HDR
There are three settings for High Dynamic Range lighting in the game - 'full HDR', using a floating point algorithm, a pseudo 'bloom' implementation, and 'off'.
Left to right: Full HDR, Bloom, Off.Full HDR is really awesome in game and looks so much better than just bloom, which barely looks better than with none on at all. HDR makes appearances throughout the game - it's not just about light coming in from windows, it's about the sun reflecting on armour and the glint of a sword. If you have enough graphical horsepower to manage to run HDR and maintain a decent framerate, you will really,
really appreciate the visual spectacle - it adds an awful lot of vibrance and colour to the scene.
Shadow filtering
There are three different level of shadow filtering - High, Low and Off.
Left to right: High, Low and Off.The effect of High and Low filtering is to give a soft shadow effect. At High, you can see the shadow blend into the grass as the head, giving a realistic shading effect. The edges, where they meet the grass all around, are also soft. With no filtering on, you can see that the shadows have a harsh edge all around. The penalty for Soft Shadows isn't really massive, especially since you can get almost exactly the same effect with the setting on Low as with the setting on High.
Water detail
This aspect of the game is very tweakable, and it's also one of the stand-out things about the graphics engine - water looks pretty awesome. You can have normal or high detail water, and you can enable or disable reflections and ripples in the water.
Left to right: High quality water with reflections and ripples, normal quality water with reflections and ripples, just normal quality.There is really a more noticeable detail with reflections on than with ripples on. Ripples look cool, but you have to really look quite hard to notice. Reflections, on the other hand, are very stand out. Normal quality water also looks incredibly flat, whereas high quality water not only appears to have more depth, but really does look more detailed.
Draw distance
Since you spend a lot of your time in the game trekking across massive outdoor expanses, the draw distance in the game is very important. Having a longer distance kills your framerate, but having a short distance gives you a
Turok-on-N64 effect, which is not desirable.
Left to right: Draw Distance on Maximum, Medium and Minimum.You can see the
massive difference this makes. We'd advise you to turn the detail right down rather than sacrifice such a massive amount of draw distance. Annoyingly, there is an awful lot of pop-up in the game, even with draw distance on maximum.
Left to right: Full HDR, Bloom, Off.
Left to right: High, Low and Off.
Left to right: High quality water with reflections and ripples, normal quality water with reflections and ripples, just normal quality.
Left to right: Draw Distance on Maximum, Medium and Minimum.