Guys, please explain something to me..... I read a lot about the alt-m function and it has to do with some pixels and/or lod bias? I can't get clear what they are talking about because every time I see something about this; guys who know what they are talking about write about this and I'm missing out on knowledge. So, for the less educated under us; could someone please explain what this does and.....well.....why/how and so on a bit? Thanks in advance!
Basically it will make your textures sharper or more blurry. and depending on how your system displays rf2 one of the settings would be optimal for you, or off would. So far 2 is bestest for me. but I reckon it will differ per track/mod? Alt+M now only disables it btw. in yer .PLR file find: Texture Sharpening="2" // Sharpen textures using MIP LOD bias - 0=Off, 1=+2.0(very blurry), 2=+1.0(blurry), 3=-1.0(sharp), 4=-2.0(very sharp), 5=0.0(auto) Just change the values and start rf2 to see what it does for you (and checksum if fences etc start to flicker and tree-pixels for example are looking like jagged lines etc.) Laymen's explanation
If you have a slightly blurry photo you can sharpen it to make it 'pop' a bit more; but going a bit too far starts to make it look bad, you get false details being picked up and it looks grainy etc. Generally a lot of track makers do the traditional thing of putting negative bias on textures like grass, tarmac, fences. The higher levels of texture filtering (and maybe just texture size) we have now weren't around back then, so those textures tended to look a bit too blurry. Adding negative bias just sharpened it up a bit. Sometimes you could find a track where it had been taken too far and the grass or tarmac was overly 'busy'. So back then negative bias was usually a good thing if it wasn't overdone. And because people were copying each other (in a good way) and are creatures of habit most tracks still have negative bias on a lot of those textures. But because of other improvements (filtering, resolution) those settings are now a bit too much; wire fence textures produce moire patterns, angled armco can look very jagged. Using Alt-M (or the new PLR option above) you can adjust or switch off this bias and in a lot of cases get smoother results without getting too blurry again. Without that option people were adding AA to try and fix some of the filtering artifacts; this hurt performance and ultimately you could never undo the damage done by the negative bias anyway. Over time modders will probably start to avoid negative bias except where it still helps (because now everyone knows the old settings aren't the best anymore), so eventually putting it back on auto might be the better option. But it does depend on content. LOD is a different issue entirely. Alt-M never affected LOD settings. Note: I'm a long way from an expert on texture filtering and all that.
This setting exists due to this thread. http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...same-performance-Yes!-And-YOUR-help-is-needed! Reading through it will help you get better understanding of what this is and help improve performance in rf1, GSC, etc, which I believe this setting is broken in due to the current nv drivers not implementing clamp LOD. There's special dlls in their to sort it out. Worth a read if you are nvidia based anyway.
