Introduction to fixes for a newb'

[Nocta 3]

Hi,

I'm new to PC gaming (in fact no but I stopped 10 years ago) and my memories remind me of painful crash stories (and no idea how to fix it back then) so here I am on your wiki and first of all: THANKS!

That's really awesome to have all those infos in one place.

But I'm wondering about all those fixes, when I see a game like BioShock Infinite which got a lot of fixes, do you apply them all before so then you're "sure" to be safe or is it better to use fixes only if you really have a problem?

 

Thanks a lot.
You'll see me around. :)

[Garrett 214]

Fixes that every player will want or need are noted in the Key points at the top of a page; other fixes are only needed if you're having that problem or want that result.

[Nocta 3]

Thanks Garrett. That's exactly what I wanted to know.

I realized also that there is often a tweak to modify the FOV, I have to admit that I'm used to the default one due to the fact I played consoles FPS only so far.

Do you guys have any recommendation for a FOV value that is nice for most games and to use as an "improved default"?

[Marioysikax 89]

Thanks Garrett. That's exactly what I wanted to know.

 

I realized also that there is often a tweak to modify the FOV, I have to admit that I'm used to the default one due to the fact I played consoles FPS only so far.

Do you guys have any recommendation for a FOV value that is nice for most games and to use as an "improved default"?

That's very common mistake to make. With consoles you are further away from the sceen and use sticks which move you with controlled speed. With PC you are much closer and use mouse, so it's much easier to get motion sick as you can move more quickly with mouse so brains can't keep up where you are moving because you are basically inside of an box. 

 

With regular 16:9 many says 90 is pretty much fine but some may want to go bit higher for either they simply want  so see more on competive games or they still feel sick after certain playsessions. Personally 100 seems fine as I use pretty large screen, just experiment, but I would suggest trying 90 as many games won't go higher than that without modifying. Some games default to ~90 or lower (COD goes as low as 65 before patch) and that's where the fixes comes in. 

 

Also remember to disable mouse smoothing/acceleration and make mouse speed pretty high so you have better control which also reduses physical pain in long sessions. When I started PC gaming my right hand was always in pain because I kept low speed and controller mouse with my whole arm :P

[Nocta 3]

Thanks Marioysikax, the things is...I plead guilty but I'm going to play with the x360 controller on a LCD screen from my couch so I guess I should keep the default FOV, no?

[Marioysikax 89]

FPS with stick, never got into that but I've seen people playing really good like that. At least PC gives more options than consoles, Mirror's Edge in 1080p stereoscopic 3D was amazing. 

Like stated on last post from couch with controller it really doesn't matter that much but it may start to look weird if you use too wide FOV. 

 

PCGW has pretty good article if you want to know more, including difference between PC monitor and TV from couch: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:Field_of_view_(FOV)

Also this video is really good explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blZUao2jTGA

[Nocta 3]

Thanks again Marioysikax, great links you're giving here!

[Nocta 3]

I have one last newb' question for you ! :)

 

What options should I use in general cases for PC Gaming (anisotropic filtering, vsync, triple buffering, windowed fullscreen...)?

I read the explanations about those in the wiki but some seems to have the same goal and I'm just not sure about the use of some others so I don't really know what to use...

 

Thanks in advance.

[Marioysikax 89]

They all have differend purposes, most of those improve visual quality. It would take ages to explain them so just look up PCGW and Wikipedia articles to know what does what. With beast machine it's simple to just put everything to the max but with lower end machine some may prefer other graphical settings than other. I prefer frame rate much over visual quality myself and I don't mind minor aliasing if game just runs smoothly. 

Then there's settings like windowed fullscreen which is generally used with dual screen setups and for quick alt-tabbing from-to game which has it's downsides as well. Then there's subjective things like motion blur and bloom which should be self explanitory. Some users hate them, I personally don't have problem with bloom but motion blur is always disabled when possible. 

[Nocta 3]

Thank you Marioysikax, once more!

I read the articles on PCGW already but didn't know if I could combine them.

It seems by your answer that yes and even all of them if the PC is beefy enough, I will try then!

See you around.

[Mirh 103]

Anisotropic filtering: fix texture blur in the distance. 16x is the almost always the recommended value, it has a very low performance hit

 

Vsync (=vertical synchronization) locks your framerate to the actual refresh rate of your screen.

But take note. If you have 50 FPS and your screen refresh 60hz.. framerate will be cut to the greatest common factor. So 30 FPS (video card simply scrapes extra frames)

 

Triple buffering: GPU can now store additional frames (with v-sync).

 

Windowed fullscreen: a fullscreen window without borders on the top of your desktop

[Nocta 3]

Thanks Mirh, that's everything I wanted to know.