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What the patch fixes

This page describes each problem the patch fixes: what you see without the patch, what causes it, and what the patch changes. Why the game looked wrong explains the cause these problems share.

Each comparison shows the same view twice. Drag the divider, or use the arrow keys, to compare the two, and select Enlarge to see them at full size. Both sides were taken on Mesa, with the same widescreen patches installed. For the side without the patch, Mesa was set to hide ATI’s fragment shaders, so the game found neither of its shading methods and took the path it takes on a driver that offers neither.

Grass stays on the ground

The Lower Shadowlands on Kashyyyk, with bare ground and broken fog. The same spot, with grass covering the ground and fog rendering properly.
The Lower Shadowlands. Without the patch, grass and fog are rendered incorrectly or are missing.

Without the patch: blades of grass stretch from the ground into the sky, in long streaks across the view, or are missing entirely depending on what is in memory.

Cause: the game has three ways to draw grass. Two of them tell the graphics card to read the positions of the blades from the wrong place in memory. On a driver that offers neither of the game’s shading methods, the game uses one of those two.

With the patch: the game uses the third way for textured grass, which reads the right place, so the grass stands on the ground. For the exact cause, see Why the grass breaks.

The Matale Grounds on Dantooine, with incorrect grass rendering and some grass exploding in the sky. The same location, with the grass appearing correctly on the ground.
The Matale Grounds on Dantooine. Without the patch, grass stretches from the ground into the sky or is missing entirely.

Lights reach lightmapped walls and floors

The Upper City cantina on Taris. The same view of the cantina, with the ceiling lamp glowing and walls showing more details
The Upper City cantina on Taris. The difference is small here: with the patch, the ceiling lamps glow, and some wall textures are properly reflecting detail.

Without the patch: walls and floors show only their lightmap, which is the lighting stored in the level when the level was built. The lights in the room don’t affect them.

Cause: on the path the game uses when it finds neither shading method, the game turns lighting off while it draws a lightmapped surface.

With the patch: the lights in the room add to the lightmap.

Reflections are restored

A Sith soldier on Taris, lighting is flat on the armour. The same Sith soldier, environment lighting effects the armour.
A Sith soldier on Taris. With the patch, the armour is lit properly.

Without the patch: shiny surfaces, such as armour, droids, water, and the Ebon Hawk’s cockpit glass, lose most of their reflection. The Ebon Hawk comparisons in Glow and screen effects appear also show the cockpit glass.

Cause: the game draws its reflections in one pass with one of its two shading methods. On a driver that offers neither, it falls back to an older method that draws each shiny surface twice without per-pixel shading, once for the reflection and once for its texture, and blends the two.

With the patch: the game draws its reflections in one pass on every card.

HK-47 on Tatooine, missing his eyes and metallic details. The same view, with HK-47's plating details visible and eyes present.
HK-47 on Tatooine. With the patch, his metal plating shows the details it is supposed to have, and his eyes are glowing as intended.
The river below the grove on Dantooine, with flat fallback rendering on the water. The same river, with the water semi-transparent and shaded as intended.
The grove river on Dantooine. With the patch, the water is correctly semi-transparent and is shaded properly, and the grass on the near bank is drawn.

Cube maps on Intel

On Intel’s Windows driver, the game also loses its best reflections a second way. It draws them with cube maps, and it looks for cube maps under the name GL_EXT_texture_cube_map. Intel’s Windows driver lists cube maps only as GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, which is the same feature under a newer name. The game concludes that the card has no cube maps and uses sphere maps, an older and simpler kind of reflection.

The patch makes the game look for the newer name, which Intel’s driver lists, and which Mesa also lists. Mesa lists the older name too, so the comparisons on this page, which were taken on Mesa, don’t show this fix.

Technical details

RenderEnvironmentMapped dispatches modes 0x13 and 0x14 only when AurOnePassEnvMapAvailable returns true, which requires AurBumpMapAvailable. Otherwise it draws the surface twice through the fixed function stage: once with the environment map and generated texture coordinates, and once with the material’s own texture, blending the two passes. environmentMapDest chooses which pass comes first and how they blend.

Creatures get bump lighting

Ajuur the Hutt in the Upper City cantina on Taris. The same view, with bump lighting on Ajuur's skin.
Ajuur in the Upper City cantina. With the patch, bump lighting brings out the folds of his skin, most visibly along his tail.
Master Zhar in the Dantooine Enclave, his lekku are shaded black. The same scene, with proper shading on the lekku.
Master Zhar. The shading on his lekku is properly visible and no longer looks black.

Without the patch: bump mapped creatures, such as the Hutts, are drawn without per-pixel lighting.

Cause: bump lighting lights each point of a surface according to the direction that point faces, which a bump map stores. It needs per-pixel shading, so on a driver that offers neither of the game’s methods, the game draws no bump lighting at all. Even with a method, the game draws the Hutts and the Rancor with bump lighting only when it uses NVIDIA’s. On every other card, including ATI’s, it skips that branch.

With the patch: the game takes that branch on every card. While one of these creatures fades out, the patch sends it down the game’s plain branch instead, because the bump branches can’t fade.

Lighting for mods works

Without the patch: on every card, NVIDIA’s included, three of the game’s lighting routes don’t work: bump lighting on lightmapped surfaces, normal maps, and reflective skins with a flat reflection map. The shipped game barely uses them, but mods can.

Cause: bugs in the game. The first and third use vertex programs that no driver accepts in the form the game builds them, so those surfaces draw nothing. The switch for normal maps is compiled to always answer no, and the game loads TGA normal maps with two colour channels swapped.

With the patch: all three work. For details, see How the patch works.

Shadows are soft

Characters standing on sand on Tatooine, casting hard-edged shadows. The same view, with the shadows' edges softened.
Tatooine. With the patch, the shadows cast by characters are softened.

Without the patch: shadows have hard edges.

Cause: the game softens shadows by drawing them into an image off screen and blurring that image. It does this only when it uses one of its two shading methods. A separate check in the game also keeps soft shadows off unless the game’s own settings file allows them.

With the patch: soft shadows work on every card whose driver offers framebuffer objects, and the separate check no longer blocks them.

Glow and screen effects appear

The crystal cave on Dantooine, crystals are missing their textures and glow. The same cave, with the crystals rendering properly.
The crystal cave on Dantooine. With the patch, the crystals render properly and glow again.

Without the patch: bright lights have no glow, and the game shows none of its screen effects: motion blur, film grain, the distortion around Force powers.

Cause: the game draws these effects into images off screen, the same way it draws soft shadows, and it does this only when it uses one of its two shading methods.

With the patch: the effects draw on every card whose driver offers framebuffer objects.

The Ebon Hawk on Dantooine in daylight. The same view, with the sunlit hull glowing and the cockpit glass reflecting.
The Ebon Hawk in daylight. With the patch, the sunlit part of the hull glows like all metallic objects, and the cockpit glass reflects again.
The Ebon Hawk on Kashyyyk at night. The same view, with a faint glow on the moonlit hull and the cockpit glass reflecting.
The Ebon Hawk at night. With the patch, a faint glow appears where the moonlight hits the hull, and the cockpit glass reflects again.
The waterfall in the grove on Dantooine. The same waterfall, with its spray glowing.
The grove waterfall on Dantooine. With the patch, the spray glows.

Glow and soft shadows hold still

Without the patch: on every card that draws them, the glow around lights and the edges of soft shadows flicker as the camera moves. The flicker is worse at higher resolutions, and small lights can lose their glow entirely.

Cause: to draw the glow and the soft shadows, the game first shrinks the whole screen into a small square. It does this by reading a scattered sample of the screen’s pixels, and the larger the screen, the more pixels it skips. As the camera moves, a small light or the edge of a shadow moves in and out of the sampled pixels.

With the patch: the patch shrinks the screen with a filter that takes every pixel into account, so the glow and the shadows stay steady at every resolution.

The brightness slider works

Without the patch: on some drivers, moving the brightness slider has no effect.

Cause: the game applies brightness by asking the display to use a brightness curve. A driver is allowed to refuse that request, and NVIDIA’s Windows driver refuses it.

With the patch: the patch applies the game’s brightness curve to the picture itself, including in cutscenes.