MSI AB / RTSS development news thread

Discussion in 'MSI AfterBurner Application Development Forum' started by Unwinder, Feb 20, 2017.

  1. kilyan

    kilyan Master Guru

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    This version doesn't work with Wildlands
     
  2. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    Suggesting two times to search for "EAC" to the same person is not fun, sorry. Searching is not hard. Much easier than to answer the same thing over and over again, sorry.
     
  3. kilyan

    kilyan Master Guru

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    You miss the fact that in rtss 6.6.0. works, so is not EAC issue like in for honor,where rtss never worked
     
  4. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    Yeah that's what EAC does, it strips access/handles of all non-whitelisted processes to prevent tampering with the game/software and 6.7.0 (Now 7.7.0) is not yet whitelisted though 6.6.0 should be now with the latest update to EAC.
    (Today's update for For Honor and Wildlands included new certificate files which I guess is how this is handled.)

    7.7.0 will be whitelisted once it's out of beta, until then use 6.6.0 unless you really require some of the 7.7.0 features.

    I doubt you can (or should.) spoof the version number or try to get 7.7.0 to load and get around this as it might be risky depending on how and what EAC is logging. :)

    Far as disabling EAC goes there's a way to unload the EAC driver via another driver but as you might see this is definitively not something I'd recommend doing unless you put the entire game in a offline state (Either firewall it or set UPlay to offline.) even so EAC will still be loaded and it might be reporting back so it's risky. (Pulling the net cable certainly works but yeah, bit much just for OSD support in one game.)


    I'm certainly no expert on EAC though, I tried removing it via the standard launcher method but that causes the game to crash and even in offline mode it'll still be loaded and can send and receive data unless the net is completely disconnected so tampering with it would be unwise as it could get you game banned.


    EDIT: Well there's probably a better way to describe it but it tries to block any software from hooking into the protected process, works via low level(?) driver component and then a launcher together with local files in the game folder containing among other things a installer and a certificate file which I assume handles the whole whitelist thing, dxgi.dll injection from ReShade also works but that too might get flagged but I don't know just what is sent and received and Wildlands doesn't use a log file for EAC so it's a bit more difficult to read up on what it does which you could with For Honor or Watch_Dogs 2 or the other games using EAC.

    Said certificate file does tend to update together with the game so as long as the EAC developers are actively updating their list of software new releases of Afterburner and RTSS (Once out of beta at least.) should be usable once a new certificate is provided, thankfully for the moment all Ubisoft games using EAC are still actively maintained and supported with more patches planned though if they do drop support for a game chances are newer Rivatuner updates might no longer be compatible but that's not something Unwinder can control.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2017

  5. kilyan

    kilyan Master Guru

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    Ok,thx for the explanation, using 6.6.0.
    I don't use msi afterburner, i use hwinfo instead, o find it more complete
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2017
  6. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    It's a bit of a complicated software, it's also not very widespread yet though a couple of other online games use it and it's seeing a bit more use lately, I would hope for a server side database of OK'd software though instead of a per-game dependency on these certificates (If that is how it works.) for a centralized and maintained system for this but they probably have a reason for the way it works although the software does communicate with a server already so fetching updates this way could probably be done.

    IE for Watch_Dogs 2 it'll still be playable once Ubisoft stops patching the game but new version of RTSS will no longer be usable if EAC is still in use then though for that particular game EAC can be disabled which will force the game into offline mode whereas For_Honor requires it to be enabled and won't even connect to the servers if it's disabled and for Wildlands it'll crash on start if it doesn't detect EAC as running even if the game actually has a functional offline mode.

    But that's EAC and I'm not sure Unwinder can do much about it (It's already whitelisted after all, just that it doesn't apply to these still in development beta version.) so without going too off topic (Well not that I know all that much about Easy Anti Cheat like I said.) well it comes down to the EAC devs seeing that a new release of Afterburner / RTSS is available and it'll get whitelisted shortly after and hopefully implemented in games as those get updated.

    Well I'm not the best at explaining and the software is a bit in-depth for someone like me, I know it uses a driver though and I can understand trying to tamper with or bypass these protection mechanics being a pretty bad idea if it gets you flagged as I'm not sure how aggressive EAC is with it's bans, might end up being permanent without prior warnings for example.

    Current EAC exploits like that driver method for it's own driver to be bypassed will also get patched in time but for Rivatuner it's mostly just a waiting game until the next version is OK'ed and whitelisted on their end, once it's out of beta that is. :)
    (Well I'm starting to repeat I think so that's about what there's to be said about it, dragging this out a bit too much too I suppose, back to RTSS 7.0.0 now.)
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2017
  7. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    > But that's EAC and I'm not sure Unwinder can do much about it (It's already whitelisted after all, just that it doesn't apply to these still in development beta version.)

    There is a way to whitelist betas as well, but it requires digitally signing each build. But signing is not free way and costs a few hundreds $ per year. Technically I could use MSI's signature for that, but RTSS is a standalone not MSI branded product and also distributed separately from MSI AB package so I dislike that way.
     
  8. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    Beta 4 is available, new text alignment tags have been tweaked a bit.

    http://office.guru3d.com/afterburner/RTSSSetup700Beta4.rar

    Also the first beta of MSI AB 4.4.0 is uploaded to let the testers to preview RTSS 7.0.0 text formatting tags usage. Now you can select OSD layout in "Monitoring" tab next to "Show in On-Screen Display" option. "Classic" is the previous old good OSD layout whilst "Modern" uses new text formatting tags to output OSD text in aligned columns style. Modern layout parameters (value/units columns alignment, name colors for GPU/System/Application groups, subscript/superscript styles and sizes for item indices and units, group separators) are currently hardcoded and not tweakable via GUI, but they are defined in MSIAfterburner.cfg in [OSDLayout0] section but you can customize them there as well as add new custom layouts yourself via adding new [OSLayoutX] sections. I'm not sure if there will be full layout editor or probably just a few predefined selectable layouts in the final 4.4.0.
    Also I've added experimental clock monitoring for Intel CPUs in this build, not sure if I'll leave it enabled in the final build.

    And please take a note that new MSI AB build is intended for previewing and polishing new OSD layouts concepts ONLY. So I won't document/comment any other changes now.

    http://office.guru3d.com/afterburner/MSIAfterburnerSetup440Beta1.rar
     
  9. knuckles84

    knuckles84 Guest

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    Thanks :)

    -Afterburner 4.4beta --> the switch between classic and modern works for me, without problems

    -The modern OSD looks very nice, tested with Halo Wars 2
     
  10. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    Really liking the look of the "modern" monitoring setting in AB4.4.0

    Will check the ini file later, noticed the OSDLayout0 section when I compared the config file (And some other stuff but that goes under those "other changes" I'd assume.) but for now this default setup works pretty nicely though the settings don't look too difficult for customizing it. :)
     

  11. EdKiefer

    EdKiefer Ancient Guru

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    I run i5-3570k and this doesn't seem to be working, all 5 graphs (CPU, CPU1-4)apear to be duplicate.
     
  12. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    Wrong, that's working fine if you know what to expect. Single clock per CPU is default config and exactly how it is suppised to behave. Check CFG and PerCoreClockCalc variable. And question like "make it working for my XXX CPU" is also the reason why I have serious doubts on leaving anything non-GPU related in the final build.
     
  13. EdKiefer

    EdKiefer Ancient Guru

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    That fixed the per core values, the "CPU" is now at max clock value, I guess its not suppose to show avg.

    Anyway, just reporting what I see, I don't use this, I use separate one with logging if i ever need to show.
     
  14. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    Yes, "CPU clock" is a maximum core clock similar to "CPU temperature", which is the maximum core temperature and not average one.
     
  15. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    Small note on modern OSD layout: as it is documented in RTSS changes list, new text format tags are completely supported for raster 3D rendering mode only. So it should be selected in RTSS for complete functionality of new layout as well.
     

  16. IDSG89

    IDSG89 Member Guru

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    The modern OSD layout looks great, thanks Unwinder, excelent work

    EDIT: how can i make the units fonts bigger? i wanna make them 20% bigger

    EDIT2: Nevermind, figured out
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2017
  17. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    I still have doubts on using different colors for sensor group names in modern layout. Now OSD groups names are using separate colors for GPU related, system related (i.e. CPU, RAM etc) and application related (framerate/frametime) lines. However, colorful OS can be rather eye-breaking so those who prefer mono-color OSD can add new modern mono layout to MSIAfterburner.cfg in root application folder:

    Code:
    [OSDLayout1]	
    Desc				= modern mono
    FormatHeader			= <A0=-4><A1=4><S0=-50><S1=50>
    ValueAlignmentTag		= <A0>
    UnitsAlignmentTag		= <A1>
    IndexSizeTag			= <S0>
    UnitsSizeTag			= <S1>
    GroupDataSeparator		= 
    GroupNameSeparator		= \t
    
    After adding it and restarting application "modern mono" layout will become available for selection.
     
  18. EdKiefer

    EdKiefer Ancient Guru

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    I tried last night to lower the space a little between each value but couldn't figure out what would work.
    Maybe also cause I didn't restart AB and Valley as test app(I did quit the 3d part ).
    Which value/section would that be ?
     
  19. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    AB must be restarted in order to pick up layout changes. And there is no room left for lowering the space, that's already set to minimum possible value to provide proper alignment and fit any data displayed in the column. Width of columns is defined by two alignment tag variables defined in FormatHeader line. <A0=-4> defines the first alignment variable, right aligned text, 4 symbols width. <A1=4> defines the second alignment variable, left aligned text, 4 symbols width. ValueAlignmentTag = <A0> applies the first alignment variable style to data columns, UnitsAlignmentTag = <A1> applies the second alignment variable style to units columns. If you reduce them to 3, then clock values having 4 digits will be overlapping.
     
  20. EdKiefer

    EdKiefer Ancient Guru

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    Ok, good to know, I did try to lower them (I think I used 2/-2 ) but not sure if I restarted AB each time.
    I was just messing around, so no big deal.
     

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