How do you change the rendering path in the Doom 3 demo?

[JackHawksmoor]

Right now I've got a system with a Geforce 4 and one with an x300se. I know Doom 3 has several different code paths (nv10, nv20, R200, R300, and a generic OpenGL path-ARB or something like that?) but I can't figure out how to tell which one my cards are running, or how to change what it's running.

I'd also love some technical info on the differences between the paths, if anyone knows of a link. I've been searching for all this stuff and can't really find anything.

I'm going to hold off buying and playing the game until I can get at least a Geforce 6800GT in PCIe format, just so I get the full experience from the game, but I want to mess around with it more on my current hardware.

Has anyone actually run it on less than a Geforce 3? I'm really curious as to how different it looks on the different paths. I don't see how the NV10 path could look that great.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

well in the console ctrl+alt+(that button in the top left corner next to the number 1) (or it may be ~ for u in the us)

u can type ----------> gfxinfo

this will give you info on what your card is doin. as for changing the rebdering paths...i think thats something for some who knows what they are doing with .ini files

 

[Leon]

You can change renderer on the fly.

r_renderer <renderer type>

aka

arb (basic)
nv10 (GF1, GF2, GF4MX)
nv20 (GF3, GF4)
R200 (Radeon 8500)
ARB2 (NV30, R300 and above)
Best (default).



Leon

 

[JackHawksmoor]

Thanks a lot guys!

I'm playing around with the settings on my Geforce 4, and somewhat surprised by the results. ARB has the highest frame rate of the three modes this card can do, but looks MUCH worse. Massive amounts of special effects are missing, and visually there's a huge, obvious difference (although even in this mode it still looks great by normal standards.

NV10 was a surprise to me. It actually looks really similar to NV20 to me. Shadows and lighting are more subtle and impressive on NV20, but NV10 really keeps substantially a very similar graphic experience, and MUCH better than ARB. It actually runs the slowest of the three modes for me. NV20 not only looks better, but runs roughly 50% faster for me.

Can't wait to try out ARB2 on my x300se. I'm assuming it defaults to R200 (which would explain why it looks about the same as NV20), but at least I can see how ARB2 is going to look when I get a better GPU.

Anyone know of any technical info about these modes? Like what exactly is different, what's being used on the hardware, that sort of thing? This is cool stuff 🙂

Still surprised by how good it looks on the NV10 path... What a pain for developers that they have to write so many seperate code paths, although big surprise, ID/Carmack does an amazing job again (wasn't expecting THAT 😉 )

 

[JackHawksmoor]

Okay, I've played with the x300se now. It defaults to arb2. R200 and NV20 look pretty much the same to me (although I wasn't seeing them side by side). arb2 adds neat-o heat effects, and probably other stuff.

I did notice that on medium quality the Radeon seems to be cheating with mip maps. They're VERY low quality, even when set to the highest settings in the drivers. They look MUCH better on the Geforce 4. The problem goes away on Doom's high quality setting (which among other things turns on anistropic filtering?) but something's definetly going on with ATi's drivers...

Anyway, not surprisingly the x300se has about half the performance of the Geforce 4 in medium quality.

I could technically play it on my current video cards, but I'm still planning on waiting for a Geforce 6800GT.