MGE Rev Preview

MGSO v3.0 MGE Options Preview Last Updated: 24.09.2012

MGSO for dummies – MGE Options Preview /13

MGE Options Preview Document

This document previews most of the options present in the MGE Options tool that comes with Morrowind

Overhaul. It will help you to customize your Morrowind installation to fit your tastes and PC performance!

This guide is built for the following versions of MGE:

MGE Rev 186

MGE Rev 186 without foam

MGE Rev 178

If you are running MGE XE please read the “MGE_XE_Preview” document.

Table of contents Global graphics and rendering options................................................................................................................... 3

Anti-Aliasing Filtering ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Anisotropic Filtering ........................................................................................................................................... 4

More mipmap bias detail ................................................................................................................................... 5

vSync .................................................................................................................................................................. 6

Show FPS Counter .............................................................................................................................................. 6

Shaders Options ..................................................................................................................................................... 6

High quality shaders ........................................................................................................................................... 6

Bloom and HDR .............................................................................................................................................. 6

Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) for interiors and exteriors .................................................................................... 6

Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) for interiors only .................................................................................................. 6

Depth Of Field (DoF) ....................................................................................................................................... 6

Godrays (sunshafts) ........................................................................................................................................ 6

Underwater Blur and Water Wobble.............................................................................................................. 6

Low quality shaders ............................................................................................................................................ 6

Bloom ............................................................................................................................................................. 7

Ambient Occlusion ......................................................................................................................................... 7

Sunshafts ........................................................................................................................................................ 7

Enable Shaders ................................................................................................................................................... 7

Distant Land Options – Part 1 ................................................................................................................................. 8

Land Textures ..................................................................................................................................................... 8



Resolution and NormalMap resolution .......................................................................................................... 8

Land Meshes ...................................................................................................................................................... 9

World mesh detail .......................................................................................................................................... 9

Land Statics ........................................................................................................................................................ 9

Minimum static size........................................................................................................................................ 9

Grass density percent ..................................................................................................................................... 9

Use Distant Land............................................................................................................................................... 10

Distant Land Options – Part 2 ............................................................................................................................... 11

General settings ............................................................................................................................................... 11

Shader model ............................................................................................................................................... 11

Draw distance ............................................................................................................................................... 11

Use exponential fogging ............................................................................................................................... 11

Water ............................................................................................................................................................... 12

Reflect sky .................................................................................................................................................... 12

Reflect landscape ......................................................................................................................................... 12

Reflect nearby statics ................................................................................................................................... 12

Reflect distant statics ................................................................................................................................... 12

Blur reflections ............................................................................................................................................. 12

Dynamic ripples ............................................................................................................................................ 13

Water waves ................................................................................................................................................. 13

Caustic intensity ........................................................................................................................................... 13

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................ 13



Global graphics and rendering options These settings are general graphics settings that you can find in most PC games nowadays.

Anti-Aliasing Filtering Anti-Aliasing is a filter that helps to smooth the edges of the in-game objects to improve graphics quality. It has

a moderate impact on performance.

Preview:

See how the edges are smoother with AA?



Anisotropic Filtering Anisotropic is another filter that can improve image quality. This filter enhances the quality of textures that are

visualized at oblique angles, such as terrain. The impact on performance is smaller than Anti-Aliasing.

Preview:

As you can see, the textures placed on an oblique plane gain a lot of detail.



More mipmap bias detail This is another option that enhances the quality of the textures. On some resolutions the textures could flicker.

This option has almost no impact on performance.

Preview:

As you can see the texture looks way more detailed with LOD Bias option on!

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/flickering



vSync vSync is a technique to prevent screen artifacts. I suggest leaving it enabled unless it causes specific problems.

It has (almost) no effect on performance. When vSync is on the maximum framerate will be the same as the

screen refresh frequency.

Show FPS Counter Simply shows a tiny FPS counter on the upper left corner of the screen:

Obviously, it doesn’t affect performance.

Shaders Options In this section you can tweak the shaders to affect the look of your game. Shaders are pretty heavy on

performance, but they can make the difference visually!

High quality shaders This section contains the shaders that look the best, but also have the heaviest impact on performance.

Bloom and HDR

This Wikipedia Page explains Bloom and its visual effects. It has a moderate effect on performance and also

adds HDR, another cool effect.

Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) for interiors and exteriors

This page explains SSAO and its visual effects. This shader is quite heavy on performance and should only be

used with fast configurations, otherwise your FPS may degrade too much!

Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) for interiors only

This shader behaves like the one before, but it works only on interiors. This is because usually the performance

is better in interiors.

Depth Of Field (DoF)

This Wikipedia page explains DoF (it’s from photography but it works the same with games). It’s quite

demanding on performance and some might dislike it.

Godrays (sunshafts)

This shader is meant to simulate the crepuscular rays. It looks very good but affects performance.

Underwater Blur and Water Wobble

Low quality shaders This section contains shaders that are of lower quality than the ones in High quality, but perform a lot better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_(shader_effect)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_rendering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_space_ambient_occlusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepuscular_rays



Bloom

Same as the high quality one but without HDR. It looks worse but has better performance.

Ambient Occlusion

Same as the high quality one but much less impressive. It looks worse but has better performance.

Sunshafts

Same as the high quality one but much less impressive. It looks worse but has better performance.

Enable Shaders With this checkbox you can enable or disable all the shaders. No shaders means better performances, but also

a worse looking game.



Distant Land Options – Part 1 This section contains the first part of the options that affect Distant Land, a technique present in MGE and MGE

XE that lets you see further in the distance than you could in vanilla Morrowind. This is one of the features that

most users first notice when using MGSO.

Land Textures This section is used to set the textures used when drawing the Distant Land.

Resolution and NormalMap resolution

The resolution and the NormalMap resolution are two of the most noticeable options that affect Distant Land.

Higher values mean more quality, but if your videocard has a low amount of memory, values that are too high

can result in bad performance.

Preview:

As you can see, the distant landscape looks more detailed with higher resolutions.



Land Meshes The land mesh is the model that composes the terrain.

World mesh detail

The mesh detail level determinates how much the Distant Land terrain remains faithful to the original land (in

high quality). Higher values mean higher quality; lower values mean lower quality and worse looking Distant

Land.

Preview:

As you can see at Ultra High quality more polygons are used to render the Distant Land. The models are smoother and nicer.

Land Statics Land statics are the models that you can see on the terrain (such as trees, buildings, rocks, etc.).

Minimum static size

This option indicates the minimum size that an object should have in order to be shown in the distance. In

other words, if you keep this number low, you will see more objects in Distant Land. This means that for this

option “lower is better”! Watch out: it’s heavy on performance! With low numbers there is higher quality but

lower performance.

Grass density percent

This option affects the quantity of grass present on the ground. Higher values mean more grass and and a

greater performance hit. If you set this number to 0, you will completely disable the grass.



Use Distant Land This checkbox fully enables or disables the Distant Land feature.

Preview:



Distant Land Options – Part 2 Here are the remaining Distant Land options.

General settings These settings are the most influent in the Distant Land behavior.

Shader model

Select here the shader model. 3.0 means better quality and more features, but not all the videocards support it

and it’s heavier on performance. Exponential fogging and some water features won’t be available with shader

model 2.0.

Draw distance

The draw distance is one of the things that affect Distant Land. Basically, it represents how far you can see.

Higher values mean more land shown. This feature is really heavy on performance.

Preview:

You can use a low draw distance if you want to keep the old Morrowind’s feeling if you want. The default is six cells.

Use exponential fogging

Exponential fogging is available only with shader model 3.0. This feature uses another formula to create the in-

game fog, and it looks better. Remember that this feature is pretty heavy on performance so use it only with

fast computers.



Water As the title says, here you will find the options that affect the water.

Reflect sky

Select whether the water should or should not reflect the sky. This has a little effect on performance.

Reflect landscape

Select whether the water should or should not reflect the landscape. This has only a little effect on

performance.

Reflect nearby statics

Select whether the water should or should not reflect nearby statics. This has a moderate effect on

performance.

Reflect distant statics

Select whether the water should or should not reflect distant statics. This has a moderate effect on

performance.

Blur reflections

Select whether the water reflections should be blurred for a better look. This has only a little effect on

performance.

Preview of all reflections:



Dynamic ripples

Select whether the water should react with rain and when the player walks in it. This has only a little effect on

performance.

Water waves

Select whether the water should have dynamic waves. This has a moderate effect on performance.

Caustic intensity

This option affects the intensity of the caustics effect that you can see underwater. This has only a little effect

on performance.

Preview:

Conclusion I hope this document helped you a bit to understand how MGE and its options work! As always, have fun.

Kingpix, Ornitocopter Team.

http://www.ornitocopter.net

[email protected]

http://www.ornitocopter.net/

mailto:[email protected]

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