Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: RATTFINK on August 29, 2007, 12:06:39 AM
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I have downloaded the highres. pack & I would like to know the settings that I will need to apply inorder to get the best out of the res. pack. & the games graphics.
Here is what I have:
Gateway FX 530XV (http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529665348.php) w/ Gateway 22" widescreen LCD
Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (2.40GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB cache)
Hard Drive: 1000GB 7200rpm Serial ATA II/300 hard drive w/ 16MB cache & Raid 0 (2-500GB hard drives)
Nvidia 8600 GTS
2GB RAM (PNY 2DDR)
Power Supply: 700-Watt
SB Audigy
Right now my Nvidia 8600 GTS res is: 1680 x 1050
My refresh rate: 60 Hertz
Color quality: Highest (32 bit)
Below is what I see now:
(http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u7/rattfink31/res1.jpg) <- to blury
Thanx in advance <>
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in the video setting you have to set the texture size to 1024
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The "hi-res pack" doesn't mean screen size, it means texture size. The plane is "so big" and the texture stretches to fit. 1024 textures have the most pixels and show the most detail. 512 are a slight step down (but still decent). Anything below 1024 resamples upwards to fit the plane, this is why you get blurry textures.
The downside is they take a lot more resources the higher you go on the texture size. I think your system can handle it, though.
And, to get the best pixel quality regardless of texture settings or other options, you'll want to run AH at your monitor's native (max) resolution. I checked the link you gave, this would be 1680 x 1050.
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^^ what they said.
- also, if you look at your screenshot you can see that that edges near horizontal and vertical is jagged - especially look at the buttom of the plane.
If your graphic card can handle it - those jagged edges can be smoothed out.
In Windows find the options for your graphics card and enable anti-aliasing. Try 4X anti-aliasing. (Higher values gives only little visible improvements but is expensive on performance.)
Be aware - if your graphic card can't handle it - you will experience bad frame-rates.
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His card is slightly better than mine, and mine can handle FSAA.
Just be advised that for some stupid reason FSAA doesn't show up on screenshots. (but it does in game)
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Originally posted by Krusty
Just be advised that for some stupid reason FSAA doesn't show up on screenshots. (but it does in game)
Weird!
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I upped teh FSAA & ... tada, it is bad ace
tnx yall <>
ALL HALE KRUSTY (http://forums.adventchildren.net/images/smilies/bowing.gif)
(http://www.die-simpsons.de/subs/krusty/pics/Bilder/krusty40_gif.jpg)
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One thing I found out the hard way is that turning on AA and possibly AF, if set high enough can make dot vis go away. Meaning the smoothing code in AA/AF removes the dots (faraway planes) when it smooths (is that a word?) your textures.
Found this out the hard way one night in Pac SEA. My squaddies were 'dot 9 high' and I couldn't see anything. Hrm.
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It's possible. However, I'd thought of that myself, and have tested it without any FSAA and the dots still seem equally hard to discern (to me). Some folks can see dots much further out than others.
I noticed dots way out once, then they disappeared. It turns out they turned the same color as the sky, and slowly faded in, but before that they are dots. I think some hardware better represents this than others. Possibly a coding issue with AH display processes?
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Originally posted by Krusty
It's possible. However, I'd thought of that myself, and have tested it without any FSAA and the dots still seem equally hard to discern (to me). Some folks can see dots much further out than others.
I noticed dots way out once, then they disappeared. It turns out they turned the same color as the sky, and slowly faded in, but before that they are dots. I think some hardware better represents this than others. Possibly a coding issue with AH display processes?
Dunno. It may have been the anisotropic filtering that did it. I had just gotten the card and was playing with the settings so I can't be positive. It is a Geforce 7950GT.
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I've tried it maxed out and trimmed back, almost no difference on my setup for how/where/why dots display at range.
Oh, and I believe Skuzzy has said that AH doesn't use anisotropic filtering. It doesn't affect the game at all, apparently.
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Originally posted by Krusty
I've tried it maxed out and trimmed back, almost no difference on my setup for how/where/why dots display at range.
Oh, and I believe Skuzzy has said that AH doesn't use anisotropic filtering. It doesn't affect the game at all, apparently.
Yeah but you can force it on using the NV control panel, and that's what I was doing.
Just sayin.
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I see cons way before any of my squaddies do. They look like stars (white objects in the distance)
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I don't think forcing it on works, was what I meant to say. Sorry for not being specific. AH doesn't display things (doesn't have the code run in a manner) so that they would be filtered. Something like that.
I'm guessing, mind you. All I know is that I bumped everything to max a few times. Some things make the game look almost like a new game altogether. Others don't do much at all. I think aniso was one that didn't do much at all.
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Originally posted by Krusty
I don't think forcing it on works, was what I meant to say. Sorry for not being specific. AH doesn't display things (doesn't have the code run in a manner) so that they would be filtered. Something like that.
I'm guessing, mind you. All I know is that I bumped everything to max a few times. Some things make the game look almost like a new game altogether. Others don't do much at all. I think aniso was one that didn't do much at all.
Not sure either, but I think that AH uses DX9 for all its graphics calls?
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Most certainly they haven't switched to DX10, or we'd be hearing no end of it from Skuzzy :D
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Originally posted by Krusty
Most certainly they haven't switched to DX10, or we'd be hearing no end of it from Skuzzy :D
Waht I meant is that if that is true (DX9), whether or not AH natively supports AF/AA, you can force it on in the gfx driver. DX is fairly adept at allowing driver calls to dictate texture remaps and smoothing.
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I need another nap (http://smileys.smilchat.net/smileys/tiredness/dodozzz.gif)
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Oh, I get what you're saying. My understanding was that not all things would use aniso, even if forced on. It's really for large, repeating, textures that stretch from far to near. The only thing that might apply to is the ground terrain, only the texture size is so large, so broken up, and often (when in flight) so distant, that you never are in such a position to have something an inch from your view stretch into infinity.
Like, the ground in an old Half-Life map stretching from your feet off into the distance, for example. That situation doesn't come up in AH much (at all?). So even if forced on it still wouldn't be enacted just because most of our game is "air."
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Originally posted by Krusty
Oh, I get what you're saying. My understanding was that not all things would use aniso, even if forced on. It's really for large, repeating, textures that stretch from far to near. The only thing that might apply to is the ground terrain, only the texture size is so large, so broken up, and often (when in flight) so distant, that you never are in such a position to have something an inch from your view stretch into infinity.
Like, the ground in an old Half-Life map stretching from your feet off into the distance, for example. That situation doesn't come up in AH much (at all?). So even if forced on it still wouldn't be enacted just because most of our game is "air."
Could be.... I don't know enough about it to say, really. Maybe clouds? Clouds are just textures with high transparency.
Anyhoo, I don't use either anymore.... the sawtoothing is a little distracting since I started using a TrackIR, but at least I see those lil dots way out.
1280x1024
I wonder if native resolution has much to do with it.
Anyone else using a WS monitor at 1680x1050? I did for a while on a 21" but couldn't get used to it, the views were too cut off. Maybe I should try again with the TIR.
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I played around with my native resolution to see if I could "enhance" the dots at distance.
That is, if I ran at 1024 res, or 800, and my monitor is 1280x1024 native, would it make a single pixel for the dot, then "scale it up" when displaying on the monitor, and it really didn't help much. It seemed just as hard to see them, probably because the lower quality and resolution countered out the "scaling up" of the dot anyways.
I went back to native res because it was making my fonts/text look all funky and it got on my nerves.
EDIT: P.S. You can set the monitor hardware properties to NOT resize the image. This way if you have a 1680x1050 monitor, and you want to play at 1280x1024, you can keep the 3:4 ratio without resampling the pixels. It will just center the resolution you want, and leave the left/right edges with black letterboxes.
Just a suggestion, if you didn't already know. :aok
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Yes I know, but it makes the screen smaller than my 19" 4:3.