HU Graphics and Performance Guide
GRAPHICS AND PERFORMANCE by: The Creationist
This guide should help players figure out what the graphic options are for in the game’s menu. This guide should also help players to set the game’s graphical settings to something more suitable, or settings that make the game play smoother, or settings that just make the game look better!* Note:* Anything with an asterisk by it (*) means that at the end of this guide, is a list of video cards that certain features can be utilized on.* Reference it to get a better idea of how to set each graphic option up when you see (*) by an option in this guide.
GRAPHIC MENU SETTINGS -
On the graphics setting menu, we see these options in order (descriptions given):
BULLET CAM:
* This setting has 3 choices
1) NEVER
2) ALL SHOTS
3) PROMISING SHOTS
Setting Bullet Cam to “Never” means when you fire your weapon, you will NOT see the bullet travel toward an animal, ever.* Setting this to “All shots” means that each time you fire, you will ALWAYS see the bullet travel toward an animal or anything else you fire at (leave this to ALL SHOTS if using a bow or crossbow for better aim!)* Setting this to “Promising shots” means that when you fire, and the bullet IS going to strike an animal or at least come within several feet of the animal, that’s the only time the Bullet Cam will kick in.* I leave this set to “Promising shots” usually as it is less annoying.
TREE QUALITY:
* This setting is slider-based *
Tree quality in the game means how much detail the trees and bushes will have from a distance.* If you turn this slider-setting down to half way, or lower, (towards the left is for low .. towards the right is high) you will notice the trees ‘draw’ more detail on themselves as you get closer to the foliage.* This setting does require slightly more CPU time and RAM.* Turning this down to half way or turning it all the way down can increase performance by 5-10% on many machines.* Turning it up fully means the trees will look more realistic and will not ‘draw more detail’ the closer you get – the trees and bushes will basically remain fully detailed, at any distance.* See the video card list at the end of this guide to see which cards can use this setting at max.
VIEWING DISTANCE:
* This setting is slider-based *
Viewing distance is obvious, as in, how far you can see into the distance/horizon.* The higher you set the slider for this, the further you can see.* Distances you cannot see, are culled back by a ‘blue fog’ of sorts.* The fog isn’t as bad as some other hunting games, that use white-fog. Blue and white fog both have advantages and disadvantages, but the blue colored fog in this game looks a bit more realistic compared to white fog (such as in Deer Hunter 2005).* Setting this slider option will determine how far you can see animals and the landscape!* On better video cards, this can be turned up fully.* If your game has stuttering, I suggest you turn THIS option down first, down about half way, then see how it plays.* Keep lowering it just a hair at a time until the jerkiness of the game leaves.* Higher viewing distance means a more realistic hunt, and also the ability to make super-long shots for tournaments.* See the video card list at the end of this guide to see which cards can use this setting at max.
DETAILED VEGETATION DENSITY:
* This setting has 4 choices *
1) OFF
2) LOW
3) NORMAL
4) HIGH
When set to OFF, you will not see grass.* Use this setting only if the game runs really choppy for you.* Set to LOW, you barely see any grass.* Set to NORMAL you see the ‘normal’ amount as-per what the game programmers intended for us to see.* Set to high, you get the maximum amount of grass, making the game more realistic, but draining game performance a little bit.* See the video card list at the end of this guide to see which cards can use this setting at max.
SHADOWS:
* This setting has 4 choices *
1) NONE
2) TREES
3) ANIMALS
4) ANIMALS and TREES
When set to NONE, you see no shadows at all.* Improving performance quite a bit actually.* When set to TREES, you’ll only see shadows of trees.* When set to ANIMALS, you’ll only see shadows of animals.* When set to ANIMALS and TREES, you get full shadows.* Keep in mind, these shadows are NOT dynamic!* Meaning, when trees sway in the game, due to wind, the shadows are ’static’ and will not move, they just sit flatly on the ground.* The shadows could’ve been better, but they look pretty realistic none the less.* Shadows OFF will not take away realism to the game really, and will give you quite a little speed-boost especially when looking through a scope into a thick forest.* See the video card list at the end of this guide to see which cards can use this setting at max.
GORE:
 This setting has 2 choices
1) NO
2) YES
When set to NO, you will not see blood after you shoot animals, such as blood on the ground.* This can be bad!* Tracking an animal requires you to see blood spots on the ground the animal has left behind.* Setting this to YES means you get to see all the blood.* I recommend always leaving this ON, because frankly, it doesn’t suck any performance from the game at all. So leave it on YES always.
DISABLE UI MAP:
* This setting has 2 choices
1) NO
2) YES
When set to NO, the main menu for the game will NOT show the game’s actual animated 3D settings as a menu-background.* This is really for low-end machines with pretty out dated graphics cards. When set to YES, you get the cool animated 3D menu of animals.* I leave this set to YES always.* Will have no performance on the actual game play itself anyhow.
GRAPHICS DRIVER:
* This setting cannot be changed
Already pre-set to OPENGL.* Hunting Unlimited 2 allowed you to use D3D (direct-x) OR OpenGL, which I liked. Hunting Unlimited 3 uses ONLY OpenGL this time around, and you cannot change that.* So skip this setting.
VIDEO MODE:
* This setting has many options *
This decides your screen resolution, in pixels.* It also sets your monitor’s refresh rate (see VYSNC a little later in this guide.)* I don’t know what your monitor can run at, resolution-wise. You should know that!* My own monitor will allow me to set the game to 1600×1200 which is super-high resolution, which means the higher the resolution, the better the game looks by far.* Some computer games, when setting the resolution lower, will dramatically increase a game’s performance.* And a scant few games will never change performance no matter how high or low you set the screen resolution (because such games are refresh-rate-locked, such as Doom 3 for example.)* Hunting Unlimited will run faster, the lower this is set (modes of 640×480 and 800×600 run the fastest, while 1024×768 and higher will look prettier but may run slightly slower.)* This is really up to your own preference.* You also should know your monitor’s max refresh rate.* If you don’t, you can safely set the game to 800×600 and 85hz, or 1024×768 and 85hz, as MOST monitors support these settings.* Newer monitors allow higher HZ ratings.* We’ll cover HZ ratings under the VYSNC section shortly.* If you set the game’s refresh rate too high and your monitor cannot handle it?* It will make a weird squeal-sound, and the game may either crash, reboot your machine, or just appear garbled and screwy looking – but it will not break your monitor or your game – you just set the refresh too high is all!* So if your game runs choppy?* Try lowering the resolution a notch!* Also, make sure you set the resolution to “x32″ and not “x16″ – example, you see 2 options for the same resolution:* 1024×768x16 AND 1024×768x32.* The “16″ means “16bit color” which can be ugly, as the shading between colors will look unrealistic a little (an effect called banding.)* Where as using the “32″ option means the color is 32-bit “true color” (16.7 million colors and no banding) and the blending of colors is perfect.* I always leave this at “x32″ no matter what resolution I select.* No REAL performance loss by setting this to x32 anyhow.
RENDERING PATH:
* This setting has 4 choices *
1) Using GL1X
(worst renderer but fastest.)* You’ll see the water turn into blue mud basically, and rocks from the landscape disappear using GL1X renderer in the game.
2) Using ARB
(just as bad as GL1X and fast.)* We see the same results as using GL1X, but using ARB, the little rocks on the ground remain, as you notice in the top left corner of the picture. So ARB still has the ugly blue muddy looking water, but adds the rocks on the ground instead.
3) Using ARB(fvp)
which is a high detailed renderer but slower performance wise, we see the scene is detailed as it should be. Water is reflective and not muddy, all rocks on the ground show up, etc. However, you’ll notice the ground is still a bit muddy looking, as with ARB and GL1X renderer, but not as badly!
4) Using the best renderer, ARB2
(which is the slowest renderer because of the high detail quality and bump-mapping), we see the game in full graphical glory. Take SPECIAL notice of the cliffs, grass and ground textures using ARB2! They are bump-mapped, which means the cracks in ground textures look 3D (but aren’t, but they do look it) and the cliffs have the same effect. Most newer games use bump-mapping now for realism, but it can slow down a computer with an older video card, and some older cards don’t support bump-mapping (you may not be able to even select “ARB2″ renderer, and if not, your video card doesn’t support this mode.)* I’d suggest a video card made in the last 1.5 years to 2 years to attempt using the ARB2 setting.* Your video card may support ARB2, but the game may run choppy while using it if it isn’t a newer video card.* See the video card list at the end of this guide to see which cards can use this setting at max.
**NOTE** HU4 and HU08 will also give you a R2XX option which add another setting higher than ARB2 on some of your selections.
FULLSCREEN:
* This setting has 2 choices
1) NO
2) YES
Setting this to NO means you’ll see your taskbar in Windows at the bottom of the screen, while setting this to YES means the game runs fullscreen, which I advise highly.
SYNC EVERY FRAME:
 This setting has 2 choices
1) NO
2) YES
Setting this to NO means the game will attempt to exceed your monitor’s refresh rate (HZ ‘hertz’) and thus will let the game’s frame rate run as fast as it possibly can.* Which updates the live image on the screen really fast, which can result in screen tearing.* Screen tearing is just slightly obvious, as the middle of your screen will have a slight misalignment in it when you look left and right in the game quickly.Â* This isn’t a bother, most gamers leave this setting OFF in almost all games to get max game speed.* Setting this to YES, means the game will sync to your monitor’s refresh rate, which will take away screen tearing – but, this can cost performance, as your frame rate is LOCKED in.* Example, if your refresh rate in HZ (see VIDEO MODE above) is set to 85?* Then the game will NOT exceed 85 frames per second (and may never even reach 85 frames per second either.)Â This makes the game play smoother, but yet slower, if your video card isn’t some what recent.* I leave this to OFF, even on my high-end video card, to get max frame rates.* I suggest you leave this to NO.* You can try NO and YES settings however, and see how the game performs if you want.
BRIGHTNESS:
* This setting is slider-based
This allows you to set the game’s brightness (aka ‘GAMMA’ in other games) if the game looks too bright or too dark.* The default setting appears to be fine for most players.* Only adjust this if the game seems too bright, or too dark.
TEXTURE QUALITY:
* This setting has 3 choices
1) DEFAULT
2) 16 BIT
3) 32 BIT
The choices are DEFAULT, 16 bit, 32 bit.* This goes in tandem with your resolution, so just leave this set to 32 bit, to get the best image quality – because you won’t see a performance loss really, since 16 bit may cause ‘banding’ on trees and/or animals where as 32 bit will not.
TEXTURE DETAIL:
* This setting has 3 choices *
1) LOW
2) NORMAL
3) HIGH
The choices are LOW, NORMAL and HIGH. I leave mine on HIGH, so the animals and tree bark and other textures look really detailed.* The NORMAL setting will put a slight blur on textures as the texture has been reduced in quality/clarity, giving a slight performance increase while setting this to LOW will be ugly and blocky/pixelated looking – but resulting in really fast performance.* Try HIGH setting, and if the game is still choppy, try NORMAL.* Don’t ever try the LOW setting, as it can be horrible!* However, setting this to NORMAL will, as I said, take some detail off the ground and tree bark and slightly barely any detail off animals and the hunter (you) – but setting this to NORMAL helps to slack down on the choppy performance when looking through a scope into a thick forest (because there’s less detailed textures to draw on trees, that is.)* See the video card list at the end of this guide to see which cards can use this setting at max.
TEXTURE FILTERING:
* This setting has 3 choices *
1) LINEAR
2) BILINEAR
3) TRILINEAR
The 3 settings to choose from are LINEAR, BILINEAR and TRILINEAR.* Any of these will affect the ground/wall/cliff textures in the not-too-far-distance. Example, using TRILINEAR will clear up the ground and make it look more detailed at a further distance, while LINEAR will be less realistic looking.* I use trilinear, most do, there’s hardly any loss in performance, but this setting goes in tandem with the last setting you’ll see next.* See the video card list at the end of this guide to see which cards can use this setting at max.
TEXTURE SHARPNESS:
* This setting is slider-based *
This seems to actually be ANISOTROPIC FILTERING.* Also called “AF” for short.* AF dramatically increases the clarity and detail of ground textures at a distance.* Actually, the ground will look fully detailed all the way out INTO the distance – which enhances realism greatly, but SERIOUSLY DRAINS on the game’s performance.* I turned this setting all the way up on my computer.* If you get choppy performance, this is one of the first settings to turn down half way or all the way down, as it greatly increases game speed by far.* Turning this slider down, will make the ground in the distance (about 25 feet in front of you and beyond) look very muddy and kind of ugly and unrealistic, as the dirt, grass and rocks all become a blurry muddy kind of mess, indistinguishable almost.* Set this to your own liking, play with it a little bit.
EXTRA GRAPHIC SETTING NOTICE:
*** This isn’t present in HU3, but only accessible on your video card, if your video card supports this feature.* It is called ANTI-ALIASING, or “AA” for short.* What this does, and I wont go into extreme detail, is take away the “jagged looking edges” from your game.* You know, the stair-step effect that edges of graphics have in games.* Most video cards made even in the last 3-4 years feature AA settings on the card itself (and AF settings) and you can adjust the AA settings to such settings as: 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 16x, temporal-aa (and a whole slew of other complex AA features I will not go into, it’s too complicated!) Using 2x AA for example, will use a “2×2″ filter box around edges of the environment/characters in a game, and sample/sub-sample pixels of color around the jaggy edges, and smooth the edges out.* Creating beautiful scenes in games, with no jagged edges. The higher the AA setting, like 4x and 6x and up, the more perfect the game looks but the slower it runs! Using AA is NOT recommended because it slows most games down, unless you have a super-beefy video card!* I could use it, but I do not, though it is graphically beautiful to see in action.* AA also gives you more crisp detail on distant-animals in HU3, almost eliminating the problem of “is that a jagged rock in the distance or deer antlers?!”* Some games have built-in AA settings, but HU3 does not, but you CAN ‘force’ AA if your video card supports it.* You can also ‘force’ higher levels of AF in HU3 as well, levels higher than what HU3 offers using the TEXTURE SHARPNESS option!***
Now let’s look at the video card list.* I won’t list all the video cards there are, there’s tons. I will list the more popular ones that most people tend to own, and then give what I personally think are the optimal graphic settings for each card with Hunting Unlimited, and I will also give RAM and CPU calculations:
ATI RADEON SERIES OF VIDEO CARDS -
See this section to reference of the asterisks (*)
Anything lower than these Radeon cards listed, like Radeon 8500 or 7000 cards, will probably run this game, yes, but it wont be very enjoyable. Here’s the breakdown of Radeon video cards now and what settings you should be able to play HU with:
Radeon 9200 to 9550 cards (with 64mb ram on the card) with at least 256-512mb of system ram and a 1.4 to 1.8ghz cpu should run the game at these settings:
TREE QUALITY:* Set slider to half way
VIEWING DISTANCE:* Set slider to half way or 75% of the way
DETAILED VEGETATION DENSITY:* Set to NORMAL setting
SHADOWS:* Turn them off
VIDEO MODE:* 800×600x32 seems optimal
RENDERING PATH:* ARB(fvp) and *may* be able to run ARB2
SYNC EVERY FRAME:* Set to NO
TEXTURE DETAIL:* High
TEXTURE FILTERING:* Trilinear
TEXTURE SHARPNESS:* Set this to half way or anything under that, at least setting it 25% up should be fine.
Radeon 9600 (including pro/xt) to 9800 (including pro/xt) cards with 64mb ram on the card, with at least 512mb of system ram and a 1.4ghz cpu should run the game at these settings:
TREE QUALITY:* Set slider to high, if you get choppy play, set it to 50%
VIEWING DISTANCE:* Set slider all the way to high
DETAILED VEGETATION DENSITY:* Set to HIGH setting, or NORMAL for a tiny speed boost
SHADOWS:* Use any setting you want, but for 9600 model cards I’d suggest shadows to be OFF
VIDEO MODE:* 800×600x32 for the 9600 card, and 1024×768x32 for 9700 and 9800 cards seems optimal
RENDERING PATH:* ARB2
SYNC EVERY FRAME:* Set to NO
TEXTURE DETAIL:* High
TEXTURE FILTERING:* Trilinear
TEXTURE SHARPNESS:* Set this to half way or anything under that for 9600 cards, and half way or higher for 9700 or 9800 cards
Radeon x700, x800, x850 pro/xt/pe cards (which usually come with 128 to 256mb of ram on these cards) with at least 512 of system ram and a 1.8 to 2ghz+ cpu should run the game with ALL SETTINGS MAXED!* Now, I put the CPU rating higher for these better video cards, because it DOES take a faster cpu, and more ram, to even run these high-end video cards.* Usually people with pretty nice computers already know all this.* Also, I’d suggest 512 to 1GB of system ram, to run this game at all max settings, and I also suggest at least a 128mb/ram video card.* Yes, I know other better looking games exist that run better with a less powerful system, but not all games are programmed alike, or as efficiently, etc.* With newer video cards as listed above, you will see quite a bit more detail than on the previous video cards by far!* Finally, you should be able to run the game at a minimum of 1024×768x32 resolution.* I haven’t tried higher myself, but I’d say 1280×1024x32 resolution is probably the limit here.* Radeon cards are not the fastest for running OPENGL based games such as this, however nVidia cards run OpenGL faster, but not by much.* Same goes for Direct-X only games (D3D), Radeon plays them faster, but not by much.* If you can afford the x850 or higher cards, you can go play any game you want out there!* Well, providing you have between 1-2gb of system ram and a 2.8 to 3.6ghz cpu!
NVIDIA GEFORCE SERIES OF VIDEO CARDS -
Anything lower than these nVidia cards listed, like nVidia 5200 FX or even the older GeForce 3/4 series, will probably run this game, yes, but it wont be very enjoyable.* Keep in mind, the GeForce line of video cards in the 5xxx series, have nice features but slow graphics processors and ram on the card – hence, the game doesn’t play as well as it should.* This holds true for Radeon cards, some of their older cards had great features but the card was still too slow!* So here’s the breakdown of nVidia video cards now and what settings you should be able to play HU3 with (keep in mind, nVidia cards play OpenGL games like HU3 a bit better than Radeon but not by much):
GeForce FX 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, 5950 (ultra or xt version for all listed cards here) with 64mb ram on the card, with at least 512mb of system ram and a 1.4ghz cpu should run the game at these settings:
TREE QUALITY:* Set slider to half way and if it plays fine, move slider up a little more if you want
VIEWING DISTANCE:* Set slider all the way to high, but if you notice jerky gameplay, set it to 75% or slightly less
DETAILED VEGETATION DENSITY:* Set to HIGH setting
SHADOWS:* Use any setting you want, but I always suggest shadows to be OFF
VIDEO MODE:* 800×600x32 seems optimal, but you can try 1024×768x32 and see how smooth it plays (should play smoother than Radeon 9xxx series cards)
RENDERING PATH:* ARB2, if you notice stutter on the 5200 or 5600 cards, then use ARB(fvp) setting
SYNC EVERY FRAME:* Set to NO
TEXTURE DETAIL:* High
TEXTURE FILTERING:* Trilinear
TEXTURE SHARPNESS:* Set this to half way or anything under that for any of the GeForce cards in the 5xxx series.
GeForce GT/Ultra (6xxx series) including the 6600 and 6800 (ultra or xt version for all listed cards here) with 128-256mb ram on the card (since these newer cards come usually with 128-256mb of video ram), with at least 512-768mb of system ram and a 1.8ghz to 2ghz cpu should run the game with ALL SETTINGS MAXED!
GeForce 7xxx series of cards, like the new 7800 card, with 512mb system ram and a 2ghz+ cpu should run the game with ALL SETTINGS MAXED!* If you can afford THIS video card, I wish I were you!* You can go play any game you want on this baby!* Well, providing you have 1gb of system ram and a 2.8 to 3ghz cpu!
I didn’t cover any other brands of video cards, because they aren’t popular.* There are different manufacturers, like PNY or Asus for example, but other cards like Matrox and the like really aren’t worth even buying.
MY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR VIDEO CARDS -
I suggest, to play HU3 at maximum quality and most other hunting games at max quality, to invest in either a Radeon x700, x800 or x850 card – or a GeForce 6600, 6800 or new 7800 card.* Keep in mind, this was written at the beginning of 2006, so as time goes on, these cards will become outdated in a few years! But currently, these are top-of-the-line video cards and will play HU3 in splendid graphical glory with full-speed.* Just get ready to pay $180 to $500 for some of these video cards.* The Radeon x850 Pro is great value, an awesome powerful card at a great price, while the GeForce 6600 card is comparable in value and power (the Radeon x850 Pro or XT or especially PE card is several hairs above the 6800 GeForce card and a whole notch or two above the 6600, for reference.)
NOTE FOR INTEGRATED GRAPHICS CHIP SYSTEM OWNERS -
If your computer has “integrated graphics” as in, the video card is built ONTO the motherboard, well usually these kinds of built-in video cards, so to speak, really cant play games very well unless the game is 5 years old or older it seems!* Integrated video chips on your motherboard actually suck RAM from your computer itself, which is bad! Where as a store-bought video card comes WITH it’s own ram, on the video card itself, leaving your precious system-ram free to help run the game as fast as possible.* Also, laptop owners with integrated graphics chips, get the worst, compared to desktop owners with integrated graphics.* I’ve heard of cases where someone has a 2ghz system, with integrated graphics that use 64mb of the computer’s ram.* And HU3 ran pretty dang good.* But these cases are come and go, and most people I talked to had 768 to 1gb of system ram, meaning the “64 mb of ram” the integrated graphics chip borrowed from the system, really didn’t impact the gameplay of HU3, if at all (because there was more than enough ram to spare!)
I hope this graphic and performance guide helped.* Usually people only do game guides like this for the newer and more popular games.* But I like HU3, so I thought I’d pop out this quickie guide – maybe some of you will better-understand the graphical options for the game, and be able to make your game run faster or even look a little better!
MY SYSTEM FOR REFERENCE -
This is my own computer, for reference to others who may have a similar computer to mine, and wonder how HU3 runs and plays and performs and MY settings I use in the game:
*» Pentium 4 3Ghz CPU
*» 1GB PC3200 DDR ram
*» ATI Radeon x850 Pro with 256mb GDDR3 video ram and 8x AGP
*» Abit motherboard with 800mhz front side bus and 2MB of L2 cache
(all other details like sound card and cd-rom are irrelevant)
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