![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, July 01, 2009
- Author:
- Mark Warner
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
Ghostbusters Gameplay Performance and IQ
Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters! That痴 right; a brand new video game marks the re-release of the feature film on Blu-ray. We値l take this game, which pays homage to the feature films perfectly, through our gauntlet of video cards to see what kind of value and gameplay experience you can get. We値l also see if the stories are true about this being a multi-core CPU aware game using CPU-based Physics.
Graphics Options in Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters on the PC is essentially a console port from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. As such, we really didn’t expect to see a plethora of options, and we were not surprised. There are eleven graphics options in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, several of which are useless. Still, it’s better than some other games we’ve seen lately, so we’ll remain optimistic about Ghostbusters.
There is no in-game AA option, and no in-game AF option in Ghostbusters. Thankfully, forcing AF from the NVIDIA and ATI control panels works just fine and enables 16X AF. However, forcing AA from the NVIDIA and AMD control panels does not work.
We found out that in order to run this game with proper antialiasing, AMD and NVIDIA are both going to have to write support into their drivers to make it work. An explanation as to why it doesn’t work may be that this game uses deferred rendering, and we have seen non-function AA in such games in the past. Unfortunately, it means we can’t use AA right now forced from the control panel because it just isn’t supported, and believe us, we wish it had functioning AA. There is another way that might help slightly, but it involves editing the INI configuration file and we will discuss that at the bottom of this page.
Graphics Card and Resolution
The Graphics Card option presumably allows gamers to select the graphics card and display upon which the game is rendered. The resolution option predictably allows the gamer to select from a wide range of resolutions supported by the video card and display device. Note that widescreen aspect ratios and narrower aspect ratios are fully supported.
Texture Detail
The Texture Detail option changes the resolution of textures applied to surfaces of some objects and world geometry. This setting has a very noticeable impact on gameplay image quality. It allows gamers with older video cards featuring smaller framebuffers to adapt performance accordingly.
Shadow Detail
The Shadow Detail option changes the precision of shadows cast by various lighting sources throughout Ghostbusters. This option has a noticeable impact on image quality, but not as noticeable as texture detail. This is a shader-intensive option, so gamers with older GPUs may need to reduce this setting from the maximum level.
Soft Particles
The Soft Particles option toggles the soft blending of particle sprites with intersecting geometry. This feature eliminates the hard line that can happen when a 2D sprite collides with a 3D object by smoothly blending the sprite at the intersecting edge. Despite what you may have heard, Soft Particles is not DX10 exclusive; it can in fact be used in DX9.0c as is being done here.
Persistent Debris
The Persistent Debris option removes the small pieces of debris that are spawned when some objects are destroyed. This does not affect all pieces of debris. It only affects smaller pieces that can no longer be manipulated.
Shadow Maps
The Shadow Maps option toggles the use of shadow mapping techniques for some pre-calculated landscape shadows. Its overall effect on image quality is minor, to say the least.
Mirror Detail
The Mirror Detail option controls what objects are reflected in the game’s few mirrors. At high, all objects are reflected. At low, only static meshes are reflected.
Book Detail
The Book Detail option determines the distance from the camera at which books are no longer rendered by the graphics and physics engines. Gamers with single-core CPUs might consider lowering this setting.
Multi-GPU Scaling with SLI and CrossFire
During our testing, we found that Ghostbusters did not scale at all on multiple-GPU AMD video cards, and scaled only a very tiny amount on NVIDIA video cards. We asked AMD and NVIDIA for a response, and this is their feedback on multi-GPU support:
From AMD: Ghostbusters does not currently include a profile for CrossFire, but Catalyst 9.7 will be adding CrossFire support for Ghostbusters.
From NVIDIA: Yes, we do have a profile for the game, though scaling is quite low given that the game isn’t very demanding. Low end GPUs (9600 etc) might see better results.
So there you have it. NVIDIA does currently support SLI in Ghostbusters with their current drivers, which means SLI support out of the box when playing Ghostbusters. AMD currently does not support CrossFire in Ghostbusters and plans to add that support sometime in July, which means you cannot benefit from CrossFire out of the box with this game.
Also, NVIDIA may be right about SLI scaling being better with lower-end video cards, as this game does not support AA, and it runs like butter as you will see, there just isn’t a lot there to push the GPUs of high-end video cards.
Anti-Aliasing Support
As we indicated at the top of this page, there is no Anti-Aliasing option in this game’s graphics settings. In addition to that, attempting to force AA from either the NVIDIA Control Panel or the ATI Catalyst Control Center is not effective, leaving us without any formal use of AA for Ghostbusters.
However, there are a pair of options in the game’s INI file (found in: "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\GHOSTBUSTERS (tm)\setings.ini" ) which read:
antiAliasMultipleX=1
antiAliasMultipleY=1
So, we experimented with these settings. As it turns out, it is not real multisampling (or supersampling) AA. It is a sort of shader-based full-screen blur effect. It is effective at eliminating the jagged edge of aliasing, but it has a couple of drawbacks as well, as shown in the following screenshot comparisons. For this image, we set the above two lines to a value of 2.
First, notice that the jagged edges are successfully reduced. That part is good. The problem is that it isn’t only the aliased edges that are blurred. If you look at the magnified portion of the warning text on the Ghostbuster’s proton pack, you can see that, while the original version is clear, the version with "AA" applied is not clear and very blurry. With traditional AA, this doesn’t happen, as the graphics card only smoothes edges of geometry, rather than the entire frame. We’ve seen shader based AA used in other games that utilize deferred rendering, and what happens is that shader based AA simply makes regular textures very blurry when in use.
The other problem is that of performance. With the setting as it is when the game is installed (both lines set to 1) the above scene renders at 107 frames per second. With the INI setting at 2, it rendered at 37 frames per second, for a performance penalty of 65%. We also tried it at 4, and the game became a slideshow running at 5 frames per second.
So, for Ghostbusters, control panel AA doesn’t work, and the INI option is basically unacceptable.
Our Evaluation Process
During our gameplay test, we found that the "Lost Island" level presented the most intense challenge for our graphics cards in Ghostbusters. Overall, performance is quite high through most of the game, but the Lost Island is uncharacteristically slower than the rest of the levels.
For our gameplay evaluation of Ghostbusters, we loaded up the "Lost Island" level, starting at the "Million-Dollar View" checkpoint. The test consists of the "Million-Dollar View", "On The Ramparts", "The Hedge Maze", "Gaining Entrance", and "Black Mass" stages. The test takes 6 to 8 minutes and takes us through grand exterior areas and close interior quarters.