Rage

[el badman]

I figured I'd create a thread for this upcoming game, since it's probably gonna get a lot of attention in the coming weeks.
It's developed by id Software, which has been pretty quiet in the last few years, and published by the almighty Bethesda Softworks. Here's a quick description:

Rage is a groundbreaking first-person shooter set in the not-too-distant future after an asteroid impacts Earth, leaving a ravaged world behind. You emerge into this vast wasteland to discover humanity working to rebuild itself against such forces as raider gangs, mutants, and the Authority -- an oppressive government regime that has a special interest in you in particular.

Featuring intense first-person action, vehicle combat, an expansive world and jaw-dropping graphics powered by id's revolutionary idTech 5 technology, Rage continues the legacy of design studio Id Software in delivering an experience like no other.

It's the first game released using id's new Tech 5 engine, and here are the PC requirements:

Minimum
OS: Win XP SP3, Vista, Win 7
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo or Equivalent AMD
Memory: 2GB
Hard Disk Space: 25GB
Video Card: GeForce 8800, Radeon HD 4200

Recommended
OS: Win XP SP3, Vista, Win 7
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad or Equivalent AMD
Memory: 4GB
Hard Disk Space: 25GB
Video Card: GeForce 9800 GTX, ATI Radeon HD 5550

The game was apparently featured on Breaking Bad for some reason.
Here is the first TV spot and some pretty badass videos:

phpBB [video]

phpBB [video]

phpBB [video]

phpBB [video]

Can't wait for this stuff.

[Lamrock]

Jesse plays this in Breaking Bad!

[Lean]

Whoa what, 25GB?!?

With my current rig setup, I'm past Minimum yet miles behind Recommended. Weak.

[el badman]

Whoa what, 25GB?!? ]

Yeah, I was going to pre-order it from Steam this weekend, but fuck that, my connection is not the greatest and it would take me maybe 6-7 hours to download this...I'll just buy it from Best By on release day I guess.

[shadowgrin]

Whoa what, 25GB?!? ]

Yeah, I was going to pre-order it from Steam this weekend, but fuck that, my connection is not the greatest and it would take me maybe 6-7 hours to download this...I'll just buy it from Best By on release day I guess.

Whiny frenchie.
Some people take quarter or half a day to download 1 gig.

[el badman]

Really? I honestly thought my connection was pretty slow, but I guess I could be located in the armpit of the world...

[shadowgrin]

...or the gooch of the world.

[Lean]

Some people take quarter or half a day to download 1 gig.

Ditto.

[el badman]

I gave in, eventually decided to buy it off Steam, so I'm downloading it right now. Gonna take 8 hours or so...
Here's some more greatness in the meantime:

phpBB [video]

phpBB [video]

[el badman]

Just decrypted the game, and holy crap, it looks freaking gorgeous without any performance issue so far. However, there is a big problem with the way the textures are being streamed, you turned a little too quickly, and the textures load right in front of you, a bit like what was happening with Crysis: Warhead but worse...Hopefully they'll get this fixed fast.

[benji]

Do you have an ATI/AMD card?

phpBB [video]

[el badman]

Nope, I have a Nvidia GTX465 and the textures just pop right in front of your eyes. It looks like most people are experiencing this regardless of their rig, so that's an issue with the Tech 5 engine. Hopefully, a patch will fix this soon.

EDIT: seems to be related to the "megatextures" that were advertised by id for this game. Oh well, let's leave the whiners to their release-day bitching, it's too late to try to figure this out.

[benji]

360: http://www.nowgamer.com/siteimage/scale/0/0/296013.png
PS3: http://www.nowgamer.com/siteimage/scale/0/0/296052.png

dat dynamic resolution

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... older-fix/

It looks like the Texture Cache folder doesn't get created some/all of the time when you install.

Go to C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local replacing YourUserName with your windows login name and create a "id software\rage" folder structure. So you end up with the following folder:

C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local \id software\rage

Again replace YourUserName with your actual windows loging name.

Now when you run the game you will see 2 files in that folder FileCache000.bin and FileCacheHeader.bin. This improves performance greatly although I still see tearing even after forcing VSync with Catalyst Control Center.

[el badman]

Tried that, it does improve a little but the texture pop-ins is still very distracting...Also, upon further exploring, it appears that there are huge discrepancies as far as the resolution of textures. At least it does run perfectly smoothly on my fairly aging rig, with AFx16 and AAx4.

[el badman]

From the Steam forum, this has greatly decreased the texture pop-ins for me, without losing any performance (there is a still major issue with the texture LOD though):

Ive started the game with freezes every 30 seconds or so and terrible texture loading while turning.
Now Im playing with no freezing, beautiful High res textures and barely any texture lod problems AT ALL when turning.
I have GPU transcoding on. Im at 1280x1024 with full AA(?). In a shortcut for rage I have the following switches: +cvaradd g_fov 12 +com_allowconsole 1 +com_skipIntroVideo 1 +image_anisotropy 16 +image_usecompression 0 +g_showplayershadow 1 +m_smooth 0.

In rageconfig.cfg I have :
vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 8192
vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly 8192
vt_pageimagesizeunique 8192
vt_pageimagesizevmtr 8192

In Nvidia control panel for rage I have:
triple buffering
Maximum pre rendered frames @ 8
V-sync Force off
Physx set to GPU

My specs are:
AMD Athlon 2 X3 unlocked to X4 B25 @ 3.2Ghz
GTX460SE OC 648/1296/1700
WD 7200rpm sata 3 250GB
Win 7 64
4GB Gskill DDR2 1066
Nvidia driver 280.19

I noticed the biggest change after I changed Max pre rendered frames to 8, physx set to GPU, triple buffering, and no v-sync.
These combo of settings seem to have almost completely ridded the game of low lod texture pop in.