In Game Graphics TUT. / still editing

Have you ever played a game on a PC and noticed that their are alot of graphics options for you to choose from, and some have really weird names?

Alot of times you may find yourself wondering just "What does that setting do?"

In this tutorial I plan to explain everything I can about certain in-game graphics settings and how they will impact the performance of your PC while playing.

System Requirements:
Why they are important to know.

System Requirements are a very important gaming feature, when testers test games, they use mutliple different hardwares, to see which hardwares run the game optimally at high resolutions and high graphics settings.

There are 2 kinds of requirements:

Minimum Requirements:
This is the minimum requirements you must meet to play the game.

Recommended Requirements:
This is the hardware that is recommended to use because it runs the game at optimal graphics settings at higher resolutions.


Example:

If a game requires:

AMD Athalon X2 @ 2.1 Ghz / Intel equal
1 GiB System RAM
Nvidia GeForce 7900GT 256 MB w/ Shader Model 3.0 or greater / ATi equal

And you have:

AMD Athalon X2 @ 1.87 GHz / Intel equal
768 MiB System RAM
Nvidia GeForce 6600 256 MiB w/ Shader Model 3.0 / ATi equal

You cannot play the game, because you do not meet its minimum requirements to run.


Note:

Can-You-Run-it ? / Click Here to Find Out
If you ever have any doubts on whether or not you can run a certain title, click the link above, it will ask you to download a plug-in, which is 100% safe, and it will test your PC specs against nearly ever game title of your choice's requirements and compares them to see if you can meet at least the minimum requirments for the game.

Resolutions:
The resolution is the size of the image displayed on the monitor. The higher the resolution, the more hardware demanding the game gets, simnply because the resolution produces a aharper image that is more vivid, making it use more pixels that requiregraphics processing, thus taking up more of your GPU.

The resolution improves clarity and visibilty, any true gamer can tell you that if you raise your resolution up to a high setting, it will look a lot more visually delightful, and it is very noticable.

Standard Resolutions Used Today:

- 800x600
- 1024x768
- 1152x864
- 1280x1024
- 1440x900

And the list keeps going, but this is what we will concentrate on, since it is modern day resoultions for default on certain PC's.

Anti-Aliasing:

Anti-Aliasing is the proccess of lessening the "stair-step" effect
on the lines in the game.

Example:[If you notice the jagged edges on the lines.]

When you enable Anti-Aliasing, it helps to correct this
visual flaw.

Different Anti-Aliasing Modes:

You will also notice in some games when you enable Anti-Aliasing, you have options for it as well.
Here they are, and what they mean:

Anti-Aliasing 2x [2x is a 2 times draw distance for the enabled AA. meaning that your close up jagged lines will be fixed, but the ones in a distant area may still be very present]

Anti-Aliasing 4x [4x corrects jagged edges in a further distance on your screen[in your world space]

Anti-Aliasing 8x [8x carries your Anti-Aliasing distant alot farther, 2 times farther than 4x]

Anti-Aliasing 8xQ [same draw ditantce as 8x, the "Q" means Quality, with 8xQ you also have improve bloom
effects added to your AA, we will discuss bloom and HDR in the next segment.]

Anti-Aliasing 16x [ 16x is double the visual clarity disatnce as 8x/8xQ]

Anti-Aliasing 16xQ [16xQ is the same distance as 16x, it just adds the "quality" effects to the mix of a 16x multiplier AA draw Ditance, meaning that your close far and distant lines will be fixed if the edges are jagged.]

Bloom Effects:

Bloom:
Bloom is the process of sending lighting to "bleed" over the edge of a texture.

Example:

If you notice below, the light is bleeding over the
surface.

When you enable Bloom, this is the visual effect you will notice.

HDR-i:
HDR is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances[light sources] between light and dark areas of a scene.

Simply put, HDR makes dark spots darker, and light spots lighter.

Example:

By: wikipedia.org
Quote:
Exposure examples


Three exposures of the same image.



Here the dynamic range of the image is demonstrated by adjusting the "exposure" when tone-mapping the HDR image into an LDR one for display. The above sequence uses an image rendered with Radiance using Paul Debevec's light probe of the Uffizi gallery. The rendering software produces a high dynamic range image. When making the JPEG images, one selects a part of that range for display. This is similar to how a conventional camera captures only a portion of the dynamic range of a real physical scene.
The middle exposure is the desired exposure and is likely how this scene would normally be presented. The exposure to the left is 4 EV darker, showing some detail in the bright clouds in the sky. The exposure to the right is 3 EV lighter, showing some detail in the darker parts of the scene. This shows why compositing is desirable; a composite image can retain the interesting details from all three exposure settings

Anisotropic Filtering is the effect to correct burry texture surfaces at abtuse angles in close distances on the screen.

Example:

If you look below, you will see that the textures surface gets really blurry,
the farther the textures distance goes.

When you enable Anisotropic Filtering, it will reduce this effect and make
it more visually delightful.

Anisotropic Filtering Settings:
Just like Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic filtering has settings that can clear up the image as well, but rmember, the higher the setting numbers, the lower the frame-rates.

Anisotropic Filtering:

These are the numerical settings options, and they are simply saying that the anisotropic filtering will correct the image farther on the screen with the higher the number picked.

2x Distance
4x Distance
8x Distance
16x Distance

Vertical Synchronization:

Vertical Synchronization(Otherwise known as Vertical Sync) is the process of eliminating the "tear image" from the center of a screnn when moving at fast speeds while straffing.

This happens when your monitors refresh rate cant keep up with your video cards framerates.

Example:
If you look at the image below, where the red box is, notice the "split" in the screen.

Vertical Sync will help to reduce this effect.

Shadows Section # 1:
This section will cover shadows, such topics will cover real time shadows as well.


Real Time Shadows System:
If you watch the video below it is Left 4 Dead, and with Shader Model 3 attributes enabled, you can see the realistic effects of the shadows of objects moving when the light moves by them.

(I will embed this video when the option is enabled, for now here is the link)

/ still editing

Shaders:
This section will cover shaders and how they dramaticly effect the games performance.

A Shader is an element that is used to proccess certain images on the screen, there are two main types of shaders for PC games:

Vertex Shader:
A vertex shader is a graphics processing function used to add special effects to objects in a 3D environment.

Pixel Shader:
A Pixel Shader adds 3D shading and lighting effects to pixels in an image.

For example, in a game, the vertex shaders would control the looks and size of the explosion, and the pixel shader will control the shadows and lighting effects made by the explosion.

Currently there are five versions of shader models: SM 1.1, SM 1.4, SM 2.0, SM 3.0 and SM 4.0.

The Source engine will compile using Shader Model 2.0 by default, which is the most common model, but if you wish to compile shaders reserved for older or newer graphics cards, you will have to specify what shader model it should use, or the card will fail to use the shader.

Below are picture of the thre most commonly used Shader Models in games, this is how/where you can see the difference in the SM 1.1 and SM 3.0.

Shader Model 1.1 :

Example Outlined in Red:
If you notice that there is not a real good shadw underneath your player.


Example Outline in Blue:
If you notice the Helicopter does not permit a shadow.


Example: Outlined in Orange:
If you notice, the texture is flat, and it has no real shine to it, or reflection to it.

Shader Model 2.0:

Example Outlined in the Red Box:
If you notice there is a more visible and clearer self shadows on the cars.

Example Outlined in Blue:
If you notice the textures have a more realistic look to them and they have more of a shine effect.

Example Outlined in the Orange box:
If you notice the cars all have realistic reflections that get better in Shader 2.0 over 1.1 .

Shader Model 3.0:



Example Outlined in Red:
If you look

Example Outlined in Blue:

Example Outlined in Orange:

Shaders and Resolution Slow-Down Note:
When playing a game, if you put the settings up in your graphics options to "High" shaders, and say a 1440x900 resolution, you would have to consider that since a pixel shader shades every pixel, if you raise the resolution, you then raise the pixel count, making your GPU have to work faster and harder to shade every pixel, thus slowing down any performance drastically.individually on that higher number of pixels.

/ still editing