since when did games start telling you how to run them?

somthing struck me as i played cod 4, the graphics arent quite up to par with other games about at the moment, not that it looks bad, i thaught id go and play with the graphics settings, and to my supprise im locked out of going above normal settings,

i turned the game up as high as it would allow me, and got smooth framerates above and arround 30 fps, myPC is not dx 10 but it's no slouch either, why the hell cant i push the game and my hardware to the limits of how im happy to play?

iv seen it in other games, crysis wont let me enable aa in the full game as i could in the demo. oblivion wont alow me AA and High Dynamic Range simultainiously, bioshock is holding back on me, and yet i put the settings as high as theyl go(except crysis)out and get smooth frame rates. why arent i alloud to push them further, why am i denyed high or very high settings?

none of the setings i want to increse are DX10 spicific so surely its some sort of con, when i get quake 4 all the way up to ultra full aa and the highest resolution without a stutter why wontthese games let me go past normal??

Games will let you adjust to any setting, as long has your equipment supports it. If you don't have a dx10 card, then naturally a game isn't going to let you try to set it that high. (In Crysis, "very high" is for dx10). CoD4 doesn't use dx10, so I don't know what's going on there. I don't believe it's locking you out of anything unless you're trying to do something your hardware doesn't support.

Btw, I think CoD4 is actually one of the best looking games out. Saying that it is not up to par with other games is simply not true. I'd like to know what all these other games are you are talking about.

Games will let you adjust to any setting, as long has your equipment supports it. If you don't have a dx10 card, then naturally a game isn't going to let you try to set it that high. (In Crysis, "very high" is for dx10). CoD4 doesn't use dx10, so I don't know what's going on there. I don't believe it's locking you out of anything unless you're trying to do something your hardware doesn't support.

Btw, I think CoD4 is actually one of the best looking games out. Saying that it is not up to par with other games is simply not true. I'd like to know what all these other games are you are talking about.

Qixote

His problem is likely due to settings. If he can only play on normal and get 30fps then clearly it wont' look as good as when it is maxed out.

BTW TC it sounds like you have a pretty dated machine. If normal = 30fps then ya your vid card is old. What the devs are doing is figuring out what your video card can do to determine whether you can even use it. Higher settings usually equal greater resolutions which means more memory is required and they'll probably add greater level of effects. I've seen it in some games where AA is limited to say 4x but on my machine i can get up to 8x for the same game but with a far better video card. If they unlocked those settings you'd be tanking in performance especially with something like crysis. Go buy a better video card or live with the fact your computer isn't that grand anymore

Usually the only settings that will be locked out are graphical features that aren't supported. Now for a lot of new games, Shader Model 3.0 is being used for High and Very High settings, maybe your graphics card doesn't support it? It also doesn't support HDR and AA at the same time (going on your Oblivion comment), which means I'd guess it's Nvidia? I'm pretty certain that Geforce6 series supports SM 3.0, not entirely sure whether the low end 6's do SM 3.0, I'd imagine that they would. As far as I can remember

If you do have a newer card, then there's something wrong with it.

Have fun

its a 7950 gt 512 mb card my pc is fairly top end just prior toDX 10 , my point was that all options that are available to my hardware, and in my vue thats everything excluding direct x 10 fetures, should be made available for me to select so that i can choose the best settings for my hardware,

because im certain that

a, its not a tecnical thing, i have the latest drivers etc but normal is still the highest the game will let me select

b i can push my pc alot further than thepoint itsat now.

It seams like a ploy to get me to buy new hardware when i cant select anything higher than normal in cod 4, like its saying we're withholding these graphics till you spend more money even thoughmy pc isnt even that old.

Games will let you adjust to any setting, as long has your equipment supports it. Qixote

inccorrect these days and therefore the OP's valid point. Hellgate: London disbales motion blur and depth of field (DX9 cards can handle both)on XP. And Crysis XP very high tweak proves that Crytek has an did deny XP's access to certain very high options.

to the OP: this might actually become a trend from now on, and SINCE MS, Card makers, and game dev. have conspired to keep the PC hardware/software upgrading frenzy going and at faster rate than before and SINCE the niche/fanboy market actully complies, becoming their heralds.

[QUOTE="Qixote"]

Games will let you adjust to any setting, as long has your equipment supports it. teardropmina

inccorrect these days and therefore the OP's valid point. Hellgate: London disbales motion blur and depth of field (DX9 cards can handle both)on XP. And Crysis XP very high tweak proves that Crytek has an did deny XP's access to certain very high options.

to the OP: this might actually become a trend from now on, and SINCE MS, Card makers, and game dev. have conspired to keep the PC hardware/software upgrading frenzy going and at faster rate than before and SINCE the niche/fanboy market actully complies, becoming their heralds.

I am giving a big middle finger to the PC gaming industry as long as they keep this trend up. (goes to play Age of Empires 2)

If this trend keeps up, i'm going to be broke as a joke soon... And seing how Nvidia supports most new, graphicly advanced games (aka popular games), it doesn't seem like this will end sometime soon.:evil:

somthing struck me as i played cod 4, the graphics arent quite up to par with other games about at the moment, not that it looks bad, i thaught id go and play with the graphics settings, and to my supprise im locked out of going above normal settings,c_doody_1999

That's because they max settings are normal, there's litteraly no "high" setting.

crysis wont let me enable aa in the full game as i could in the demo.c_doody_1999

AA isn't even needed in crysis and it just makes it run even worse.

oblivion wont alow me AA and High Dynamic Range simultainiouslyc_doody_1999

You need a X1800 or a geforce 8 series and you can run hdr and AA in oblivion.

none of the setings i want to increse are DX10 spicific so surely its some sort of con, when i get quake 4 all the way up to ultra full aa and the highest resolution without a stutter why wontthese games let me go past normal??c_doody_1999

Quake 4 is using the same engine as a game that was sorta good looking back in 2004, eeeverybody can max out quake 4.

I think you need to educate yourself a little bit before making pointless threads ranting about problems that don't exist. Now you got everyone here worked up about nothing.

-For Oblivion, override any setting with the control panel and set it tonone in game.

Crysis doesn't need aa, but its foliage is a bit jaggy. Use the edgeaa=1 or 2 in your system.cfg. As for the Crysis tweaking refer to this:

http://www.tweakguides.com/Crysis_13.html

Essentially, with XP, to accomplish very high settings you need to got to:

\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis\
Then you right click open space and create a new text document. Rename it to system.cfg and copy and paste this into it.

r_UsePOM=1

r_sunshafts=1

e_water_ocean_fft=1

q_Renderer=3

r_colorgrading=1

Test s have shown the game running %20 faster without any discernable impact on XP. Make sure you set the gfx settings to high first. As you could imagine, this will hurt frames, but will look noticeably better. Others I use besides edgeaa=2 are (in same file)

i_mouse_accel=0 (turns off mouse acceleration)
r_MotionBlur=0 (turns off motion blur, i find it distracting and this helps performance)
r_TexturesStreaming=0 (preloads textures, reducing pop up and stuttering for me, but ram usage will go up)