Image Quality Considerations
So we know that the performance of most any PC hardware at this point is going to be 60 FPS which is a bit of a letdown for those of us that invest in some high-end hardware in order to gain some image quality advantages over the console generation. And in my testing, there was no discernible image difference between the GTX 580 and the GXT 560 Ti and not even the GTX 460 1GB card. Bah.
It would seem until the console that is accessible through a shortcut modifier gets fully unearthed and decoded, PC gamers might be out in the cold for this one.
That aside, much of RAGE looks spectacular. And much of RAGE looks pretty bad. An example:
Full screen shot – Click to Enlarge
Gun looks great!
This area…not so much.
And isn’t just an issue of something that is close versus something that is far away having different levels of detail. It is an obvious choice by the id Software designers to do this, likely for a technical / performance reason.
Fullscreen shot – Click to Enlarge
Distance appears good
Up close…nope.
While from a distance the majority of the game looks good and some areas (and especially the character models) look great even close up, there were some obvious issues at the end of development that caused some bad quality to creep into the game. Look at the section of pipe in the image above – we saw better graphics throughout the entirety of Doom 3 back in 2004!
And there are some more issues at work including texture loading pop-ups that might be a bit overblown as we’ll demo in a short video.
Some Image Quality Improvement Options
I did find that there was some ability to improve image quality via the console which you can access by adding the line "+set com_allowConsole 1" in either your desktop shortcut or in the Steam launch settings. The setting that seemed to improve things for us while not affecting performance at all were the collection of variables called "vt_pageImageSize". There were four we increased from the default setting of 4096 to a higher value of 8192.
Here are a couple of images with before and after applying these settings.
Before
After
Now for some closer shots…
Before
After
If you look at the detail in the wall you can clearly see that the cracks in it are more noticeable and pronounced while the detail on the orange barrel is also increased.
Before
After
The detail on the rocks improves somewhat…
Before
After
As does the quality of the text on the sign.
So while there isn’t MUCH you can do to alter image quality, there are at least these settings, and very likely more to be revealed in the near future, that can improve RAGE.
Only thing that bothers me in
Only thing that bothers me in this game are tons off very low quality textures. In some cases, in closed rooms it looks just horrible or you need to press button but you almoast cant find it because so low resolution than you can count very big pixels. Dont remember last time a saw so low textures in any better PC game.
btw. very nice evaluation and thank you.
You are right – the variance
You are right – the variance in texture quality is insane throughout the game.
You can adjust the texture
You can adjust the texture quality via config files … the textures are HEAVILY compressed when loaded into memory (to hit the 60 fps mark), so look around … you can notice a huge difference going from 8k to 16k textures.
The textures are very poor.
The textures are very poor. Even Unreal Engine 3 looks so much better than this, and that engine came out in 07′ when this engine was started.
Pathetic
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You mention that it is
You mention that it is dependent upon CPU and storage. If you get time, some benchmarks will be appreciated.
Thanks for the evaluation so far. Nice work, as always from PCPer.
On the keynote video Carmack
On the keynote video Carmack specifically states that the texture data had to be compressed to get down to 25gigs. That I think is really what makes a lot of the textures bad. you can see it very well in dimly light textures it resembles the distortion you see on low quality video compression. he also says at some point he’d like a less compressed texture pack available. I can’t remember what size range he mentions but he says the source art before any compression was over 1 terabyte. Also mentions the gpu can transcode from one compression format to another which could also degrade the texture.
Carmack mentioned a possible
Carmack mentioned a possible 75gb super high texture pack. Combined with the 25gb PC game download that’s an insane 100gb download. The internet just isn’t up to that in the vast majority of places so id obviously had to cut back on the PC textures and think about placating PC gaming enthusiasts later.
Obviously id could have offered a CD texture pack upgrade to PC owners before releasing the game, but that too might have just compounded all the technical problems they’ve had launching it onto PC. The irony is that PC gaming enthusiasts have been complaining for years that few new games are pushing the technology and Rage offers them a chance to do support one effort, but they have to be willing to put with a few serious growing pains.
this game is a complete
this game is a complete dissapointment, try crysis 2 in dx11 mode. this is more like a slightly advanced doom3 engine, very big waiste of money.
very dissapointed in id
Another thing to notice is
Another thing to notice is the poor AI which is easily
comparable to Doom3.
This game makes me rage on how poorly written it is.
I won’t be purchasing another
I won’t be purchasing another id game, ever.
Waiste of 60$, I want a
Waiste of 60$, I want a refund!
I love how everyone is a
I love how everyone is a ruthless critic these days. id is aware of it, they’ve said so, and they’re working on a solution. It isn’t the first time a game this has happened.
Incase you haven’t noticed, id is a *little* different company now as it was before. It’s much larger, which is a requirement of developing todays games, but unfortunately it’s not the best scenario when it comes to results time. Honestly, I think there are too many hands involved, and they bit off a large amount to chew and eventually deadlines have to be met one way or another. Since Bethesda owns them now I don’t believe they buy into their “when its done” philosophy, so at some point the game has to ship. The good news for the PC platform is, there is such a thing as patches. Again, this is not something new.
Relax. Inhale…. Exhale. Repeat.
BTW, this isn’t directed at
BTW, this isn’t directed at Ryan’s article. But to all the posters crying about how it’s such a terrible and horiffic flop.
If it’s long awaited, over hyped, over the top flop that you want to complain about, try DNF.
PC gamers could give
PC gamers could give professional wrestlers lessons in trash talk.
Id spent six years developing this game and did not rush it out the door to meet a deadline. AMD screwed up using outdated code in their first Rage performance driver, quickly fixed the problem, and now both AMD and Nvidia are rushing to produce improved drivers. That’s business as usual, but with the added complication that Rage uses openGL instead of the more familiar Direct X.
I agree with PC:
-Rage
I agree with PC:
-Rage doesn’t gave me the same experience of all others Id’s FPS ;
-Rage and, perhaps, Id Tech 5 where optimized for consoles. What means that is a HUGE opportunity in the market waiting for someone that make a PC Game that uses the power of modern PC hardware;
-The last great PC FPS in Id’s tradition was Doom3. I hope Doom 4 honor the Id’s tradition in PC Game, but sincerely I don’t believe.
Honestly, I love the game.
Honestly, I love the game. Sure there are a few bottle and can labels out of focus, a bit blurry… But honestly, when there’s a horde of mad insane bloodthirsty gay mutants after my ass… the least thing I worry about or look at, are the few blurry textures!! Which, I might ad, in real life, you wouldn’t notice them either, because the brain simply doesn’t work that way.
People need to stop the bitching over piddly crap and just enjoy what is a very well written, fun and fast game.
Dan
Thank you for intelligent
Dan
Thank you for intelligent answer !
I expected more of an ending
I expected more of an ending than what the game provided.
Though, using the pulse cannon on my monarch to destroy a lot of authority vehicles (bandits) gave me all the money and racing certificates I needed from the bartender.
i had no probs
i7 2600k @5GHZ
i had no probs
i7 2600k @5GHZ water cooled
128gb crucial M4 ssd x2 in raid 0.
2tb spinpoints x2 for storage
16GB gskill ram
dual GTX580s.
textures always looked amazing. game ran flawlessly