this is completely awesome. thanks!
Thank you very much. The vast array of sliders was causing me unease!
I'm glad I could help! If you have any questions, feel free to ask here or PM me. My global chat handle is @Tulzar, too. 
How much does CoH "read" my computer? When I change to a setting and it says "(not recommended)", does that mean it's checked my computer and the setting isn't recommended for me? Or is it just a general warning that the new setting is higher than default?
It's just checking the video card; CoH isn't a very invasive game as far as fiddling around with your registry files or anything. Those "not recommended" messages are a general warning.
[ QUOTE ]
Anisotropic Filtering - Modifies the crispness of world textures, making it easier to distinguish fine lines. Doesn't affect framerate, and turning it on automatically changes "Texture Crispness" to Smooth.
[/ QUOTE ]
Just a general disagreement here. Anistropic Filtering impacts my framerate (at least on my laptop with ATI 9600 128mb). I haven't checked the impact on my desktop pc. My fps can go from 15 to 25 just by turning it off. I turn textures to 'crisp' in an attempt to compensate for all the blurriness.
"With everything that I do, I hope that they see people struggling to live decent, moral lives in a completely chaotic world. They see how hard it is, how often they fail, and how they get up and keep trying. That, to me, is the most important message I'm ever going to tell." - Joss Whedon
Few corrections.
It's about 60 fps that things start to blend together to the eye, not 30.
Movie theatres in the US run at 24 fps. Television shows run at 30, sometimes higher if it's camcorder feed.
Also, fps isn't a solid measure of how "smooth" something is. Oftentimes, blending and blurring of frames can capture the illusion of smoothness.
Hope that helps. 
I heard about the blending FPS and television FPS numbers from the Discovery and History channels respectively. They were on not too long ago. One was Exploring Eyesight (or something similar) and the other was Modern Marvels: Television. I know I could be wrong about the television part (it was a while ago that I saw it), but I distinctly remember hearing about the eyesight part and discussing it in my Psychology class.
Actually, all broadcast television in the US that isn't HDTV is NTSC, and as such is 29.97 frames per second of interlaced video.
Interlaced just mean they only update every other line of the screen every frame.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC#Refresh_rate
Ooh, thank you! I love Wikipedia.
I thought it might be handy to see what some of these options are doing for ya. Some are subtle, some are pretty obvious. I'm doing all these with an ATI x800 which does not have the snazzy Shader 2.0 effects but it still has a lot of options.
Here's a simple, basic shot with most of the options turned off and details set at 100%.
Here I add debth of field and high quality water effects. The water is kinda hard to see in a screenshot because it adds animation to the water. Debth of field is easy to see, though - notice how the more distant objects got blurry? That's what DoF does.
Now I add Anisotropic filtering. Notice how it gets lighter? That's got nothing to do with Anistropic filtering - that's just because the sun has been rising while I take these screenshots. 
Check the texture on the railing on the right side and how far along it goes. Anisotropic filtering lets that texture go further into the distance. I think it's helping on those knoby things near the rail, too. I turn Depth of Field off in this shot.
Here I turn off Anisotropic filtering and turn on Crisp textures. Crisp texturing is what you use if your card can't support Anisotropic filters. You can't turn on Crisp textures if you have any A-filtering going on.
Now I crank up the World Detail to 200%. Lots of distant objects that weren't visible before can be seen now.
Next I cranked up character detail (which didn't do much in this situation with just some wandering NPC's around) then cranked the World Texture Quality all the way up. Sweet eh? This is where your video card's memory starts to come into play. I think you need a 256k card to use this setting.
Now let's really play - I turned on the High Shader option. Hello!!! Those reflections on the Archon and on my character's helmet actually move, too. They aren't real reflections (they look the same no matter what is around) but they sure look nice. No clue how I'm getting them with an x800 card - maybe something is faking the Shader 2.0 effects in software? Quite a few Arachnos look different with the shaders (before and after) as do caves.
The best thing to do with these graphics settings is just experiment. Use the "/showfps 1" command so you can see your framerate and start playing with things. Your graphics card is NOT the only thing that determines frame rate - if your CPU is slow your graphics card might just be sitting around twiddling its digital thumbs until the game has time to send it a new frame to render. That means you might be able to add effects with no FPS hit at all.
Clarification.... Refresh Rate is how fast your monitor is refreshing. Even at 60Hz (60 per second) people often get headaches after prolonged use. 70Hz should be much better and 75Hz should be just fine. Much over 80 is getting to be a waste. FPS is the rate at which the game redraws - low FPS should not cause headaches, at least not physical ones. Low frame rate does mean you'll have slower response times to your actions and the game will not feel as 'smooth'. With a high FPS you'll have no trouble turning to face an exact direction but with low FPS you might find yourself overshooting and turning a bit too far. (In first person shooters that's death incarnate so you want a real high frame rate in those games. Here it's not such a big deal, though you'll probably start to notice it when FPS gets in the low teens.)
Or higher at a bit less FPS <evil grin>
She's purty. But how can you live without FSAA?
Be well, people of CoH.
Because I get this sort of craziness when I turn on AA! I used to keep it on all the time but I turned it off when that sort of thing started cropping up. Hopefully ATI can fix it real-soon-now. (If they can tear themselves away from fixing Beyond Good and Evil bugs.)
Actually, I don't run at quite that resolution. My monitor has to cut down to 60Hz at that size and that drives me nuts. I keep it at 1920x1440 and 75Hz. The jaggies aren't as bad at high resolution because the pixels are so small. However, I can occasionally get some craziness if the jaggies form some sort of pattern. (Arg, can't remember the term for that. It was often done on purpose back in the old Apple ][ days, though!) 2x Anti-Alias is enough to fix those patterns.
P.S. Ooo, irony - that character in the first shot is a warshade I made on Test so I could see the early parts of the Kheldian story arcs. I made her costume as a precursor for City of Villians - which then showed up (more or less) on my main in CoV beta, which you see in this post's shot.
Just for general information :
[ QUOTE ]
Vertical Sync - I can't see a difference with or without this enabled. It's recommended to have it on, though, and it doesn't alter my framerate, so why not, right?
[/ QUOTE ]
Vertical Sync is a computer game technique used to prevent 'visual tearing'. It prevents the GPU from drawing a new frame until the beginning of a new video scan. Older cards, such as the Geforee 5xxxFX series, are likely to need this active if you want to actually see the interface overlays. Newer cards (and even some older ones) don't need it active to prevent the flickering, but might suffer some horizontal alignment problems with it off, nothing too sever. Vertical Syncronization causes a small framerate decrease, although it may not be noticable in a game such as CoH/V. It does, however, cap your framerate to the monitor's refresh rate, if you're wondering why you can't beat 60 FPS... well, there's also another software cap sometimes, but v-sync is often the reason.
Oh, and BillZ, what's the specs on a system that can handle those levels of detail at 30 fps?
Zloth, I thought that the X-series for ATI handled SM 2.0, but didn't support SM 3.0?
Arc Salvo: Okay hold one sec guys, we can't just rush in blindly vs these Nemesis, they've got these ranged aoe's tha-
Teammate1(charging in): Shut up, Arc Salvo, you lame*$% Viewtiful Joe wannabe! What do you know?!
Teammate2(also charging): yeah, ST#& arc salvo u PWR RANGR U!
Arc Salvo: *sigh*
[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and BillZ, what's the specs on a system that can handle those levels of detail at 30 fps?
[/ QUOTE ]
P-4 HT 3.0 OCed to 3.2GHz
2GB DDR400/ PC3200 4X512
X800XT Pro AGP
80GB Sata drive (Virtual Memory Disabled)
SB Audigy2 LS
WinXP-SP2 (Completely stripped down for gaming only.)
That's it.
ATI X1*** and above SM3.0=yes
ATI X850 and below SM3.0=no
And due to this:
[ QUOTE ]
Because I get this sort of craziness when I turn on AA! I used to keep it on all the time but I turned it off when that sort of thing started cropping up. Hopefully ATI can fix it real-soon-now. (If they can tear themselves away from fixing Beyond Good and Evil bugs.)
[/ QUOTE ]
Did you turn off Bloom, Depth of Field and Water FX, load the 6.1s and enable AA in the driver? (Or have I already asked you that? If so, it's late, my apologies.)
Be well, people of CoH.
[ QUOTE ]
Did you turn off Bloom, Depth of Field and Water FX, load the 6.1s and enable AA in the driver? (Or have I already asked you that? If so, it's late, my apologies.)
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and no. I'll try that tonight.
[ QUOTE ]
Particle Physics - I don't have a lot of experience with this option, but it won't immediately affect performance. Things like fire attack's little embers that fall on the ground are turned on/off with this option.
[/ QUOTE ]
Since these little effects require a great deal of processor power to calculate, turning off Particle Physics can result in a substantial framerate increase in large teams.
If you're noticing that your framerate is good normally, but starts to drag heavily in group combat in a "slide show" sort of way, particle physics is your problem. It's very pretty, but it's probably not worth keeping on for most people.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Did you turn off Bloom, Depth of Field and Water FX, load the 6.1s and enable AA in the driver? (Or have I already asked you that? If so, it's late, my apologies.)
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and no. I'll try that tonight.
[/ QUOTE ]
Seems to be working but I'm missing my water effects in those sewer missions! ATI must fix! MUST F I X!!!
Thanks for the tip BillZ!
Ooops, did find one problem. When Anti-Aliasing is turned on, demodump for turning demos into a jillion screenshots doesn't work right.
A Guide to Graphics Options (v1.0)
Table of Contents
Part 1: Intro
Part 2: Graphics
Part 3: Advanced Graphics
Part 4: Closing
Part 1: Intro
Issue 6 has added a lot of options to the graphics menu, and I figured I'd write a guide to all the new features that exist. I will mention each option's impact on performance as well as what it does (to the best of my ability) in the form of the game's framerate (Frames Per Second, or FPS).
A little history on FPS, first. For starters, the amount of frames per second are just that: the amount of individual snapshots of the game that get displayed on the screen every second. So if your FPS is 60, then you see 60 really quick snapshots of the game world as it animates. Slower framerates don't show all of the action; it just shows a portion of what's going on (think of a strobe light).
For reference, the human eye views reality at approximately 30 frames per second. Anything over that is just blended together and is excess. It's all fluid after 30. Some people claim to be able to see a difference between, say, 40 FPS and 60, but I think that's just the power of suggestion. If they're actively comparing the two, sure they'll think they see a difference. Some people just have better eyes, too.
Televisions display TV shows at 24 FPS. Your brain makes up for the lost 6 frames and smoothens out the show, so everything still looks smooth. It's not until around 20 FPS that you'll start to see choppiness, especially on a monitor since you're typically sitting close. Anything lower than 10 starts to become a slideshow.
Part 2: Graphics
Screen/UI Resolution - This is the resolution the game runs at, similar to how your desktop resolution works. The larger the res, the more closely compacted each pixel is to one another. For example the game running at 800x600 will have pixels that appear larger than if CoH runs at 1280x1024. The smaller the pixel, the more detail you can get in the game. The higher the res, the lower the framerate, too. A rule of thumb is to keep this setting at or below your desktop resolution.
3D Resolution Scaling - This slider can be moved from the farthest right to a lower setting. The lower it goes, the more the game fakes being at a lower resolution. Essentially the only purpose this has is to make the game play at a manageable res while the UI (User Interface, or the power tray, menus, etc.) stays at the regular res. I personally witness absolutely no impact on performance whatsoever when I use this feature, so I leave it at max.
Refresh Rate - This determines the refresh frequency of the game (measured in Hertz). Set it to be the same as your desktop refresh rate (if you don't know what it is, right-click on your desktop and select Properties, then go to the Settings tab, click the Advanced button, then click the Monitor tab). The higher the setting, the less chance of the game flickering. A low setting can give people headaches, because while the eye may not be able to see the flicker, your brain can, and it gets strained. Mine is set to 75Hz. This has no impact on gameplay performance. A note: this setting is greyed out if you play the game in Windowed mode.
World Texture Quality - This setting determines how high of a detail each texture in the game is displayed at. Your video card will handle most of the grunt work with this setting. There will be an impact on performance, especially outdoors.
Character Texture Quality - Same as above, but this applies to the players instead of the environment (including NPCs/mobs). There will be an impact on performance, but a significant improvement in character appearance.
World Detail - This slider determines how many of the little details such as trees, shrubs, etc. appear as you play, as well as the detail of the architecture and how far away they can be seen before fading out in fog. This slider drastically impacts performance when outdoors, expecially in more detailed zones.
Character Detail - Same as above, but for characters/NPCs. The farther away you are from them, the blockier they appear. This is something you will want to set low if you're at a big event like a Hamidon Raid or something.
Gamma - This adjusts the brightness/contrast of the game. No impact on framerate.
Max Particle Count - The amount of particle effects from player powers are determined by this. Default is 50000, minimum is 100. The significance of this option has been lessened thanks to the new "Suppress Extra Player FX" option, which disables effects from appearing if they don't directly affect you. So a Fire Tanker's shields will not appear to you, but a FF Defender's Dispersion Bubble will, since it buffs you if you're close enough.
Particle Physics - I don't have a lot of experience with this option, but it won't immediately affect performance. Things like fire attack's little embers that fall on the ground are turned on/off with this option.
Part 3: Advanced Graphics Settings
Vertical Sync - I can't see a difference with or without this enabled. It's recommended to have it on, though, and it doesn't alter my framerate, so why not, right?
FSAA - Full Screen Antialiasing converts jagged pixels around the edges of shapes into a more smooth line. It does this by making semitransparent pixels between diagonal pixels along the edge. You will notice objects become smoother if you enable it, but the performance hit can be significant.
Shadows - The game explains it as well as I could.
Use Geometry Buffers - I can't see a visual difference in the game, but enabling this feature gives me a moderate boost to my FPS, so I suggest turning it on.
Anisotropic Filtering - Modifies the crispness of world textures, making it easier to distinguish fine lines. Doesn't affect framerate, and turning it on automatically changes "Texture Crispness" to Smooth.
Shader Quality - I don't know what this does, but putting it on Low makes my game run better, so Low it goes.
Water Effects - There are 3 settings: None, Low Quality, and High Quality. There is little difference between Low and High, but there is also little performance difference. It boils down to if your video card is well-equipped to handle this type of effect. Some cards may not handle reflective/bendy water at all and will grey out this feature.
Depth of Field Effects - Enabling this will make things in the far distance start to fade out and become blurry. Many older cards will not support this feature, but it's nice if your card supports it. Minor framerate hit.
Bloom Effects - Turning on Bloom will make light-colored objects glow. It also tends to soften up the entire game. This is another feature not supported by older cards, but the newer cards that do handle it do a good job of it, so you don't see much of a change in your FPS. The setting below this is directly tied to Bloom Effects and determines just how much glow there is, though it's hard to tell a difference from my experience. "Heavy" bloom will add a significant amount of bloom to the stuff in the distance, further accentuating the sense that things are fading out as they get farther away.
Part 4: Closing
Here is a split-screen screenshot to show a comparison between what the game looks like normally for me versus what it looks like when I'm taking screenshots. The right side has bloom, depth of field, and antialiasing on, among other things.