Bethesda suggests Rage users turn down the resolution

GAMES PUBLISHER Bethesda has posted configuration file tweaks in a bid to cure graphical problems in Rage.

Rage, which was developed by ID Software and published by Bethesda, has left PC gamers in a state of anger with numerous complaints of 'image popping' and poor texture quality. Now Bethesda has come out recommending a few seemingly minor tweaks to the Rage configuration file, claiming it might cure problems.

Yesterday it was widely reported that Rage, which uses ID Software's latest Tech 5 engine, was causing PC gamers severe problems despite what video card they used and custom 'Rage enabled' drivers. It was a sorry start to what should have been legendary games developer John Carmack's latest and greatest game engine.

Before Bethesda put out its recommendations the firm said, "The texture streaming is limited by the performance and number of cores of the main processor (CPU)." It suggested that those who own an Nvidia video card should turn on GPU transcoding and lower the vt_maxPPF value depending on the number of processor cores available.

Eventually Bethesda concluded by saying, "You may, for instance, observe slow texture streaming at high resolutions like 2500 x 1600 with anti-aliasing set to 16X. In some cases lowering the anti-aliasing to 8X fixes the problem but lower settings may further improve the texture streaming. Alternatively, or in addition, you can lower the resolution." Essentially the firm recommended playing the game at lower graphics settings to try to mitigate any problems, a pretty poor answer for gamers who spend hundreds on high-end processors and graphics cards.

The consensus seems to be that the configuration file changes do mitigate image popping issues, however texture quality remains poor. One gamer posted a screenshot to compare the texture quality in Doom 3, which uses ID's Tech 4 engine and Rage, which uses the latest Tech 5 engine. From the picture it is surprising that Doom 3 is the title that is over seven years old.

Given that Rage graphics problems do not appear on the Xbox 360 version of the game and Bethesda's less than stellar handling of PC gamers' complaints, this serves as yet another advertisement for console gaming. µ