Opinion: This game looks WAAAY better on low graphics

Am I the only one that seems to think the low graphics settings look the best?
Let's compare!

This is the high graphics setting.
To me, everything looks blurry in the distance, colors are faded out and washed away, and overall it looks like Vaseline was smeared on my monitor.
According to SOE, it's supposed to be the "best"???
Even the horizon and the clouds look dirty and smoggy, as if we're playing in L.A.



Here is medium.
Less blurry at distance, but colors are still hazy and washed out. You can see more color in the trees vs high settings though.



And here is low.
Way more color to trees, the ground, even the sky. You can actually see detail and different types of cloud formations.
No more hazy "Vaseline" look. Everything looks richer.



Maybe I just need glasses, but to me low is the clear winner.
I'd rather have rich colors, a defined sky filled with white clouds, no smog or dirty air on the horizon, actual green in my trees, and deeper blacks.
Look at the glove holding the gun. It actually looks like a freshly made black leather tactical glove. Look at the one in the "high" picture. It looks like it was sitting in a dusty closet for 20 years.

What do you guys think?
Am I alone here?

I play on ultra so it's another step up and I find it to be a lot prettier than low. For example your glove texture thing. The high detail one looks like a leather glove. The low detail one looks like a hunk of rubber. The low detail gun also looks like cheap plastic compared to the more metallic high detail gun. I find the textures on the higher settings to be more than enough of a reason to use them as much as possible. Also, most of the color sems to merely be a difference in contrast. There's a lot more dark black in the low settings.

Also, it's not daylight that's the most spectacular with higher settings. It's the nights. On low it's just a few lancing streaks of lights from bullets that all look the same. On ultra it's a glorious multi-color extravaganza which is often worth the sniper round to the face that you get when you stop to watch for a few seconds.

Truth be told, I run in low graphics because it's easier on the eyes as well. I really wish I could pick and choose what effects I wanted to run because some of the high/ultra settings look fantastic and others I'm really confused as to why I should spend resources on generating them. It's not a big deal, I get 30fps in heavy battles, but I'd rather be pulling 50fps and not have poorly done clouds rolling past.

As to the contrast thing, the lower contrast images at high resolution are more realistic since most things get whitewashed by intense sunlight irl; but yea, a contrast slider would have been much nicer.

I run on low too, I could run high but I want the best fps I can get as think its more important in a game like this than everything looking "nicer" (if high actually even does).

High lets you actually see **** with night vision optics, that's all that matters

That is the only reason mine is set to high, wish it wasnt the case.

Night is brighter in low graphic setting, especially in a building complex like amp station.

You got it. However I found out that on high you thing you may be hiding behind a bush or some detail object. Then you get popped because someone on low graffix does not ever see the bush. They just see you. Low unfortunately is much easier to play. But the look of high, especially at night. is spectacular.

Ideally you want the game to look something like this, but you need a decent rig and you're going to have to put up with 30-40 FPS in big engagements. I didn't see any shadows in the screenshots? Also you need to set texture quality to 0. My settings allow for reduced quality at a distance, which is what you want for better FPS, you shouldn't be inspecting anything that is very far away anyway

Anyway yeah this screenshot is a compromise between maximum quality and not having your computer smoking and trying to off itself.

Here's a random Indar, I used Amerish because I think it looks amazing.

You are smoking crack, dude. I play on Ultra @ 50fps and game play and eye candy is awesome.

the only reason i don't run on low is NV optics feel like their range is too short. also cloaked infiltrators used to be completely invisible on low for me, although i'm pretty sure they fixed that in a patch.

for me, this game on low looks like a bag of ****.

The step is so huge, if I play BF3 from low medium high to ultra, low doesnt look awful considering its the lowest

But then this, high looks good, but then low, even considering its the low version of that, looks like an absolute bag of ****.

It's not a bad thing mind, not everyone can afford super computers, I'd find a way for it to even out mind you though, blocky flora + shadows or something, as opposed to no bushes at all which adversely affects players playing on higher settings. Kinda annoying hiding in a bush/dark shade, unable to be seen but in reality, every player that has ****** graphics settings is seeing you crouch in an open field like a muppet.

Ultra is breathtaking but my rig can't quite handle it in any kind of decent fight I might actually try switching back to ultra but keeping render quality to 1.00 and keeping PhysX off. I stick with high settings except I switch texture quality to 0 and I switch on fog shadows (high has them off by default). I would recommend people try that if they want a balance between looking great and still being playable on a rig like mine. What number do you have all your graphics options set to, 4?

edit: Not shadows though, shadows stay set to 3 (high). Shadows are friggin gnarly.

low with ultra textures FTW

most stuff looks horrible on high - the only good setting to turn up is textures imo

Shadows is a MASSIVE resource hog, try turning that to one below the highest, or medium, and you'll be well away I reckon and I hardly notice that at all, don't sacrifice render quality!

Maybe even drop resolution from 1920 to 1660 (or whatever that one is), I can play fully ultra on 50fps if i go to that, as opposed to 30 on 1920.

I'll try dropping shadows to medium and see what they look like. Do you typically run with render at 1.00 or do you bump up to 1.41?

i5-2500k @ 4.5GHz O.C.
Asus Sabertooth z77 /w Turbo Boost (easy mode OC)
Asus AMD 7770 GHz Edition
8GB 1866 RAM
Win 7 - 64 bit

We have near identical systems. What is your Mobo? Check out some of the Asus high-end boards as they have bios software that can optimize and overclock your system. You may also check to see if your cores are parked or not.

I get 50+ fps at the Warpgate, 45~50 traveling the world and less than squad level engagement, 40~ in platoon level engagements and 35~40 in multi-platoon/armor engagements.

I don't know what the OP did but his looks like **** on all 3 settings... lol

I play on ultra and mine looks awesome

there are a bunch of MSI boards that are mid priced that have OC Genie which will OC for you and let you tune it up or down with buttons straight on the board...

my mobo is called Asus P8P67 Pro. I don't really know much about mobos. Can I just look up core parking and get all the info I need on it? I really want to look into it. Can you recommend a site for it?

Low is practically a different game/