Yeah, they're fantastic. My last Thinkpad lasted a solid 7 years, and I only decided to replace it because I had it plugged in once, tripped over the cord, and it fell screen-first onto a chess set and shattered the display. Ruined my ongoing chess match, too!
My experience with Thinkpads and Lenovo in general is pretty much the opposite.
I will >>NEVER<< buy another Lenovo made device, >>EVER<< again.
Once the Chinese took over completely, in my opinion, it started turning to full on greasy rancid excrement.
You're supposed to design your graphics around looks and performance while not compromising visibility in any significant manner. It's just common to turn down stuff because benefits of visibility is more important for playability (performance being the next important thing) than anything else.
The point of the fog is to diminish visibility. That is how an immersive game is suppose to be designed.
On high there's still hills, that have invisible hitboxes on polar that I hit often when trying to peek with PPC builds. Would be great if PGI fixed those.
The best I recall, it's actually a single graphics setting that does that weird foggy effect. I believe it's Post Processing. So no reason to turn everything on low for visibility. Stuff like Textures makes things look much, much better without hurting visibility.
Re that subdiscussion on ThinkPads. For my first year on MWO, I too played on an E540. Though it has a GeForce GPU and I was able to squeeze 50+ FPS out of it, on old maps like original Caustic. Things got progressively worse with every new map, and finally upgraded to a desktop.
Spoiler
I do my work on an X220 which I'm fanatically fond of. Last year of that form factor with the old-style ThinkPad keyboard. I have two spare X220's in storage, which I'm hoping will get me through the 2020's.
How did you get this "LOD bias mod"? You've just clamped it to the max with your driver? If so, what video card/driver? Also no performance difference? It's strange because for me when I clamp it by a bit my lowest FPS scores increase by 2. Tested many times but I'd like to hear from others. Yet my graphics don't change that drastically, they are much more like first screenshot.
It basically looks like on this video - is it still possible to set it this way?
Also, does anyone have similar texture shimmer when playing without AA or using negative LOD bias?
Cant speak for AMD, but with Nvidia you can do it with Nvidia Inspector.
Since the Nvidia drivers contain a bug, it requires a 'trick' to apply the correct LoD bias. Since it has nothing to
do with Transparency AA.... yeah. \0/
Performance wise there is little benefit unless you run a crappy GPU.
I ran with it for a while, and I'm doubtful whether it gains you any competitive advantage. You gain clear view, but at the same time you might 'miss' detail on mechs, details that could make you spot a mech faster, rather than looking at a 1 colored blur.
I could be wrong though ;-)
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This is what the graphics settings do;
Effects: Never seen any difference, anywhere. Looks like a non functional setting.
Particles: Medium enables dynamic deferred lightning around your beams that hit objects, increases particle quality and count. High makes PPC's look best. Very High just seems to increase particle count even more.
Anything but Low is a huge CPU eater and FPS dropper in active battles.
Post Processing: Depth of Field, possibly more bloom HDR and other junk, any additional and stacked post FX, including stuff like SweetFX just adds junk and added input latency. More stuff in the rendering pipeline.
Mostly GPU restricted.
Shadows: Pretty obvious, medium just enables the 'real' shadow system, anything higher just makes the edges better. Shadow distance seems unaltered.
Both GPU and CPU dependent
Object Quality: Medium/High enables more map particle junk, smoke in Caustic Caldera for one. Adds grass to maps like river city, Sadly this feature also increases GEOMETRY LoD, which makes buildings and rocks appear more accurate as well as Mechs.
Both GPU and CPU dependent
Environment Quality: Enables Ambient Occlusion, huge drain on GPU, little benefit except immersion. Sadly this feature also increases certain GEOMETRY LoD objects, mostly on terrain this time. However there's a trick to benefit from the increases object accuracy and disable Ambient Occlusion; Very High will enable SSDO (Screen Space Directional Occlusion) and together with these user.cfg entries you can have best of both worlds. (thus disabling SSDO)
Has a high tier player comes in yet and said something along the lines of:
"Low settings provide a clear advantage. If you're not play the game on the lowest settings you are hurting the team. Cool graphics and immersive enviornments are for losers. Git gud scrub, and lower your graphics settings"
or am I early?
Well, the problem is that MWO's max settings don't actually make the environments cool or immersive. Max graphics makes MWO look ugly as ****. Fog and other obstruction all day every day is ugly.
Max settings are supposed to make games look beautiful, not force you to squint while playing.
Well, the problem is that MWO's max settings don't actually make the environments cool or immersive. Max graphics makes MWO look ugly as ****. Fog and other obstruction all day every day is ugly.
Max settings are supposed to make games look beautiful, not force you to squint while playing.
Perhaps, I think some of the new maps with all their clutter are gorgeous. Occasionally I will max my setting and go into training grounds of Causitic just to watch the smoke plumes and the fire or even Frozen to watch the snow billow across.
Alas, those things may be immersive, lovely to behold or just a visual pain in the a55 depending on one's point of view, but regardless of what we think of them aesthetically I won't debate that they interfere with the playability of this stompy robot arena shooter. If I kept those setting up when really playing sure I'd be able to admire the artistry of the map but then I wouldn't see the mech off in the distance about to pop me with dual gauss and/or my frame rate would suck.
I for one keep particles and enviornment on medium cuz I like the environmental effects. Does that likley get me killed on occasion? I have no doubt. Everything is a tradeoff.
Okay so this "lod bias mod" ain't mod at all. It's just LOD bias setting set in video drivers(clamp, positive values). It works in DX9 but probably won't work in DX11 mode. Does anyone know is it possible to somehow archive it on ATI Video Card in DX11 mode?
As for performance it's marginal but on some systems clamp could be bit smoother/faster.
I mean some people play with joysticks too, and we all have the option of having this advantage, rather than it being the other way around, only available to people who can max settings.
about what? The article seemed to confirm that it does actually affect performance.
Quote
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I think there were only benchers and overclockers who were actually increasing this setting, to boost up benchmarks a bit by using less complex textures.
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Would seem to indicate more detailed textures does indeed affect performance, so lowering the detail of the textures that are being rendered should in fact increase performance.
Every pixel placed on the screen requires some GPU utilization so decreasing the number of 'different' pixels by lowering details means your GPU will be doing less work. So if you're not seeing a performance increase going from Maximum to Low settings your performance issues are either a problem with the card or something else in the environment stealing resources.
Edited by Dimento Graven, 08 February 2017 - 06:23 AM.
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Tarogato, on 06 February 2017 - 11:08 PM, said:
