Think Quake Wars has crappy graphics? Think again! (Enable HQ graphics in the beta)

M

ManCannon

2[H]4U
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Aug 9, 2004
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I know there's already a thread about the beta, but I figured this was important enough to have it's own thread where everyone can see it. If anyone feels this is extraneous, go ahead and move it there.

To enable much higher quality graphics in the beta, type "r_megadrawmethod 0" into the console. It's that simply folks.

Here's a before and after:

Before the change:

etqw2007-06-2602-04-32-20.jpg


After the Change

Cyclops2.jpg


And a few more shots:

Desecrator.jpg

Cyclops.jpg

Forest.jpg
 
I'm curious, what settings are you using? And what kind of FPS hit did you get from this?
 
With the system in my sig I'm running at 1280x1024 with everything at it's highest possible setting. Also have 4xAA and 16xAf enabled at the driver level.

You can see there's a pretty big performance hit if you check out the FPS in the before and after screenshot, but it's more than worth it and isn't really that drastic across the board. There are a few places where I drop into the 20's, but for the most part I stay in the anywhere between 40-80 fps, which is pretty playable.

All in all I don't notice that much of a performance decrease, and the visuals improvement is drastic. There's all sorts of neat effects this command enables that weren't there before, like spiralling smoke on the Tormentor's strockets and on the Tank shots. The lighting is improved dramatically, so much so that some areas are barely recognizable compared to what they once were.
 
Im running all setting maxed except AA (2x) at 1440x900 and this didnt change the fps at all as far as i could tell i did do the tweak where the frames are no longer at 30 and the game was much more plesant.
 
anything with 16:10 ratio all on normal still gives me less than around 30-40 fps after the tweak =[ and the game is impossible to play with lags.
 
Not impressed in the slightest.

The whole "make up for low poly count with special bump mapped textures" doesn't work in a bright outdoor area, worked well for Doom3 but this just looks rubbish.

Roll on UT3 and it's insane poly counts :)
 
Personally, for a purely multiplayer game, I prefer a good balance between performance and visuals. I know my system will barely handle UT3, yet I can run this at great settings with AA and AF and still mantain playable framerates.

It may not be super cutting edge, but it runs well and looks quite good for the performance I'm getting, so I'm pleased.

EDIT: Heh, beaten to the punch :p.
 
Sorry but I'm not seeing a significant difference in those first two shots. If you look at the wall at the left of the shot, it actually looks LESS detailed in the after shot than it does in the before...
 
Cousin Patty said:
Sorry but I'm not seeing a significant difference in those first two shots. If you look at the wall at the left of the shot, it actually looks LESS detailed in the after shot than it does in the before...
Click to expand...
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought so. I'm sure there are weapon and lighting affects and such that aren't visible in the comparison shot, but those two look pretty much identical to me.

I'll have to give this a shot at home and see if it makes as big a difference as you claim.
 
It's kind of hard to capture in screenshots, but mostly this just improves the lighting. The most noticeable effect is that the shadows become more defined, but what's less apparent in the screenshots is that instead of a uniform lighting scheme throughout the map, there's more variation between the areas and a constantly moving cloud cover that enhances the mood. To my eye, colors seem a lot better too.

The only tradeoff is that the background becomes slightly lighter and less defined, but you're rarely if ever in the mountains anyway so it's not that big a deal.

Here are a couple more comparisons:

Shot4.jpg

Shot3.jpg


These give an idea of the difference in lighting.

Shot2.jpg

Shot1.jpg


And these show the difference in shadows.
 
Yeah, those help out a lot. I was looking at the first few pics expecting to see some massive jump in texture detail or something. Those lighting effects do show a pretty big in the environment. Thanks for clearing up my confusion.
 
Frosteh said:
Their engines are fully scaleable for the cheapskates who want next gen tech and won't pay for the hardware to run it.
Click to expand...

Some of us are still in school / not on our own two feet yet and can't splurge on hardware. :(
 
I just signed up @ FilePlanet and will be downloading this Beta promptly...I'm sick of Gamespot's crappy download speeds. :D
 
movax said:
Some of us are still in school / not on our own two feet yet and can't splurge on hardware. :(
Click to expand...

I worked all through highschool, all through college and inbetween semesters at university, I've practically never been given anything of real value off my parents, anything expensive I've had to earn

Work hard, spend hard, game hard :D
 
Frosteh said:
I worked all through highschool, all through college and inbetween semesters at university, I've practically never been given anything of real value off my parents, anything expensive I've had to earn

Work hard, spend hard, game hard :D
Click to expand...

Now game hard, and overclock that CPU soldier! 3ghz, blah, hit 3.5!

e6400@3.4 and stock cooling here, it can be done! :p
 
I made the mistake of buying only 667Mhz RAM, it can probably go higher async with the RAM or maybe even push the RAM a few Mhz more but nothing really requires faster than a 3.0Ghz Dual Core right now :)
 
movax said:
Some of us are still in school / not on our own two feet yet and can't splurge on hardware. :(
Click to expand...
not to mention the fact that its the developers job to optimize code so it runs good on as much hardware as possible, ppl seem to forget that A LOT. just bcs i have 1yr old hardware doesn't mean that i shouldn't be able to play games with acceptable visuals and framerates.
 
miskari said:
not to mention the fact that its the developers job to optimize code so it runs good on as much hardware as possible, ppl seem to forget that A LOT. just bcs i have 1yr old hardware doesn't mean that i shouldn't be able to play games with acceptable visuals and framerates.
Click to expand...

And just because you can't use "max" settings doesn't mean it's not acceptable visuals for your hardware, it simply means that they're allowing people with better hardware the option of cranking the visuals higher than you.

It makes no sense to limit the game so that people with average hardware can run in max settings, why can't we have a greater range of options so that people with the best hardware have additional eye candy to turn on.

People need to get out of the habit of seeing "Medium" in the settings and freaking out because they can't use higher.

Case in point, crysis in medium settings is going to look far nicer than Farcry does in high settings.
 
This setting does make a big difference IMO. The colors are deeper, things are more detailed and I didn't notice any significant (if any) drop in frame rate. To me, however, it's just prettier frustration. LOL
 
the flyer drone and self placed arty is the only thing i find entertaining. the trees just look so awful not to mention alot of the other stuff looks bad even after the change.
 
I'll have a MyIS Dallas server up once they start selling.

Be sure to keep an eye out for >mace< !

and I turned all of my stuff up when the BETA first began, helluva difference. :)
 
I guess I'm gonna be looking forward to Crysis that much more. :( Though I'm still going to get this game.
 
Frosteh said:
Their engines are fully scaleable for the cheapskates who want next gen tech and won't pay for the hardware to run it.
Click to expand...

I fail to see how not buying the top end hardware as soon as possible makes a person a cheapskate.
 
krameriffic said:
I fail to see how not buying the top end hardware as soon as possible makes a person a cheapskate.
Click to expand...

It doesn't.

Buying hardware that's not suitable to run a game in max settings, and then complaining about the fact, that makes them a cheapskate. If you want the best graphics you gotta pay for it, simple as.

I'm just getting really irritated at this negative association with next gen games and the mid range video settings, just because the slider says "medium" on it doesn't mean that it looks worse than current games on "high" or "ultra high"

Games like Bioshock and Crysis are going to look fantastic even in medium settings, everyones video card is going to run the effects as fast as it can, and unless the game is really poorly optimised the quality of the effects you're going to get is going to be relative to the speed of your hardware, just like every other game.
 
To the best of my knowledge this game is based on the Doom3 engine which is OpenGL
 
Yep, it's OpenGL, and the last game that's going to use this Doom3 engine. The new one, of course, is the ID Tech 5, which seems alright thus far.
 
Spoudazo said:
The new one, of course, is the ID Tech 5, which seems alright thus far.
Click to expand...

I've only seen low quality cam videos of that demo. In Doom3 the areas in the base that had moving guts looked really great, the slick appearance of such things really benefit from the look of the doom3 engine...metal and skin on the other hand look dont look as impressive to me. The only impressive use of textures in actual games I go ga-ga over have been from Crysis and Unreal 3. I dont think its style as its more akin to how a filmed movie looks vs a tv show vs a daytime soap opra, the camera and lighting play a key role in the overall look.
 
I was wondering why my opinion of the game's graphics changed after I played it yesterday. I enabled that command, but didn't really know what it did, and I hadn't played the game in a few days. I used to think the game didn't look that great, but now it doesn't look that bad. It looks quite good, actually.
 
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