Image Quality, Continued
The cone of light produced by the flashlight in FarCry v1.1.
Thanks to the new patch, the cone of light is now actually visible on the GeForce 5950 Ultra as well, albeit with a great number of visual artifacts. The GeForce 6800 now displays this effect correctly. Shader Model 3.0 also seems to focus the cone just a bit more. This would also explain why the screenshots of the SM3.0 code path showed duller reflections. On the whole, the flashlight's intensity is a little lower in the new code path.
Test Setup
The new patch v1.2 includes four pre-recorded timedemos for the levels "Research," "Regulator," "Cooler," "Training," and "Volcano." A benchmark run can be started using a batch file. This type of benchmarking is a bit problematic in FarCry, however. For one thing, there are a number of AI-controlled enemies moving around the scene that will behave slightly differently in each of the benchmark runs. The other problem is that savegames are stored on HD at certain locations during the timedemo. Consequently, the results can differ to a certain degree between benchmarks runs even on the same video card. The fps-values only become almost constant after about three or four benchmark loops. Another way of benchmarking the game would be to take a saved game in which all enemies have been, uhm, "removed" from the map and in which the entire map has already been explored. Unfortunately, it seems that the saved games from FarCry v1.1 no longer work with the new patch applied, at least with the version available to us.
