Introduction

Last week CryTek finally released the 1.3 patch for Far Cry and it couldn’t have come soon enough – with DOOM 3 already out on store shelves and Half-Life 2’s release imminent, interest in older shooters like Far Cry is quickly waning. This is a bit of a shame really, as Far Cry has been praised by both mainstream press and gamers for its compelling gameplay and its wide variety of maps, which take place in lush tropical environments as well as indoors (unlike DOOM 3).

Far Cry is also a technological tour de force, with 2.0 pixel and vertex shaders and a good physics engine. With the 1.3 patch however, Crytek takes a good product and makes it even better. First, Crytek adds official support for pixel shader 2.0b and the 3.0 shader models. As we mentioned in our last Far Cry article, these newer shader models are used to improve performance and don’t affect image quality. For instance, using shader model 2.0b and 3.0, Crytek is able to collapse multiple lights into one pass in Far Cry 1.3: three lights per pass in the case for ATI X800 cards and four for NVIDIA GeForce 6. Geometry instancing is used to render common items such as jungle foliage in Far Cry’s multiple outdoor levels.

Research with HDR off

HDR on

Research demo HDR off

HDR on, note the glare off the objects underneath the lights

In the recalled 1.2 patch, these features were considered beta and had to be activated via the command line or console, with no official support if something went wrong. In Far Cry 1.3 however, both the 2.0b and 3.0 shader models are used by default if you have the supported hardware and set your visual quality options to the “Very High” setting in the main menu.

Arguably the most discussed new feature in Far Cry 1.3 however is high dynamic range lighting. As Cevat Yerli told us in our Far Cry interview, Crytek has implemented the GeForce6’s OpenEXR technology for HDR, and the results are pretty impressive:

HDR off

HDR on

Training HDR on

HDR off

HDR on

HDR off, color less vibrant

As you can see in the screenshots, bright objects emit significantly more light with HDR turned on. The original source isn’t the only object that’s lit brightly either, light reflects brightly off of other objects within the your environment, including the weapon you’re currently carrying. HDR is disabled by default, to turn it on use the “r_hdrrendering” command at the console or command line. Values range from 1-11, with 1 being the least intense lighting setting, and 11 being the highest; we used a setting of 6 for all our tests.

HDR is on

Note how subdued the sky is with HDR off

HDR on, again color more vibrant

HDR off

Unfortunately you’ll have to disable anti-aliasing if you chose to use HDR. As you’ll see in the following pages, HDR comes with a huge performance hit, even on the latest high-end GeForce 6800 Ultra cards, so this isn’t as big of a loss as you’d initially think.

HDR on

HDR off

HDR on here

HDR off, clouds obscure more light

In addition to HDR, Crytek has also added normal map compression for both ATI (X800 cards or better) and NVIDIA (GeForce FX or better) into Far Cry 1.3. This feature, like HDR, is disabled by default, but can be enabled by typing “r_TexNormalMapCompressed 1”. Unfortunately, Crytek currently uses normal map compression to optimize performance, rather than increase visual fidelity. In our initial quick and dirty testing with normal map compression we witnessed limited performance gains, so we elected not to run more detailed tests with it on for this article. What we have done however is test ATI and NVIDIA’s latest and greatest with and without shader model 2.0b/3.0, as well as HDR. Breaking from tradition, we’re using the stock demos that come with the 1.3 patch. This should make comparisons easier. If you recall in Far Cry 1.2, the biggest gains came in the indoor demos with lighting, Research and Volcano.

Let’s get on to the results!