Clarified Graphical Options

[ncarota]

Been browsing through the screenshots thread and not noticing alot of dynamic lights bieng used. It occured to me the wording in the graphical options were a bit criptic. Below I've listed the values for the highest visual quality. I hate to see all those dynamic lights we placed not bieng seen!

Shadows - On. That's an obvious one.

Hyperspace Quality - High. Gives a nice white glow around the shilouhette of the ship.

Detail Geometry- On. This turns on the goblin layer for the ships. The small shniggly surface detail. i.e. panels, vents, plasma coolers

Damage FX LOD - High. This is one to fall on the category of "criptic". It basically refers to the surface damage textures that show up after a bullet or missle hits the surface of the ship. The higher the setting, the more battle scars will appear on the ship.

Lighting LOD - High. This options enables the dynamic lighting properties of the fx. My favorite part Make sure it's set to high if your computer can handle it. There's Nothing cooler than the watching your fleet light up after the enemies mothership goes down

Geometry Scaling - Off. Setting this to on allows the game to switch ships to lower lod's when performance of the game becomes sluggish. Not good for screenshots

Well that's it I think. Happy to hear most of you dig it.

[PeanutR]

So helpfull these relic people

[karanboobs]

Geometry Scaling - Off. Setting this to on allows the game to switch ships to lower lod's when performance of the game becomes sluggish. Not good for screenshots

Ah thanks for this explanation of that option. I turned it on believing it was for better quality adapted in real time based on the graphic card.

The dynamic lights are best seen on capitals and higher class vessels.Capital ships look then better with these perspectives lights.


When I unchecked the nlips option , I noticed a 20-40% performance boost.(using a radeon 9800 pro, catalyst 3.6)

Could you clarify this please ?

Anyway, that is the greatest work I have seen on explosions: your timing between intermediates blows and final explosion is awesome, Mr Carota.

[Zang]

Originally posted by karanboobs


When I unchecked the nlips option , I noticed a 20-40% performance boost.(using a radeon 9800 pro, catalyst 3.6)

Could you clarify this please ?

Hrrm...."nlips" where can I find that? Is it in-game or in the Control Panel?

[Mehrunes]

Nlips appears to increase the scale of ships inversely proportional to their actual size, so your fighters don't look like little specks.

[karanboobs]

Zang you have to lauch the demo then click options then click on gameplay. There is a box checked enable NLIPS

Uncheck it, and enjoys !

[Mehrunes]

As much as someone can enjoy pixel-size fighters and gunships flying around.

[karanboobs]

As already said by most people, it is more realistic than having your frigates the visual same dimensions as your corvettes.

[Mehrunes]

Originally posted by karanboobs
As already said by most people, it is more realistic than having your frigates the visual same dimensions as your corvettes.

Frigates are still much larger than corvettes they're just scaled up less because they're larger to begin with, hence the non-linear part of NLIPS. It just isn't Homeworld if you can't see fighters flying around and blasting each other in a great big furball of engine trails and mass driver shots. I'd like to see where 'most people' said differently.

[Antra]

Actually, it's kinda cool watching frigates duke it out while fighters dogfight in the distance, all you can see is the mass driver slugs and the engine trails .

[SoSD]

I agree. I much prefer NLIPS off.

[Mr-e-Man]

ditto.

[malignus]

To each his own.

[Langy]

The game looks awesome with N-LIPs off. Of course, it's hard to see what the hell is happening, too.

And Nick, you did a great job on those death effects on the Mothership and Carrier! Keep up the good work!

[ncarota]

Originally posted by karanboobs



When I unchecked the nlips option , I noticed a 20-40% performance boost.(using a radeon 9800 pro, catalyst 3.6)

Could you clarify this please ?

Hmmm, probably because the lod's can kick in earlier. LOD visibility is determined by how much screen space the ship occupies, so with ships bieng alot smaller at most view distances, likely alot less polygons are bieng thrown around.

Thanks for the compliments. I can't wait for you guys to see the full game!

[Ride]

If you have N-LIPs off the you "must" turn on the tactical overlay. The tab button moves throught the 3 settings; off, on, on with destination/attack lines. With tatical overlay on you can see the fighters and corvettes by their little symbol.

--Ride

[Mad_Scientist]

Thanks a lot Nick! I was wondering about some of those options untill now.

[Keiichi]

Shadows - On. That's an obvious one.

Which do you think makes a better screenshot?

Shadows ON


Shadows OFF


:umm: :disagree:

-Keiichi

[karanboobs]

When looking at 3D engine features, I didn't notice truform support. Although it concerns radeon users only -but nvidia has its own way to do the same (n-patches)- it adds a deeper experience of level of detail without sacrificing performance.

And on the ati website it says that's 'not difficult' to seamlessly integrate that feature.

Will there be a patch ?

And it was a pleasure to play the demo with so many graphical effects. I feared the 0.1 build june in a hurry to give a demo to fans when marweas loose his temper reading flames and attempted to avenge sierra (miniscule community).:disagree:

It is clear you have eliminated any doubts on your side.I believe story, music and gameplay will be on the same level.

[JargonFilter]

ya, i plan to upgrade to a radeon. I would like to see truform support in it. That would be pretty cool, and from what i have heard, it isn't supposed to be too hard. It would be cool.

ps, karanboobs, i like your name lol.

--pimpster

[Mehrunes]

All of the ships look like they are supposed to have a lot of flat surfaces and sharp angles. I don't see how n-patches would make anything look better on that front. The asteroids might look a little bit better, but I don't spend a lot of time looking at asteroids close up.

[skyyaa]

I have a ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and I was dissapointed to see how the shadows have that really jagged look where as on Nvidia chipsets the shadows don't. I dont mind as long as they fix that in the final build. Also when I zoom in real quick there is a little glitch where the graphics go kinda funny for just a frame or two.

[Steppe]

Originally posted by ncarota



Thanks for the compliments. I can't wait for you guys to see the full game!

Well you could accelerate this by sending me a special version to germany . so i dont have to wait till september 26th and you can see me online much earlier.

BTW you guys should play the demo with us after all your work its just fair to get owned by us

[arrrse]

There seems to be an error in the options.

The extra lighting effects supposedly enabled by setting lighting effects to high, only are enabled on my radeon 9800 when shadows are turned on.

There is some difference between high lighting + shadows and medium lighting + shadows, but the bigger difference is between high lighting + shadows and high lighting + no shadows.

[Alliance]

dont know if any one replyed to this, but LOD is level of detail.

[Mechcommander]

Hermmm.. well, whenever I try setting any type of shadows on (And high quality hyperspace) the game quits right as I see the mothership hyperspace into view. Wierd.
Otherwise, game looks, feels, and plays great.
I've been waiting for this game for three years.. and by golly... I wasn't disapointed.
Kudos to you, Relic!

[Chand]

Will shadows work on GF2 hardware at all? Trying to enable them via the video options panel in-game doesn't do a thing.

Peace...

[Skeletor]

Ahh, Geometry Scaling! That's what I needed to change! I've been wondering how to make it so my ships don't look like ass in large battles.

[rolfski]

What about "enable vsync"? What does this option do?

[motiv-8]

Vsync. Vertical Synchronisation.

It locks your framerate to your current monitor refresh rate. If your refresh rate is at 60Hz, you cannot get a higher framerate. If you turn vsync off, your computer renders as many frames as it can, potentially resulting in more fps. However, doing so can cause graphical defects such as screen tearing.

My advice is to set your refresh rate as high as safely possible (use a tool like RefreshLock if you need to), and turn vsync on for best image quality.

[Zakua]

Has anyone noticed in sensors manager the blue spheres that indicate your sensors range sometimes glitch into a black.......mmmm hard to explain.....bunch of triangles that all face the center of the sensors sphere. It only happens at a blink of an eye and doesnt ruin performance or anything but I was a bit curious since I am running a FX5900 ultra, AMD XP2700 with a gig of DDR333 ram.

Oh and thanks for the clarification on settings, the games a true masterpiece in my book and I have my computer counting down to the games release date hehe

[[bulletproof]]

having played the demo for a good week, i only just noticed today that there is no support for 1280x1024, which IMO would look far better than 1024 without really cutting into FPS. there is 1280x960, but on most monitors this is very narrow. what gives? why no 1280? i find that many games omit this resolution, which is a disappointment, as it is my favorite.

my other problem concerns hypering and docking. when any ships hyperspace or undock, they take on a very fuzzy, buggy looking effect. it seems pretty clear to me that this shouldnt happen. i have the latest drivers for my card and DX9.
i run a PIII 1Ghz, 384mb, 128 GeForce4ti4200.

just my PC? being worked on right now?

[Mehrunes]

Originally posted by [bulletproof]
having played the demo for a good week, i only just noticed today that there is no support for 1280x1024, which IMO would look far better than 1024 without really cutting into FPS. there is 1280x960, but on most monitors this is very narrow. what gives? why no 1280? i find that many games omit this resolution, which is a disappointment, as it is my favorite.

HW2 only officially supports resolutions with a 4:3 ratio because that's what the interface art was designed for (it's odd that you say that 1280x960 is narrow, since it's the same ratio as 1024x768, 1280x1024 is actually the odd-man out at 5:4). You can set any resolution you want through the -width and -height command line parameters.

my other problem concerns hypering and docking. when any ships hyperspace or undock, they take on a very fuzzy, buggy looking effect. it seems pretty clear to me that this shouldnt happen. i have the latest drivers for my card and DX9.
i run a PIII 1Ghz, 384mb, 128 GeForce4ti4200.

just my PC? being worked on right now?

Someone reported the hyperspace glitch before. I believe they had older drivers interfering with their current ones, and they fixed it by doing a full uninstall and reinstall of their drivers following the instructions that came with them precisely.

[[bulletproof]]

thanks for the detailed response, mehrunes.

1280x1024 is my desktop res, and my res in nearly every game i own. it fits my monitor perfectly. i can see how it would be the oddball, but id like to try it. where is the console? where can i enter the command lines?

i try not to mess with my drivers too much, because ive had lots of troubles in the past just simply updating DX or downloading and installing the drivers. the problem im having is extremely minor, and it only really bugs me when there is a nice in game cutscene going on. otherwise, its not worht the work trying to fix that.

maybe later this year when i make my own PC ill become more tech savvy.

[whitt107]

First, go to your shortcut to homeworld2.exe, right click and select properties.

Next, make sure your target looks like this:

Target: "C:\Program Files\Sierra\Homeworld2 Demo\Bin\Release\Homeworld2.exe"

If not, as in the case of mine it ended in ...INTALL.LOG"(for some strange reason it wont work with my existing target) copy and paste the target above into the target box in place of the old one.

Once you do that you can add the command line parameters so it will work in 1280x1024; add -w 1280 -h 1024;(or whatever resolution you want in place of these numbers) make sure the entire target path looks like this:

"C:\Program Files\Sierra\Homeworld2 Demo\Bin\Release\Homeworld2.exe" -w 1280 -h 1024


^(it is space and cap sensitive)^

and it should work.

And FYI: a good way to cleanly remove detonator drivers:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...threadid=15962

[Homdax]

My gratitude goes to Relic/ncarota and to all the others of this thread. I badly needed this graph option review.

(I am still trying to produce shadows as discussed in the Bug Forum here . I guess I will have to paint them...)

[Homdax]

Originally posted by Keiichi Which do you think makes a better screenshot?

Well IMHO shadows OFF is a better pic, more hull detail.
But just my IMHO...

[Dimension]

this thread doesn't question if its smart to enable VSync

[HW2Junkie]

Question which card is better for HW2

fx5900 ultra or 9800pro.

i gonna buy one of the two, which should i buy?:dolt: :fencing:

[Homdax]

...but,

1. Make SURE You can run newer AGP´s. There is a difference You know :!!: :!!:
2. Make SURE what You buy, is compatible to what You have!!!

- A member of this forum went out and bought a highend card, expecting it to work on his VIA KT 133 mobo. WROOONG! THINK!
Do your homework, or give me a line i will help out what I can. :deal:

( I am pretty sure there must be a thread somewhere involving graphic card upgrades)

[nickersonm]

VSynch on is best. This prevents "tearing" where the screen refreshes halfway through the picture being drawn, so you get half of the old frame on the bottom and half of the new frame on the top.

- nickersonm

[MajorFreak]

thanks, motiv and the relic dude, "whatsisname"

[Dr Bombcrater]

Originally posted by HW2Junkie
Question which card is better for HW2

fx5900 ultra or 9800pro.

The 9800 Pro is the better card, but ATI's drivers have a problems rendering shadows in HW2.

I'd go for the 9800. The shadow thing is just a driver glitch and can be fixed, but the 5900's performance problems will be much harder to correct.

[thesquare]

Not sure what planet your from but where im from facts beat fiction not only is the fx5900 more compatable with less software issues but check this out for the stats on the actual boards side by side!
fx5900 vs radeon9800pro
You will find that the only thing that is better about the 9800pro is the price and thats only in some places.
The one thing that gets me is i have both boards. ive got 4 comps 1 g4 and 3 pc in the pcs ive got quadro 4 xgl 900, fx5900, and radeon 9800pro. I do alot of graphics work for my hobbies... any who ive been getting pissed about the crap drivers that ati puts out the media player they have crashes like all the time. and their tunner sucks goat &@)(#.
so you can see why i would tell you that if i could get rid of mine i would but right now i cant afford to swap vid cards out on that machine.
but however the issues are mostly minor the card is still bad ass but it does weird crap on some different games that my nvidia cards just dont do. heres an example of one of the things that happens to decals such as the badge from far distance with the 9800pro http://www.opengl.org/developers/cod...es/node20.html

[Jos Graviton]

:cata: i cant play this demo :meh: it starts in a black screen then just dumps me back into windows and i have the recommended setups and i have been though all the read mes in contact with relic and seirra but both in use of a auto-machine reply :fight: can any 1 help :cata:

[ÜberJumper]

Post the hw2.log file from the demo.

[whizzkidextreme]

I have the same problem as Jos Graviton. The demo starts, but then dumps me in less than a second back onto Windows. Below I have pasted my hw2.log file:

Sun Feb 06 12:40:47 2005
UTIL -- filepath failure, path doesn't exists 'C:\PROGRA~1\Sierra\HOMEWO~1\data\locale\english'
Uing ..profiles\ for profiles folder
Changing from a 32 bit colour depth in winNT (5.1 build 2600), Service Pack 2

Don't know what the hell this means, but can anyone help me?

[ÜberJumper]

It's not detecting your graphics card properly. Post the contents of your dxdiag.txt file.