Verdict on ULQ

[R.A.T. Army *MST3K*]

I'll get right to the point with this. I don't think playing on ultra low quality gives any distinct advantage whatsoever. Here's why.

During operation frost my computer began to experience major hardware failures, it was over 10 years old and I had put countless hours of gaming on that machine; although technically Steam does count all the hours.

During the second half of the event, I had to progressively keep lowering my graphics to reduce the amount of stress put on my computer so it could keep playing through the event. By the time the event ended, I had 5/6 vehicles, and I was on the absolute lowest settings the game offers. For the record I did spend some GE's on the last stages of the airplane to get all 6 vehicles. I spent somewhere between 2-3 weeks on ULQ.

It not only looked terrible from an aesthetics point of view, but sheer gameplay was aweful. Tanks were fuzzy and off color mere 50 meters ahead of me, shaders and lighting were non existent, planes in the sky blended in as they pixels sizes were gigantic, and even ships became one with the ocean background since the lack of any coherent color scheme made them all one color.

I spent a month researching parts and eventually built a brand new gaming PC, capable of running War Thunder, and other games, on the highest graphics settings available, all while streaming.

The game now looks beautiful, everything thing is crisp, edges are clean and the the details on vehicles and the environment are fantastic. The best part, I can see enemies better; yes, I said better.

I am spotting enemies faster, seeing them through bushes easier, and even spotting planes in the sky at a much higher rate than before. Planes, tanks, ships, helicopters, everything is easier. I'm seeing all vehicles types at greater distances, hitting more shots, making more informed decisios overall, and with less effort.

Having seen both sides of the spectrum back to back for weeks each, I can and am definitively stating that UHQ is better than ULQ in everyway.

I've seen plenty of people complain over the years about being killed by players they are certain were using ULQ; both on the forums and in game.

The way I see it, if you are blaming poor performance on other players using ULQ, you are making excuses.

If you are playing on ULQ solely for the perceived advantage, you are only fooling yourself. You are missing out on a great looking game by playing on ULQ when you don't have to, and getting nothing for it.

Russian bias, kill stealing, and now ULQ advantage. All these things are myths.

Disclaimer:
Please note that if you play on ULQ because your computer can only handle that, this whole post does not pertain to you. Playing a game because you enjoy it, despite poor graphics is what gaming is all about

[Blakk7]

wow all the big time you tubers with thousands of views that show other wise must be wrong huh. lol i dont know how long u have played but haha u have to be one of the few that think that. we all have tried it and we all have seen countless videos, streams, and post that kind of make what u said seem, well a little silly to be honest. But u keep on trying, but my friend u are not changing any ones mind on ULQ

[ospholis]

every tryhard player who plays tanks in RB use ULQ

[Alpharisus]

Originally posted by Spoonky:

every tryhard player who plays tanks in RB use ULQ

Thats generally why they run around with bushes too, both of which hinder their ability to fight .
Had to use ulq for a few months after my pc died, its like playing with 2003 era graphics and makes it fairly impossible to engage at 1km+

[ningus bingledong]

ULQ is only good if you tell yourself it's good, I too have trouble with it and I find my targets using motion rather than looking for specific colors or shapes. For some ULQ is good because it eliminates obstacles like bushes and grass but for others it becomes a hindrance when you can't see far ahead of you and edges and pixels aren't crisp or blending. I do agree that certain walls disappear and that is a definite advantage to ULQ however being able to spot tanks easier through bushes is subjective

[Alle' Yuhawaja]

Render distance can be set in the settings regardless of the quality of the game.
As I play with ULQ because my hardware can only keep up 10 fps max on ULQ and 1024x780 res I can safely say that ULQ at times is the worst type of settings you can play on, bloom and reflections will screw you up big time. Playing simulator air battles is out of the question due to the light in the cockpit which makes it impossible to spot enemies. Clouds are invisible-mode for any enemy player regardless on how good you are at spotting (you can only see a faint line of the propellor, if it's a jet... good luck, and yes you can spot via crew skill but not everyone has aced crew.)
Tank wise it's even worse, some tanks (especially Italian tanks) have the same exact colour as the envirorment, so you have to make out the shape of the tank pixel by pixel. Things such as tank track marks on the ground or ground deformations are not present, which makes your trail hunting impossible. And often I find myself in the position where tanks are simply not rendered, and they pop up randomly after I focus on their area for at least 5 seconds, might be hardware, might be server issues idk. But generally it's not ULQ that's controversial, it's the render distances. I would set them at max but then again, toaster pc.

[burg4401]

same, had problems few years ago, went from max settings to ulq......game is rubbish, no advantage and looked crap.

I stopped playing for a week rather than play ulq.

People need to play ulq to see just how bad it is but they would rather blame ulq than them playing badly.

[JohnCrysostm]

Originally posted by burg4401:

same, had problems few years ago, went from max settings to ulq......game is rubbish, no advantage and looked crap.

I stopped playing for a week rather than play ulq.

People need to play ulq to see just how bad it is but they would rather blame ulq than them playing badly.

I find it funny that the first comments were all anti-ULQ but then once people started recounting their experiences, suddenly all the complaining goes quiet

I'll share my ULQ story too :P
I played on a really bad desktop for the first year or so of playing War Thunder. It was pretty terrible, but I didn't know better at the time. I was also really bad, so there was no real advantage I could have gotten out of it anyway
fast forward to today, I have a decent gaming computer, but also a laptop
every time I am on holiday, I am forced to use my Laptop. And I can say playing on min settings sucks so much more than anyone so far has even come close to mentioning.
it hurts your eyes to stare at the screen. It physically hurts to use
I had to squint to see targets, and it was impossible to tell when tanks were dead and when they were alive, so still tanks and dead tanks were the same for me.
there were also lots of glitches and visual bugs. Just don't play ULQ for the "advantage"

[burg4401]

Originally posted by theGoddes:

Originally posted by burg4401:

same, had problems few years ago, went from max settings to ulq......game is rubbish, no advantage and looked crap.

I stopped playing for a week rather than play ulq.

People need to play ulq to see just how bad it is but they would rather blame ulq than them playing badly.

I find it funny that the first comments were all anti-ULQ but then once people started recounting their experiences, suddenly all the complaining goes quiet

I'll share my ULQ story too :P
I played on a really bad desktop for the first year or so of playing War Thunder. It was pretty terrible, but I didn't know better at the time. I was also really bad, so there was no real advantage I could have gotten out of it anyway
fast forward to today, I have a decent gaming computer, but also a laptop
every time I am on holiday, I am forced to use my Laptop. And I can say playing on min settings sucks so much more than anyone so far has even come close to mentioning.
it hurts your eyes to stare at the screen. It physically hurts to use
I had to squint to see targets, and it was impossible to tell when tanks were dead and when they were alive, so still tanks and dead tanks were the same for me.
there were also lots of glitches and visual bugs. Just don't play ULQ for the "advantage"

yeah, I think I managed 3 games before i said screw this and played a different game.

It is just terrible on ulq.

Having a computer able to run max, then reducing the settings is prob more of an advantage than running on ulq.

[Alpharisus]

its a minor advantage and only over noobs tbh, anyone experienced will RB/SB are still going to have an advantage over people who try to abuse low graphics settings

[Urho Kekkonen 🌸]

>I'll get right to the point with this. I don't think playing on ultra low quality gives any distinct advantage whatsoever. Here's why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5uXw57hCwI

[Læms]

high end pc, skill and ULQ is a huge advantage lol, you need to do your research tbh

[Xins Ruby]

okay so, fun fact i once tried ulq and it does give you quite a big advantage depending on the things you decrease. one of the main advantages is that tanks become shiny, thus making them easy to spot.

[nosrepatsuj]

.... but ulq flat out removes objects over a certain distance and the color scheme is a seperate filter independent of ulq ....

I played with and with out ulq on a good rig with ulq some maps especialy at range are laughably unbalanced because all the bushes that make up the majority of cover don't draw over a few hundred meters

[Waryth]

The fact that you can get to see much on a dense foliage area with more visibility in ultra low quality then you have a better chance of shooting a module or more enemy tank crew members compared to a less visible foliage in other graphical preset.

I'm actually able to get a better K/D in Realistic Battles as mentioned above so I can confirm it does give advantage. It may not be much but an advantage is still an advantage especially when used properly.

South part of the Poland map contains thick forest foliage and people who are using Ultra Low Quality settings can easily pick you off far away as the render distance of the trees are less.

This affects the following gamemode maps:

• [Domination] Poland
  
• [Domination] Fields of Poland
  
• [Battle] Fields of Poland
  
• [Battle] Poland
  
• [Conquest #1] Fields of Poland
  
• [Conquest #2] Fields of Poland
  
• [Conquest #3] Fields of Poland
  
• [Conquest #1] Poland
  
• [Conquest #2] Poland
  
• [Conquest #3] Poland

2 main points addressed about advantages in total:

1. Being able to get a cleaner shot for better accuracy in knocking out the opponent
   
2. Render distance of trees in ULQ are shorter and can snipe better far away.

If you can't counter any of this statement of mine then you can't deny that it does give advantage overall.

[R.A.T. Army *MST3K*]

While ULQ may remove certain objects from the game itself, the overall reduction in quality of the images you are seeing made it vastly harder for me to pick out objects at a distance.

On UHQ, I'm able to spot tanks while still in the third person mode from greater distances, much greater distances. Tanks that may be covered in bushes, while also hiding in bushes, I'm still spotting details that give away their position. On ULQ this is simply not possible.

While in the air, I found it very difficult to spot any planes that weren't probably within, a rough estimation, 2 to 3 km away. When I spawn in now in airplane, in tank RB, or even an air matches before the names pop up, I can see across the entire map, every single plane that spawns in the air. Literally as they spawn in, I see tiny black dots appear.

For those of you saying that I haven't done my research, or that you've played it so you know the difference, you have not read my post. I clearly stated that I was forced to play on the lowest settings possible, for almost a month. Not only was I forced to play that way, but I did it for a month every single day for hours, because of the event.

My research has been done. If you are playing on ultra low quality, and your computer does not have to do that, you are simply fooling yourself. If you blame your bad game on a ULQ player, you are making excuses.

For those of you who said you have to play on ULQ and you hate it, I feel for you. That few weeks of playing on ULQ for me, was the absolute worst time for me in this game.