Graphics settings guide?

[Zantinium]

Before the forum upgrade there used to be a guide that had a very good description of each of the graphic setting, what settings you could increase without impacting performance and what settings you could decrease without impacting visual quality but at the as time increasing performance.  Did anyone by chance save a copy of this guide?  I don't remember whether it was in the tips and tricks forum or the tech support forums.    I've done some quick searches, and haven't seen found it yet, but when i have some time i hope to do some more indepth searches. Thanks

[Sairusco]

<p><i>The following is originally written by Vobe, all credits for this go to him, I found this guide somewhere else already copied there so I could link the original.</i></p><p>The purpose of this is to hopefully help out anyone who is having trouble with adjusting their display settings. I sometimes encounter EverQuest 2 beta testers who, while trying to improve their performance, unknowingly set some important settings too low. This can cause the game to not only look terrible, it can also affect your gameplay. It is difficult to play EQ2 when you can not even see the monsters.                        I am something of a graphics nut, and I like to tinker with the display settings in every game I play, trying to make it look great, but run well enough to play. In the case of EverQuest 2, the developers have deliberately designed this game so that it is capable of graphics beyond what todays hardware can handle. This means that it should be a few years before we have computer hardware capable of running EverQuest 2 very well at the maximum possible settings.             For your referance, my basic system specs: Athlon 2600+, 1gig DDR, Radeon 9700 pro.             I will give recommendations for some of the display settings, but this advice is often assuming that your hardware specs are similar to mine.             All of my display testing was done using Fraps. Fraps is a nice little program that can be downloaded for free from www.fraps.com. Having Fraps running in the background will display your framerate on the screen, as well as let you take screenshots and movies of the game you are playing, but do not forget about the NDA.             The Basics             First, you and I need a common starting point. Open your options window and select the display options. Click the \"Default\" button at the bottom of the window. Next, look to the top of the options window for \"Performance Profile\". Open that pulldown menu and select \"Balanced\".             Performance             Performance Profile: This pulldown menu contains some preset configurations, courtesy of the developers. However, these profiles do not adjust all display settings, which is why I asked you to press the Default button first.             Full Screen: This checkbox will allow you to select between running EQ2 in a window on your desktop, or running it full screen. You can also switch between windowed and fullscreen mode by pressing ALT-Enter at any time. I find no change in framerate between fullscreen and windowed mode of similar resolution.             Full Screen UI Resolution: This is where you select your resolution for the game when it is running in full screen mode. If you are using windowed mode, the game will automatically use whatever resolution you stretch the window to, so this option is greyed out and can not be changed if you are in windowed mode. The resolution is currently set to 1024x768 60 Hz. You probably already know what those first two numbers mean, but what does the 60hz mean? That is how many times per second that a normal CRT (glass) monitor will redraw the picture on the screen. Anything less then 75hz is not very healthy for your eyes, and it may give you eye strain and headaches during long play periods. Set your resolution to however you like it, but make sure to use one with at least 85 Hz. If you use a Flat Panel LCD monitor, ignore the refresh rate, it does not apply to you. My testing results: 1600x1200 70hz: 18 FPS 1280x1024 85hz: 22 FPS 1024x768 85hz: 29 FPS Full Screen: Synchronize Refresh: In other games, this is normally called \"V-Sync\". If you have it turned off, the picture may notice horizontal \"tears\" in the picture. Set this however you like. If you do not understand what V-Sync does, turn it on and do not worry about it. Graphics Resolution: What this setting does, is allow you to run the 3D graphics part of the game at a lower resolution then what you are actualy running the game in. This slider should be set to maximum (to the far right), and should not be available for players to fiddle with. Lighting Resolution: Again, this is another setting that should not be available to players. Leave this slider at its maximum (far right). Rendering Distance: This is how far into the distance your computer will draw things such as monsters, players and certain other objects. If you set this slider too low, you may find that you can not see other players or monsters until you are dangerously close to them. If you set this too high, it will needlessly hurt your perfromance. It is currently be set to 650. That is a good number, and I recommend that you leave it there. If your system specs are lower then mine, you may want to try setting this lower, but I do not think it would not be a good idea to go below 450. Complex Shader Distance: This setting is the primary thing that makes EverQuest 2 look so good. This setting is what causes the flat polygon surfaces to have a realistic \"bumpy\" appearance. Setting this slider higher will noticably hurt your performance. If you set the slider all the way to the bottom(-1), it will disable the pixel shaders completely and your framerate will suddenly go way up, but everything in the game will look terrible. There is not much point to turning this setting very high, because the shaders are really only noticable on surfaces that are very close to you. Just leave it at 25 for now. Lighting effects require the complex shader, so if you set this too low, lighting will not work, no matter how you set the lighting options. Letter Box Letter Box Boarder Size: This slider will allow you to resize or completely remove the black letterbox boarders at the top and bottom of the screen. The default is about 50% on the slider. If you want to remove them completely, move the slider all the way to the left.             My testing results:             Slider at far left: 29 FPS Slider at middle: 29 FPS Slider at far right: 34 FPS            Show Letter Box Frame: This checkbox will turn on and off the golden line that seperates the 3D graphics and the black letterbox boarders. This is purely cosmetic, so set it however you like it.             Texture Resolution             Texture Resolution: This setting only applies to the environment textures. Things like walls, the ground, etc. Texture settings have a big impact on your performance because the better textures you use, the more of your memory they use up. The visual difference between High and Maximum environment textures is minor, so you may not even notice the difference.             Character Texture Resolution: This texture setting applies to all Player and NPC characters you see in the game. In this case, the difference between High and Maximum textures is very noticable, primarily on your own character.             With 1GB of RAM, I am able to run the game with both of these texture settings set to Maximum. If you have 1GB, you may want to set the Environment Textures to High. If you have more then 1GB, you probably will not have trouble running both set to Maximum. If you have less then 1GB, you may want to set your textures down to the lower settings, although the game obviously does not look as good. If you do need to turn down your textures, I recommend turning the Environment Textures down one level first, since they are less noticable then Character Textures.             Character LOD Texture Resolution: When a character or NPC is a long distance from you, or there are a lot of characters on your screen at the same time, the game will draw low detail versions of them. This setting should control the texture resolution of these low detail characters. This setting does not need to be very high, so just set it to High or lower.             My testing showed: (128mb video card, 128mb AGP aperature size, 1gb of system ram) Environment Texture: Maximum Character Texture: Maximum LOD Texture: High             I have about 166mb of pysical memory not in use.            Atmospheric Effects             Enable Bloom Effect: This checkbox alone does not seem to have any affect on the appearance of the game. The idea is that when a bright light source is behind an object, such as a person, there will appear to be a glowing aura around that person or object. I have yet to actualy see this in the game, since you rarely get the chance to stand directly in front of a bright light in EverQuest 2.             My testing results:             ON: 14 FPS OFF: 18 FPS            Atmospheric Bloom: If you have the previous checkbox turned on, you can turn this one on as well. Unlike the previous checkbox, which seems to do nothing, if you turn on this checkbox too, the game will apply the \"glowing aura\" effect to EVERYTHING. Even when there is little to no light in the area, such as at nighttime, the players, monsters, trees and everything else will have a colorful glowing aura. In some locations, your entire screen will become very colorful. If you are like me and do not like the \"on acid\" look, turn off this checkbox, and since the previous one is useless, turn it off as well.              </p>

[Sairusco]

<p>Distortion (Heat Shimmer): This is a cool effect. If this is turned on and you look closely at fire, you will notice that the air is distorted, just like in real life. I like this setting and it needs to be enabled for you to use underwater distortion, so turn this one on. Water Underwater Distortion (Requires Distortion): This one is even cooler then the last one, and much more noticable. If you turn this checkbox on, it will apply the vision distorting effect to the entire screen when you are underwater. I think this is really cool and helps make the water in EQ2 look great, so I recommend turning this on. Water Interaction: This setting controls how the water reacts to your character moving through it. You can live with this turned off, but it is a neat effect. I tried switching between all three settings, and I honestly could not see any visual or performance difference between them. I just leave it at Foam+Reflect+Refract. Splash Particles: This setting can be left off. If you turn it on, there will be a few particles when you jump into water, but only a couple of them and it really does not help the game look good. Animate Procedural Textures: Here is what this does. In some locations, such as the docks in Commonlands or Antonica, water has this white texture on its surface. Turning this option on, will animate this white texture. I recommend turning this on. Ocean: When you are on a boat, such as The Far Journey, the game uses a different kind of water graphic. I am personally turning it up to Maximum, because boat travel is not a common everyday thing for me in EverQuest 2. If you find that you have very low performance when on a boat, this is probably the setting that you want to turn down. Environment Cube Map Updates: This has to do with the quality of reflections. I recommend just leaving it at its current setting: Fast (Periodic) (Recommended). Reflections: Yet another setting for Reflections. The first setting, Cube Map, produces nice reflections, but the best setting, Mirror + Cube Map (Best) Looks a lot better. My testing results: Cube Map: 18 FPS Mirror + Cube Map: 14 FPS Particle Effects Max Spell Results Per Character: This should control how many spell graphics are shown on the screen at the same time. Particle Effects have always had a big impact on your performance. Also, spell effects in EverQuest 2 are often very flashy, and in group situations you may sometimes find that you are not able to see the battle through all of the glittery stuff on your screen. I recommend that you leave this at its current setting. Show Particles in Reflections: This is not nessesary and particles already have enough impact on your performance without being reflected too. Leave this off. Particle Level of Detail Bias; Maximum Particle Size; Spell Particles Close to Me: These three settings impact the spell effects you see on the screen as people cast spells. Personally, I am leaving these three at their current settings. However, if you feel the need, you should be able to make adjustments to these sliders to reduce how much the spell effects are visible to you. That would give you better performance during battle, but EQ2 has some very nice spell effects and I like to see them. Lighting Light Quality: This should be self explanatory. Turning this up should make the quality of lighting in EQ2 look better. This is not a very noticable visual difference, so you should be fine leaving it at Average. Setting this higher should hurt your performance, so you will probably want to leave this setting as is. Max Lights: This setting should determine how many light sources you see at on the screen. I recommend just leaving this setting the way it currently is. Specular Lighting: Turning this on will cause a loss of performance, but it really helps to make lighting effects in EverQuest 2 look much better and more realistic. For now, I will recommend turning this off, in favor of better performance. See the end of this document for more on this setting. Additional Specular While Raining: This is a really cool lighting effect that only works if you also have Specular Lighting turned on. If both of these are turned on, surfaces become very glossy during rain because they are wet. I have also found that raindrops are not visible at all, unless this setting is turned on. Turning this option on without Specular Lighting turned on will display the raindrops without using specular lighting effects. Turn this on. Max Spec Lights: This is fine set the way it currently is. Minimum Ambient Light: There is no question, move this slider all of the way to the right to its maximum. This will increase the amount of light in the game, and it is needed. Some zones in EverQuest 2 are very dark. You really want this setting maxed so that you can see. Max Bumpy Point Distance: This setting is similar to the Complex Shader Distance, which we looked at earlier. They work side by side to make EverQuest 2 look the way it does. There is no point to setting it higher then your Complex Shader Distance, so set this slider at the same or lower. Shadows The next item on the list are shadows. EQ2 has some fantastic shadow effects. I am sure that we will enjoy them someday. Unfortunately, shadows cause a big loss of performance. So for now, since we want performance, find the checkbox labled Shadows and turn it off. I will come back to shadows at the end of this document. My testing showed that if I set Shadow Quantity to Minimal, and check only the first three boxes, the performance loss is very small and not noticable. Model Detail I am not going to go into specifics about these settings. I recommend that you leave these settings the way they currently are. If you want to improve your performance, you can try turning these settings down a little bit, but be careful. If you set these too low, the game will probably stop drawing some of the players and monsters in the area. It is not fun to be attacked by monsters that you can not see. These are some of the settings that I feel players should not have much or any control over. Leave these settings alone if you can help it. Animation Again, I do not really want to go into specifics here. All you need to know is that if those three sliders are set wrong, players and monsters will turn into a silly looking slideshow of animation, even if you have a nice high framerate. These are more settings that I think should not be available to players to fiddle with. Set all three of these sliders to their maximum (far right). The game will look better this way and I could see no performance loss. Cloth Simulation: This is the option that enables the dynamic flowing cloth you see in the game, such as on robes. Leave this setting on, because it is really cool. Flora Flora: Turning this checkbox on will make the game show little tufts of grass all around the game world. Flora has a big loss of framerate. Turn it off for now, I will come back to it at the end of this document. My testing results: (both sliders maxed, looking across the landscape in Antonica) ON: 19 FPS OFF: 24 FPS Color Correction Ignore these settings completely. Adjusting these sliders could quickly and easily make the game look bad. These are more options that I feel should not be available to players. Just leave these sliders at default. Try it out Now just press the Accept button at the bottom of the options window, and see how the game runs for you. If your system is similar to mine and you followed my advice, you will probably notice that the game is much more playable now, and still looks very good. You will probably notice that your framerate will get fairly low in intense situations, but I feel that this is a good balance between performance and visual quality. Feel free to make further tweaks to your settings, but be mindful of the warnings I gave you about certain settings above. First Person vs Third Person Playing the game in third person mode makes your character visible on the screen. While this is neat and many players enjoy playing like this, keep in mind that your computer has a lot more to render. Not only does it draw your character in nice high detail, it will also draw the people and creatures that are behind you and to the sides. A quick and easy way to increase your framerate is to just zoom into first person mode. Your computer will have a lot less to render in first person mode, and you will get a noticable performance increase. Full Scene Anti-Aliasing It is known that for whatever reason, FSAA does not work on EverQuest 2. To the best of my knowledge, the devs have not confirmed if this is intentional or just a glitch. Either way, having FSAA enabled in your driver settings will still have a huge impact your performance in EQ2 as if it were working normally. Make sure that you run EverQuest 2 with FSAA turned off, or you will needlessly suffer a big loss in your framerate. Crank it up! Ok, so now you have the game running pretty good. But are you willing to sacrifice some of your framerate to make the game look REALLY good? The following settings will give you the biggest improvements to the visual quality of the game, but will cost you on performance. Try them out, but keep in mind that turning them all on will lower your framerate by quite a bit. Spectral Lighting: ON. - Shadow Quantity: Average. Shadows: ON. Torch Shadows: ON. Character Shadows: ON. Environment Shadows: OFF. Shadows from Off-Screen: OFF. Shadow Specular: OFF. - Flora: ON. Flora Displacement: This setting will make the tufts of grass bend out of the way when you step on them. Not nessesary, so turn it off. Flora Radius: This is how far into the distance the game will draw these tufts of grass. It does not need to be very high, I recommend setting it to about 0.500 or a bit lower. Flora Density: This is how many tufts of grass the game will draw in the range you have specified above. I say leave it maxed at 1.000, but you can turn it down if you want to improve performance. The game should now look really good. Now go drool over the eye candy and have fun. * as stated above all credits for this guide go to Vobe</p><p>And for a second less complex guide with some graphic examples: <a href="http://www.nvnews.net/articles/everquest_2_graphics/index.shtml" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.nvnews.net/articles/ever...ics/index.shtml</a></p><p>  </p>

[Zantinium]

Thank you, i believe that was the guide I was looking for