Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
EQ2 looks fantastic! This may help.
eccoton
Member UncommonPosts: 1,340
During my time here at mmorpg.com I have posted many screens from EQ2. I get a lot of e-mail asking me how I get game to look so good. So I thought I would post some information that may help some get a better look and still get great performance. These are things I have tried over the years on different systems to tweak EQ2’s graphics.
EQ2 is a bit tricky to get setup right for a great look and good performance. There are a few settings that are more important for graphic and some for performance. I will list a few things that may help some of you get a better look in EQ2 with good performance.
Under option/display check these things this may help.
Unless needed turn off both synchronize refresh and triple buffering.
Use vertex buffers if your card supports it.
Max both graphic res. and lighting res, these are very important to the over all look.
Set rendering distance to 700 to max depending on your fps.
Complex shader distance is a huge processor hog. Set it low to about 30 at 30 it looks great then experiment by raising and check your fps. (In case you did not know F11 will bring up a fps monitor)
Under texture, resolution Max both Texture res and character texture res both very important to the over all look.
Set LOD to medium or low this has very little impact on the look of game.
Atmospheric effects I never like bloom so I have both blooms turned off but have heat shimmer on it has a nice look.
Under water, Experiment but if possible max all of them. If not set cube map to fast or fastest.
Under particle effects, set quality very high and put all the rest of the sliders about half way. Again experiment a bit with higher setting.
Under lighting, set light quality to high or very high but there is little difference between the look of them.
Number of torches to 1 intensity is a matter of choice but I do not like torches the light looks fake so I have them turned off.
The big hog is bumpy point distance set it no higher then complex shader distance so if that is at 30 set bumpy point distance to 30. If all goes well move both up a bit and find the distance you like for the performance you want. Those two really hog the resources.
Shadows are the biggest hog of all! If you PC can handle it max them all however this is rare, you need a great processor to do this. EQ2 is processor heavy not video card.
Now if you have trouble with shadows turn all shadows off accept character shadows. This will have huge impact on performance. Game still looks fantastic without environmental shadows.
Under model detail set all the slider to about the middle, again if all goes well play with bumping them up a bit.
Animation settings are important to the look and feel of the game.
If you can max settings and check cloth sim and cloaks.
Under flora if you can max sliders and check all boxes this really makes the world look great. However uncheck displacement and set both radius and density to about 3/4 if performance suffers.
With the above settings you should have good performance and a good look. You then can tweak them to see what you like. The most important settings to the over all look of EQ2 are: flora, animation, lighting quality, particle quality, texture Res, Character Texture res, graphic res, lighting res, and of course the overall res. which mine is set to 1920 x 1080. I hope this helps and other please post your tweaks to graphics here since EQ2 offers so many choices to adjust graphics it can be confusing. Good luck everyone! EQ2 is worth the effort and set right it is still one of the best looking mmos out.
Comments
Hi eccoton,
Ty for posting this! im sure it will help out a lot of people
messing around with the settings.
Greatings,
Ortahr.
I tweaked my game settings around after reading this post. And my game looks significantly better, and my framerates are still in the upper 40s. The only place I really notice any negative effects is when I'm in a cluttered and clustered area like Gorowyn. If I'm sprinting through that city, I drop frames like crazy. Well worth the trade off though in my opinion.
Thank you eccoton.
Wow, thanks for the settings. The game is now using much less memory and still looks as beautiful as it did before. Much appreciated.
I am glad this has help a few of you. It is great to have so many graphic options for EQ2 but it is hard to know which ones have the most impact on preformance and which on the over all look. They just put all the options out there but with little explination as to their impact. If anyone has any other tweaks please post them here. EQ2 is an amazing looking game still after 4 years but so many never really see it as it should be. The default settings are ridiculous. Most never get past the defaults. EQ2 may not be the game for you but it is not because the graphics are bad or dated as I often read.
If you notice EQ2 does not have an option for anti-aliasing in the graphic options. However you can use anti-aliasing to make the game look even better!
To do this you need to add this line to your eq2.ini file r_aa_blit 1 If you do not have an eq2.ini file just make one. This is not enough though. You then need to go to your video card settings and tell it to over ride the game settings and use the cards. I tell my card to override game settings and use the cards options which I set to 4X AA. This will smooth out the edges of the graphics and has only a small impact on memory used and I only drop a couple fps from game with no AA used.
It is to bad you have to work harder to get the great look in EQ2 then say WoW. If you take the time to do these things EQ2 is an awesome looking game.
Again thank you, but how do I go to the settings in my video card to set it properly? Do you use an nvidia card? I'd love to turn it on.
Yes EQ2 does look fantastic in certain zones and poor in others.
Because of SoE insistence to add 1 million zones per expansion, they have to bump map most of them, with the consequent lack of any detail at all.
If you cherry pick the screenshoots you can find some amazing ones, in particular from the original game (not the expansions), but it aint't this way everywhere you go.
SoE needs to concentrate more on the quality of the content rather than the quantity, they need to add some substance again to the game, or they will be swallowed by the new games that are coming out.
At the moment it doesn't offer anything different or better than anything on the market, and the graphic will be outdated in a couple of years time, so they cannot rely on that to survive.
First, ste2000 I for one do not cherry pick screens to make eq2 look better then it is. I take shots of my game play and post them. Second, this was a thread for one purpose to help some understand the graphic settings. For those that play and like the game. This is not about content, other games swallowing up EQ2, zoning, or the expansions. EQ2 looks great everywhere to me and the expansions especially EoF look great and better then the original zones..
You are a good member of mmorpg.com and sometimes I think you are spot on. However you will go out of your way to attack EQ2 even, as in this case, if it is off topic. As far as I am concerned you have never really posted a open minded truthful account of EQ2. You are totally bias and never attempt to see through anything but you fogged up glasses when it comes to EQ2. Face it you hate the game, I have read dozens of your posts telling us this. That is your right but do you need to come to a thread trying to help people who enjoy the game and attack it? There is a time and place for that. This is not the thread for it. Anyone who follows the mmorpg.com forums and EQ2 know you hate the game and do not play it. No big suprise. Please continue on with your crusade against EQ2 that is your right but at least stay on topic. If you got information to help others understand the complex graphic issues with EQ2 then post away.
Most video cards have a control panel to allow you to adjust it's settings. Often by right clicking your desktop you can get to your cards control panel. Try looking for a folder in your progam lists for your video card, might be in there.
Oh, I found it. I just don't want to mess up by setting it to the wrong setting and then having to go through aggravation trying to set it up the way it was before.
It is easy to setup the only change you really need to make is to anti-aliasing tell it to over ride game and what AA setting you want. Leave all other settings as is. Then when you are done simply set it back it is actually very easy to do.
Thanks for the guide.
I'm actually redownloading the game right now due to a mysterious 30 additional days of game time. XD
Good luck and I hope this helps some.
Here are just a couple game play screenshots. With settings described in the original post. Top shot is with no anti-aliasing, bottom has 4X anti-aliasing
Here is another shot I think looks pretty cool. Again this is my game play settings, They are set on higher settings but not all maxed I get a very good framrate with this graphics.
Here is another tip for Vista users to get better performance. Vista uses a program called superfetch. What this program does is monitor your PC use and preloads your frequently used program in memory, to get them to load faster. This is a nice feature but if you game it takes away vaulable resourses.
Simply go to start and in the search input services. When the list comes up scroll to superfetch right click go to properties and disable it. On games like EQ2 and WAR that are processor and memory heavy this will help a lot.
Some players are having a client crash problem with GU #49. Here is an e-mail I got from SOE that fixed the issue with me. After doing this you will have to reset your game settings and UI but it solved the problem for me. GU #49 has added dual core support and they fixed the longtime disappearing shadow problem. EQ2 looks and performs better then ever.
Delete the following files and folders:
cache folder
eq2_recent.ini
eq2_default.ini
EverQuest2.exe
eq2.ini
As well as the character specific files, these will appear as such:
Servername_CharacterName_EQ2_uisettings.ini
Stationname_characters.ini
To do this, follow these directions:
1. First look for your EverQuest II directory. You can find the default directory in: C:Program FilesSonyEverQuest II
2. Click on MY COMPUTER and then proceed into local disk C:
3. Navigate your way to the default directory, or your chosen installation directory.
4. Next look for any files explained above and delete them.
5. Afterwards, please start EverQuest II to have these files re-downloaded by the patcher.
The latest game update brought dual-core support! Eq2 has never looked or performed better. This change does not change the graphic but for those of you using dual-core you should be able to bump your graphic setting up. Use the core suggestions I listed then bump them up.
For those of you that have had enviromental shodows turned off try experiementing with adding them. If you find a good setting to use them they add a lot to the look of the game. SOE has stated more improvements are to come but this dual-core has really help a lot of dual-core users.
EQ2 graphic's are poor, Characters are the best thing going for it, but most backgrounds are terrible it's a shame a lot of things can look really nice and it just messes up with low detail tree's and bland grounds.
It's really aged lol, these characters in Vanguards background would probably be the best for them 2 games it is like they both have something the other don't.
The way this game looks it should perform the same as WOW on my cpu but it doesn't wow performs superbly, whereas this acts like it's crysis for performance lol still playable though, when I make it even more uglier with taking shadows off.
Everyone has their own opinion and taste when it comes to graphic. However to discribe EQ2's graphics as poor and bland is a total mystery to me.
As far as the performs as good as WoW comment, it actually performs better then WoW on my system since the addition of dual core support. It may perform poorly on your system but it performs great on 1000s of other players systems.
I would bet you have not played the game recently or with graphic maxed. My experience with EQ2 simply does not support your comments. Explain to me how this screen and the others I have posted here are poor and bland. I would be interested in how you come to that conclusion.
One of the subtle things I love in EQ2 is how your characters expressions change in battle. I love my toons game face.
Eccoton
So over the weekend i tried evrything you said to try with EQ2 and WOOT thanks so much i just got a new comp and it improved the overall look and the way it runs it looks great no matter what all the others say
Again many thanks for that post now to try it on my wifes tonite .
eccoton thank you very much for this article it helped alot while i was playing the trial the game looks so much better
Thanks guy, glad it helped. The complex nature of EQ2's graphic settings, because of poor choices by SOE, is hard to understand at times. EQ2 takes a little work to get running right. However, if all your ducks are in a row it is a really fun experience and even after 4 years stands up graphically to many newer games.
Hey ecco your right, the toons do impress, but look at the ground, the tree's and the buildings it's not so impressive anymore.
Yeah I'd go so far to describe them as bland sorry :P in the year 2004 maybe they would be considered good but then again doom 3 came out at that time, it blows it away with the graphics.
See where I'm coming from? I mean theres games in year 2004 that look better then eq2 toons and backgrounds included, now in 2008 where most new games is to a high level of detail of graphics, example fable 2, fallout3, Age of conan .... list goes on, they do make EQ2 environments bland..
Same goes for any game back in the old days people used to say how can ff7 look bland? how can morrowind look bland? Now they say they look bland it's technology and that's where my opinion come from I think it's outdated.
Your right about another thing
it does play better I tried again. Saying that it's still a great game but I think halo 1 could challenge the graphics lol.