The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

the textures are horribly compressed. what should have been at least 1024x1024 is 512x512, however the shading and lighting engine is what saved this game it would be garbage without it. I'm also not a fan of the New Vegas color bleacher, which is painfully more obvious in Skyrim than it ever was for NV.

 

The book explains it somewhat. Most of their food crops are mushrooms and livestock rescued from the surface during the early days.

That's certainly a realistic range with a 40mm grenade launcher but I can't imagine actually hitting a target at that range. Overall though, they got the feel and the sound of the guns down pat. How can they get the "feel" you might ask? One word, recoil. If you've ever fired an M16/AR15, the game is like picking one up all over again.

Crysis 2 was great, but in my opinion was a technological step back for Cryengine. They left out a lot of stuff and in some ways skimped on the detail. It's also painfully linear which Crysis 1 was not. It's certainly worth a play now that it has proper Crossfire support. They tried some new stuff with the graphics as well, but the overall fidelity and quality just isn't there. So it's a great looking and playing game, but it fails as a sequel.

Crysis and Warhead are better games with better graphics, period.

Also, Rich, Skyrim is indeed amazing

 

last page button not working for anybody else?

 

I'm able to visit 312 & 313.

 

never mind its working now.

 

Kevin, I'm glad you like it. I too found it to be a blast. Like Jeff said, we proletariat won't let ourselves be put off by their elitist gripes

Here's 3 Rage tips - one small spoiler in the first sentence but mentioned already in a prior post two months ago:

[1. The only part I had to go to a walkthrough on - was the gigantic mutant about 5 stories high - you'll know him when you see him. You have to shoot a rocket at the glowing power pack on his chest - only exposed for about a second as he gets ready to chuck a boulder at you - and if you hit it right, he grimaces and charges. Then you climb up the nearby stairs, and shoot into his brain. This works better if you get the lucky shot with your first or second rocket, cause then, without reloading, you can fire two or three rockets at his brain before he withdraws - unfortunately he is not quite dumb enough to stand there all day with his brain exposed, lol. I had accomplished all that several times, but to my frustration, it appeared to have no effect. Unlike the good old days, there is no red bar above his head showing his health level, or any other sign that he is growing weaker, like slower movements, or smoke coming out of his ears. They didn't bother with that. I like it better, for example as when you have to kill a helicopter, that it starts smoking when you are weakening it. You see that in Far Cry, in COD, in HL2 - most of the helis or other types of flying and shooting things, start smoking. I think that makes sense and is the way it should be. I started to say Carmack screwed up, but now I realize that the L4D tank also shows no real signs of overall weakening - yes he slows down when you are shotgunning him - but then he speeds back up. So anyway, what I didn't realize with the 5-story Rage mutant, is that the cycle has to repeat a specific number of times. To be precise, 3rd time is the charm, then he'll die.]

[2. The only other part that was puzzling for about 30 mins, was in fighting the "Indians." In their very interesting "camp" you will come across some pulleys on a steel cable like when you leave the first mutant camp, or like when you leave the top of the radio tower, if you do that mission. But one of those in the Indian camp - the handle for it is tricky to see - it blends in with the stuff around it and it has no "halo" or any other lighting or color effect to help you find it. If you spot it from down below, just realize it is up there, and when you get back up to that position, reach up and hit the use key even if you can't quite see it.]

[3. Finally, take the game's advice and use the quick save feature a lot. You can play the game on hardest difficulty to make it more challenging - and you can beat it on that difficulty level - but invariably you will get killed from time to time. The quick-save will keep you from going back to 30 mins earlier and having to repeat all that nonsense. LOL]

This next time around, I'm gonna do crazy things that will add to the fun, like I read about in some of the reviews. For example, I'm gonna build more things with guns on them, lol (turrets, spiders.) And I'm gonna build more mom rounds (you take the special magnum rounds - they don't call them magnum - for the single shot pistol - which if you buy the monocular becomes almost like a sniper rifle - and you buy a schematic that shows you how to upgrade them to even double the magnum power.)

And I'm gonna buy or build more electro bolts - for the crossbow. They work equally well outside the water as when the guys are in water - they are the single most effective killing tool around, except for the rocket launcher.

And I'm gonna do all the races, including in the second town - I didn't try any races in the second town the first time around. I think you race through some old subway tunnels - it should be super fun

Wow - I too missed the last page - didn't notice more posts after Omega's.

Jeff thanks for explaining about the Metro mushrooms - makes sense I guess.

Also about the "feel" of AR15 in Red River. You're so right - I play those games and some of those guns really buck, and then I think about it later and say to myself - "I'm holding a mouse - how can the gun buck?" But all you need is the visual effect, and your brain fills in the rest, lol.

And lastly, since you liked it, I'll get Crysis 2 - thanks for the recommendation.

Rich

 

Guns are more often than not mis-represented in games. Large caliber rifles with pinpoint accuracy on full auto? LOL, get real. Red River makes a truly honest attempt at gunplay. It's definitely middle-of-the-road for realism though. They went for authenticity while keeping it mostly fun and accessible.

If you want truly realistic gunplay, ArmA II and Red Orchestra are great fun. ArmA II is so stupidly overcomplicated though. It's like playing an FPS as a hardcore flight-sim. Supposedly once you get used to it, it's awesome but I really cbf'd to put that much time into the learning curve. At least I can have fun with complicated flight sims because my throttle/stick/pedals setup is intuitive. I have enough working knowledge of the interface to get in the air and take down other planes. ArmA II is like trying to play such a sim with mouse and keyboard. It's not happening.

Red Orchestra: Ostfront and Red Orchestra 2 are the best balance of realism and fun I've seen yet. The controls are stock standard FPS mechanics but everything has the extra detail. Taking time to aim, manually working the bolt on your rifle, true ballistics with bullet drop and penetration. Actually hitting another guy at distance is quite a feat in this game, and takes practice and concentration. It's not overly complicated to play at all, very simple even. But the guns are right and the vehicles are right(3 man crews for tanks) plus all of the historic details. I found myself having an unexpected amount of fun with this game and Ostfront was very cheap at some $10-15 on Steam when I got it.

 

I have had minimal contact with guns, but on the one occasion I did visit the shooting range I noted a couple of observations:

1. Real guns are far, FAR more powerful than they are ever portrayed, even relatively small things like 9mm handguns.

2. Even with experience, you wouldn't want to fire a high-powered rifle on automatic continuously, there'd just be no point. Granted, I was inexperienced, but even once I got a good feel for it, I did not find the 1rps safety limitation at the range limiting - it took me at least 2-3 seconds to line up the next shot properly.

As for the rest of the discussion, it's been a long day, I haven't really had a chance to read it. Suffice to say about torrents though, there obvious ways to get caught, and obvious ways not to get caught. I've yet to see a C'n'D letter after applying common sense, but I did see one beforehand.

 

Thanks for the Tips Rich. I'll probably try to set aside some time this week. But I'm getting a fair amount of overtime from work. MUCH needed. Yesterday I was seriously hungover. Still feel pretty weak. Just had a pizza and a 12 inch sub sandwich though. So I'm doing better
I've handled a few guns. One in particular comes to mind. A shotgun. Man that sucker can kick! That was like 15yrs ago, so I can't be more clear of the model. I've also played with explosives. You know those CO2 cartridges they use in BB guns? Make the hole a bit larger, and a bit of gun powder, and you've got yourself a very loud firecracker! Probably more toward dynamite though. I actually use a white powder found in a screaming firework. If done right, it's like a canon going off. SUPER loud! But this is certainly no toy. VERY dangerous actually. Should not be attempted without a very long fuse.

 

1) 9mm is a great pistol round. it doesn't hold up to well for mid range engagements as it looses stopping power far to quickly but makes up for its mild recoil.

2) which is the point of automatic and burst modes to put more than 1 round on a target to guarantee a kill or combat debilitating injury. that first round may not be fatal that 2-3 seconds to line up another shot on the soldier you failed to kill or Knockout of combat could very well be the death of you.

 

Hmmmm - I saw several of the trailers for Red Orchestra and was considering it at one time - it's multiplayer, isn't that right? Does it even have a single player campaign or offline mode? But I am intrigued by what you wrote - very likely I will get it on Steam and check it out, esp since the price is so far down.

Speaking about multiplayer - somebody - maybe when I was playing Left 4 Dead a couple months ago - or maybe it was a review - somebody just raved about BF2 Vietnam - saying the guns were the best, blah blah blah. But then I couldn't even find a BF2 Vietnam on Steam, other than the new BF:BC2 Vietnam which I own and love. Do you care to comment, Jeff?

Oh, and I too found Arma a bit daunting - all those controls, sheesh. I customized them for my way of doing things, and ignored the fact that you can look sideways while moving forward - who friggin cares? I even went through the training, and made it through vehicle, until I got to helicopter. In staying up all night, I couldn't get past the final part of helicopter training, even with quick saves. I don't know how close I came, there was no counter. Just "you failed." I don't know if it was my old laptop mouse, before I got the new Ikari, or what? Finally I said "Ok, to hell with the training." I entered the game, and in the first 10 seconds, I took an instant dislike to my view of my rifle - the side of the scope that I was looking at literally taking up half of the screen. "Holy christ, I am not going to run around looking at this ugly gun butt." I deleted the game, and that was that, lol.

Common sense - haha. That's what my brother, who got the letter before I did, had to say. "You idiot, you used what program - well that's obviously not what a smart person would do."

Haha. Needless to say I don't know the ins and outs of it - if I ever decide to try some "sampling" again, I'll send you an email and you can give me the "common sense" ways to avoid C'n'D letters, lol.

Haha - Kevin I didn't even know you drank. I still have a couple bottles of Grand Marnier lying around - my poison of choice - what's your brand?

Holy shit Kevin - homemade dynamite!! Haha.

I've never fired a shotgun, just heard people talking about the huge kick. My main rifle experience has been a small caliber 25 pistol, and M16 - not bad recoil. We did some M16 full auto which was virtually impossible to keep level, mostly to reinforce the point that burst firing is much more effective. We did quite a bit of burst firing.

Very good point DXR. Our M16 rifles had single shot, or full auto modes. We left it on full auto, but we were taught to try to feather the trigger to achieve a 3 round burst, which is how I use most full auto rifles, like the secondary full auto rifle in Red River - which I switch to when we start going through a building complex, intending to fire it from the hip without scoping in. If I come around a corner and one or more Chinese is staring me in the face, I want the ability to spray and pray while I try to back pedal or find cover.

Jeff, again with your hands-on rifle experience, how do you feel about the secondary automatic rifle in Red River - the one with full auto. It has a nice throaty sound to it - unscoped it is pretty good up to about 20 yards, beyond that the 3-round burst rifle is better unscoped. Do you feel that the way THAT gun handles, and sounds, is realistic? (Or is THAT the gun, in fact, that you were talking about before when you mentioned very realistic AR15?)

CONTINUOUS 3-ROUND BURST
I find it interesting that the SCAR in L4D2 fires continuous 3-round bursts budaBAH, budaBAH, budaBAH. I hear that's the newest, latest thing for the field. Did I hear right? If so I guess the theory is that you can fire a 3-round burst with minimal barrel elevation, so why not let you set the gun to that mode.

There must be some clever engineering going on, versus the M16 I used. For the rifle in Red River, they have to partially ratchet up the air piston stop so that it does not fully engage until after the third round fires. And in the case of the SCAR, they have to additionally engineer the piston stop to move out of the way within 1/4 second for the automatic next burst, while you are still squeezing the trigger.

A spring acting against a gel dampener could do that for you, like the way my little calculator smoothly opens up and elevates the screen without bouncing across the room, lol.

Back to the main rifle in Red River which fires a 3-round burst. Those rounds are not directly on top of each other due to minimal recoil - so there is going to be somewhat of a burst spread - and like DXR says, pretty much you've killed the guy or delivered a debilitating blow.

SINGLE SHOT - FULL PRONE
Or for that gun you can switch to single shot. Occasionally on an ammo scarce map, I'll switch to single shot, like at the beginning of a CSAR map, where I will be running for quite a while leading those helicopter pilots I am trying to rescue. There is no ammo anywhere in sight. In that case, earlier in the mission, I'm hoping for head shots. Even upper chest usually takes them out - the gun is powerful.

Back to a real M16, in single shot mode, we didn't have any trouble firing 1 rps - but that was full prone, gun against a sand bag. Firing single shot, or bursts, in standing, or even crouching position, probably more like Sam said, 2-3 seconds to level it again.

But M16 doesn't have a huge recoil in single shot - the air cylinder with piston absorbs a lot of the push back of the round leaving the barrel, and besides, the round is very tiny comparable to a 22 round. Sam, if you were firing something like a 30/30 hunting rifle, that's probably like night and day regarding recoil compared to the M16.

But the single shot full prone we were doing, with real M16, was in order to adjust the sights. In full prone, we could have squeezed off rounds as fast as our finger could pull - at least 2 per second I believe, with excellent accuracy - again full prone makes a huge difference, and the M16 doesn't kick that bad. But in sighting the gun, we of course took it much slower than that, probably a full minute for the 3 round grouping, breathing in after each shot, then exhaling and gentle squeezing at the same time.

We were trying to achieve a very tight 3-round shot circle on the target, a tight grouping, so we could adjust the sights horizontally, or vertically, as required in order to finally get all 3 rounds directly within the bullseye. Then our weapon was properly sighted. (I went on to achieve an "expert" designation, which included a night-firing range about 200 yards, using tracer rounds every third bullet. It was fun!)

So, Jeff, if you get the chance, tell me a bit more about Red Orchestra - it's multiplayer, right? If so, will I even find servers for it anymore?

EDIT - Ossfront, the original, was only $9.99, so I bought it on Steam, metacritic 81 and best mp of 2007 from somebody, the newer one is $39.99 and metacritic score of 76. I can send a guest pass to anybody who wants to try it on Steam for 10 days, free. Any of you guys want to do that - send me an email at harvardguy at harvardguy dot com.

Rich

 

Especially around this time of year!

Well I'd play Rage tonight, but I gotta double shift again. Darn, making more money LOL! I have a feeling, in february - march, things are gonna change big time for me

 

Barbarossa spiced Rum! Nice graphic Kevin. Haha.

Good for you - more money is a good thing! Thinking positive is a great thing! And playing Rage is a wonderful thing, lol.

I chewed out Valve support for promising me guest passes, and then not giving me any. I told them I have an in with Gabe and he wouldn't appreciate that kind of sloppy programming, lol. I'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I logged about 4 hours on Ossfront. At first, the practice maps were clunky - vintage 2001 textures. Then I decided to dispense with that and got on multiplayer. Lots of servers to choose from.

They have majorly upgraded the maps - Return to Danzig was beautiful - Day of Defeat quality. No tanks - strictly ground troops. Lots of wine cellars - and a canal - quite playable and acceptable graphics.

The game reminded me very much of Day of Defeat. The Russian smg has huge recoil, like the DOD BAR. The barrel wanted to fly to the moon. Like Jeff said - all iron sights - realistic. I finally caught on and got in some good kills using the semi-automatic rifle - about 8 shots per magazine. I have to say it was quite a positive experience.

They want $40 for the newer one, Red Orchestra 2. Maybe I'll even get that one a little later.

Rich

 

I agree on both points. In fact, that IS my general philosophy about guns. Weaker/smaller rounds are just fine because a guy with a bullet in his chest doesn't care what caliber it was. Also, yes, full-auto is stupid and largely pointless even with mild rounds like the .223/5.56mm. Even in the military, full-auto is generally discouraged on infantry rifles because it A) wastes ammo B) Destroys your accuracy, and C) puts unnecessary wear on the gun. Now recoil is absolutely subjective, but I can rapid fire my AR-15 in semi-auto and put every single round on a 6 inch target at 50 yards.

The best mix of both worlds is burst fire, which most newer military weapons have. The theory is that at least 3 rounds can make it out of the barrel before your aim is ruined. Some rifles take this even further with a 2 round burst(such as the coveted AN-94 Abakan) that can put both rounds on target before the barrel even moves.

Not to say full-auto doesn't have its place. Close quarters and covering/suppression fire come to mind. But in a stand-up engagement, full-auto is next to useless. There are some experienced shooters that can fire very accurately in full-auto, but this is only with intermediate rounds like the 5.56mm NATO and the 5.45mm WP. My uncle, who carried an M16/AR15 through 3 tours in Vietnam can empty an entire magazine into a target while firing from the hip. I was impressed to say the least. But even being as good a marksman as he is, even he recommends using semi or better yet, burst if its available.

It's designed entirely as a multiplayer game, but it does indeed have an offline mode though with very crappy bots. It's the best WW2 simulator I've ever played but be warned the shooting does have a learning curve.

Also dude, there was never a Battlefield 2 Vietnam. I think that person meant BC2 Vietnam

Well, it's pretty complicated to explain everything but you've already picked it up so just play it. It's fun

 

An NDA lift is occurring for the HD7 series on January 9th. The HD7970 is estimated to attain performance levels around UPI 325 (remembering the HD6970 is 210 at high-res, and the GTX580 is 230), but with an additional 10% boost for playing older DX9 titles.

 

In other words, the flow and ebb of technology just so happens to mean a large increase this gen?

 

In other words, the generational performance increase of this gen is pretty much the same as every other new generation has been - i.e. the first card on the market makes about a 40% increase over the best of the previous generation, and an 80% increase over the first.

Example:
GTX580(210)->HD7970(325) = 41%+
HD5870(180)->HD7970(325) = 81%+

GTX285(128)->HD5870(180) = 41%+
HD4870(100)->HD5870(180) = 80%+

9800GTX+(80)->GTX280(112) = 40%+

It's almost uncanny how accurate they are...

 

And my 6850s would be somewhere around 150 or so yes?

 

With the initial release tweaks they were 150, generally speaking they're now 130-140 depending on the title.

 

Since then they have re-fixed their performance quite a bit. The early nerfs that I experienced are basically gone. They're still obviously not quite what the 5850s were, but currently they are closer in performance than when they were new.