FSAA.
This option allows you to select the FSAA mode to use in the game, with
options available being Off, 2 Samples & 4 Samples.
Similar to the Anisotropic Filtering Level option you’d be best
leaving this set to Off unless your current frame rate warrants the
frame rate hit enabling FSAA will cause – with 4 Samples
providing greater jaggy smoothing than 2 Samples does, though
performance will be much lower in this mode.
Alias
Shaders. Setting
this option to On will reduce the variety of textures used within
the game, which will provide memory savings/ improved performance on most
systems. Selecting Off will enable the use of the full
variety of textures as intended within the game, which is recommended for
Graphics cards with 32MB or more of Video memory.
Advanced
Texturing. When
set to On this enables rendering of detailed textures, which
can further image detail in images though can also lower frame rate a bit.
If you have a Graphics card older than GeForce 1 class then you’d
probably be best setting this to Off instead for optimal
performance.
Curve
Subdivisions. This
setting controls how detailed the scenery/architecture is in the game.
Selecting a higher detail option will allow the use of increasingly
more complex meshes for the landscape/architecture, which will yield a
more realistic appearing environment, but this will require increasingly
higher amount of polygons rendered as a result. Using a lower
detailed option will use less complex meshes for scenery, which
will give less detailed scenery shapes, although this can improve
performance – especially if your Graphics card can't handle rendering a
high amount of polygons. This will have a greater effect in more outdoor
levels though.
Image
Format. Use this
to select the format for textures used in the game. Options available
being – Default, 16 Bit, 32 Bit, S3TC Compressed,
DXT1 Compressed & DXT5 Compressed. Default allows
the Graphics card driver to choose the most appropriate mode, which
isn’t really recommended. 16 Bit is recommended for those whose
Graphics cards do not support any of the compression options available,
nor have great enough Video memory to warrant using 32 Bit, e.g.
Voodoo 3 would fall into this category as far as I’m aware (Not that you
should be using a 3dfx card anymore). 32 Bit will provide best
texture quality & fastest loading times, though is not recommended
unless you have a Graphics card with 128MB Video memory & a similarly
fast CPU with over 128MB RAM. DXT1 Compressed is recommended only
for those with Kyro & ATI Radeon Graphics cards given the excellent
DXT1 quality of those cards & the high compression ratio, do not
select this for NVIDIA Graphics cards which have rather horrid DXT1
support. DXT5 Compressed is recommended for NVIDIA GeForce/ATI
Radeon Graphics cards as it will compress textures with a good reduction
in size & little compression artefacts. S3 Compressed should be
tried if you have any other Graphics card.
Alpha
Image Format.
Use this to select the format for transparent textures used in the game.
Options available being – Default, 16 Bit, 32 Bit
& DXT5 Compressed. Default allows the Graphics card
driver to choose the most appropriate mode, which isn’t really
recommended. 16 Bit is recommended for those whose Graphics cards
do not have great enough Video memory to warrant using 32 Bit, e.g.
Voodoo 3 would fall into this category. 32 Bit will provide best
texture quality & fastest loading times, though is not recommended
unless you have a Graphics card with 64MB Video memory – this is the
recommended option if you can possibly use it & it doesn’t affect
frame rate too much. DXT5 Compressed is recommended for those with
lower Video memory models of ATI Radeon, NVIDIA GeForce, etc. Graphics
cards as it will compress textures with a good reduction in size & not
too noticeable compression artefacts.
Now
scroll down the menu further.
Generic.
This setting can be left set to Yes by pretty much everyone, unless
you are having severe problems trying to run the Game. This will more than
likely only be a problem for those with an out-dated Graphics card
(Driver) installed or those with poor OpenGL support. On such Graphics
cards you should set this to Off if you are having problems with
the Game, otherwise leave this set to On. This shouldn’t
be required for anyone with any sort of gaming oriented Graphics card,
e.g. Kyro, GeForce, Radeon. This option alters the r_allowExtensions
cvar.
Nvidia
Specific. Set
this to Yes if you have a NVIDIA GeForce 256 (Or any of the
newer models – including those not yet released presumably) AGP Graphics
card, this will enable the use of NVIDIA OpenGL extensions which
can provide improved performance through optimised use of the AGP bus
& better image quality using register combiners. Set this to Off
if you have any other Graphics cards, e.g. TNT 2, ATI Radeon, etc.
or experience problems with it enabled on your GeForce card (This
might be a potential issue with motherboards with poor AGP
implementations).
ATI
Specific.
Similar to the above option, Set this to Yes if you have an ATI
Radeon (Or any of the newer models – including those not yet
released presumably) Graphics card, this will enable the use of
extra ATI OpenGL extensions – which will enable Truform support,
which provides improved polygon counts on terrain in levels created by the
Random Mission Generator, which should make them look better. Set this to Off
if you have any other Graphics cards, e.g. GeForce 3, Kyro 2, etc.
or experience problems with it enabled.
