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Updated
on March 6, 2001 by Thomas
McGuire
Display
Load NOLF, select Options, then Display.
Renderer.
This setting is not changeable, & only really serves to let you
know Direct 3D rendering is being used.
Resolution.
Selecting a lower setting will improve performance & maintain a
stable, higher frame rate. Although, higher resolutions will look
better, they generally run slower. Set this to 16 bit for
optimal performance also. If your card supports it you can select 32
bit for best image quality, although performance may be reduced.
Texture
depth. Set this to 32 bit for best image quality & 16
bit for improved performance. I’d highly recommend selecting
32-bit texture quality & using 16-bit colour
depth for the best image quality/performance trade off.
Hardware
cursor. Set this to On unless you have an old graphics
card, this will yield smoothest mouse movements. Setting this to Off
will Disable hardware cursor
acceleration, which may improve performance slightly
(Useful if you have a slow system), although can make mouse
movement less sensitive as a result.
Click
on Options, then Performance.
Performance
optimization. This option can allow you to select pre-defined
settings for the Display & Special effects
sections. I’d recommend you ignore this setting
altogether & use a Customized setup as shown below.
Sound
filtering effects. Set this to On to enable audio
filtering for improved audio quality (More realistic). You can
improve performance by setting this to Off,
although audio will be less realistic as a result.
Now
select the Display setting.
Lightmaps.
Set this to On to enable Lightmap lighting (real-time)
of levels. Setting it to Off will enable Vertex
lighting instead, which is faster but uglier (static) lighting of
levels.
Mirrors.
NOTE – This option is only selectable if the Colour depth
is 32 Bit & your graphics card has a Stencil buffer. Set this to
On to enable reflective mirrors in levels, this will
look more realistic although reduces performance (Models will
effectively need to be rendered twice). When set to Off any
mirrors in levels will not be reflective, this will improve
performance.
Shadows.
Setting this to None disables shadows for your
character. Circular enables simple circular shadows.
Enabling shadows will reduce performance, so I’d
recommend setting this to None.
Detail
textures. A detail texture is a very small, fine pattern which
is faded in as you approach a surface, for example wood grain, or
imperfections in stone. Selecting On can improve visual
quality, although it can cause a performance hit, particularly on
older graphics cards. Select Off for increased performance,
although with reduced visual quality.
Environment
map. Set this to On to enable Bump mapping of the
environment in NOLF. Bump mapping can be used to improve detail of
the environment by using light-calculations to add depth to the
environment. Set this to Off for optimal performance, although
visual quality will be reduced slightly (Less realistic).
Model
chrome. Set this to On to enable the chrome effect
on models. This will allow for shiny models in the game. Set this to
Off to disable the chrome effect on models. This will
improve performance, although models may appear duller (e.g.
unreflective helmets) as a result.
Trilinear
filtering. Trilinear filtering interpolates between the mipmap
levels as well as the weighted average of the texels around it. This
gives the smoothest texture with the most blur in between texels.
Select On for improved visual quality. Select Off to
disable Trilinear filtering (You should only really do this on
3dfx cards, which cannot perform Multi-texturing & Trilinear
texture filtering simultaneously).
Triple
buffering. Set this to On for improved performance (Triple
buffering allocates a 3rd frame buffer. This frame buffer can improve
performance by allowing the hardware to render at the same time that
the 3D application performs other tasks), although it will
require extra video memory. Certainly select Off if you have
less than 16MB of video memory on your graphics card as this requires
extra video memory.
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