Black pbss shot in BF3.

I've got only one querry for now. The pbss black screen what does it mean in BF3?It's the same as it was in BF2142 (problem with vista)?
It's amazing the number of cheaters in BF3. In a 32 slot server, I saw 15 ppls being banned during 1 hour play..!!

Edited by bk73, Nov 24, 2011 - 09:58 AM.

Black SS is most likely due to DirectX 10 and 11 incompatibility.

bk73, on Nov 24, 2011 - 09:55 AM, said:

The screenshot feature predominantly works in BF3.

http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-banned-pbss-list.html

fozzer, on Nov 24, 2011 - 10:13 AM, said:

So way I'm getting black screens taken from ppls, that I have suspicions on them.!!
All the other pbss are fine except on 2-3 specific players, I'm tracking now.!!

bk73, on Nov 24, 2011 - 11:03 AM, said:

Does your server stream via PBBans ?
Does your server stream via any anti cheat site ?

Why are you just "tracking" suspicious players who always return black screenshots on a server that you pay for instead of applying a local ban
Those same players pbguids may be on a ban list already, have you checked ?

If Punkbuster is still falling on the incompatibility with Directx 10 or 11 sword they really need to get their act together or someone needs to develop some modern technology. I mean lets be serious here, Directx 9c came out when? 2004? In any type of security field if you don't adapt quickly to the environment you're protecting then you're only ever going to catch the worlds dumbest criminals and never catch the really good ones. The only saving grace in any of this is most of the cheater community (and I say cheater because hacker is way too complimentary) are composed of absolute idiots.

And while local ban is a great option it's always nice to have absolute proof the person you're preparing to punish IS actually a cheater and not someone with a bad connection that appears to be doing well simply because he's lagging or IS actually pretty damn good. Otherwise you will quickly blacklist your own server by being too liberal with the local bans everytime someone "suspects" a hacker. A great tool is always judged by how much work it saves the operator in the end. If Punkbuster were a great tool we wouldn't be getting blank screenshots, screenshots of the loading menus or screenshots with no names attached to them. The streaming idea is by far the best thing about Punkbuster but it's only as strong as the admin community surrounding it and as we all know not even 50% of the server community even bothers to use it.

LumpyNtZ, on Nov 24, 2011 - 10:06 AM, said:

Or it is a cheater.
I just banned two obvious cheaters from my servers.
After checking, both had black screenshots when ingame. But when the map was loading and in the endround I could get their screenies.

So I've been Googling for specs about BF3 hacks and look what I found on the 2 most famous cheat sites:

Cheat 1
PB Clean Screenshots - Cleans all hack visuals when Punkbuster requests a game screenshot.
PB Black Screenshots - Returns a failed black screenshot when Punkbuster requests a game screenshot.
PB Undetected- Our hack is not detected by Punkbuster Anti-Cheat scans.

Cheat 2
PB secure
PB clean sshots

So screenshots won't be any help to catch cheaters with this particular cheats...

Edited by EBassie, Nov 26, 2011 - 08:32 AM.

Old news m8.

Well, thanks for your supportive reply AcE

Apparently this is old news for you, but for some of us it isn't.
As I could not find a topic about this, I thought I post it here.

With this info, scanning for screenies has become pretty useless, as many (maybe almost all) of the cheaters use cheats from those wellknown sites.

I also noticed that when I run windowed my own screenshots are black, while running full screen yields quality screenshots.

Frakkas, on Nov 30, 2011 - 04:26 AM, said:

I actually did end up getting some quality screenshots when windowed - just seems to maybe fail more. The point really being, black doesn't necessarily imply hacking...

Edited by Frakkas, Nov 30, 2011 - 04:46 PM.