Doom 3 BFG uses new renderer, but still Ultra quality setting and new Light option

I should have posted this sooner as I did over at steam...

There's some discussion going on over at the Bethesda DOOM forums, that apparently the new lighting algorithm is not age-old "r_lightscale" but a new option called "r_overbright" that controls the new lighting mode. Apparently this is what id was referncing when they talked of a new lighting update... setting overbright to "1" from its default "2" setting will turn it back to vanilla doom 3 lighting. Overbright isn't new in itself, but its not been an option in Doom 3 before, and was used in a different manner in other titles for bloom and radiance... the new DOOM 3 option clearly effects entire world and object lighting as well.

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1417746-r-overbright-2-the-real-reason-my-apologize/


Also, The game is NOT stuck in "high quality" only. It's confimed by bethesda that it's running in "Ultra Quality", but any noticeable difference appears to be from the swtich from a different, modern renderer in this release. Scroll down in this link to see official response from Bethesda support.

here's bethesdas official Gstaff response:

"""Talked to some folks at id and got some clarifications on the game's visual settings.

DOOM 3 BFG uses the same resolution textures as both the "High" and "Ultra" quality settings in the original DOOM 3. The game uses YCoCg-DXT5 compression which results in almost no perceptual difference in quality compared to uncompressed textures while still providing a significant storage savings and an improvement in rendering performance.

http://www.nvidia.co...ompression.html

While in the original DOOM 3 anisotropic filtering was only turned on in the "High" and "Ultra" quality modes, DOOM 3 BFG always uses anisotropic filtering. In DOOM 3 BFG the maximum anisotropy can be adjusted with the r_maxAnisotropicFiltering console variable.

A lot of the video settings that were available in the original DOOM 3 just don't make any sense anymore because there is no reason to lower the quality on today's hardware. For those options that are no longer available in the menus DOOM 3 BFG always uses the highest setting. For instance, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense on today's hardware to lower the quality by turning off shadows, specular or bump/normal maps.""""

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1417244-no-options-to-adjust-video-settings/


So that settles that... however, there's some confusion going on with the DOOM 2 IWAD... did they complete remove/copy over the SS/Nazi symbols/flags/sprites, or did they relabel them and the old data is still tucked away inside the IWAD, just no longer in use? This a lot of discussion going on over at bethesdas forums with some saying one or the other. Also, it appears texture artifacts per this new DXT5 render method vary greatly between card manufacturers and their drivers... some reporting better than vanilla doom 3 "ultra quality" textures, and some reporting it to sub par. I notice really no visible difference between vanilla d3 and d3 bfg on my gtx680 sli'd system myself, with fov set to default vanilla of 90.

Buckshot said:

So that settles that... however, there's some confusion going on with the DOOM 2 IWAD... did they complete remove/copy over the SS/Nazi symbols/flags/sprites, or did they relabel them and the old data is still tucked away inside the IWAD, just no longer in use?

It was completely purged. The SSWV sprites (except for the last four) have all been replaced with copies of POSSA1 (yes, all the same frame and angle), with stupid offsets that push them far below the floor and to the right. Also, the Wolf guys in the two Wolf maps have been replaced by zombiemen.

See here for a fully exhaustive list of differences. Some are quite strange.

Gez said:

It was completely purged. The SSWV sprites (except for the last four) have all been replaced with copies of POSSA1 (yes, all the same frame and angle), with stupid offsets that push them far below the floor and to the right. Also, the Wolf guys in the two Wolf maps have been replaced by zombiemen.

See here for a fully exhaustive list of differences. Some are quite strange.

Man, your not kidding. Why would they use one zombie guy for both the animations? I mean I understand the legality issue and people becoming more sensitive to that stuff and lawsuits over the years... and the Bethesda/activision/apogee copyright hurdles... but they could have created respective fill-ins for the SS guards and officers.

So this new DXT5 compression algorithim... is it done prior to the textures being put into the .pk3's on the download or disc, or does the renderer take uncompressed textures and compress them from source and apply them in the level in DXT5 compression form?


If the former is the case, then it means the source textures included with Doom 3 for the BFG edition have been recompressed and original quality is permanetely lost in this release. If its doing compression to DXT5 on the fly, in realtime, during the rendering process, then perhaps the original textures are intact, and the compression can somehow be disable from console?

From what they said, they merely recompressed the original (uncompressed) TGA textures.