graphics

[1stpar3]

I am running a great system, or thought it was. I have seen a lot of screen shots from the beta. Question is, how are they getting such bright and colorful images? Is there something I need to change in my graphics card controls, or are they running a shade program like sweetfx? I tried running most terrains and they all seem the same and not being a computer expert I have hit a wall!                      

[Chilli]

I sort of noticed the same thing with screenshots.  Sweetfx is very cool, but I don't believe that is what we are seeing or necessary.

Suggestions: 
Option1_ Type .sliders in the game while clipboard is up.  This brings up additional controls for the plane skins (std shape), terrain, and trees.  They will be the bottom 3 sliders, and the only ones functioning in this manner in beta.  Lower numbers on the slider scale are darker.  Also, use the gamma slider under graphics details menu.

Option 2_ Use your graphics card's control panel and look for settings (sliders or curves) for colors, saturation, contrast, brightness, gamma, sharpness, etc. 

Option 3_ Use your monitor's control panel to adjust settings (same as above)

Lastly, I have found that a slight adjustment in hue from my video card has done a lot to "pop" colors more (I was surprised).

[Bizman]

My graphics settings are at the very default, I don't even have the graphics control panel installed. Also the game settings are set to default. However I can't say my screenshots were any worse than those of any other. There's one huge difference, though: Some people are better photographers than other. They wait for the perfect lighting and choose the perfect angle and cropping. That applies to screenshots, too. My screenshots (and photos) serve well as documents, some other people illustrate dreams.

I understand that your game looks a lot like mine: A little dull, ordinary... Compare the tourist brochure of your hometown to your everyday experience. Two entirely different places, aren't they!?

[guncrasher]

your video card is a bit on the slow side.


semp

[bustr]

Hitech can make many changes between now and go live day. For the last 18months he has made countless changes with out warning the testing team. That is up to him.

Right now this is why you are not getting what you wish you could. You are describing my experience with graphics until I received a GTX 760 this Christmas. Over clocking will not help, I OC'd mine up to 85 Gbyte\sec and it didn't help other than over heat shut downs. It is the the combination of the three highlighted specs. When they doubled with my 760, so did my game graphics experience.

GeForce GTX 750
GDDR5 - 4096
Data Paths - 128bitit
Band Width - 80.16 Gbyte\sec
Shaders - 512

The two cards I've used for the alpha are below. The HD6770 I used for the first 18months. The best mode was 1024 and I had to turn off post processing to get 40-60 FPS in a bomber mission with 60 bombers. Otherwise when I attacked them with post processing on, 7-14 FPS.

AMD HD6770 SC
GDDR5 - 1G
Data Paths - 128bit
Band Width - 80Gbyte\sec
Shaders - 800

Geforce GTX 760
GDDR5 - 2048
Data Paths - 256bit
Band Width - 192 Gbyte\sec
Shaders - 1152

[JimmyD3]

For the record, I have SweetFx 2.0 running on Beta.