UT3 Looking Like Crap! Any Suggestions?

[[iX]AnnaBeaver]

Ok, as you may know, I upgraded my vid card in order to play UT3. Got the card installed, fired up the game and I was a tad bit excited to view it as it was meant to be viewed. No more of that damn 8 fps that I got with the lowest vid settings on my old card. So, game starts up, I do instant action VCTF...it starts....and....WTH?!!! It still looks like shit!

So, I tinker with the vid settings. I go through 3 different screen resolutions but keep the same detail etc. settings. Here were the options other than resolution I had it set at...

Full Screen
Screen Percentage 65%
Texture Detail 2
World Detail 2

These are screenshots of all 3 resolutions I ran the game in while the above settings remained unchanged of course you'll notice in the top corner I have the fps on. I uninstalled the demo and reinstalled it just in case there was any file corruption. I've changed and re-changed my card settings and options, I've even gone in and manually changed a couple of graphic settings in the games config files. Oddly though, even though I removed the game, and went into my c: drive and manually deleted the UT3 folder before installing it again....all of my input, audio etc. settings returned to what I had them set at. Which confuses me, because I would think that after removal all of the game settings would be set to their defaults upon reinstall. When I do reinstall it, a dialog box appears saying that several of my .ini files are outdated and do I want to automatically update them...it also says that not updating them could cause the game to crash. So, I don't know what that BS is all about.

But I will say this, I'm not paying $50-$60 for this game....especially if it looks worse than UT2004 does. Before my new card UT2004 looked decent, with the new card it looks great! UT3 looked like shit with the old card....and with the new card...it still looks like shit! It's a bit disappointing if you ask me. Anyhoo, I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas or suggestions on how to correct the crappy rendering. I dunno if it's just because it's the demo or not. The file system/names that they have now isn't even close to what was in UT2003/UT2004 and is completely alien to me....and so I'm not even sure if I'm editing the right .ini file. Any suggestions would be great! Thanks

Just for reference these are the new vid card specs...

NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
512MB DDR2 memory
AGP 8x interface
Dual 400MHz RAMDACs; 540MHz core clock
Extreme HD (XHD)
CineFX 4.0: Fourth-generation NVIDIA® CineFX® engine
Intellisample 4.0
UltraShadow II Technology

Some System Info:

AMD Athlon 64 @ 2.4ghz
Windows XP Home
1gb DDR RAM
180gb Western Digital Caviar SE 7600rmp HDD
17" NEC MultiSync LCD1765 Monitor

In game screenshots for 3 resolution settings are below

800 x 600



1024 x 768



1280 x 1024

[NIR_Rimc]

First off all put more RAM, second if you will have more RAM and if your PC can handle change :"Full Screen Screen Percentage 65% Texture Detail 2
World Detail 2 " to MAX if i remeber (Im now on job its 100% ; 5; 5.

[Intimidator]

I had a similar problem but it was that the game is such a resource hog and my pc cant handle it all.
I went through the tweaks on this site here :

http://www.tweakguides.com/UT3_1.html

I tried each tweak one ata time until it fixed my issue.
RIght at the moment i cant remember which one it was but i think it was the anti alising (not sure if its spelled right) one that was set to true and i changed it to false.
Go through them and try them one at a time to fit your needs.....
Remember each vid card and users pc's are different so outcome will vary.
One last thing make sure that you find the one about uncapping FPS !!!!!!!!
It has your FPS capped below 60...I know that alot cards will not even come close to getting 60 fps but it did make a tremendous improvement in my graphics as a whole.
Hopefully you will find what you need there..... but there was one other site i found a few other good tweaks ,but right now i cant rmemeber which one it was and like a dumbass i forgot to bookmark it.
Once i find it i will post it if further help is needed.
But anywhoo i think i found it by googling UT3 PERFORMANCE TWEAKS,
and it was a few sites down .
Good luck!

[[iX]AnnaBeaver]

Yah, I did see the one about uncapping the fps but I decided not to mess with that for fear of "F'ing" it up. Yes, I do agree that I need at least another gig of ram. Once the pc is up and running with no programs opened except background stuff...my available memory is usually around 700 mb.

Yes, the max for the advanced video settings is
Screen Percentage 100%
Texture Detail 5
World Detail 5

I'm curious as to wether or not the full version will have the level of video options that UT2004 has. As it is now with the demo...things like Shadow, Trilinear Filtering, LOD etc. are not available via the UT3 menu.

Thanks for the tips guys!

[Mr_N_Pants]

Yeah, more RAM. It's not as specific as a detail, but this system uses thee heckk out of your ram. I'm running all versions of UT on 2.0/512/2.8 ghz "D".

Full throttle!

[[iX]AnnaBeaver]

Well, I have no clue what actually fixed my problem. But I did the following....

Updated AGP driver
Updated Nvidia driver to the latest beta ver.
Installed latest AMD Athlon processor driver
Edited the UT3 BaseEngine.ini file instead of the DefaultEngine.ini...which is what I had edited previously.

Now, I'm able to run it at 1024x768 with screen % at 100, I can run it with texture and world detail set to max...but it's a bit sluggish. Having the details settings at 3 and the screen % at 100 still renders a very nice image. However, anything below 3 for details makes it start to look poopy again. So, I think it's gonna work just fine now. Thanks again!!