HQ settings for Quake3

[SleepyGuy]

How do i set Quake3 for the best visual settings? Thx in advance.

 

[RoboTECH]

well, setting it for best visual quality is great, but if your framerate is under about 60 or so, you'll have a lot of problems playing it.

What is your system configuration? If you have a GTS-Ultra + AMD 1.2 GHz, that'll allow you to play with a much higher level of visual quality than if you have a Pentium MMX 200 + ATi Rage, y'know what I mean?

For basic starters, the following lines will increase the visual quality quite a bit (assuming it's the basic Quake3 installation, up to version 1.25)

/seta r_lodBias "-2"
/seta r_picmip 0
/seta r_ext_compress_textures 0
/seta r_subdivisions "1"
/seta r_lodCurveError "10000"

this can lower your framerate pretty massively tho, again, depending upon your hardware. If you have an 800 MHz CPU or higher, and a V5/Radeon/GTS or higher, this shouldn't be a problem.

if you have a V5, go into the drivers and set your lodbias to (-0.1), and your 3d filter quality to "high"
you can fart with the alpha blending if you want to run 16-bit with the V5. Setting it to sharper will make some things (like blood) look better and other things (like smoke) look a bit worse. Setting it to smoother will reverse that. (of course, I probably have it backwards, heh....)

if you have a GTS or a Radeon, add the following line:

/seta r_textureMode "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR"

this enables trilinear filtering. you will probably want to enable anisotropic filtering in the drivers also, but that's a pretty good framerate hit again.

also, go here Upset Chaps Q3 guide

it is one of the best Quake3 tweaking websites I've ever found.

There are also tons of pk3 files that are great for making various skins in the game (i.e. models, weapons, ammo, etc) look much better.

Just make sure you avoid pure servers.

 

[SleepyGuy]

thanx, those links are great! Maybe i can see what this Radeon can do now! peace out.