Now that i've got my new cool graphic card, i have access to some options i didnt have previoulsy :p
Andi feel like i'm playing a whole new game now !!!! I can see far away detailed landscapes, well-rounded characters, etc...
So, i figured the antialiasing stuff (put it to x4), but what is the "GPU Animation" and "Reflections" ?
Also, now sometimes (depending on lightning) the faces are all white, is there a way to fade this a bit maybe ?
Grats on the card. The game looks awesome when run at full spec.
GPU (Graphics processing Unit) Animation will try and enhance certain elements of detail. I would say reflections would be as what is says, enhancement and processing of any reflections required.
I'm not sure why you get white faces, its not something I've seen. Maybe a few tweaks of the settings might resolve it.
I have SLI graphics with 2 Nvidia cards and the scenery and graphics are a delight. Just look at the clouds floating by in the sky !
Not sure what GPU animation is, as all it seems to do with my 6800GT is lower my FPS, and "hiccups" (pause) every few seconds, so my FPS is like "24, 24, 24, 0, 24, 24, 24, 0, 24, etc".
I think the reflections refer to the water reflections. With that off, the water is just a translucent texture that doesnt reflect anything like water irl does. Sky Only will give the water that shimmering effect, and reflect the sky only, as well as being translucent. Reflect All will give shimmering, translucent water, and reflect the whole game environment; your character, mobs, trees, etc, etc. Looks good, but even on a decent system, it can cut your fps by 10fps or more.
Face all white sounds like you have the fake HDR on. To me, it doesnt look good at all and just makes the ingame gamma look even worse to the point of being unbearable to look at a solid white area (snow areas in dwarf land for example). Plus it also affects your fps negatively. Try the real HDR or lesser intense "glow" if you like, but personally, I'd just leave it off.
That reminds me. I finally have a way of forcing my correct gamma to stay in place (hardware gamma correction :) ). Maybe I sould try those HDR modes again and see if having the correct gamma for a screen improve the look.
Ok,i set up "reflections" to "sky", but i didnt turn the HDR on and i still get white faces sometimes, depending on the places and lighting...
Oh well, it's not very important, as the game looks so awesome now :p
Ok,i set up "reflections" to "sky", but i didnt turn the HDR on and i still get white faces sometimes, depending on the places and lighting...
Oh well, it's not very important, as the game looks so awesome now :p
I have that a lot in Cruma Tower for example, it depends of the in game light. Has little to do with your graphic card ;)
Turn reflections to all! Reflections are sometimes funky with "sky" for example if you go into a cave type area and there is water you will actually see the sky reflected in it. If you put all it will reflect the environment.
GPU animation is pointless, don't use it...if anything for most people they will get less performance.
Me being a light elf, a lot of times I get the face to be whited out a bit. Usually if I am in a place that receives a lot of artificial light, sun, torch, etc. I have Glow effect A on, and when I turn it off it only changes a little. The only thing you can really do to reduce this is to turn gamma down, and if you want you can even increase the contrast of your monitor a bit. Hope this helps. :)
One thing you will notice if you didn't before or haven't yet is, that shadows are weird in this game. You can save resources for rendering more people than the shadows since shadows sometimes will show up on weird areas where shadow physics would be impossible.
Welp, I tried the fake glow and HDR with the calibrated gamma settings and it still doesnt look great. I noticed that the game with the glow setting off, still has a glow of its own as you have noticed from the reflections of ingame light. The fake glow/HDR just intensifies the existing "glow". :/
Actually I can set it from menu, but it does nothing. Strays on the same texture. On Radeon 9600XT I had previously it was OK. I just had some major graphic lags when I looked in direction of some nearby water.
I do not miss it that much thou.
SHader options are available if your card supports Pixel Shader v2 I think, and is fully DX9 capable. I am not sure how it actually works, but you can see difference in glows and scene lighting if you play with these settings. It could be that it lets graphic card calculate all lighting for scene through pixel shader units that are programmable and can do it in different ways - depends on what code is sent to them by application. (Cartoonish rendering of L2 anybody? ;) )
You can see antialiasing effect on things like characters and horizon - it's without "stairs" effect or broken lines. Anyway for whatever reason if you turn antialiasing in driver settings drirectly, it works faster than when you turn it on in L2 itself... 4x AA turned in drivers had barely any effect on FPS even in crowded places.
If your GFX card is still bored, turn on Anisothropic filtering - being said in stupid way "textures on the ground and walls also in distance look smoother with that" :)