FFXI Finally In High Quality Graphics

Also, since there's a lot of unnecessary steps in posts here, this is strictly what's needed to make it work:

Necessary files:

• File 1 : Executable and d3d8.dll

• File 2: d3dcompiler_47.dll

1) Download File 1 to somewhere easy to access. Right click the .zip file and select "Properties". Click "Unblock" at the bottom if it's there. Extract the files to an easy to get to folder.

2) Launch dgVoodooCpl.exe from File 1 at least once to generate a .conf file for the wrapper to use. By default, this file will end up in your Users/<Name>/AppData/Roaming/dgVoodoo/ directory. You can leave it there and it will act as a default. Alternatively, you can choose where it goes and if you place one in the PlayOnline/SquareEnix/PlayOnlineViewer/ directory, that one will be used instead.

2) In the File 1 download you should see MS and in MS you should see d3d8.dll. Move d3d8.dll to the PlayOnline/SquareEnix/PlayOnlineViewer/ directory. You should see pol.exe and polhook.dll as well.

3) Download File 2 to somewhere easy to access. Right click the .zip file and select "Properties". Click "Unblock" at the bottom if it's there.

4) Extract d3dcompiler_47.dll to the Windows/SysWOW64/ directory (64bit systems) or Windows/System32/ directory (32bit systems) if it does not already exist there. You should see similarly named files.

740 isn't strong enough to run with lots of AA and AF, especially if you are already running SuperSampling.

...

Hook.dll isn't a well known system library that exists in every version of windows for the past decade. DXD8.dll on the other hand is and some AV programs really dont like anything linking to common system libraries not signed by Microsoft. I even mentioned earlier that people should check their AV programs.

Ah ok, good to know. I'll live with it tuned down happily lol.

Although, if this keeps getting better I'll have to update my video card one day just to be able to make FFXI shiny!

Thanx a bunch!
I didn't have much trouble setting it up. All the main points I ran into were already in this thread.

I really love the improvements!

Everything is running great and love the performance improvement, is anyone else having issues with resolution in windower taking to white screen? I still can't run windower at the same resolution as my display (like I was before Voodoo)

So shiny

I'm aware of that, yeah. More so meant "hey this may not work, I don't know if I can do anything about it on Windower's end, but probably not, so check your antivirus software". Wasn't disagreeing with you or anything, I just don't want people misunderstanding that it's not working with Windower and thinking it's the fault of windower. You're so combative all the time, it's a god damn headache.

I say try it with it if its already on your system.
"what isnt broke" comes to mind lol.

If you already got d3dcompiler version 47 then no need to copy it there. It's not distributed with Windows by default but many modern games install it.

Can only think VRAM or DX feature level on GPU. What GPU do you have and how much memory is on it?

Its actually older but it shouldn't matter.

Side note: Game is looking great now :)

Coast looks nice

It is a laptop, it has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M with 4GB of vram.

Abyssea confluxes do weird things on usage now. It's kinda neat really.

so I have only been tweaking this a little so far and otherwise looking for some input. lately I have been running on my 4-5 year old laptop now, (2.3 GHz quad core i7, 8GB RAM, GeForce GT650M with only 512 VRAM). for the virtual card should I be limiting to 512 or 1024? I have noticed that things are fine for the most part unless I start dual boxing, at which point my frame rate drops through the floorboards.

in theory, I should be able to more stably run two instances of the game with at least some graphical tweaks, but that doesn't seem to be the case here (and the couch is more comfortable than moving over to my desk chair, besides). essentially, which settings should I be able to take advantage of to get the most bang for my buck here?

what's the chances of SE somehow messing this up with an update?
or is it not really possible?

If I understand it, it shouldn't matter. The game HAS to communicate what the graphics are to display, and has to do that via an intermediary. As long as the intermediary is speaking the same language as the game, the game is happy. What is actually done with that information the game passes on is out of the game's control.

The only way they could break it would require them to break the game, period, unless there is some specific, malformed DirectX call that would cause this to crash.

I'm sure someone else can give a more in-depth explanation with actual proper terminology.

I feel like I must be messing up some configuration settings, because my performance is terrible. Zones like adoulin will drop down to 20, sometimes 10 fps when running around with no additional texture filtering, no antialiasing, no supersampling. I know my card's pretty old now(gtx 770 with 2gb vram) but I feel like with bare minimum settings I should at least match performance without the wrapper.

I'm experiencing an issue wherein I cannot take screenshots. I discovered this trying to take screenshots of another issue, namely that light sources are more or less 'flat' and ignore intervening items- which it might have been always and I just never noticed it since it wasn't this nice looking.

For example, there is a bright, perfect circle around a lamp post, with no gradual fade to non-lit.

The 'perfect bright circle' issue is not on all light sources, but all of them don't care if there's, say, a table there.

edit: disabling phong shading option fixed the screenshot issue.

edit: it also fixed the lighting issue, nevermind.

This also allows FFXI to run like butter on my GPD Win, allowing me to play FFXI completely mobile, this really is a dream come true.

http://imgur.com/a/G8jAz

You absolute madman. That's amazing.

Also, this has fixed windowed mode crashing when something fullscreen launches.

Skarwind, what are your setting to get your lighting like that? Did you mess with ambient lighting and gamma numbers in windower?

Lol that is amazing!! I got mine to finally work on my laptop because of this, only issue I could see is that when in Abyssea Altepa fighting against Cuijatender with party effects turn on, it caused my game to crash everytime I pulled it. Turned off the effects and worked fine. So don't know what was happening there.

Probably hit F11.

Yup it was F11

Maybe I just missed the post but, anybody posted suggested (or even mandatory, if there are any) DGvodoo settings? There's a lot of stuff you can configure there.

Likewise, is there some settings you should turn on/off on the FFXIconfig? (Bump Mapping, shadows type, something else etc)


There's also that "Graphics stabilization" option on the FFXIconfig which got added aeons ago but I don't remember what it was added for and if it still serves a purpose at all.

Yeah. I'm not exactly sure if I should stop supersampling, or exactly what to turn on and off, other than no Phong shading.