Remember the gool old first incarnation of Cry Engine? Of course (some of) you do! Why not make some experiments 10 years later, with all the pixelcrunching power we have nowdays? So I deleted the original FC pre-compiled shader cache folder ( "Far Cry\Shaders\Cache\") and let the game rebuild the shader binaries on a Windows 7 SP1 system with lastest DirectX installed. I got some interesting differences in image rendering and its quality: (XOR png between new and old shader binaries) .....and some surface rendering issues too (depending on camera view angle): Anyone who can suggest a solution for the issues?
Have you patched the game? Updating it to the latest available patch normally works to fix the compatibility issues with newer OS. I've got the game running on my Win7 system. The only visual issue I have is that the ground/rocks don't reflect in the water. Grass, trees, characters and vehicles do... but land and rocks don't.
The game is fine, the problem is with the forced-re-compiled shaders With original shader binaries of course there's nothing wrong.
Far Cry 2 is great IMO, but 3 was stupid and boring. I don't think that Crytek would make better game though, looking at what they did after first Crysis.
Find the latest fxc.exe you can fine and replace the one that comes with Far Cry. It also resolves issues with using the 64 bit version.
It's on purpose, and obviously I have the backup folder! (I'm not so idiot LOL ) I want to know - if possible - how correctly recompile ALL the shader binaries to avoid those issues! A trick is to delete the cache folder, let the game compile the shaders, merge them with the shader backup folder and (obviously) rename it "cache": it's working, but I don't know why the game can't recompile ALL the requested shaders on demand (like in Crysis)!
issue finally found: they are the terrain shaders (bunch of files, just search for "*terrain*") in the PIXEL shader CACHE folder (CGPShaders) Just use the release ones for the terrain an you can recompile all the others with a recent fxc.exe (taken from Windows SDK Kit). Oh wait, it has been 6 years!
One really polished island instead of one pretty good and one pretty bland and the third game would have worked really well but it's probably my favorite of the Ubisoft Far Cry games. Spin-offs like Blood Dragon and Primal weren't bad either, New Dawn was a bit ehh it had some good ideas but it gets a bit too up about the whole crafting stuff although at least on PC users can opt for tools to minimize it I suppose. Crytek's engine and what would become Far Cry was a bit special when it came out though no linear levels or small indoor environments though it wasn't open world either and the Trigens weren't that great when introduced but it was really fun especially the early levels just messing around a bit before the game threw every encounter at you and in much larger groups. Never tried the GFX update or the totally 64-bit only honest upgrade for it and then there's I think Ubisoft(?) and their attempts at console with what was it call Predator or something plus later on the Dunia engine build and remake of the first game. (Not too impressive but allowed them to re-release the game on newer consoles.) Memorable box art too, garish tourist shirt, explosions and over-kitted MP5 it has it all plus pretty scenery. EDIT: Huh I completely forgot about how this and Crysis had that shader setup, it's pretty uncommon. Allowed for a bunch of neat mods though which wouldn't have worked otherwise. Although at least Crysis also shipped with initial compiled shader packs. (Which was the file that got deleted for modding purposes, probably leading to similar issues come to think of it.) These days though on Steam and digital (Not sure where this is available, everywhere? ) I presume you can just validate the game files and get it all restored should something like that happen. Think the game is D3D9.c so no hybrid with D3D9 or D3D9.b and shader model 2.0 and 2.0b funniness either. Strange that it's affected by shader compilation, some engine or game bug maybe. Or later D3D9 bug on Windows 8+ that maybe hasn't been entirely resolved? (Think the memory one for over 4 GB of VRAM got resolved in a earlier Windows 10 build so it's not entirely forgotten about, yet.)
You can force shader model 2.0b It seems that all the shaders are recompiled fine by the lastest fxc available for Windows 10 in its SDK, the issue is only about the terrain-related ones (maybe not all of them, just nailed the range of the issue to them ) So you can literally delete all the precompiled shaders but those ones...... This game stands out today too, it only needs some SSAO+FXAA/SMAA through ReShade and voilĂ .....just remember to console-force the terrain LoD to 0 every time you load a level......(every level has a different integrated value for it, so no way to force 0 - the best - for ALL the levels).