View distance

[Hoxton]

View distance: Medium my internal graphics card cannot support the current application in "realism"


Joke aside, when you can't play the game on high graphics, what options do you shut down first?
I go for anti-aliasing and shaders, view distance: UTMOST IMPORTANCE

 

[evilneko]

I'd go for AA too, and/or Anisotropic Filtering. Sometimes I can't even tell the difference anyway.

Although I've never had to do it just to adjust settings enough to play, I think it'd be a good idea to hit up tweakguides.com to see what he says about a game's graphics settings, and see comparison screenshots. That way, one could make an informed choice about what to sacrifice.

 

[]DustArma[]

I'd go for AA too, and/or Anisotropic Filtering. Sometimes I can't even tell the difference anyway.

Although I've never had to do it just to adjust settings enough to play, I think it'd be a good idea to hit up tweakguides.com to see what he says about a game's graphics settings, and see comparison screenshots. That way, one could make an informed choice about what to sacrifice.

First AA, then Shadow quality/resolution, if I get stuttering I drop draw distance and texture resolution as little as possible until I get no more stuttering, a hiccup-less experience is far more important to me than a choppy framerate (I can tolerate 25 FPS) or a low draw distance, as long as it's not too low.

So far that's all that's been necessary to get new games running fine on my aging PC.

I never, ever, for absolutely no reason at all will drop Anisotropic Filtering, the performance hit is negligible (my old PC's Geforce FX5200 could handle 8xAF on most games, and that is a freaking FX5200) and the drop in visual quality is horrendous, and I don't drop resolution either because I use a LCD screen connected via VGA, the LCD screen automatically upscales to fit the screen keeping the aspect ratio, it makes things look blurry and since I don't have a DVI cable I can't just create a custom resolution that keeps a 1:1 relation between rendered and displayed pixels.

 

[evilneko]

Hmmmm I don't really remember Anisotropic having that big an effect, but the only games I've ever tweaked that setting in are the Fallout ones. Most of the time I don't bother tweaking unless the game looks bad. (Mass Effect's Film Grain, Fallout's HDR, I'm lookin' at you, you horrible ugly things you) Naturally I'll fiddle with the resolution if the game doesn't start out in my monitor's native 1600x900.

I'll have to go fiddle with it and see.

 

[efeat]

For me, anisotropic filtering is one of the HIGHEST priorities. Some games do some texture filtering on their own prior to anisotropic so it looks aniso doesn't do much, but the ones that don't look awful with it disabled.

Spoiler: Exhibit A

Spoiler: Exhibit B

You can see the textures get very blurry, very quickly without anisotropic filtering. I will never go less than 4x AF on any title.

As for what gets shut down, AA is first to go, and then resolution*. Shadow quality and particle effects are next. I <3 me some good weather and water, so I try to keep those cranked. Model and shader quality can be reduced too, depending on how pronounced the effect is.

*I still use a CRT for my gaming monitor so I have no fixed or native resolution.

 

[drakythe]

View Distance always takes top priorty, along with AF. Typically I turn shadows off, and textures down hella low because I am on a 6 year old machine. If I can, though, VD is all the way, Textures are as high as I can get a smooth experience out of, and then I grab particle effects. Everything else is negotiable.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

eh view distance isn't the UPMOST importance, depends on the game and stuff usually, to see which is eating the shit out of my computer..

my computer is good enough to run near everything on max though as of right now, witcher 2 is the only one it has slight trouble on and that's only with uber sampling on, otherwise it runs like a dream..

so yeha, don't have to worry about this fortunately =]

 

[evilneko]

You can see the textures get very blurry, very quickly without anisotropic filtering. I will never go less than 4x AF on any title.

I'm pretty blind I guess. I had to read your description before I really noticed the difference in the second pic. The first one doesn't hotlink, btw, had to copy/paste into a new tab. It was easier to spot the difference in though.

 

[Titan Buttons]

I get rid of bonus garphics such as foliage detail and shadows. As long as I'm still having fun I don't care if the graphics are bad

 

[Layz92]

Shadows and water reflections etc. Then Textures, then Draw Distance.

 

[infohippie]

TBH, I can't remember the last time I couldn't just turn all the sliders up to max and leave it at that. It's because most titles are fairly much the same on both PC and console, and consoles have pretty low-powered video hardware by today's standards. So games that can just barely run on consoles will run smooth as silk on a relatively cheap modern PC, even if the developer has put in a few graphical upgrades over the console version.