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Posted on
May 21, 2002 by Thomas
McGuire
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Detailed Shaders.
Set this to On to enable support for Shaders
in Jedi Outcast. This allows for more finely detailed
objects in the Game, the screenshots beneath illustrate
this, in particular pay attention to the floor.
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Shaders
Off
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Shader
On
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The effect of Shaders in action is best seen
when in motion however, but is well worth enabling
for best visual quality. Those with older Graphics cards or
slow CPUs should disable this for optimal frame rate.
Now select the More Video button.
Brightness.
Use this slider to set the game brightness (glare) level.
Sliding the bar to the Right will increase the
brightness level & vice versa. The further this is to
the Right the more washed out textures may appear.
Adjust this to suit your own needs.
Shadows.
This setting defines the LOD (Level Of Detail)
used for shadows cast by Models, if any. Options available
are None, Simple & Volumetric of
which selecting None will provide best performance. Simple
will enable the rendering of basic, circular shadows
beneath a model which shouldn’t cause a noticeable effect
of Game frame rate on all but older Graphics cards.
Selecting Volumetric will enable the rendering
of more detailed shadows though I’d not really recommend
selecting this unless you have a Graphics card with a
T&L unit &/or the Games frame rate is already
running smoothly, that & the volumetric shadows are
fairly error prone & subject to being miscast. The
images beneath illustrate 2 types available.
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Simple shadow
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Volumetric shadow
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Video Sync.
With this option you can enable/disable Vsync
in the Game. Vsync effectively limits the frame rate to your
current refresh rate at any given resolution. Frame rate can
be perceivably increased when set to Off (disabled),
as frames are rendered as fast as they can be regardless of
refresh rate, although you may experience image tearing
&/or controller lag as a result. With this set to On
(enabled) you won’t experience either image tearing
nor controller lag, although frame rate will be limited to
your refresh rate. As such I’d recommend enabling
Vsync for best image quality & disabling it when
you intend to benchmark system/game performance.
Dynamic Lights.
Set this to On to enable the casting of light
from non-static (i.e. dynamic) sources, e.g. laser fire from
weapons, explosions, etc. This adds a great deal to lighting
in levels & can also make targeting enemies easier,
particularly in darker levels or where they are
concealed/far away. If you are on a very slow CPU (500Mhz or
less) you should strongly consider setting this to Off
for best frame rate.
Wall Marks.
Ticking this option will enable the rendering
of decals on walls/floors caused by weapon fire & such.
This can enhance the realism of the Game a good deal, though
on older Graphics cards the frame rate may well be adversely
affected during fights with a lot of weapons being fired
(& more importantly missing their targets) & should
be Unticked with such Graphics cards, e.g. TNT2.
Anisotropic Filter.
Anisotropic
texture filtering is a high quality method for filtering
textures. This provides significantly reduced texture
aliasing & maintains texture sharpness over greater
distances. The images beneath illustrate this filtering in
use, or not. Pay attention to the floor most obviously.
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Anisotropic
Disabled
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Anisotropic
Enabled
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The image quality difference is apparent
enough & should your Graphics card support it I’d
highly recommend you enable this (Except on Kyro
Graphics cards for performance reasons) as it will improve
visual quality noticeably. On Graphics cards which don’t
support this filtering mode it will have no effect, e.g.
3dfx Voodoo 4.
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