S.T.A.L.K.E.R. gets a graphics upgrade (unoffical)

faetal on 29/4/2007 at 11:06

Has anyone figured out any way to play the game with dynamic lighting on Ati X800XT?

I know a lot of the lighting fx use sm3.0 (my card is not sm3.0 ready), but I was wondering if there was a mod which allowed you to turn on any of the good dynamic lighting stuff which doesn't use sm3.0.

charlestheoaf on 29/4/2007 at 12:25

Quote Posted by faetal

I'm pretty sure that someone here said they were running dynamic lighting on an x800xt. Try looking through the guide for Stalker at tweakguides to improver performance.

steo on 29/4/2007 at 13:50

I'm running an X800XT on full dynamic lighting and fairly high settings for everything else with playable frame rates and a bit of stuttering from time to time. What problems are you having with your X800XT? Have you got the latest drivers? Not that I do...

Malygris on 30/4/2007 at 03:18

I'm running dynamic lighting on an X800GTO2, although for performance reasons it's only object dynamic lighting. Still, makes all the difference in the world, there's really no comparison between dynamic and static lighting.

With regards to the topic, do we have a clear opinion on whether or not this is worthwhile? And where is this Ars Technica thread anyway, I can't find it anywhere.

Turtle on 30/4/2007 at 05:07

(http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/39309975/m/860003693831?r=879002034831#879002034831) Here.
Well, (http://arstechnica.com/index.ars) here, actually, but that's where the shader mod discussion starts.

bikerdude on 30/4/2007 at 11:28

Quote Posted by Malygris

Its a shame the engine cant do HDR and AA at the same time, Either I run 1600*1200 with some AA and static lighting or 1940*1440 with no AA and full HDR.

biker

Rogue Keeper on 30/4/2007 at 13:01

A disadvantage of deferred shading technique.

In "User.ltx" you can change following variables to enable and set variability of blur effect, in essence a some form of pseudo-anti-aliasing.

r2_aa [on,off] - Toggles fake Antialiasing blur effect.

r2_aa_break [0.000000,1.000000][0.000000,1.000000][0.000000,1.000000] - Controls extent of fake AA.

r2_aa_kernel [0.300,0.700] - Controls overall blurriness of fake AA.

r2_aa_weight [0.000000,1.000000][0.000000,1.000000][0.000000,1.000000] - More precisely controls bluriness of fake AA.

Thanks to Tweakguides.

This should be theoretically less performance draining than proper AA. I don't care about it though, I am happy it looks as good as it does, few jaggies more or less.

faetal on 30/4/2007 at 16:39

Quote Posted by steo

My system specs:

Athlon 64 3200+
2gb DDR400
Radeon X800XT
Disks, plugs, mouse keyboard, flashing HDD lights etc...

Does your system compare? If so, what settings do you use?

steo on 30/4/2007 at 17:26

I'm running:

3GHz P4 Prescott 1MB L2 cache 800FSB
1GB dual channel DDR400 RAM (Got another gig coming on thursday)
X800XT with the 7.1 drivers from ATI
2 SATA HDDs

I have also tweaked windows quite a lot, usually have only 14 other running processes when playing stalker.

What is your problem with full dynamic lighting? Does it just refuse to run or do you just get poor frame rates? You could try defragging your HDDs if it's the latter.

I play stalker with full dynamic lighting, sun and grass shadows, medium texture detail, a little AA/AF and the other settings are medium/high. I get some stuttering sometimes, particularly in the military warehouses and my frame rate isn't ideal but it's still very playable.

Bjossi on 30/4/2007 at 18:33

That is pretty impressive compared to your specs, but I guess it really comes down to how you use your system and keep it optimized. (and luck may very well be a factor too...)