Graphics

Hi I have rencently bought a new pc:

Acer Aspire E380
Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6000)
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
2046MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS, DirectX 10,
19" TFT LCD monitor 1440 x 900 (32 bit) (60Hz)

when I zoom out whilst playing gw, it's as though the sharpness is being altered, the graphics just don't look right, I have never had any problems with gw, I ave altered the settings on my monitor, I tried changing the settings ingame, I just wanted to know whether the problem is my graphics card or DX10

Thanks in advance.

That doesn't really say much. Is there some specific problem with the graphics, or they just aren't exactly as you remember them? Because I would note that you have a new monitor. Perhaps you're just not used to the way it's displaying the game.

Maybe you are right, I might just need to get used to the new monitor, it just seems as though the graphics have changed, whilst I have been playing tonight, some of the other ppls characters were missing their hair, armor, and when I zoomed in all the flaws were gone.

Sorry to inform you of this, but if you were told that your card supports DX10 then you've been lied to. That 7600GS is only DX9 compliant, not that it matters though as Guild Wars doesn't support DX10 itself.

Does anyone know a way I could run dx9 instead of dx10

Your card runs DirectX 9 automatically and you have absolutely no choice in the matter. If you don't have a Geforce 8xxx-series card or equivalent DirectX 10 doesn't even exist for you. If you can open Guild Wars at all, you're running DirectX 9.0c just fine. I think the fact that you have Windows Vista is confusing you due to all of the incessant advertising Microsoft does for DX10. What they don't tell you is that you need a video card capable of running it at all.

But all of that is irrelevant in Guild Wars, as its a DirectX 9 game and will always be a DirectX 9 game.

As for the loss in quality, there's several possibilities: First of all, its normal that when you zoom out, the game drops the level of detail slightly. This is called dynamic level of detail, and the game engine does it automatically once the field of view is increased. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way to turn it off.

Also, try turning on "Use best texture filtering" in Graphics Options, as that may sharpen some textures, especially ones that fade off into the distance.

textures being reduced in detail is one thing, textures disappearing entirely is a totally different matter.

try doing a fresh install of GW with the -image command. that might be able to fix it.

Post a screenshot?


It's probably your new monitor....19" has bigger pixels....

Sounds as though it could be the Bilinear (or Trilinear) filter settings on your graphics card. The filtering is used to set the detail level of far away objects. Since you lose detail as you zoom out, it could be that your filtering is set too low. Of course, the higher it's set, the more graphics power you need, so there is a compromise with frame rates.

You could go into the controls for your video card and check the Trilinear filter settings. I'm not sure if GW would override them, however. I'm also not sure which setting in GW would affect the same thing.

Btw, each version of DirectX is backward compatible with the previous versions. DX10 has all the functions of DX9 plus some new ones (that GW doesn't use.)

Thanks for all the replies, I should just be grateful I can run guild wars, my partner says I need my eyes testing as he can't see a problem, but what does he know he has never played it. I ave also added 2 screenshots, the first is up close and the second zoomed out.

I don't see a problem either. All the textures are there as far as I can tell, the colors look to be blended properly, etc. I can see a clear loss of detail around smaller objects such as the edges of her hair, but it's not abnormal.

I think perhaps your monitor is just displaying things differently. That would explain why you can see things as "off" but people who don't have that prior context can't.

lol, then look again for the background trees and fires in the zoomed out picture. It took a while to figure out what was wrong. No idea why this happens. Same applys for me in background textures (also have use best textures checked). Things would suddenly jump into focus as I got nearer. Its probably the old game engine comming up to its limits in terms of eyecandy. thats all.

i advise going into nvida control pannel and move up the slidders under the options to max for antialising and antrosopic flittering

In the zoomed out picture, some of the smaller fires end up below the "hill", which is why you can't see them.

I think the biggest reason for the detail loss is simply that there are only so many pixels in and LCD, and they are discrete units. For example, if her head in the zoomed in shot is about 100x100 pixels, then in the zoomed out shot it's about 1/4 of that, 25x25 pixels. You are trying to display the same information that took 10,000 pixels with only 625 pixels - there's gonna be a loss of detail.
I suspect that your old monitor was a CRT, which could explain why the detail loss was not as noticeable.

One last attempt, I noticed that my graphics card has a dvi port but my monitor is avg, would it make any difference if I bought a cable and change to dvi instead of avg?

Basically, no.

Or at least, not in this case.

The DVI cable may give you a slightly less "noisy" picture than a VGA connection, (I assume avg = vga), but that would only be a minor difference and would affect the whole picture, not just a zoomed out part. These days, there's usually no noticeable difference between a VGA and DVI connection.

Didn't realise I had spelt it wrong till u pointed it out, I am getting used to the display now, I think it was because I had been using a CRT monitor since I started playing, I think it was 2005, I got used to the picture and now I get a new monitor I just expected to see the same picture.

Thanx for all the replies

Is it possible to close this thread?