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Direct3D error when starting game

Noah Sherwin edited this page Oct 20, 2022 · 3 revisions
A problem occurred initializing DirectDraw/Direct3D. Hardware acceleration maybe disabled...

Windows' Display Scaling is set to something other than 100%

Follow the steps shown in the video "Fix classic Halo PC Direct3D crash without changing Display Scale" to avoid having to deal with

Note

If the "compatibility" tab used in the video is missing everywhere on your PC, you might be able to re-add it.

ALTERNATIVELY, set Windows' Display Scaling to 100% before playing SPV3 and change it back afterwards. Go to Change your screen resolution in Windows and scroll down to Change the size of what's on the screen.

The game resolution is either too small or too large

In the launcher, change the Width and Height values to match your desktop resolution. If you need different values, please try changing them after issues have been resolved.

Your GPU configuration app is enforcing SSAA, MSAA, or CSAA either globally (all apps) or for just "haloce.exe".

If so, set the anti-aliasing for "haloce.exe" to something else or turn it off. The instructions for this solution depend on your GPU/iGPU and the version of your GPU driver. The game engine extension "OpenSauce" is incompatible with GPU-accelerated anti-aliasing.

Note: modern anti-aliasing solutions (e.g. SMAA, MLAA, FXAA, TAA, et cetera) are fine because they do not affect the game's rendering pipeline the same way. All ReShade effects are fine, too. NVIDIA FreeStyle has not been tested, but is probably fine.

Hardware acceleration have been disabled -or- SPV3's haloce.exe was told to run on a graphics device that lacks basic capabilities

This can be caused by accidental toggle of a system setting, failing to install your GPU driver(s), or by preferring a "GPU" for haloce.exe that is incapable of Custom Edition's very old and very basic GPU requirements. In very rare cases, it may have been disabled due to a hardware malfunction and you're SOL...

Windows 10

  1. Enable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling
  2. Set your preferred GPU for SPV3's haloce.exe. We're unsure if this affects only SPV3's haloce.exe or any haloce.exe.

Windows 11

  1. Enable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling
  2. Change Graphics Performance Preference

Windows 8.1, 8, 7, and older

There are no known tutorials for toggling GPU hardware acceleration on these older operating systems. Sorry :(



If all else fails, follow the troubleshooting outlined in Issue #14