Why your char looks better than any others

For some time I've noticed that my own character has more detail than anyone around him. His armor has exceptional detail while others, including FOW armor, looks like a blurry mess.

I suppose this is because the game defers high quality to a player's own character while degrading everyone elses.

Here's an example...my character on the right standing next to someone wearing the same leggings and gauntlets. Look at the difference in quality and detail.

ive noticed this too, though i don't know why this happens :\

Can you imagine AC district 1, swarming with high-detail textured models? That's why. Anyway, there should be an option to change this for high end computers.

Ive noticed this as well - depends on what you have your settings on, theres a little bar in options that has fastest on one end and highest on the other end - mine isn't at the all the way highest, but its close to it - the ony difference from highest to the second highest is that on full highest everyone has shadows, and on second highest only you have shadows - thats all ive noticed anyhow.

Ok I've noticed this too, however I've also noticed that when your team leaves town their armour looks better than it did inside. I believe this has a lot to do with minimising the data going back and foward between the server and your computer - thus allowing players on dial up to play without huge amounts of lag. This is far more necessary in towns because a lot of people are moving in and out of them all the time.

When you're outside of towns with other players, you get to see their chars in all their glory.

Nearest models should have same resolution textures as your character. No one can tell a difference from the distance anyway so majority of the models would still have same old low resolution texture. This would be an option, of course. I don't see why Anet doesn't pay attention for things like texture resolution. People have complained about it since game was released. Video cards have advanced. There is room for visual improvements without crippling the frame rate.

your character always shows as hi-res when in town. others are low res to reduce the overall strain. outside of towns, all chars are shown in hi-res.