Why do the graphics in games continually get worse?

[Jax Omen]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
Question for the OP: are you using dual monitors? Doom 3 (and, I assume, other games running on the Doom 3 engine) runs HORRIBLY bad if you have a second monitor. If you disable it in the NCP, the game runs just fine. At least, it did for me. Screwed up the settings on my second monitor when I re-enabled it, though.

I'm reposting my own question hoping the OP sees this.

 

[Oyeve]

Latest patches for those games?

 

[nakedfrog]

There is undoubtedly something wrong with your setup. Quake Wars was playable on my old Inspiron 9300 with a 6800 Go, and it plays quite nicely on my C2D T5450 with an 8800GTS.

Edit: Of course, I'm playing full screen.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
Question for the OP: are you using dual monitors? Doom 3 (and, I assume, other games running on the Doom 3 engine) runs HORRIBLY bad if you have a second monitor. If you disable it in the NCP, the game runs just fine. At least, it did for me. Screwed up the settings on my second monitor when I re-enabled it, though.

I'm reposting my own question hoping the OP sees this.

Yes I have dual monitors. The control panel is set to multi-display performance mode, and video quality is completley application controlled.
The control panel is jumpy as hell so it's possible I have it set wrong. Example: forcing antialiasing causes BSPlayer to lag like crazy and consume huge amounts of CPU power. When application controlled, BSPlayer only needs 1% to play movies.

 

[Jax Omen]

That's exactly it. Try disabling the second monitor in Nvidia control panel, then run the game.

It's the only way I got Doom3 to run tolerably. Before it was running significantly worse than crysis, and at lower settings besides.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
That's exactly it. Try disabling the second monitor in Nvidia control panel, then run the game.

It's the only way I got Doom3 to run tolerably. Before it was running significantly worse than crysis, and at lower settings besides.

Night and day. I set the textures to ultra and still get a solid 60fps. Thanks!

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
UE3 is the wonderful exception that looks amazing and runs better than it looks. And it scales beautifully down to crap hardware.

Go Epic!

Too bad everything else about the game is worse than UT2k4. Another game were graphics were the most important thing, and every other consideration was a distant second.

 

[mitchel]

Buy better games?

 

[Edge1]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
That's exactly it. Try disabling the second monitor in Nvidia control panel, then run the game.

It's the only way I got Doom3 to run tolerably. Before it was running significantly worse than crysis, and at lower settings besides.

Night and day. I set the textures to ultra and still get a solid 60fps. Thanks!

Youdaman Jax Omen!

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
That's exactly it. Try disabling the second monitor in Nvidia control panel, then run the game.

It's the only way I got Doom3 to run tolerably. Before it was running significantly worse than crysis, and at lower settings besides.

Night and day. I set the textures to ultra and still get a solid 60fps. Thanks!

I wonder if this was my problem with Gothic3....hm. Will check. Never had a problem like this and I leave "clone displays" on as the default option. Worth a shot.

 

[Jax Omen]

Yeah, I only knew that because I ran into the exact same problem with Doom 3 less than a month ago.

Apparently it IS all Doom3 engine games that have the problem. Good to know.

 

[EvilComputer92]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
UE3 is the wonderful exception that looks amazing and runs better than it looks. And it scales beautifully down to crap hardware.

Go Epic!

Too bad everything else about the game is worse than UT2k4. Another game were graphics were the most important thing, and every other consideration was a distant second.

He's talking about the engine there, not the game. UE3 also powered games like Bioshock, Mass Effect, Gears of War to name just a few. UT3 may have sucked but the engine is very well optimized and looks good as well.

 

[Oyeve]

Unreal engines have always been solid. I can play every single UE game on one of my laptops with a Radeon 7500 pretty smoothly.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
UE3 is the wonderful exception that looks amazing and runs better than it looks. And it scales beautifully down to crap hardware.

Go Epic!

Too bad everything else about the game is worse than UT2k4. Another game were graphics were the most important thing, and every other consideration was a distant second.

UE3=Unreal Engine 3.0

UT3=Unreal Tournament 3

There's a difference a pretty big one.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
Question for the OP: are you using dual monitors? Doom 3 (and, I assume, other games running on the Doom 3 engine) runs HORRIBLY bad if you have a second monitor. If you disable it in the NCP, the game runs just fine. At least, it did for me. Screwed up the settings on my second monitor when I re-enabled it, though.

Yeah this is awful stuff. Same problem here.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
Here's a simple test. Take a middle age computer, such as an Athlon 3200+ with a GeForce 6600GT video card, and run a Quake3-engine game like Jedi Knight 2 at settings high enough to get only 60 frames per second. I happen to have that computer, and I can set JK2's video quality to the absolute maximum and still get 60fps. The game is incredibly smooth (especially if v-sync is on), the textures look great, and the game is really a work of art. Now take that same computer and run Quake 4 at the settings that will give 60fps. I've tried this, and it's not possible. If I set the "quality" to low (it refers to texture quality), disable bump mapping, turn off specular, turn off shadows, and turn off sky textures, Quake 4 is still nowhere near 60fps. How does it look? Think of Quake 2 in software rendering; that's how Quake 4 looks with those settings.

My main comp is a C2D 6600 with a GeForce 8800GTX, and even on this computer Quake 4 is super slow and Quake Wars is nearly unplayable. Quake 4 at 1440x900 windowed with high texture quality, no shadows, bump mapping on, specular on, sky rendering on, and high quality effects gets 25 frames per second. If I set the texture quality to low but keep the other stuff on, it gets 60fps but it still appears laggy for some reason. I could put 60fps Jedi Knight 2 next to 60fps Quake 4 and you would swear up and down that Quake 4 had a much lower frame rate. I don't mean to pick on id Software's Doom 3, Quake 4 and Quake Wars, but they seem particularly bad for this. Lost Planet and Crysis are just as bad. Even on the best computers in the world those games look laggy as hell.


Why does this happen to all of the newer games? They run slow as shit, they look like shit, and they require a system that is more than twice as expensive just to get this horrible quality. Are software developers simply not trying anymore?

Stop right there. There's something wrong with your system, plain and simple. I can run Quake 4 on mine at all high settings, 1680x1050 and it's smooth as butter. Maybe it's a driver problem, but something just isn't right.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
Question for the OP: are you using dual monitors? Doom 3 (and, I assume, other games running on the Doom 3 engine) runs HORRIBLY bad if you have a second monitor. If you disable it in the NCP, the game runs just fine. At least, it did for me. Screwed up the settings on my second monitor when I re-enabled it, though.

Wow, I was wondering why ETQW ran so poorly on the system in my sig... it runs much smoother now after disabling my second monitor, thanks 🙂

 

[Jax Omen]

Wow, I'm happy I'm able to help so many people ^_^

ConstipatedVigilante, we already solved his problem. It's the multi-monitor issue with the Doom 3 engine.

 

[Piuc2020]

Graphics don't get worse, hardware just can't keep up.

Though I really wish developers scaled their graphics better, I mean if I can get Crysis-High visuals on a 8800GT at 1680x1050 I'd expect every game released from now on to be able to play at those settings with Crysis-High-like visuals but engine often times scale horribly so if you want to play future games at 1680x1050 it definitely won't be with graphics on the level of Crysis-High, more like Far Cry on low given the recent trend of crummy engine scaling.

 

[Jax Omen]

yeah, the Unreal Engine seems to be the only decently-scaling game engine around nowadays. Well, and Source, but it's not exactly cutting-edge anymore.