What does the "Max 3D Rendering MPX" setting do?

[76561198018245183]

I've been having this question since the Public Test, and haivng bought the full game, I want to know: what the heck does the "Max 3D Rendering MPX" setting do? Does it adjust the maximum texture resolution? Does it adjust the quality of models used? Something more? The tooltip for the setting isn't very helpful.

[Grey Heron]

It's for if you want to reduce resolution for performance reasons. The simplest way to explain it is that it's like the screen resolution setting, except it doesn't apply to the HUD, menu, or what your GPU actually sends to the screen. It also corrects for display aspect ratio, which actually changing the resolution wouldn't.

If you get adequate performance with it set to a higher value than your actual screen resolution, there's no need to lower it unless you like the pixelly look.

(more technical explanation: Modern engines don't draw the world directly into the buffer that holds the screen contents, but into another buffer that isn't displayed directly. That then gets used for further rendering (as with water, mirrors, or the ripple when things hit a forcefield), or postprocessed and written into the screen buffer, which the HUD then gets drawn atop. The setting you inquired about presumably caps the size of that offscreen buffer, which would otherwise be the size of the screen.)

[76561198018245183]

Originally posted by Grey Heron:

It's for if you want to reduce resolution for performance reasons. The simplest way to explain it is that it's like the screen resolution setting, except it doesn't apply to the HUD, menu, or what your GPU actually sends to the screen. It also corrects for display aspect ratio, which actually changing the resolution wouldn't.

If you get adequate performance with it set to a higher value than your actual screen resolution, there's no need to lower it unless you like the pixelly look.

(more technical explanation: Modern engines don't draw the world directly into the buffer that holds the screen contents, but into another buffer that isn't displayed directly. That then gets used for further rendering (as with water, mirrors, or the ripple when things hit a forcefield), or postprocessed and written into the screen buffer, which the HUD then gets drawn atop. The setting you inquired about presumably caps the size of that offscreen buffer, which would otherwise be the size of the screen.)

Ah! That's a bit clearer - thank you.

Just one more question, if you wouldn't mind: what does setting the option to "Unlimited" do?

[Grey Heron]

The values the setting affects are also capped by the screen resolution, so selecting "unlimited" makes it always use the screen resolution.

[punchobastardo]

You can compare it with the lame trick consoles do... the TVs support a 1920x1080 resolution but the consoles don't have that power to render the game in that resolution, so they render it in a lower resolution and then "upscale" it to the TV. So if you have a 1680x1050 resolution (1.8Mpx) but choose to render it with 1.1Mpx you will see things blurred.