@Openedge: Yeah, I knew Turbine hasn’t fully implemented DX10 in their games, and since they haven’t done that in the past two years I see no reason to expect a legitimate full implementation of DX11 either.

I actually did use your article even with the 7950GT, though with that card once I tweaked some options the way I wanted them I could simply switch Shader Model versions. I could leave all the grass stuff on for screenshots, etc. but it didn’t actually render unless I selected SM3.0 in the options, so simply selecting 2.x or 2.0 would automatically give me extra framerate. Switching down to 2.0 from 2.x also improved performance but I couldn’t always tell exactly what was being altered other than I could see a slight shifting in textures, etc. But once I get more time to tweak things, hopefully I’ll find a sweet spot.

The shadowing makes a big difference, in my opinion, though. It’s from every tree in the game in every area and can really have an impact.

Still had the Nvidia card in? Bugger…lol

Well, I am glad it worked out in the end.

Now, on to LOTRO, I think I had mentioned before, but DX10 is not a 100% implementation in the game. The characters are not changed, and only trees, shadows and water were worked on. Texture mapping and ambient shadows were NOT added. So, for visual changes, LOTRO did not offer much. Maybe when they go DX11, it might.

Age of Conan though is truly a delight in DX10. Shafts of light through trees, shadow mapping textures on armor and enhanced blur and radial blurs on fatalities…impressive.
Just make sure to check out my article I sent you on making some optimizations to the game to help squeeze out more frames.

http://simple-n-complex.blogspot.com/2009/09/age-of-conan-ati-5870-by-numbers.html

Cheers

Yeah, whenever a game seems to be pushing my computer too hard, shadows are the first thing I lower. Draw distance is the other thing.

Let me know when you’re red to spill blood in BfME2. :)

Uh, sorry, but Shepard is the commanding officer and there is no reason he would be locked out of part of his ship.

I just had to LOL.

I’ve thought about an ME MMO a couple of times, but I’m not sure it would work (at least for me). Mass Effect, so far, has been all about the character relationships that you form, and that’s not something that translates well to an MMO. I think it would be the difference between Star Trek on TV and Star Trek Online. Admittedly I enjoy both, but I think Bioware would face a lot of the same issues that Cryptic has grappled with. I would much rather see more Mass Effect games, books, and even some movie adaptations first in order to develop the background more.