Make Guild Wars look better

[TouchOdeath]

Besides the standard video tweaking (Antialiasing, Anisotropic filtering, etc etc) If you have an nvidia card you can tweak guild wars scenerys REALLY stand out.

If you have an nvidia card, you probably know that you can tweak the brightness settings to make things more appealing. To get there do the following:

Right click on desktop -> Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> Geforce Tab -> Color Correction

Once here, you now see the options to tweak the color. Given my setup, this setting looks the best for me ingame (it looks rediculously sweet for me).

http://touch.evil2u.com/-TouchOPicturesTouchOVideos-/Guildwars34.gif

my setup:
=======
Monitor: 21' Viewsonic Professional Series P95f
- Monitor Brightness settings: Contrast - 100 Brightness - 50
Gfx Card: Geforce FX 5600
Drivers: Forceware 66.93

Now you can do this yourself, all you really need is a screenshot of your own that you took from a BWE. I would take the brightest screenshot you have, and the darkest one, and base your settings off of those two screenshots. Which is exactly what I have done and it worked perfect. If your out of screenshots then just run Gw.exe. You can still open the game and look at the login screen and test your new settings. Although, the bad part about doing that is it doesnt test two extremes, meaning that you don't know exactly how your new settings are going to look if you see something really bright, or something really dark.

I would make a registry file, so it would insert that color profile but the problem is that one of the folder paths has a variable name and I don't know how to exactly get the variable name for each person. But you can almost follow the screenshot exactly, accept for maybe Digital Vibrance. Digital Vibrance is a crucial part. If you don't get Digital Vibrance right then all the lightning effects in guild wars will look really annoying.

[5zigen]

Nice tip.

What I would like to know is if there is a way to make it pre-render scenery further away. I dont know if that is possible though.

[immortius]

I can confirm there are equivalent controls for ATi cards, although the method to reach them depends one what version of the catalysts you use.

[TouchOdeath]

although the method to reach them depends one what version of the catalysts you use.

Likewise with nvidia drivers.

[Glenn_Irving]

Thx for the tip it may come to good use with other types of games to.

[TouchOdeath]

My pleasure

[Thul Rasha]

Nice tip.

What I would like to know is if there is a way to make it pre-render scenery further away. I dont know if that is possible though.

That would have to be an option in the Guild Wars game itself. Because that is not what the graphics card or drivers do, it's what the 3d engine does.
I don't think it's possible now. Would be a cool option for the high-end machines.

[Hurin66]

Monitors are all really diffrent so dont expect your setting to work for everyone

But I believe Nvidia, or your video card manufacturar usually have some sort of tool that allows you to callibrate your video settings based specifically on your monitor, by comparing images etc.

[Tarrant Rahl]

Well, kind of hmm'ed and haw'ed over this one before moving it, but ultimately I stuck it over here in Off-Topic :). Some nice tips there, and perhaps next BWE I'll give them a try, as my GeForce 3 Ti-500 has had some real issues with over-brightening things.

[TouchOdeath]

Monitors are all really diffrent so dont expect your setting to work for everyone
So are graphics cards, and drivers. Which is why I took to the time to list my particular setup. But your right, it wont work for everyone.

Geforce 3 :|. Time to upgrade your card (especially if it gives you any problems). If I was getting a graphics card anytime soon ide send you the one I have now.

[TouchOdeath]

Well, the March BWE is over and here MY results from the graphics/color tweak.

Everything in general was alittle more sharper, the GUI especially looked alot better. Characters and spells stood out alittle more than normal, but not by much. General Lighting looks alot better (an example would be light that shines through small holes, or the light from the fireplace). The only thing I disliked about it, was whenever you were looking far away, it seemed like it took away some depth. I'm talking about the part where theres a fade line, like if there was alot of fog in the sky (go look over seas to see what im talking about or over a long distance) it kind makes it alittle less foggy.

Other than that It worked out great. Will I use this setting next time I play guild wars? If I still have an Nvidia based graphics card by then, then yes.

[Ander Moonshadow]

I use a Radeon X600, and I don't think I could improve them... I was in awe about the lighting effect on my short-sword in Pre-Searing Ascalon, where the sun reflected off the sword into my eyes. Guild Wars has the greatest eye for graphic detail. If I'd have to give only one aspect of GW a 10/10, it'd be graphics.