Strange Graphics Behaviour

[Derkon]

Hi foks,

Quick question I'm hoping someone can help me with. I'm currently replaying MTW II as I wait for Empire.

I'm playing it on a well powerful PC, Quad Core, 4 GB RAM, GeForce 8800 GTX with 512MB RAM. All in game graphics settings are maxed out and it's running at 1600 =1200 at over 50 FPS most of the time.

However, I've notice an unusual anomoly while playing in battles. Whenever I'm up close the graphics look great and all. However, whenever I zoom out there is a cetain point which I reach where the unit graphics appear to turn into sprites. When I zoom in again there is a sort of wipe over effect which changes the units back to 3D models as I get closer.

That the best way I can describe it. What I'm wondering is has anybody else had a similar experience and does anybody know how to get rid of it.

It's more of a nuisance than anything else, but, since I'm running it on a machine that's more than capable of running the graphics engine maxed out, I'd rather be able to force the draw distance to keep 3D models no matter what the zoom level is!

Can anybody help?

[Silent Assassin]

I would take out the shadows completely, what I know of is that it's very hard on your graphic card

[Pink Beard]

well, as the humble opinion of a "fok",
I think your pc outperformed the game
It's just the game's limit I guess

[Derkon]

Not much help really. It's not a performance issue per se, so taking out shadows isn't likely to fix it. Like I said, as I zoom out the unit models/graphics appear to change into what look like sprites.

They actually look like the sprites in the old Shogun and original Medieval (pre Rome days). Wonder if anybody around here remembers those.

It's really weird, because there is no good reason for the game engine to do it. It suggests to me that there is a config setting somewhere that is adjusting the complexity of the Unit models once I zoom out to a certain distance. If I knew where to find this setting then I might be able to play around with it.

Any ideas out there? Anybody?

[Magicana]

There are some that may help. Try setting all the different graphical options to Highest. You can do this in a battle by pressing ESC, then Graphical Settings (I think that is what it is called). If all options are on highest, this shouldn't occur - it is designed to lessen the impact of the game on your system, to make it run a bit faster.

[Ightenhill]

I think its just a design of the game..Once you zoom out so far it seems to replace the models with this less detail.. (I dont know if you can alter the LODS or something though)

They didnt seem to consider much above a 8000 series when the game came out.. I still cant get vegetation shadows no matter what I do