RealMyst, ATI, and the Omega Driver

Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/RealMyst, ATI, and the Omega Driver

I finally got my hands on RealMyst the other day and I really was enjoying it.

Soon I realized that there were some unfortunate hard-coded LOD things that apparently can't be removed (a complete shame, because it would look perfect otherwise) and that I can't use Anti-Aliasing unless I tell the ATI Catalyst thing to force applications to use it. (Thus defeating the purpose of "let the application decide" and the "Use FSAA" checkbox in the RealMyst graphics settings).

Anyway, while messing with Catalyst I noticed a driver update. (Or rather, that I hadn't updated in ages).
Joy!
I download, install, restart, then I remember where it all began... boom, RealMyst doesn't start. It loads, enters a black screen for a second, then closes and returns to the desktop.

So here I am, now suffering from Myst withdrawal...
I ran a few Google searches, but all the help I can find is from over two years ago with the Catalyst 3.3 driver (this one is 6.9, and I know that the previous one which was 6.somethingelse worked fine without fussing).

One single thing I learned that still applies to today is the Omega Driver.
It sounds like a nice thing, I like the idea of escaping Catalyst since the thing irritates me to no end and I like the description that it isn't tailored to passing fake benchmarks... but I want to be cautious about it.

-Is there perhaps a way to have two video drivers, and be able to switch between them at will? (Restarting the computer is undoubtedly a necessity, of course...)

-Have you had any experiences with the Omega driver on a Radeon 9600 SE or Pro or whatever it is? Is it better, faster, slower, crashy?

-Does Omega have an ugly config utility like Catalyst does now, or a sensible config utility that integrates with Properties/Settings/Advanced like Catalyst used to?

I was using Omega drivers for the about 12 months when I was using a Radeon 9800 Pro and they were definitely quicker and much less prone to compatibility issues. I can't say anything about 9600 though. Also, when I was using them, the settings were always in Properties/Settings/Advanced . That could have changed by now. There's also Dhzeropoint (I think thats how it's spelt) drivers for radeon as well, and apparently they are quicker for Oblivion. Best is to try a few and see what's best for you. I also found that using DriverCleaner before installing resulted in less hassles. Either way, I always preferred these modified drivers over the stock catalyst ones.

Hope this helps.

Omega Drivers are a godsend for Notebook owners with ATI Chips since neither ATI nor the Notebook manufacturers offer driver updates frequently (No ATI Drivers for Notebooks at all).

For PC i didn't think there were substantial differences as this Omega Driver basically is the Catalyst minus some detection routines that prevent Catalyst from being installed on machines with mobile ATI Chips.

I might be completely wrong though ...

Could you perhaps use VMWare to set up different OS-Configurations with different GFX drivers?

Blast!

It still won't start after installing Omega :(

Curse those busy-body software developers - Curse them!

I'll see if DriverCleaner makes a difference, then I'll try reinstalling the whole thing...


Edit:
Oh my!
*Blushes*
A quick exploration with the dreaded command prompt (I bet Windows's command prompt is the reason why so many people have come to be afraid of CLIs) somehow managed to tell me that RealMyst was simply executing from the wrong directory!

How this happened, I will never know.

Oh well, back to it!

One good thing came of all this: I've found Omega :)