Doom 3 Tweak Guide

Graphics Settings

r_skipSpecular “x”. Specular lighting identifies the bright specular highlights that occur when light hits an object surface and is reflected. It is more intense than diffuse light and falls off more rapidly across the object surface. It takes longer to calculate specular lighting than diffuse lighting, however the benefit of using it is that it adds significant detail to a surface. Setting x to 1 replaces the specular maps with black, effectively disabling specular lighting for slightly improved performance. The images beneath illustrate this in the game.

As you can see, disabling specular lighting results in some loss of detail, while the image also appears a bit darker. Setting x to 0 enables the use of specular lighting in the game, which is recommended.

r_usePortals “x”. Setting x to 1 enables the use of portals for performing area culling. This is recommended for best performance. Set to 0 - everything can be drawn, which obviously is far from the best approach.

r_useCachedDynamicModels “x”. Setting x to 1 enables caching snapshots of dynamic models, which can improve performance when such loading occurs. Set x to 0 if you are on a low memory system.

r_useConstantMaterials “x”. Setting x to 1 enables the use of pre-calculated material registers if possible. This provides best performance and there’s no particular reason why you’d want to disable (0) this.

r_skipParticles “x”. Setting x to 1 disables all particle systems in the game, e.g. steam and Imp fireballs. While this can improve performance it does remove some atmosphere from the game, and more importantly makes it harder to fight certain enemies. Setting this to 0 enables the rendering of particle systems in the game. The images beneath illustrate this in the game.

r_useInfiniteFarZ “x”. Setting x to 1 enables the no-far-clip-plane trick, which provides best performance. You shouldn’t need to disable (0) this.

r_useCulling “x”. x specifies the culling method to be used for objects. 3 different modes are available; 0 sets no culling, which provides worst performance though will eliminate any culling errors you may otherwise notice. 1 sets sphere culling and 2 sets sphere and box culling, which both provide improved performance. 2 is the default and you shouldn’t need to change this.

r_useLightCulling “x”. x specifies the culling method to be used for lighting. 4 different modes are available; 0, as above, sets no culling, which provides worst performance but eliminates any light culling errors from occurring. 1 sets box culling, 2 sets exact clip of polyhedron faces, while 3 includes areas as well. 3 is the default, though other modes may reduce any visual glitches you may notice or improve performance (As with the previous setting, you shouldn’t need to change this).

r_useTripleTextureARB “x”. Setting x to 1 enables Graphics cards with 3 or more TMUs (Texture Memory Unit) to perform 2 pass rendering, which provides best performance. Setting x to 0 results in 3 pass rendering being used, which is slower and only necessary if your Graphics card has less than 3 TMUs. Pretty much all Graphics cards supported by Doom 3 however feature more than 3 TMUs, nor will this have any effect of image quality.

r_skipGuiShaders “x”. x controls the use of GUI (Graphical User Interface) shaders in the game. Setting x to 0 renders shaders as normal, e.g. menu GUI and terminal screens. A setting of 1 bypasses all GUI shaders. 2 bypasses GUI shaders but allows events to be handled. 3 renders as normal but skips events. The following images illustrate GUI shaders in the game.

A setting of 1 and 2 have the same effect on graphics and while they may provide some performance improvement they also drastically reduce the playability of the game, i.e. no HUD, game menu or terminals rendered (and no way to know you can use one) 0 and 3 perform essentially the same.

r_ignoreGLErrors “x”. This is pretty much exactly what it says. Set it to 1, performance isn’t affected either way.

Select Doom 3 Tweak Guide - Covering the Basicss Graphics Settings #1 - Lightscale, Swapinterval, Shadows… Graphics Settings #2 - Multisamples, SkipDefuse, SkipBump... Graphics Settings #3 - Specular, Particles, Culling... Graphics Settings #4 - Ambient, Post Process... Graphics Settings #5 - ImageCache, Filters, Anisotropic... Graphics Settings #6 - LOD bias, Compression... Graphics Settings #7 - SizeBump, DownSize... Graphics Settings #8 - Blood effects, Decals, FOV... Audio settings Input settings and Conclusion

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