|
Updated
on July 12, 2001 by Thomas
McGuire
Graphics
(continued)
Once more select Options, then Advanced
Options. Now select the Advanced rendering options button.
Normal/Animation/Effect
size. This sets the maximum resolution allowed for textures
seen in the game, e.g. Wall textures used on Buildings. Given the great
use of high-resolution textures in Serious Sam I'd recommend setting
this as large as possible. If you have 64MB of Video memory, or
32MB & use Texture compression then I'd highly recommend setting
this to Huge to enjoy the greatly improved textures. NOTE – Normal
textures are static, non-animated, Animation textures are used
for animated textures (obviously), while Effect textures are used
for procedural textures such as the Water.
Normal quality. This setting sets
the colour depth used for qpaque/transparent textures in the game.
Select 16-bit/Compressed for best performance (Reduces Video
memory requirements), with reduced visual quality (More apparent colour
banding in textures). Select 32-bit for best visual quality (Less
apparent colour banding in textures), although performance will be
reduced – especially on older Graphics cards with Low Video memory.
Using 32-bit textures will also consume a greater amount of Video
memory. You can also use different combinations, e.g. Compressed/Optimal,
which I’d recommend selecting if your Graphics card has 32MB Video
memory only & supports Texture compression.
Effect quality. This setting sets
the colour depth used for Effect textures in the game. Select 16-bit for
best performance (Reduces Video memory requirements), with reduced
visual quality (More apparent colour banding in textures). Select
32-bit for best visual quality (Less apparent colour banding in
textures), although performance will be reduced – especially on older
Graphics cards or those with Low Video memory. Using 32-bit textures
will also consume a greater amount of Video memory.
Filtering method.
Using this slider you can make normal textures appear sharper or
blurrier. This is quite useful & can enhance texture quality
greatly. There is no noticeable performance hit when using also. Here’s
what the LOD bias does (Thanks Reverend).
LOD bias modifies the calculation of texture level of
detail parameter LOD. Often a texture is oversampled or filtered such
that the texture is band limited at lower frequencies in 1 or more
dimensions. The result is that texture-mapped primitives appear
excessively blurry. LOD bias provides biases in the LOD calculation to
compensate for under or over sampled texture images. Mipmapped textures
can be made to appear sharper or blurrier by supplying a negative or
positive bias respectively.
If you are using FSAA
then you should move this slider to the Right to offset the
texture blurring that can occur when using FSAA (How far you move this
should depend on what level of FSAA you intend to use), although if you
aren’t using FSAA you should leave this set to Normal to avoid
any unnecessary texture artifacting. Unless you are desperate for
performance you shouldn't want to move this slider further to the Left.
Effect filtering method. This
setting controls the same filtering method as specified above, only this
changes the filtering technique used for opaque/transparent textures.
Filtering boost. Set this to Enabled
to allow the filtering method to be enhanced. This may be useful if you
find that one filter method doesn't provide great enough texture
sharpness, although a higher setting causes too much texture aliasing.
In which case you may find that using the lower filtering method &
setting this to Enabled increases texture sharpness
sufficiently.
Dithering method. This option
modifies the dithering method used for 16-Bit textures in the game. This
can give the appearance of greater colour depth to textures, although it
can make them appear speckled upon closer inspection. As you can guess
dithering is no substitute for using higher depth (32-bit)
textures.
Don’t compress. This setting
sets the minimum texture size that may be compressed (Small,
Medium, Big & Large) - assuming you intend to
use texture compression. Ignore this setting if you don’t
intend to use any texture compression (Not recommended). If you
have a Graphics card which a large amount of Video memory (64MB) then
you should have enough Video memory to leave some textures uncompressed
for improved texture quality, with only higher resolution textures being
compressed (Reduces Video memory requirements, although can make banding
more apparent & increases level loading times). I’d
recommend setting this to Big if you have a 64MB Graphics card
& Small/Medium if you have anything less than this.
Promote to 32-bit. This sets the minimum
Texture size that will automatically use 32-Bit colour instead of
16-Bit. Larger textures will generally gain more from the
increased depth than Smaller textures would, e.g. The sky. For a
good performance/visual quality trade-off I'd recommend setting this to Large,
although if you have a Graphics card with 32MB Video memory or more then
try lowering this setting for improved texture quality.
Revert to 16-bit. This sets the maximum
size of Textures that won't be downgraded to use 16-Bit colour. Smaller
textures generally have less to lose from such downgrading than Larger
textures would, e.g. the sky. For a good performance/visual quality
trade-off I'd recommend setting this to Large, although if you
have a Graphics card with 32MB Video memory or more then try increasing
this setting for improved texture quality.
|
