Draw Distance Low Poly NPC Issue

I just came back from a long break of not playing CoH and there's something that's been bugging me graphically about it that I either don't remember or never had before.

What I'm wanting to do is set the graphics high enough that NPCs will stay higher poly looking for at least almost as far as my draw distance will show them. Currently, however, they seem to very often only switch from low poly to higher poly when I get fairly close to them. Closer than I think they should be doing so at least, as it's quite noticeable. Especially when you keep going back and forth between the point they switch at and they quickly flash from low to high and then to low again. The low poly stuff makes them look like they have cones for heads, and it's a bit disappointing.

I can't figure out what graphics option I need to adjust to fix this. I have both World Detail and Character Detail at 200% and both World Texture Quality and Character Texture Quality at Very High.

Here's a picture that shows what it looks like:



Note how the head of the guy standing in front of the lighted window goes from low poly body and almost no head to actually having a full head.

Does anyone know what I need to adjust to fix this so the low poly stuff will go away or be changed to high poly at such a distance that it's practically unnoticeable? Or is this just how the game is designed?

Definitely not how the game is designed. What do your FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering settings look like? What do your shader settings look like?

What graphics card are you using? It may just not be able to handle the settings properly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Graphics Card is a GeForce GTX 260.

Here's a screenshot of my settings:



FSAA is off, but I tested it and it didn't seem to help the issue at all even at 16x.

I also tried setting Advanced Shadow Settings to Enabled and setting all the options it opens up to as high as possible. Didn't change things either. I mean, things looked better in general, but the issue was still there.

I have exactly the same thing, the LOD settings for character models doesn't seem to fit with the world draw distance. It's definitely something that changed between when I played during i12 and when I came back during i19, but I don't know what.

I'm almost positive it's the shaders that govern the yucky look...and your Shader Quality setting (right above Water in the advanced settings list) is N/A. With a GTX260, I have NO IDEA why you can't set your shaders. Unless your nVidia control panel settings are overriding City.

FSAA will get rid of some of the jaggies around the far-away characters. Otherwise I'm almost positive it's shaders.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

When you click the question mark next that particular Shader Quality it says that it's only available if you are customizing on the Recommended graphics quality or lower. Since I'm using the Ultra Mode Options I think the shaders are actually handled through Advanced Shadow Settings and Shadow Quality; which means that other Shader Quality setter is made N/A since it's done elsewhere for higher settings. When Advanced Shadow Settings is enabled it has a quality setting you can adjust for Shaders, but like I said I tested it and it didn't solve the issue.

I'm not too worried about the jaggies on far away characters, I'm more concerned that they turn into coneheads and their legs turn into stick figure legs when I'm more than 50 ft away from them. Lots of graphical quality popping in and out. I could understand that at farther distances, but it seems like it doesn't happen until I'm almost on top of the NPCs.

I do appreciate you trying to help me. Just a frustrating issue.

Hmmm, I've actually just tried to reproduce the issue and I can't, which is odd as I know I've experienced it recently. I guess it could be a driver-related issue or some combination of settings ingame that were causing it (I was forced to reinstall several times recently thanks to the ludicrous Steam/NCSoft Launcher debacle, which reset all my options to default).

I discovered I was using very old drivers before and updated them hoping it would solve the issue, but no luck there either. I'm using the most up to date drivers for my card and have been since before I took those pictures. Same issue both before and after the driver update.

OK. Now I'm really confused, because I put all of my settings (except for FSAA because I forgot about it) to exactly match yours. Here's what I get:



Obviously something is going wrong here, because with nearly the exact same settings, on a card several generations older than yours, I am getting prettier results. No coneheads until they get far away (see far group in image).

I have...no...clue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Do you normally get the conehead effect at all? My main issue was that I don't ever remember the graphics doing that before. Not at any distance that was noticeable at least.

I may just be completely confused and it's always been like this. Either way, it's weird it's happening to me at slightly shorter distances.

The Character Detail slider is what controls how far away the gamed displays high resolution textures. Turn it down to 50% or so and you can get much closer and still get the "conehead" effect. I remember that in the old days (pre-Ultra Mode) you could use a slash command or possibly editing a config file to increase draw distances well above 200% but they removed that capability during one of the the graphics upgrades, presumably to avoid massive graphics lag / crashes with the new upgraded textures. 200% character detail may not equal the same draw distance it used to either (I'm not sure if they shortened it when they went Ultra), but I know if you had tweaked things to display high res textures beyond 200% distance that won't be working now.

Yes, as I remember the world detail is used for draw distance for buildings and other stationary objects (ultra mode adds shadows and reflected objects that are affected by this setting) besides the haze.

Character detail affects when the switch from high to low poly model is made but doesn't affect the distance that they are drawn at. This is true for NPCs and player characters.

If you crank world detail down to it's minimum, you will notice on some of the indoor maps that you have the ability to spot mobs at a distance that as you approach will suddenly be behind an intervening wall or crate.

If you crank character detail down to it's minimum, you will see the poly models switch while you are in the Freedom Core generic store in Talos.

I believe the reason character drawn distance isn't affected by those settings is for spot NPC threats consistently and later PvP.