What are the effects of enabling bloom and hiresterrain?

[NewbieOne]

What are the results of enabling bloom and hi-res terrain in your settings.txt? What are the requirements for those to work?

Here's my settings.txt:

gui=
{
language=l_english
has_set_language=yes
}
graphics=
{
size=
{
x=1920
y=1080
}

refreshRate=60
fullScreen=yes
borderless=yes
shadows=no
shadowSize=2048
multi_sampling=2
anisotropic_filtering=0
gamma=50.000000
}
sound_fx_volume=100.000000
music_volume=100.000000
scroll_speed=50.000000
camera_rotation_speed=50.000000
zoom_speed=50.000000
mouse_speed=50.000000
master_volume=100.000000
ambient_volume=59.000000
mapRenderingOptions=
{
draw_terrain=yes
draw_water=yes
draw_borders=yes
draw_trees=yes
draw_rivers=yes
draw_postfx=yes
draw_sky=yes
draw_bloom=no
draw_tooltips=yes
draw_hires_terrain=no
draw_citysprawl=yes
}
camera_speed=50.000000
camera_tilt=100.000000
centered_zoom_in=yes
lastplayer=""
lasthost=""
serveradress="diplomacy.valkyrienet.com"
autosave="HALFYEAR"
difficulty="NORMAL"
outliner=
{
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 13 8 10 }
outliner_open=no
windowmovetime=0.200000
disable_wikipedia_links=no
nudge_allowed=no
dont_track_data=no
has_made_data_tracking_choice=yes
hints=no
ironman=no
mp_max_day_lead=7
compress_autosaves=no
old_gods_pagan_hint_forced=yes
old_gods_non_pagan_hint_forced=yes
disabled_hints=
{
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 }
autosaves_to_keep=0
last_mods=
{
mod/A Game of Thrones.mod }
low_res_textures=no
force_pow2_textures=no
custom_mapmodes=
{
1 5 6 0 3 }
last_used_id="76561198031224465"

Anything I might wish to tweak here while at it? What multisampling level? What about anisotropic filtering?

PC Config: E7600 CPU (Core 2 Duo clocked at 3.33 GHz), 4 GB RAM (DDR 2 800 MHz gaming sticks with heatsinks and lower latencies), nVidia 460GTX (the Gigabyte version with a larger heatsink and two fans), oldish Samsung F1 HDD.

I play at full HD res, usually max speed.

Thanks.

 

[AndrewT]

No, I don't see anything in there that needs changing.

What actual problem are you trying to solve?

 

[NewbieOne]

Only wondering if blur or hiresterrain does anything useful. I thought my PC was autodected as being too weak to manage them, but it seems they're off by default... Any reason they're still in?

I'm also kinda wondering what level of multisampling to use and what to do with the anisotropic variable. Is it boolean or do you need to set a specific value like 4 or 8 etc.?

 

[AndrewT]

You can see in system.log what values the game detects for things like multi-sampling. I've never seen anisotropic filtering set to anything except 0. the has set you to

draw_bloom=no
draw_hires_terrain=no

because I guess it judges your video card is not up to supporting those and getting decent game speed as well.

In all honesty, I don't have any idea what criteria the game uses to pick those values, sorry. Feel free to experiment though!