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Updated
on November 04, 2001 by Thomas
McGuire
Graphics Tweaks (Continued)
Dynamic Light Visible
Distance. This option controls the maximum
visible distance at which dynamic lighting is used in the environment. Those of
you with slower CPUs should move this slider to the Left to reduce this
distance & thus improve performance. Those with faster CPUs may find they
can move this further to the Right for best image quality.
Sky Detail.
This setting controls how detailed the sky in Tribes 2 is. Options available
being Full Sky, 2 Cloud Layers, 1 Cloud Layer, Sky Box
Only & No Sky. Those of you only Low end systems would be best
off selecting No Sky or Sky Box Only, although should you have a Graphics
card with 32MB video memory I'd recommend setting this to Full Sky –
Assuming you have texture compression enabled (As recommended), this is
basically because using texture compression can cause a lot of banding in the
sky, this will hopefully minimize it's effects.
First Person Draw.
This setting determines what is to be rendered when in First person viewmode.
You can improve performance by setting this to Items Only, with this
option selected only the Weapon/Item you are currently equipped with is
displayed. Selecting any option with Player in it is rather unnecessary
& has the effect of you being able to see part of you body, e.g. Looking
down you may see your chest & legs, which while realistic, is just a waste
of resources. Those of you with excessively fast systems should consider setting
this to Player and Items for most realistic visual quality.
Precipitation.
Tick this setting to enable rendering of certain weather effects
in the game, i.e. Rain & Snow. These effects can enhance the atmosphere of
the game in certain levels, although on old Graphics cards you may find them to
lower performance a good deal. Untick this setting to disable
rendering such weather effects; this may also improve your visibility as well
(In the sense that you may be less distracted by the weather). Personally I'd
recommend enabling this effect for the simple reason that it just
improves the feel of the levels.
Dynamic Interior
Lights. Tick this setting to enable
the dynamic lighting of the Indoor environment, e.g. From light surrounding an
explosion. Performance can be improved by Unticking this setting,
although visual quality will be reduced in the sense that it will be less
realistic. Should you have a Graphics card with a T&L unit then you should
be able to enable this setting at all times with hardly any performance
reduction.
To set the maximum
number of Hardware lights open your ClientPrefs.cs file & Edit
the following line;
$pref::OpenGL::maxHardwareLights
= "x";. By default x is
set to 6. If you have a Geforce 1 based Graphics card you should set this
to 3 at most (Given the rather slow T&L unit this is equipped with),
although with newer generation T&L supporting Graphics cards you should be
fine setting this higher, although you probably set only set to a maximum
value of 8.
Decals.
Decals are the explosion/bullet marks that get left on scenery during the game
– which can give a more dynamic look to the levels as they get damaged from
various weapon fire/vehicle crashes. Tick this setting to enable
their rendering, which may lower performance on older Graphics cards. On newer
Graphics cards you should be able to enable this setting without issue.
You may also want to set how many decals can be rendered, & for how long
they are visible.
Open your ClientPrefs.cs
file & Edit the following lines;
$pref::Decal::decalTimeout
= "x";. x sets the amount of time
(In Milliseconds) that a decal is visible for, beyond which time it will
disappear from the landscape. The default is 5000, although you
may increase/decrease this value as you see fit. If you intend to
use a high number of decals then you shouldn't set this value too high
however.
$pref::Decal::maxNumDecals
= "x";. x sets the maximum
amount of decals which may be rendered before the oldest one is removed. The default
number is 256, if you wish to use decals on older Graphics cards then
you'd be well advised to lower this value, while those of you on newer
Graphics cards may wish to increase this value further. I wouldn't
recommend going beyond 512 though, especially in large-scale games.
Dynamic Terrain Lights.
Tick this setting to enable the dynamic lighting of the Outdoor
environment, e.g. from light surrounding an explosion. Performance can be
improved by Unticking this setting, although visual quality will be
reduced in the sense that it will be less realistic. Should you have a Graphics
Card with a T&L unit then you should be able to enable this setting
at all times with little frame rate reduction.
Terrain Details.
Tick this setting to enable the rendering of optional terrain on
the environment, e.g. Trees. While these can add a bit of variety to the
otherwise barren landscape they don't appear overly realistic, as a result I'd
recommend disabling them. This can improve performance slightly as well.
If you're on a Low-end system certainly Untick this setting.
Interior Textured Fog.
Tick this setting to enable the rendering of coloured fog in
Building interiors. This is more of an atmospheric effect than one intended to
hide details. If you are on an old Graphics card then you would be best leaving
this setting Unticked, this can also improve your visibility in some
instances. If you do intend to enable fog then you should also use a 32
Bit colour depth for best rendering of this effect (Less noticeable colour
banding).
Hi-Res Shield Effects.
Tick this setting to enable the use of better quality shield
effects on Models. This shouldn’t really be an important effect to use unless
you have fairly fast system, as a result you should leave this setting Unticked.
Vertex Lighting.
Unticking this setting will enable Lightmap lighting (real-time)
of levels. Ticking this will enable Vertex lighting instead, which
is faster, but uses static lighting of levels so reduces overall image quality.
If you have a Graphics card with a T&L unit, or a fairly fast system (700Mhz
+) then you should have no reason to use Vertex lighting.
Should you wish to enable
the display of a frame rate counter in Tribes 2 then bring down the console via
the Tilde key & enter either of the following commands;
show("$fps::real");
show("framecounter()");
Hit the Enter key
to initiate a command.
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