Last Updated on Saturday, 05 April 2008 01:04 Friday, 04 April 2008 10:11

One area where BHFO deviates from our "maximum settings available" benchmarking standard is with Crysis under DX9. Fervently resisting an upgrade to Vista last year, we were trying to access the "Very High" settings available only under DX10. We thought back to our much younger days of editing the configuration files for Far Cry to push the engine to its limits. After investigating the root directory of Crysis, we found (\Game\Config\CVarGroups\) fourteen "sys_spec*.cfg" files and our solution.

These files have labels such as "GameEffects," "ObjectDetail," "Particles," etc. Within the files are variable settings for four different detail levels. The standard settings of Low, Medium, and High have a corresponding section number from [1] to [3]. The locked settings of "Very High" are located in the default [4] section of the configuration file. To achieve "Very High" under XP, the variables from section [3] are copied over section [2], and the section [4] variables are copied to section [3]. If a user performs this process on thirteen of the fourteen files (minus sound), the default High setting will pass "Very High" variables to the game engine.

Essentially, the computer reads the settings of Low, Medium, High, and Very High as normal, but the actual settings passed to the game engine are Low, High, Very High, and Very High. BHFO does not recommend changing these settings unless the user understands what the variables affect. This process also deletes the default Medium settings, making them no longer a possibility with modified files. Assuming no responsibility, the modified configuration files are available in a Zip file here. Simply extract the contents into the install directory under \Game\Config\CVarGroups\. Always make a backup before extracting or modifying any files.

The resulting gaming experience provides similar visual quality to DX10, minus some effects that DX9.0C cannot handle. The major differences are in lighting, rendering, and physics accuracy, but the average user cannot tell the difference. Gamespot has an excellent Crysis piece comparing the differences between settings, including the modified XP settings. It is obvious that Crytek limited display options, which artificially inflates the difference in DX9 and DX10 gaming experiences. At those early stages last year, the maturity of DX9 programming left little reason to force an OS change, something that Microsoft did not appreciate.

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