Date:
Monday , February 23, 2009
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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F.E.A.R. 2 Gameplay Performance and IQ

F.E.A.R. 2 is here for all of you to get your Alma fix. But is Alma Wade the only terrifying part of the game, or will the performance make you want to crawl out of your skin too? We'll find out with seven of today's most popular video cards.

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Evaluating Gameplay in F.E.A.R. 2

F.E.A.R 2 is a DirectX 9 only game. There is no DX10 option at this time. Nonetheless, it has a pleasing amount of graphics options. However, almost all of those options can only be accessed through the main menu. After you start a game, the only graphics option available to you is the resolution and brightness. So, in order to change settings in-game, you have to either change them before you start a game or load a saved game, or exit a current game back to the main menu.

Firstly, before we dive into the graphics options, there are a few graphics-related items in the game's README.TXT file you need to be aware of:

Forcing on Anisotropic Filtering in your video card driver settings may cause visual anomalies when playing.

During our testing, we did not experience any visual anomalies when using the AF setting in either the NVIDIA control panel or the AMD Catalyst Control Center. However, since F.E.A.R. 2 has an in-game selector for AF that goes up to 16X, we used that option instead of the control panel selectors. Even though we did not see the problem, our readers need to make sure they are aware of this potential issue.

Running the game using Crossfire (AMD’s solution for using two video cards at once) can result in significant graphical corruption. Disabling Catalyst AI in the Catalyst Control Center should clear up this corruption. We are currently communicating with AMD regarding this issue.

Again, we did not experience this problem. Keep in mind, however, that we did not test this game with multiple graphics cards. We tested it with the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which is a single-card CrossFire solution, and we did not see a graphical corruption problem. It is possible that the issue is related to multiple discrete graphics cards, rather than multi-GPU graphics cards.

Running the game using Crossfire (AMD’s solution for using two video cards at once) shows little to no performance improvement over using one AMD video card. We are currently communicating with AMD regarding this issue.

On February 20, 2009, AMD released the WHQL qualified Catalyst Driver package version 9.2, which added a CrossFire profile for F.E.A.R. 2, which should fix CrossFire-related performance degradation issues. Therefore, for AMD video cards, especially multi-GPU variations, use Catalyst 9.2 for this game for the best performance. This evaluation will be using Catalyst 9.2.

Graphics Settings

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Graphics options are accessed in F.E.A.R. 2 by selecting "Options" and then "Performance" from the game's main menu. In the first menu provided, there are only 2 actual options. The first allows you to select the resolution you want to use, and the second allows you to adjust the game's brightness. Some parts of F.E.A.R. 2 are very dark, so a proper calibration of the brightness to your comfort level is key. Between the resolution and brightness selectors is an item that allows you to apply the selected resolution. The game will quickly apply the resolution and prompt you to confirm it. If you don't confirm the change within 15 seconds, the game will change back to the previously selected resolution.

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The "Effects Detail" option toggles some effects, such as heat distortion and thick glass distortion. The "Particle Bouncing" option changes the bouncing behavior of particle effects, such as broken glass. In our testing, we did not see a considerable difference in how the particles bounces regardless of what this setting was on. We also did not notice a performance change, likely due to our fast quad-core CPU. The "Shell Casings" option toggles the creation of spent shells normally produced when firing a weapon in F.E.A.R. 2. The "World Detail" setting alters the detail density of the game world. Lowering this option removes things like rubble piles and destroyed iron beams.

The "Sound Quantity" Limit is not a graphics option, but is found in the Performance controls. It simply lowers the maximum number of sound effects that can be played simultaneously in the game. The "Water Resolution" option changes the resolution of effects applied to the surface of water objects. The "FSAA" option is the Anti-Aliasing selector. You can select between Off, 2X, and 4X MSAA in-game. Forcing a higher level of AA does work from both the NVIDIA control panel and the AMD Catalyst Control Center.

The "Texture Level of Detail" option changes the resolution of textures used to render all objects in the game. If you are very low on video memory (as in 256MB or lower), you may need to lower this option. The "Enable Shadows" option does exactly what it sounds like it does: it toggles shadows. The "Texture Filtering" option allows you to select the AF level you want, from Off, all the way up to 16x.

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The "Light Detail" option controls the level of detail of light sources in the game. Most of the detail difference is observable in the form of shadows cast by the lights. The "Shadow Detail" only has an effect if the "Enable Shadows" option is turned on, and it alters the number of shadows drawn in any given scene. The "Vertical Sync" option is usually referred to as VSYNC, and instructs the game to update the frame only after the previous frame is completely drawn according to the monitor's vertical refresh rate, usually 60 to 120 Hz. This option automatically limits the framerate to the refresh rate of the monitor (60 for most LCD displays) and can introduce input lag in some cases. As a rule, we disable VSYNC everywhere we find it.

The "HDR" option toggles the use of High Dynamic Range lighting in the post-processing phase of rendering. Simply speaking, HDR enhanced contrast by making dark spots darker and bright spots brighter. It also "overexposes" lights and reflections to give a super-bright gleaming quality to some objects or surfaces. The "Model Decals" option changes the number of "decals" (small detail textures such as bullet-holes) made on characters. During intense combat, large amounts of damage decals can affect performance, but in our testing, it did not prove problematic at the highest setting. The "Motion Blur" option toggles the motion blur effect, which is applied when in reflex mode, when turning the character quickly, and on fast-moving objects.

The "Reflections and Displays" option disables some reflective surfaces and some active "display" surfaces such as televisions and computer monitors found in some of the offices in the game. And finally, the "Ambient Occlusion" option toggles the use of the Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) lighting technique, which can give some scenes more realistic depth by applying shading and/or lighting on some surfaces, especially character models. SSAO is a very complex graphical technique used in quite a few games such as Crysis: Warhead and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky. More information can be found here.

Transparent Texture Anti-Aliasing

We experimented with NVIDIA's Transparency Anti-Aliasing and AMD's Adaptive Anti-Aliasing with mixed results. While we did sometimes experience a measurable performance impact, we did not detect an improvement in image quality. Further, there are not many scenes in which TRAA or ADAA are useful in F.E.A.R. 2, so due to the apparently fruitless impact on performance quality, we left TRAA and ADAA disabled during performance testing.

The Test Procedure

We found that performance in F.E.A.R. 2 was less about finding ideal framerates, and more about finding a smooth gameplay quality. Quite frequently, we found ourselves looking at framerates that measured in the 40s and 50s, but found that the game itself was jittery, unresponsive, and laggy. Thus, the framerates we measured were abnormally high, while the gameplay itself was just right.

During our testing we found that the second section, "Interval 02", contained the most demanding scenery in the game. It is entirely indoors, and begins with Sergeant Becket waking up in a hospital room, then tasked with arming himself and escaping. Our test consists of the first 10 minutes of this section, in which the character explores the hospital, arms himself, and does combat with more than a few enemy soldiers.