got this off steam yesterday, played around 30 minutes (would of played some more if I wasn't so sick). pretty fun so far. have everything on max at 1920x1200 except AA (8800GTX & E6600), and that mostly because I didn't even try yet. annoyed with securom's refusal to run the game if Process Explorer is running (what I use as a replacement for windows task manager), and the fact that the game seemed to need to install net 2.0, which crashed-half-way through. I dont know if that will affect the game or not...
Both Crysises (lol) work fine with Steam on my system; dunno what's up with that. Actually I'm glad Bludd mentioned the respawn rate -- that IS annoying. Clear out a bad-guy camp spot, drive 100 ft away, turn around, and you're being pelted on all sides by gunfire again. WTF? ANd yeah, character face animation is kinda crap. In fact, it's really crap. I didn't have any problems with mouse lag, and Crysis was a bit odd in that you could have two baddies standing next to eachother, you could mow down one of them with a silencer, and the other one would continue standing there. Huh? FarCry 2 doesn't act like that; if you kill one of 'em and the other sees, then they're coming looking for you. Unlke STALKER, they don't immediately know where you are though (unless of course you're standing straight up blasting away -- I prefer to crouch and move.) The map actually feels more suited to this game; I expect a HUD on a multi-billion dollar nano-suit, I don't expect one strapped to the head of some random mercenary. Yeah ok, so it's a "magical" map that updates as you move -- well, so what? Not that big of a deal to me. Autosaves also aren't a big deal to me; I don't always want to save when I go take a nap. The diamond detector is hokey, but works the way it is IMO and it never bothered me that it 'beeped' or not. And I'm not sure that I followed your "more ui" comments about enter -> use, wasd -> arrow -- I'm guessing you're not talking about remapping keys, so I'm pretty sure that I don't undertand what you are referring to there. Help?
Although they don't look good in screenies and movies, can you give me a comparison? Are they Oblivion-level crap?
thanks for your instructions. sorry i was called away shortly after my last post. well im looking at a load of non plug and play devices trying disable of dmboot,dmload,fips?, null, startforce protection (x4) drivers, and xprotector
none of those were it. i read though that securom has a problem with DVD players with IDE controllers (i have). also problem with SATA drivers (i also have) what say you to that? and what are alternatives? looking like i can't play farcry2 on my rig.
I'd say in some cases, yes, facial animation is right down there with Oblivion At least they're better detailed, but they're still very stiff and mouth movement has little to no synchronization with the voice-over. Which makes me think of another thing: most of the voice over audio is very rushed -- as in, everyone in the world seems to talk VERY fast. No pregnant pauses, it's almost like the dialog coach told the voice-over talent people to bust-ass through all their lines. Paid by the hour? The voice-over talent isn't really that bad (within what you reasonably expect from an FPS anyway), it's just too fast, to the point of sometimes being indecipherable. Good reason to keep the default setting of subtitles.
Regarding my UI wasd, enter comment: Manipulating the menu system in-game, like when the game asks you to save when you sleep, I have to move my hand away from wasd to the arrow keys and then press enter. It would be so much more intuitive if it would allow me to use wasd as arrow keys and the use key as enter in that use case. Re: magical map. I think it's contrived, because they go out of their way to force you to look at your map without being armed, but then they allow you to drive with your map. It would be easier if we'd just get a simple HUD map a la Crysis for navigating in firefights etc. The magical map kills the immersion for me, because I know they made it to be immersive, but since it's magical and auto-updating (and they have no explanation why you have this magical map) they actually ruin the immersion they set out to create in the first place by having that map. Re: faces. They are terrible. Googly eyed people with lifeless faces. Crysis destroys FC2 in this respect. It's like being shot at by Kraftwerk.
I am basing this on FC2 for PC with 4xAA, 16xAF and highest settigns for everything. In short Crysis high is above and beyond this easily. Sound quality + sound effects good for FC but still way off. Lighting, quite large difference in depth, detail and how it illuminates the world. Amount of vegetation + small ground vegetation + clutter (like stones, branches, blades etc) huge difference. Amount of soft-vegetation, very big. Texture res, quite a difference + texture mapping, huge difference + lack of parallax occlusion mapping or regular parallax. Particle effect density and detail, quite large. Lacks volumetric clouds, dynamic SSAO, amount of clutter, amount of grass vegetation (as above) and probably a lot more. Building amount depends since I have not explored the whole world but both games have villages of moderate size. Draw distance detail etc. yadda yadda yadda! Really in short there is a large difference vs high. But it doesnt make this or other games look bad becosue of that. Crysis as is is in its own class high or very high, untouched and so to atleast the next-gen machines release. This wont mean any less looking titles are bad or ugly at all. Really I could later post screenshots of both games high vs FC2 ultra high in the PC screenshot thread if you whant to see the [strike]large difference[/strike] almost huge difference.
I foud out the following. At 1280*1024 vsync (tripple buffering forced on) in DX10 all settings maximum and I get above 30fps. But it feels laggy even at 40fps until I drop down the shadows from ultra high to very high. Then I get 50-60fps flat out and silky smooth response. Graphic engine walking on its toes? Now anyone getting this bug/error with some surfaces missing the right texture (wrong texture on wrong surface) or some purple marks? I admit I only tested it on DX10 mode but maybe an ATi driver (8.8) thingy? Also in the console press tab to cycle the gfx_ variables for some tweking to extreme!
I've read that it is not working as it should for single GPU 4870. That driver works only good with 4870x2.
Hmm I tested Crysis high with 4xAA for the screenshots so its lower. Somewhere around 30-40fps 4xAA/16xAF at 1280*1024. At same resolution and AA/AF FC2 maxed out it runs at 35-60fps and mostly 35+ fps and with shadows on very high it runs at 45-60fps and mostly at 50+ fps. I would say it runs better if AA is used for Crysis but if no AA is used for Crysis then its not better. But if shadows are set to very high (looks almost the same) then FC2 runs better.
Scratch my problems they disappeared after restarting the game! Great looking game and very good athmosphere!