Side by side comparison of options (beware lots of very large images)

Here is a post I made on the ubi forums regarding the options in the game. The parlax image (last one) is reported as being useless since there is nothing in the scene to show off the paralax option, so I'll make another post below this one with the links to images that another user made on the ubi forums showing off paralax.

Note that each image should be clickable so that you can see the image at it's full 1680x1050 screen size.

Hello,

First off I want to apologize to our friends reading this thread that are on dialup accounts or really slow broadband accounts for the large images shown here. I left the images in their original 1680x1050 (roughly) resolution so that people could see the differences that smaller images might not show.

Here is how this works... I have taken 2 images for many of the in game options and then with the image that had an option turned on, i cut it roughly down the middle and pasted it on the image that had the option turned off in hopes that people could see the difference. I've left out some options simply because I wanted every shot to be the same and some options might not be available on both sides of the screen so it would be pointless to show those images.

Here we go...

000 *ORIGINAL_IMAGE.jpg*

This is the original image taken, all options are turned to high, and shader is turned to high with all options turned on. The only things off are the Anti Aliasing and the Multisampling are both turned off (unchecked). You could say this is the base comparison screen shot that you will need to refer to further down in one of the side by side comparisons.

Some key places to note on the original base image is the right front tower of the castle and the prestige item in the bottom center of the screen for their clarity, as these two areas sometimes show a big difference depending on the options chosen in the settings panel.

001 *AA_IMAGE_ONE.jpg*

Anti Aliasing (AA)
This image is with the Anti Aliasing option turned on and off. The right side of the screen shows AA turned on and likewise the left side of the screen has the AA turned off.

Note: Note how the right front tower of the castle has been blurred from turning on AA, andhow the buildings on the AA On side at the bottom are also quite a bit less sharp than the buildings on the left side of the screen.

002 *MS_ON_IMAGE_ONE.jpg*

Multisampling
Instead of writing a volume of text in this comparison thread, just remember, the left side of the screen is always going to be with the option turned off and the right side with the option turned on.

Note Notice in the Multisampling image how much more blurried the right front castle tower is than the left one, also notice the prestige item in the bottom middle it's cut in half just about and a huge difference is noticed on this object with MS turned on or off.

003 *UPSCALING_LOW.jpg*

Upscaling
The easiest place to see the real difference that upscaling provides between Low and High, is to look at the prestige item near the bottom of the image, what you'll note is that the left side of the screen is reasonably sharp and detailed while the right side of the image is blurry and lacking details on the buildings, items etc. The prestige item clearly shows the difference as the left side of it is reasonably crisp and the right side is definitely blurry and lacking detail. And all the buildings on the right side of the screen are extremely lacking detail compared to the left side which has upscaling turned to high.

004 *LowshaderSettings.jpg*

I just wanted you to see what options are turned off when the shader setting is turned to low, all those missing checkmarks are not there because all of those options get turned off when using the simple shader option of low, medium or high. I'm only showing the difference between low and high today.

Note Please note that while the settings panel shows the upscaling turned to low, that was not the case, I just took the shot before changing that. I assure you tht the upscaling was turned to high for the comparison image as you can see by the prestige item bottom center with the amount of detail that is on it, if the upscaling was turned off, that item looses just about all detail.

005 *LOWSHADERQUALITY.jpg*

Shader
I'm only showing the difference between Low and High so that the difference can be seen most clearly. The High quality shader is on the left, Low quality shader on the right. As you can see there is a huge difference in quality between low shaders (and the loss of all those options shown in the image above this one) and the high shader options (shown on the left side of this image).

006 *DEPTHOF_FIELD.jpg*

Depth of Field
I don't think I need to explain this, it may be hard for some to see, but objects further away are blurred more than the foreground. This is what is known as Depth of Field.

007 *CLUTTEROFF.jpg*

Clutter
To best show the difference, I've deviated from my normal side by side comparison and am using the same left side of the image on both sides of this image. This allows you to best see what the clutter is. The left side is Clutter on high and the right side of the image is with Clutter turned all the way off. Come to think of it I probably should have done this type of comparison from the beginning, but I apologize, it's too late to switch now as I've got too much time into the side by side images already.

008 *SHADOWS_OFF.jpg*

Shadows
Both the shadows image here and the Shader image above obviously show the most difference in the game, when turning off shadows it not only turns off the shadows but also darkened the entire screen.

009 *PARALAX_OFF*

Paralax
Thanks to Howl-UK, I've updated this image to a new one at ground level. Image is marked on and off for the respective sides with regards to Paralax.

Well, that is all of the side by side comparison shopping I've done, while I could go through the settings options and turn off each individual item (the options on the right side of the settings page like paralax and depth of field, ambient whatever etc) unfortunately I don't have enough time to do so since I've got to exit the game and load the saved game each time that I make a change to the settings to ensure the options I chose activate or deactivate as the case may be for each screen shot image option and that just takes a lot of time on my computer (exiting to the menu, then loading the saved game for each option).

If anybody wants to do the rest of the options feel free to add to this thread, I hope that it helps people wondering about what the options do and how it changes things by what you choose.