MSI afterburner bug report & suggestion

I am having issues with the steam overlay not working with afterburner/rtss and subsequently not working with steam controller.

As set up, I can get the overlay to work in most games I play including FarCry 4, but specifically Lego games, the steam overlay won't work, and my controller won't either.

If I go to RTSS and disable the 64-bit application support service then the overlay in Lego games works, but afterburner overlay in FarCry and other games won't.

I can get the lego games working if I switch to dx9 mode from dx11. But I am wondering if I am missing settings or something. Just seems odd. Any suggestions?

 

I think adding the steam overlay to the delay section works. I'll test more.

 

Multiple overlays in games can cause issues as stated by AB developer countless times. Steam known for having weird stuff with their ingame overlay and AB is not to blame.

 

Nah or well that's true too I suppose but in this case one of the changes of Riva Tuner Statistics Server 6.5.0 and newer (6.5.1 and now 6.6.0b1) is that the Steam_Api64.dll file is no longer part of the default delay config (From the looks of it Origin's overlay still is tough.) it was discussed extensively for the AfterBurner 4.3.0 / RTSS 6.5.0 beta builds even if it's part of the pdf documentation and there's multiple threads now with how to adjust this if needed.

From my understanding following some of these discussions it's to try and get Valve to fix the compatibility issue on their end with the Steam overlay rather than using this workaround with a delayed injection of RTSS although I have my doubts about Valve really doing much at all about it though they do adjust the overlay functionality now and again going by for example the current Steam beta branch although I don't think this particular issue has been brought up but perhaps they'll eventually get around to fixing it.


And as far as 6.6.0 goes I can't really say much in regards to Vulkan as there's only a handful of games using it and some recent emulators are also slowly incorporating the API in addition to DX12 support, I do have Talos Principle but it's more of a ever ongoing beta testing ground for Vulkan in future Croteam games or game engine updates and then there's Doom which I uninstalled last month since updates are fairly infrequent and all post-release content so far is for the online mode so with the game finished and little chance of any major changes being added let alone new content outside of multiplayer maps or player customization's I decided to uninstall it.

For emulators I don't use CEMU (WiiU) myself although Dolphin might be possible to test RTSS 6.6.0 Vulkan support although the implementation is still not 100% with daily builds frequently making changes to this and other parts of the emulator.

But besides not having something to test Vulkan monitoring and FPS limiting via well everything else is working as it should.
(Looking forward to seeing in-game OSD support for later beta releases and well more Vulkan games being released I suppose, guessing it might end up like OpenGL otherwise at least on Windows where DirectX 11 and 12 take market dominance almost completely with the occasional infrequent release of a game using OpenGL and/or Vulkan as it's main API.)

Spoiler

Although it's not like there's that many DirectX 12 games currently either let alone games using DirectX 12 as their main API.

..Is there any besides Ashes of the Singularity and maybe Quantum Break on the Win10 Store? - Since the Steam version went with DX11 instead. - Well I guess Gears of War Remaster and Gears of Wars 4 might count too, also Win10 store exclusive.

(Eidos is making use of it but well Tomb Raider, Hitman and Deus Ex of 2016 all had the same idea of using DX11 primarily and then post-release patch in DX12 support and update it over time resulting in delays to for example multi-GPU support and such.)

(Ubisoft maybe will start using it eventually, Division did have it in the PTS environment but the stable 1.5 release had it removed citing it needed more work and some other bugs were discovered as well during testing.)


Guessing it's similar with Vulkan only because it's a bit more recent it's not as widespread yet, Croteam have expressed interest in Vulkan over DX12 as it isn't locked to a particular OS and id Softwrare will probably continue using Vulkan for some of their games. (Doesn't seem like the upcoming Quake online game will use it though?)

Newest versions of UE4 and Cry-Engine 5 also support it though they do support DX12 too so it's up to the developers licensing those engines which API will be used as the primary one I suppose.
(Much like many UE3.x games still relied on D3D9 even some years after D3D11 support was added to the engine.)

EDIT: Added a spoiler tag around the last parts of the post as it was more about DX12 and Vulkan in general.

 

Anyone figured out how to get OSd working in watch dogs 2? I disabled in game overlays from uplay and steam.

 

Game uses EasyAntiCheat, their FAQ states that 4.2.0+ of AB is supported though nothing is mentioned about RTSS so that could be what's blocking it.

There's so far no way to disable EAC and it's force started with the game by a in-built "-eac_launcher" launch parameter, I've tried disabling it but with no luck so far.

For the moment I've added profiles for WatchDogs2.exe and it's SplashScreen.exe files as "Not monitored" I can check most statistics via the Afterburner software and it's charts and for screenshot functionality that still works in borderless mode at least as a workaround. (Captures the desktop actually but as the game window is in the foreground when in borderless mode that's what gets captured.)

No idea if there's some other way around this, I tested some of the compatibility settings for vector 2d, raster 2d and raster 3d without effect and also framebuffer and viewport position but that didn't make a difference either.

EAC doesn't seem to be quite "Punkbuster" type bad at least though at a guess there's not yet a whitelist for RTSS 6.5.0+ - And AB 4.3.0+ ? - and as it's added client side it would be Ubisoft who had to update it together with the the game when that gets updated as far as I can tell, not 100% sure how EAC works in this regard. (ReShade works though so it might not be EAC that is the actual problem at all but it's the most likely reasons unless the game itself is doing something different.)

 

so someone needs to submit the RTSS dll file to the devs of the anti-cheat app so they unflag it.

 

I tried that but unfortunately it did not work, well at least not for me.

[RendererDirect3D10]
Enable = 0

Far as GameWorks goes it uses a updated TXAA method (Called version 3.0) but that would be Nvidia GPU exclusive, also uses temporal reconstruction though it's toggleable and I have it disabled but that might perhaps interfere even so.
(Scales down the resolution, not quite the same tech as multi-res shading though which is a Nvidia technique.)

Also uses volumetric fog effects and PCSS+ and HFTS shadow filtering along with HBAO+ (And two of Ubisofts own AO modes too.) most of which can be toggled although that might not be enough for overlay compatibility.

 

did you buy this with steam? so its trying to hook the uplay overlay as well as steam??

under \ProfileTemplates\Global there is a line

Code:

InjectionDelayTriggers			= IGO64.dll

in that line you could add GameOverlayRenderer64.dll for steam overlay and/or overlay64.dll for uplay overlay.

so make it look like

Code:

InjectionDelayTriggers			= IGO64.dll,overlay64.dll,GameOverlayRenderer64.dll

this will add the injection delay which by default is 15 seconds after application is launched, then it will hook. you dont have to use gameoverlayrenderer64.dll. that's for steam overlay. if you did not buy the watchdogs 2 off steam, then you don't have to worry about that you can just add the overlay64.dll to that line. launch the game and wait at least 15 seconds and see if it hooks. i think its both the gameworks stuff as well as uplay or steam overlay causing the issue

 

Shortened the quote a bit but it's the UPlay version directly as to not need one client for downloading the game (Steam) and another to launch the game (UPlay) even if I greatly prefer Steam over UPlay, Origin or Battle.net.
(It also allows for acquiring cheaper keys compared to buying from Steam directly which over here is about the most expensive option for buying games since they convert 1:1 to Euro currency leading to a 30 - 40% price increase in many cases, been a big issues in many poorer countries and Valve and other digital download clients are a bit slow to add in local currency support but it's slowly improving.)

Far as overlay compatibility goes I can actually do without the delay functionality in Afterburner since I keep the Steam overlay disabled (Makes things compatible with some other software too such as ReShade without any possible problems from conflicts there.) and the UPlay overlay is also disabled which UPlay is all to keen on reminding you about when you start a game. (Two+ years now as a suggestion to be able to toggle that and also the after-game report/advertisement screen with Ubisoft promising to look into it, been peeking for quite some time now without anything changing or well no further response from them at all but that was kinda obvious how it would go.)

I do still use it though even if it's not strictly needed but again more for compatibility with other injectors like ReShade to give those a chance to inject first and then Afterburner / RTSS activates afterwards.

EDIT: Steam version of the standard edition of Watch_Dogs 2 is 60 Euro which translates to a bit under x10 when converted to SEK (~590 SEK) and I can get the game locally here for about 335 SEK so yeah, Steam.
(And that doesn't even involve third party discount sites even officially supported ones like Gamesplanet or GreenManGaming where it can be had for cheaper still in some cases.)

 

Apparently putting UPlay in offline mode gets around it from what I just read, I haven't tested yet but it's a interesting implementation to force EAC to always be used with the game but setting the UPlay client in offline mode somehow gets around it?

I'll have to read up on it a bit more.

EDIT: This has some info too.
https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/anti-cheat-bypass/123859-easy-anti-cheat.html
(It's a little bit invasive yeah?)
(Kernel mode little driver thing doing stuff, not that nice.)

 

I sent them an email last night about this, but from little googling I did, they seem to not care much.

I've personally tried even with offline mode, blocked everything in the firewall, etc. no luck.

steam overlay and fraps work fine for FPS display purposes, but obviously, they are not even remotely as comprehensive as RTSS.

 

I wasn't able to find a 6.3.0 download link other than from this thread:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=398530