![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Virtual spaces keep getting prettier.
Aug. 12th, 2003 03:50 amThey're definitely helped along by proper hardware. Kim was a saint and lent us his Nvidia Quadra4 card -- a too-pricey-for-us ubercard that he won at the last GDC. We had a machine it'd fit well in and he had it just sitting on a shelf... so why not? After installing this card, all I can say is wow
Planetside is a seriously tough-on-hardware game. On our souped up box we tend to run it on the 'medium' preset to maintain a playable 30-40fps rate. With this heavy-pounder of a graphics engine I was able to set the game into "everything on and at max" settings, at 1280x1024, and get between 40-90fps no matter what we were doing. Battles with 30 people crowded into a hall leading to the command-center that used to turn the game into a slide show now run at 30fps. This just breaks my brain. Scarier yet is the card appears to run cooler than the slower one!
To give it a proper test out I hooked up with Nash from my outfit (Smoke & Mirrors) and went for a little playaround on Cyssor. Cyssor is a favorite continent of mine. Lush green and cypress swamps give you these vivid colors during the day, breaking completely out of the 'FPS games should be dark and industrial' flat-palette mold. At night the fog rolls in, deeply hued and sound-muting. The vegetation is so thick that you can actually be a foot soldier and live even with a sky full of bombers and reaver pilots. If you walk away from the cities and out into the open land, away from the fights, you can just walk around and listen. It's a really great place.
Tonight had no real quiet-times to appreciate, though. The Terran republic had entrenched themselves in the base at Ixtab... and dammit, they weren't going to give it up. Their home-continent's warpgate was just down the road and they were pouring out of it like termintes from a kicked-over mound. The road was theirs, as was Ixtab and its surrounding areas. A storm was rolling in from the west, cutting overhead visibility. Still a few miles out we could hear the muffled concussions in the distance. Evidently someone felt the Terrans' mound needed a little more kicking.
Nash turned around to motion me onwards. In lighter scout armor he could beat my pace... but he wanted to be behind my thumper instead of in front of it when we crested the ridge. Slogging up through the wet grasses was slow going, but it gave us something to crouch down in and peek over the ridge beyond.
( Screenshots follow. )
Planetside is a seriously tough-on-hardware game. On our souped up box we tend to run it on the 'medium' preset to maintain a playable 30-40fps rate. With this heavy-pounder of a graphics engine I was able to set the game into "everything on and at max" settings, at 1280x1024, and get between 40-90fps no matter what we were doing. Battles with 30 people crowded into a hall leading to the command-center that used to turn the game into a slide show now run at 30fps. This just breaks my brain. Scarier yet is the card appears to run cooler than the slower one!
To give it a proper test out I hooked up with Nash from my outfit (Smoke & Mirrors) and went for a little playaround on Cyssor. Cyssor is a favorite continent of mine. Lush green and cypress swamps give you these vivid colors during the day, breaking completely out of the 'FPS games should be dark and industrial' flat-palette mold. At night the fog rolls in, deeply hued and sound-muting. The vegetation is so thick that you can actually be a foot soldier and live even with a sky full of bombers and reaver pilots. If you walk away from the cities and out into the open land, away from the fights, you can just walk around and listen. It's a really great place.
Tonight had no real quiet-times to appreciate, though. The Terran republic had entrenched themselves in the base at Ixtab... and dammit, they weren't going to give it up. Their home-continent's warpgate was just down the road and they were pouring out of it like termintes from a kicked-over mound. The road was theirs, as was Ixtab and its surrounding areas. A storm was rolling in from the west, cutting overhead visibility. Still a few miles out we could hear the muffled concussions in the distance. Evidently someone felt the Terrans' mound needed a little more kicking.
Nash turned around to motion me onwards. In lighter scout armor he could beat my pace... but he wanted to be behind my thumper instead of in front of it when we crested the ridge. Slogging up through the wet grasses was slow going, but it gave us something to crouch down in and peek over the ridge beyond.
( Screenshots follow. )
