When you're deciding whether to buy a particular game, the first thing to figure out is whether the game will run on your system. Every game and almost all software packages come with a list of minimum system requirements. You should compare them with your system specs to see if the title was designed to run on your gear.
That sounds like a pretty obvious first step, but believe me, it's not always what a game purchase is based on. I'm not exaggerating when I say that a quarter of the questions I receive from readers of my columns, reviews, and books could be answered simply by checking a title's requirements against a system's specifications.
That's not all there is to it either. Most of us aren't blessed with a system that can take full advantage of the graphical splendor offered by such advanced games as Doom III, Half-Life 2, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth, and other cutting-edge fare. Your system might meet the minimum system requirements for such titles. But you'll also need to find the perfect balance between speedy frame rates (how well the game performs) and visuals (how delicious the game looks).
Although many games have automated system sniffers and try to configure themselves for your system, the only title I've encountered that does a decent job of it is Half-Life 2. I've found most games to be too conservative, sacrificing looks for playability.
In this column, I'll walk you through configuring a game's graphical settings so they fit with the hardware configuration you're running. That helps give you good game performance. And I'll provide tips on how to achieve the perfect level of detail for your computer setup. This helps you get great image quality in your game. You should end up with a working balance between muscle and gloss for your computer.
How to access graphics settings
Just as Windows XP has performance settings that affect how the operating system looks visually, most games have graphics settings buried in their Options menus. The trick is finding them.
Some games, for example, have graphics settings outside the game interface. They're accessed by inserting the game CD into the drive and letting it autoplay or by clicking the game's Start menu.
Most games contain graphics settings within their shells. In nearly every case, they're accessed by clicking Options on the game's main menu and then by selecting Graphics or Visuals or System (in the case of id software engine games.) In some cases, there might be two graphics settings screens, one with basic options and one with advanced settings.
Visual settings on the System options screen of Doom III.
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Selecting graphics options
When examining a game's graphics options menus, you may find all, some, or none of the following options to tweak:
Automatic detail settings. Many games have their own presets for graphics options. They might be labeled something like Visual Detail with options such as Best visual quality, Best performance, and degrees in between. Doom III is an example of a game with preset levels of detail.
Resolution and color depth. In Windows, the screen resolution determines how large the icons and text look on the monitor and how much desktop real estate you have to work with. In games, changing resolution affects how much detail the scenes are drawn with. Unlike the case of Windows resolution, an object in a game will be the same size at 800 x 600 pixels and at 1024 × 768 pixels. In the latter case, however, it will be drawn with that much more fine detail. Higher resolutions look better but degrade performance. Similarly, you can often select the color depth in bits per pixel that the game will use. With modern graphics cards, this doesn't affect performance as much as resolution does.
Brightness/gamma. This setting doesn't affect performance at all, but instead changes how brightly the in-game screens will be displayed. Use it to brighten the scene if it's too dim. Be careful here: increasing the gamma correction could result in pixilated scenes. It could also bleach out the scene so areas that are supposed to look black don't truly look dark.
Antialiasing. Also accessible through graphics card driver interfaces, this option indicates whether the game will try to smooth out the jagged look of diagonals and seams between textures and polygons. Sometimes you can select the level (for example, 2x, 4x, 8x). The higher the level, the more effective the antialiasing will be and the better the game will look, but the more it will hurt performance.
Filtering options. You're often asked to choose between bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic filtering, and sometimes the anisotropic filtering level. Filtering smoothes the textures and makes them look less pixilated and more lifelike. Trilinear filtering does a more thorough job than bilinear filtering. Anisotropic filtering also smoothes the transitions between detailed, close-up textures and less detailed, faraway textures. Bilinear filtering is the easiest on performance but looks the worst. Trilinear is next best visually. Higher levels of anisotropic filtering look better but deliver a blow to performance. You can force anisotropic filtering through graphics card driver programs, as well.
TIP: It's best to tweak detail levels through the game interface rather than forcing the issue through a graphics card driver interface. That way, you can custom tailor each game to find its ideal settings. (Of course, some games don't offer antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, or other features, so you may have to force them through the graphics driver interface).
Texture resolution/detail. Textures are the paintings on the flat and curved surfaces that make the models look like what they're supposed to look like. As with screen resolutions, textures can be drawn at several resolutions (sometimes simply referred to as detail levels). The higher the resolution/detail level, the more realistic and richer the textures will look, but the worse the game will perform. If the option is available, compressed textures usually look best.
Unit/model detail. Most 3-D games have character models or unit models. Like all 3-D objects, they are composed of polygons and textures. Changing their detail levels can affect their texture resolutions, the number of polygons they're drawn with (in both cases, higher numbers are visually superior but impair performance), or other aspects.
Other detail levels. You'll often encounter other detail options, such as curved surface detail, water detail, length of time dead bodies stay in the game environment, and many others. In almost every case, turning details on or setting them to higher nodes will make a game look better, at the expense of some performance.
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Striking a balance between performance and visuals
Armed with the knowledge of what the various settings do, it's up to you to find the perfect levels of detail for your situation. To do this, follow these steps:
1.
Play the game. There's no need to run a benchmark. Just play and see how natural it feels and how fluidly the animation flows.
2.
Enter the graphics Options screen and tweak something. I suggest you run through the options in the same order as I introduced them. Make one, small change at a time.
3.
Play the game again, paying attention to how the gameplay feels.
4.
When the game becomes unplayable, go into the graphics options and back something off a little. You've found a working balance.
5.
Don't stop there. Experiment! Decide whether you'd rather have a high resolution or powerful antialiasing by judging what looks best to you. Go up on this, back off on that, and see what you discover.
