Rage PC patch adds graphics features

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 10 October, 2011

id explains lack of hardware configuration.

id Software has released a patch for the PC version of Rage.

It adds a number of hardware configuration options, including VSync (allows you to remove screen tearing), Anisotropic Filter (enhances the image quality of textures on surfaces), and the option to adjust the use of a texture cache (to keep more texture data in video memory).

Rage on PC has endured a difficult launch, with fans reporting a raft of performance issues id has blamed on drivers.

Fans also complained at the lack of hardware configuration options, which would allow them to tweak the visual settings of the FPS.

On Steam, where the patch is available to download, an explanation of sorts was offered.

"Rage defaults to lower video settings to allow the game to work on a wide variety of hardware and software configurations," id said. "Unfortunately, it is not possible to anticipate all possible graphics driver issues in combination with unique end user hardware and software configurations.

"For this reason Rage does not automatically increase video/graphics settings as this could result in negative side effects on specific hardware and software configurations. The original release of Rage does not expose many video/graphics options for people to tweak because some of these settings, although desirable from a quality perspective, simply will not work on specific configurations either due to hardware limitations and/or driver bugs."

This latest update, however, undoes this limitation.

"Due to popular demand for more video and graphics options, this patch updates the video settings menu and exposes several quality and performance settings," continues the note. "However, not everyone may be able to increase the settings due to hardware limitations and/or driver bugs."

The patch also fixes a number of graphical issues associated with driver conflicts.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (55) Latest comment 8 months ago

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  • ubergine #1 8 months ago

    I hope the fixes aren't too late, many people may have already... ragequit.

  • Stratix #2 8 months ago

    id of all people should know not to limit the PC gamers' ability to tweak their games to their heart's content.

    That's what makes PC different.

  • Nazo #3 8 months ago

    So is this id's first game on PC or something?
    This sounds lame from one of the industry's oldest devs.

  • bad09 #4 8 months ago

    @Stratix & Nazo

    Rage was built for consoles (probably the real reason there was no graphics options). “We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games.” says Carmack, basically we are lucky to even get this port from ID I wouldn't expect too much from them.

  • Tyronne #5 8 months ago

    You would think with the pc heritage id has, that they would have enabled this kind of thing from the very beginning,it screams of short sightedness to me and that I hope they change their ways for future releases on the pc.

  • Inmediasress #6 8 months ago

    Yes this is the lamest excuse comming from one like ID.
    Please make something better up next time.
    We all knew that this would happen they were practically all over the console version and made idiotic comments on how it will be the greatest thing on consoles.
    That generally suggested the PC fanbase will be shafted and lo and behold what happened, an unplayable game at launch from one the oldest PC developers still in existence.
    No matter how much apologists say that consoles dont ruin PC gaming, I practically never seen a title that was multiplat from the beginning in which the PC version came out on top of things.
    Running the game on my PC and gettign the feelign that the controlls are shit and that everything smells of consoles does not equate in my book as a PC version that's a console version running on my PC.
    Edited by Inmediasress at 10/10/11 @ 08:23

  • bad09 #7 8 months ago

    "I practically never seen a title that was multiplat from the beginning in which the PC version came out on top of things."

    What, you only buying Ubisoft games? Plenty of multiplatform far outshine their console versions on PC.

  • thebuzzard #8 8 months ago

    This doesnt fix the main problem that PC gamers are having with an engine doesnt seem designed for PC at all, the megatextures means the the full quality internal build was a 150Gb install but this was massively compressed. The idea of not repeating textures is fine but if it then means the textures have to be compressed to such low quality then it looses its advantage.
    I do think the engine would be great for a game set entirely outdoors as it worked really well for the driving parts.For the most part the game looks very attractive on PC but when you stop for breath after a big fight the low resolution textures can be a bit jarring.
    Also they have indicated they may well release a 100Gb download of the full texture pack but not sure how many people will have the bandwidth and drive space to bother.
    Edited by thebuzzard at 10/10/11 @ 08:40

  • Inmediasress #9 8 months ago

    @bad09
    Yeah Pc versions that came out months after the console release. I'm sick and tired of being shafted 90% of the time.

    Usually those that are multiplat from the beginning are flawed in the way that they target consoles as a the lead platfrom and the PC gets in the background and I'm not just talking about technical issues like with rage, but I kind of always feel like these games could have been so much better if they made the pc the lead platform.
    Complete genres start to vanish, like old school rpgs because no one wants to make games solely to the pc and they don't work well as multiplat, look at DA2 for example.
    Not to say that I'm a PC elitist if it may come over that way.
    I would just like to coexist peacefully rather than have tehm invade my gaming hobby.
    Edited by Inmediasress at 10/10/11 @ 08:42

  • jamievilla #10 8 months ago

    Is anyone else still having problems with this?

    Even though I have the new options it seems that when I enable Vsync it only works for about 5 seconds and then turns itself off. It'd be nice to know why, although still loving the game - the co-op is awesome!

  • Subdominator #11 8 months ago

    id Games have never had a lot of graphics options, so how is this a surprise to people? Most of the problems come from people messing with all the settings and then complaining why the game isn't working great. So it's best to limit options and decide yourself what is best for the gamer (and have less customer support for the real problems). Want an example?

    Yesterday I read about someone complaining that he only got 30 fps in Rage after the patch and having turned on VSync where he got 60 fps before. That's the whole problem. People don't get that it kills performance. Vsync means that whenever the game can't get the 60 fps needed it will drop to the next frame rate that fits nicely to the refresh rate. And that is 30 fps, even if the game could run at 59 fps. The reason why developers chose to not use VSync with 60 fps games is because the hit from 60 fps to 30 fps (it actually feels like a slowdown) is much more noticeable than a little tearing.

    Same goes for textures. People are complaining that they can't increase the resolutions. That's because they aren't there, they take up too much space. That's why id is only thinking about releasing a single level with high res textures, because the game would need four times the dvds (so around eight for the game plus multiplayer) for higher textures. Changing from 4k to 8k ingame only increases the amount of the 128kx128k megatexture that is loaded into Ram. here we have the next problem: 8k is not necessarily better than 4k. 8k = 4times the memory load of 4k, so whenever some streaming takes place (which in Rage is whenever you move) it takes much more time to load the data into Ram and thus increases popins.

    Next problem is PC people think Ram is Ram. It's not. The consoles have very specialized, expensive, ultra fast Ram. It's comparable to what expensive graphics cards use on PC. You can have 8 GB Ram all you want, if you don't have a graphics card with 1.5 GB Ram turning on 8k will result in problems.

    People always know better than Carmack. The reason why Rage looks like it does is not a limitation because of consoles, it's a limitation because of how megatextures work. Which is just what id always does. Remember Doom 3? It went big on normal textures, but at that time the texture resolution was too low to make an actual impact. Why? Because you need about 4 times the amount of Ram for all the different texture layers when using normal maps. So a game that does not use normal maps can have 4 times the resolution - which is a lot. It's jumping from 512x512 to 1024x1024. Doom 3 looked good in motion with all the nifty realtime shadowing going on, But up close everything was a blurry mess.

    Nowadays we can have both, high res normal maps. But Carmack is always ahead of what other people do. In five years we will see megatextures everywhere, cause it speeds up the development process and allows more creativity. The artists literally paint the world and every single pixel is unique. But you will always see popin, because megatextures can only be streamed, unless somebody has a 150 GB graphics card (that's the amount of data for the uncompressed raw megatexture id created).

  • Dyason #12 8 months ago

    Sorry but for me the problem wasn't the graphics, it was the amazing dull gameplay. There hasn't been an fps I've played in a long time where I've felt so confined. There's things I can't jump on or go around because of bounding boxes, it just feels like you're pushed down a single avenue with nothing to do but shoot things. And the shooting aspect isn't even that great. Don't even get me started on the driving. If I wanted a racing game I'd buy one!

  • Buran #13 8 months ago

    Id Sofware was able to deal with the variety of the hardware in the PC landscape in the past. Is sad to see that Carmack can had trouble with this currently, after all those years being a milestone.

  • Lyonjak #14 8 months ago

    Never mind performance problems, I'm one of the unlucky 'few' that can't get Rage to work at all on PC (due to AMD driver issues apparently), so I've basically paid out money for a non-working product. I doubt there's many industries in the world where you can release a product that is completely unusable and get away with it.

  • berelain #15 8 months ago

    2 days later, I have a game I can actually play! Amazing.

  • SidiousCyanide #16 8 months ago

    I think the console version of this game is the one to get, pity really because I've got a decent rig too.

  • rojjer #17 8 months ago

    it looks pretty shitty on my PC, annoyed.

    specs:

    i2600k OC'd to 4.4ghz
    Nvidia 590
    16GB Ram

    pretty disgraceful that this runs so badly tbh. I've even tried the multitude of config files and fixes that enterprising gamers have figured out and it still loads the textures in when you're looking around on screen - lesson learned, Don't pre-order PC games.

  • smurphs #18 8 months ago

    @Subdominator
    Good answer! You're not DF in disguise by any chance?

  • smurphs #19 8 months ago

    Megatextures, smegatextures. I'm playing Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii where the all the faces have the most ridiculous looking single polygon 'pig' noses I've ever seen!

    And I'm loving it.

  • roz123 #20 8 months ago

    They obviously didnt put the required effort in and rushed it out on the PC, I think iD probably underestimated the size of their core fanbase still on the PC and by releasing a second rate version have managed to kick themselves in the nuts.

  • StooMonster #21 8 months ago

    On one hand I'm lucky that my ATI 5870 is supported by the AMD drivers, where 4xx0 ranges and older are not currently supported at all, but on the other hand I have two of them in Crossfire and that's not supported.

    Although I read the Catalyst Driver developer's Twitter page and he said both these things will be addressed this week.

    I'm hoping that other things like flags flickering black if v-sync is turned on -- mentioned in the updates notes as an AMD driver issue -- is fixed too; although this only happens if I force textures to 8192.

    I don't want to turn v-sync on, but no matter if I have default textures or 8192 and I have V-sync off my screen is divided into three bands whenever there is movement: top at about a third of the screen, middle underneath that about 1cm heigh of black/white and messed up graphics, and third bottom of the screen.

    It I don't move, fine as it's not there, but if I move the mouse at all it's the biggest tear I've ever seen and is horribly unsightly. V-sync gets rid of it, and game remains silky smooth so I can only assume that my hardware is making more than 60fps.

  • Shinomo #22 8 months ago

    Have they fixed the lack of SLI yet? That's really all I care about at the moment.

  • ricpamiwor #23 8 months ago

    People need to stop harping on about heritage and how they owe it to the PC because that's what got them off the ground. All game companies need to make dollars, and lots of them. Heritage doesn't pay the bills!!

    Don't get me wrong, I think an FPS on anything other than a PC with it's tweakable nature is sacrilege but these are the times. :-(

    Ha ha I'm getting negged - the truth hurts bad.
    Edited by ricpamiwor at 10/10/11 @ 12:12

  • Negotiator1 #24 8 months ago

    I'm still waiting for the game to be delivered but was wondering if I can patch the retail boxed game using steam, and if I can, how would that work?

  • FanBoysSuck #25 8 months ago

    So can someone confirm what high and low texture cache is set to? I'm guessing 4k and 8k. I'm rocking a 6870 1gb so low looks crap and high result in stuttering with vsync on and everything else set to low @ 1080p. Couldn't they have a 6k medium setting for those with 1gb video RAM?

    That and certain parts of environment flicker black and white :(

  • linksdad #26 8 months ago

    Looks like i have had a lucky escape, my PC has AMD graphics.
    I pre-ordered the PC version from zavvi a couple of weeks ago and they botched delivery so I havent received it yet, but after reading the face off and hearing about Tesco's Ł25 xbox version if you spent Ł30 on groceries I picked it up yesterday and although its early days yet it seems like fun.

  • darkcult #27 8 months ago

    Rage is NOT console port. It was developed simultaneously for all 3 platforms ( PC, PS3, x360 ).

  • Negotiator1 #28 8 months ago

    Game just arrived and it just gets added to my steam game list, so I know the answer to my question now. Anyone getting good performance out of this game with a 5770 and a quad core.

  • xenon_md #29 8 months ago

    @Negotiator1

    Yargh matey - thats pretty much the setup running in my 2nd rig - have been playing some co-op with my wife and it's been running very well.

  • Negotiator1 #30 8 months ago

    Nice to know Xenon, thanks.

  • Seoh #31 8 months ago

    If you actually look into it its due to id's focus on a 60FPS experience regardless of spec.

    Whereas most PC games allow for the graphics settings to be constant and the frame rate takes the hit during detailed or hectic scenes, rage goes the opposite with the frame rate locked and the engine scaling back details to keep the frame rate up. This sort approach inherently limits the amount of user customisation as the more options you can configure the less the engine has to play about with to maintain that 60FPS.

    Personally i think rage looks great and the feel is fantastic, i actually feel like the weak link since its so responsive, there is never any lag or slowdown to blame failure on its breathtaking. FYI i'm now running with everything on at 1080p on a i5760 with a 460 GTX.

  • Goofboy #32 8 months ago

    onlive could run this pretty well but its a crap game

  • FortysixterUK #33 8 months ago

    I can see where Carmack is coming from saying PC is no longer a major gaming platform ( or words to that effect), on PC you can't protect from piracy as easily as you can on console, therefore console becomes the number 1 platform.

    And judging by the quality of the 360 version, I can see ID put a lot of work in, despite during the run and gun sections many textures seeming decidely low res. The hospital is where this is really apparent, with lights on control panels seeming very basic, and building textures sometimes nothing but smooth and partially detailed.

    Overall though, good effort. Fun shooter. And no, it's not got RPG bits built in. It's a shooter.

  • UncleLou #34 8 months ago

    Say what you want about blurry textures and (annoying) technical problems, the game looks absolutely stunning. One of the best-looking games I've ever seen, and while it's the mega-textures that got all the attention, it's particularly the lighting that floors me. In a way, the looks (PC version) remind me a bit of Uncharted (2), though it does these things on a larger scale. The engine is absolutely terrific, in my opinion.

    Really great fun as well, 2 hours in, more so than I expected.

  • FanBoysSuck #35 8 months ago

    @Seoh : I take it that's post patch ie vsync on, AF/textures high ect?

    My i7 920, 6870 1gb, 6gb RAM system seems to stutter even when everything except textures is on low with vsync on. Maybe an ATI driver issue I suppose :(

  • metroid455 #36 8 months ago

    aww poor PC elitists!! what a bunch of crybabies you all are with all your console hate. its the SAME GAME with the SAME experience on all three platforms, what the hell more did you expect?

  • mashk #37 8 months ago

    Got an ATI 48xx card here, Rage definitely works on this card. Although it doesn't work without a bit of coaxing. The 'patch' itself did absolutely nothing for me, and neither did AMD's new drivers. You just need to add the following to the Rage launch options +jobs_numThreads 0. This fix is for both 4 and 5 series cards. My game still isn't running quite how I'd like it, but I'm getting there.

    Spent more time fucking about with configs than I have actually playing the game, this has to be one of the buggiest launches ever in PC history. Why the hell didn't they release a demo? And from ID as well!

  • Seoh #38 8 months ago

    @Fanboysuck

    i've got Vsync set to smart so it drops it if it needs to, but everything else is set too high or on, including the rather nifty transcode option. as mentioned earlier try disabling the vsync or setting to smart as it can cause that instant drop back to 30FPS .

  • FanBoysSuck #39 8 months ago

    Ah cheers dude, I'll try that when I'm back home from work :)

  • Caimbeul #40 8 months ago

    @bad09 - i agree. Batman is a good example. Hope it remains so with the sequel.

  • Darren #41 8 months ago

    I didn't get my PC copy of RAGE until Saturday despite ShopTo.net sending it out on Wednesday (thanks for that, Royal Fail!). Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones as the game ran flawlessly from the off, even before Sunday's patch. Textures are a bit iffy (i.e. low-res) but otherwise this is one fine looking game that runs at a silky-smooth 60 fps with not a single stutter or hitch on my system at 1920x1200. I've played it for about 8 hours so far up to the Prison rescue and it's certainly very enjoyable and addictive. Weapons are great fun to use and the levels are varied and challenging (on Normal difficulty) with some fairly impressive A.I. If id can improve the quality of some of the more N64-like textures then the game would be pretty much perfect as far as I'm concerned.

  • Darren #42 8 months ago

    @Seoh - If you enable triple buffering in the game profile for NVIDIA cards or globally for AMD cards then you can have V-Sync set to On without dips to 30 fps. Needless to say I've left V-Sync on Smart as on my system the game only uses 30% of the GPU's power and has never once dipped below 60 fps. For all the criticisms of the game's textures, I have to say that the engine is otherwise very impressive and runs brilliantly at all times. Apart from a split-second post-load when I see the textures pop in, I haven't seen any other visual issues at all. Good stuff.

    P.S. Note that if you have NVIDIA Updater installed then there was a RAGE profile update on 4th October which NVIDIA forced V-Sync *OFF* for some reason meaning that it overrided the game settings. You need to change the V-Sync setting in the game profile to "Use 3D application setting" if you want to avoid screen tearing.

  • stoopidgreg #43 8 months ago

    I finally managed to get the game running 60fps at 1920x1200 4xAA on an ATI 5870 - originally running at about 5 fps and freezing up every few seconds so it was completely unplayable. Here's what I did - create a shortcut to rage.exe (located within steamapps\common\rage) and in the properties>target field add the following:

    +cvaradd g_fov 20 +set com_skipIntroVideo 1 +fc_maxcachememoryMB 1024 +ik_enablesmoothing 0 +image_usecompression 0 +jobs_numthreads 0 +mem_phymemblocksizem 3072

    (this is for a dual core system, so putting the threads to 0 seems to work best)

    Then create a text file "config.cfg" in steam apps\common\rage\common and paste the following:

    image_useCache "1
    image_cacheMegs "125"
    image_cacheMinK "50"
    image_anisotropy "8"
    vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 "4096"
    vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly "4096"
    vt_pageimagesizeunique "4096"
    vt_pageimagesizevmtr "4096"
    vt_maxPPF 8
    vt_minlod "-1"
    vt_lodBias "-1"
    vt_maxaniso "4"
    vt_qualityhdplossless "1"
    vt_qualityhdppower "0"
    vt_qualityhdpspecular "0"
    vt_qualityhdpnormal "0"
    vt_qualityhdpdiffuse "0"
    vt_qualitydctpower "100"
    vt_qualitydctspecular "100"
    vt_qualitydctnormal "100"
    vt_qualitydctchroma "100"
    vt_qualitydctluma "100"

    (You can change the page size in the config to 8192 if you have 8gb of ram)

    Download the "amd_catalyst_11.10_preview_sep26.exe" drivers (these seem to work the best, better than the rage hotfix drivers and the BF3 drivers) and using the installer, uninstall whatever drivers you have. Reboot, and now install these drivers. A separate issue is a crash on boot, you can fix this by disabling triple buffering in Catalyst control.

    Should work silky now and I get virtually no texture pop-in. The game looks incredible and I'm having loads of fun wingsticking bandits :D
    Edited by stoopidgreg at 10/10/11 @ 17:41

  • cstan #44 8 months ago

    For every id fanboy that will blindly defend Rage there is someone looking for any excuse to slate it. It does take a bit of tweaking to get it running the way it should on PC which isn't ideal, but when you do, you are rewarded with one of the best looking and certainly the most fluid shooter I have played in a long long time, the engine surpasses that of any recent shooters without a shadow of a doubt.

  • bad09 #45 8 months ago

    @Caimbeul

    Batman is one of the first ones that crossed my mind to! Don't worry Rocksteady have said that will be the case again for AC and after the great job they did on AA I have no reason not to believe that.

  • apoc_reg #46 8 months ago

    All it needs now is a fov fix, bindable/adjustable. Vehicle camera controls and a walk button!!

  • stoopidgreg #47 8 months ago

    apoc_reg: you can bind keys in the config file and you can change the FOV to around 95 by adding +cvaradd g_fov 20 to the shortcut

  • Negotiator1 #48 8 months ago

    I have to say after playing this for a few hours it's a damn fine game, and runs as smooth as silk. In fact it has stayed at a constant 60fps without one occasion where it fell below that, and that's a first for me with any PC game I own, and it looks better than any game I own. Also I gotta say the sound and music is superb and really creates a great atmosphere, just buy the game its great.

  • comedian #49 8 months ago

    The textures are still beyond poor.

  • Kaminari #50 8 months ago

    @bad09

    Considering the console versions are barely acceptable, that's not really an excuse.

  • ashmon #51 8 months ago

    I have a amd 965 x4 and a 4850 it was running quite slow, updated to the beta drivers 11.10 and the patch, works like a dream. No texture lag at all.

  • Machiavellian #52 8 months ago

    id of all people should know not to limit the PC gamers' ability to tweak their games to their heart's content.

    That's what makes PC different.

    It's also what have turned people off the PC to consoles as well. I know it was one reason why I stopped the upgrade path on the PC. I just do not have the time anymore to play around with the PC, downloading drivers, tweaking config file etc. I just want to put the game in and play.

    On another note, it does appear that Carmack and company did this on purpose. Since performance was the main design concern for Id, including their engine ability to handle the graphic load and choose the resolution and texture quality for the game, giving users to much ability to play with those settings probably would break more things then they wanted to handle. Giving users choice after the fact, especially for PC users, take care of the casual players first than for more advance users, give them the ability to customize their settings.

    For people who are saying ID should have included this in the first place, I really cannot remember when I didn't have to go into the config or console of an ID game and adjust settings.

  • raytrace #53 8 months ago

    haha can't wait to get this - but I NEVER thought I'd see the day when an id Software game had no graphics options!

  • stoopidgreg #54 8 months ago

    id games have never had full graphic options. doom 3 let you change between low medium and high, that's about it. doom, quake and quake 2 didn't have any options iirc

  • Sin11 #55 8 months ago

    Doom 3 had 4 settings.... Low, Medium, High and Ultra and advanced options too

    [link url=http://pcper.com/images/reviews/72/doom3_1.jpg
    ]http://pcper.com/images/reviews/72/doom3...[/link]
    http://pcper.com/images/reviews/72/doom3...