obviously all detail settings high, shadows, etc.

I really hate "fog of war" ...what a terrible option to hide the map. I turn it off whenever I encounter it.

Agreed. Motion Blur is another one where I cant help but think what the hell the designers were thinking. Were they trying to emulate severe intoxication?

I also cant stand inverted mouse on ANY game. drives me nuts.

Difficulty. To the maximum, if the game engine isn't cheating.
Plus I turn off motion blur, antialiacing, DoF and all others "sugarcoating" graphical options.

P.S. Forgot to tell - subtitles=on.

When playing on a Win98 system I set the resolution to 1024x768
In Windows XP and 7 I use 1280x1024

Blur, Bloom, Lens Flare - Off
Vsync - never noticed a difference, off
Antialiasing, Triliner Filtering - What do these do? I don't see a difference.

Audio
Music < Sound Effects < Speech
Subtitles - On

Ah good point. Vsync...Im a big fan. always On.

Vsync off, Windowed mode on, 5.1, no mouse smoothing, 8xmsaa, 16xaf, 1920x1080, motion blur on (Depending on how it's implemented. If it's a crappy screen buffer trail, then it's definitely going off. If it's based on velocity of specific objects with a threshold (Saints Row 3, TF2) then it's going on)

Vsync sadly sucks since it delays input far too significantly.

leileilol wrote:

Vsync off, Windowed mode on, 5.1, no mouse smoothing, 8xmsaa, 16xaf, 1920x1080, motion blur on (Depending on how it's implemented. If it's a crappy screen buffer trail, then it's definitely going off. If it's based on velocity of specific objects with a threshold (Saints Row 3, TF2) then it's going on)

Vsync sadly sucks since it delays input far too significantly.

Your probably right. However I dont play anything cutting edge technology wise.

Vsync is a must for some programs. Especially all EMU. Gens and Mame come to mind. It makes whats on your screen so much more "solid" and "stable"

leileilol wrote:

Vsync sadly sucks since it delays input far too significantly.

Oooh. This is usually a problem with pre-rendered frames on nVidia cards being set too high, (forget what the option is called with Radeon cards but there IS such an option), or using a TV monitor instead of a computer monitor and not setting it to "Game Mode", especially if it changes into 24 Hz mode for whatever reason.

I'm highly sensitive to delayed controls and I can safely say I don't run into this problem with the games I play, despite having forced vSync on in games since forever. ;)

Also, something interesting about those motion blur effects some of you have noticed: Many of them are dependent on a perfect 60 FPS framerate. Having played certain games with motion blur on both an older system and my newer one, I've noticed the motion blur effects are far less nauseating the higher your framerate is. Mind you, some games do still go a little overboard with it. Portal 2 is a great example of a game that actually had very decent motion-blur effects that don't get in the way of the visual quality.

In terms of other options, I NEED inverted mouse controls. The public alpha of Cube World recently debuted and when I finally got hold of it the very first (and only) major problem I ran into was that there was no option to invert the mouse! Suffice to say, I wasn't able to play the game much yet as a result. THANKFULLY, this is pretty much one of the first things they've addressed in a patch update, so now I'll be able to get some solid time in with the game this weekend! :)

I also leave anti-aliasing off because I don't find the boost in visual quality makes up for the potential drop in framerate... excepting older games that don't use a lot of GPU power on newer systems. Those ones I'll turn up the AA if I can. ;)

In the past, if I needed to disable a graphics option in order to fix framerate issues, shadows would typically be the first thing to go, since some games have terrible shadow effects.

If I'm allowed to adjust crosshairs, I prefer a basic plus-symbol.

Also, I prefer to run most games fullscreen rather than in a window, however, there are a few exceptions. For example, Minecraft I run maximized because I like to be able to see the system clock when playing that one since it's so easy to lose track of time when you're building high-voltage solar arrays and automatic UU-Matter-based item crafting systems. ;D

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

Antialiasing, Triliner Filtering - What do these do? I don't see a difference.

check angled distant textures
bilinear filtering is even worse than trilinear
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons … iltering_en.png

check wooden planks
http://solidlystated.com/content/2011/06/divi … ti-aliasing.jpg

check aerials on right building roof
http://www.codinghorror.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae … ee512970c-800wi

as for vsync i noticed terrible trearing on game's introductory movies with it off

AA , I don't care about it at all, never did. I just don't like it. 😵
FoD I actually like and motion blur depends on how it is implemented...
And I turn VSYNC always ON, screen tearing hurts my eyes.

In FPS games like Duke Nukem 3D, Descent or Radix, I might change the controls to the WASD scheme if I feel like it (more probably for Descent, "on foot" FPS games usually play well with the default arrow keys controls). Sometimes I'd also invert the mouse Y axis, but after having some experience with space flight sims I've adjusted to the "default" directions as well.

I also adjust music and sound volume but that's kind of obvious 😁

In C-evo, I find the auto end turn option (after all of your units have moved) inconvenient. Similarly, the auto item pickup option in roguelikes isn't always useful.

1. I usually go to the Graphics options first, to check if my desired resolution is selected, depending on which LCD screen I'm playing.

2. I always set VSYNC to ON. I hate screen tearings. A constant 60fps is all I need.

3. Difficulty in action games are always set to the highest, provided there are no respawning. Somehow playing at the lesser difficulty levels makes me feel like I'm missing something, or not getting enough of what the game has to offer, as long as the CPU is playing fair.

4. The rest of the graphics settings, I usually set them at max, except the AA. At high resolutions, the AA does not matter much to me, and furthermore, the AA hogs the GPU and just makes gaming unnecessarily taxing, while the said high resolutions will offset the AA. Unless one stops to look for every angulated lines, it will not matter.

5. Default inverted mouse settings are becoming a thing of the past. Used to change the Y-axis back to the "normal" setting previously.

6. Subtitles to OFF. Displaying subtitles distracts me. And I could get myself involved better with the gameplay, while directly listening to the voices. (In DOS CD adventure games, I usually only leave the TEXT to ON, and seldom turn on the voices if supported, unless I really feel like listening to them.)

7. Previously used to select 5.1 or 7.1 sound channel settings when supported, for use with my audio receiver/decoder.

8. Key bindings to my likings.

Everything beneficial to the way the game looks I leave on or maxxed out.

VSync, it depends on the game. Some games run smoother with it enabled, some are to laggy or stutter with it enabled. If I notice something isn't smooth or there is excessive screen tearing I try to turn it on but if it makes the game more unplayable off it goes.

Frame Limiting : My screen is 60hz, this is always on to limit to 60FPS.

Then there are the weird games. For example Crysis 2. When I first launch crysis it will be laggy with Vsync enabled, but if I toggle it off, then it becomes stuttery, but if I toggle it back on again it becomes perfectly smooth. I've seen this happen with this game on 3 different generations of NVidia cards it's the weirdest thing but everytime I play it I go in and toggle it from On to Off, then from Off to On again and it works perfectly after that point.

Very interesting topic. Over the years I've acquired a lot of preferred settings. I always change the following, if possible:

-Inverted Mouselook = on
I can't play shooters without inverting the mouse.
For whatever reason, I can't play console shooters with the stick inverted. I've got a friend who's the exact opposite! Can't play PC FPS with inverted controls but always turns it on when playing an FPS on the PS3 or 360.
This is probably the weirdest thing because I have different preferences on different platforms.

-VSync = on
I hate even minor screen tearing, so I turn it on.

-WASD Controls and some other things. I usually swap space (use) with rmb (jump), which often confuses people playing with my settings.

-AF to me is much more important than AA, so I put the former pretty high while the latter can easily be on just 2x (don't like playing without though)

-I hate motion blur, but like bloom for some weird reason. All the other filters don't really do anything for me. I leave them on if they don't cost too much performance.

-real fullscreen, never windowed. I hate windowed mode because it reduces the immersion for me

-increase (or decrease) the graphics details so I get at least 30fps. Running at native resolution is very important and I rather keep a high texture resolution and turn off other stuff. graphics aren't that important to me, I just don't like blurry textures and display scaling.

-difficulty to the highest and if it's too hard I reduce it to the normal level at most. Never play on easymode

-subtitles off, I've got ears for that. Subtitles tend to make me slightly impatient and skip the dialogue and I don't like that

-toggle stand/crouch & run/walk instead of hold. The first one is DeusEx' fault, because I was constantly sneaking around while crouching and holding the key down gave me cramps.

-I always (if the soundtrack is good) turn up the music (and if possible ambient sfx) and lower the overall game volume. Speech is somewhere in between, where it's still audible. I could never understand how people were able to play games like doom, deus ex, diablo and other titles which have great soundtracks with the music turned way down or even off. The soundtrack of a game is really important to my enjoyment of the game. If I can't hear the music because my gun is too loud I reduce the sfx volume.

That's all I can think of for now. There are a LOT of game specific settings, but going through all of those would take up too much time 😉

Generally music, if your a soldier in a war or your driving a f1 car you wouldnt have background music playing

I always turn on subtitles. I am getting older and my hearing has declined so I want to make sure I don't miss something or hear something incorrectly.

I turn on subtitles for the decline of proofreading 😀

robertmo wrote:

check angled distant textures bilinear filtering is even worse than trilinear http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons … il […]
Show full quote

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

Antialiasing, Triliner Filtering - What do these do? I don't see a difference.

check angled distant textures
bilinear filtering is even worse than trilinear
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons … iltering_en.png

check wooden planks
http://solidlystated.com/content/2011/06/divi … ti-aliasing.jpg

check aerials on right building roof
http://www.codinghorror.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae … ee512970c-800wi

as for vsync i noticed terrible trearing on game's introductory movies with it off

I suppose I'm not paying that much attention to things that are off in the distance.

Davros wrote:

Generally music, if your a soldier in a war or your driving a f1 car you wouldnt have background music playing

blasphemy! 😀

such a seriously subjective topic.

I use subtitles turned on also. Just in case I dont understand something.

Oh yeah, Subtitles! That's... a strange case for me actually.

I like to see subtitles, but only under two circumstances:

1. Non-interactive cinematics
2. Important or intentionally engaged dialogue with NPCs

ALL other circumstances I don't like subtitles, such as if I'm walking by an NPC and they just randomly say something. Thus my decisions for enabling or disabling subtitles hinges around how many things are subtitled and what kind of subtitling options there are.