Age of Conan Video Optimization (Tweak) Guide

[Vulturian]

Age of Conan Video Optimization (Tweak) Guide

It's a guide to experiment with AOC's video settings and in connection with your PC's hardware to achieve best possible fps result 

Notes • There are mods available which can offer additional video options for Age of Conan. For the purpose of this guide we use only the stock video options.
• For testing purposes FPS comparisons were made using the default "High" settings and making adjustments based on these settings. Average FPS on "High" was 41.2.
• The default "High" setting does not enable maximum settings.
• A custom UI was used during testing.
• FPS tests were performed with a motionless character and very little activity in the area.
• Results will vary depending on processor, graphics card, RAM, operating system, resolution and drivers.
• FPS will vary by zone, for testing purposes we used Khopshef Province.

Test System

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Memory: 4.00 GB
System Type: 32-bit Operating System
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Driver Version: GeForce Release 175 WHQL, 175.16
Windows Edition: Windows Vista Home Basic (DX9)
Resolution: 1280x1024


Testing Default Low, Medium and High Settings

The first task was to test the default Low, Medium and High graphics settings in Age of Conan, located in the "Overall Quality" section under Video Options -> Basic. Below you will find in-game images at each setting, along with their frames per second.


Default High Setting - 41.2 FPS
Default Medium Setting - 80.4 FPS
Default Low Setting - 91.2 FPS

Visual Observations:
The most noticeable difference between the three images (initially) is foliage removed from Medium and Low settings. If you look at the character's robe you can see the texture quality degrade. The water is of a lower quality in both the Medium and Low settings. View distance is reduced as quality is lowered, as is view distance quality. You will also notice that NPC view distance quality is poor on the Low setting.


Basic Settings

Anti-Alias Quality:
Anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion in digital photography, computer graphics, digital audio, and many other applications. In Age of Conan anti-alias options include: none, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 8xQ, 16xQ. The "Q" stands for "Quality". Note that not all graphics cards support 16x or 16xQ.


Anti-Alias Quality: none
Anti-Alias Quality: 16xQ
Anti-alias quality: none (41.2 FPS)
Anti-alias quality: 16xQ (34.2 FPS)
Difference: 7.0 FPS

Visual Observations: Not much difference visually. Shadowing appears slightly sharper in 16xQ. If you experience system lag in Age of Conan, the recommended setting is "none".


Enable Bloom

Bloom aims to recreate the optical effect known as the Airy disc. In the real world, when light passes through a circular aperture such as your eye it diffracts, causing flaws that limit the maximum resolution of even a perfect lens. These defects are negligible for normal incoming light, but very bright sources can appear to bleed into surrounding darker objects.

Enable Bloom: Disabled
Enable Bloom: Enabled
Bloom: Disabled (41.2 FPS)
Bloom: Enabled (37.5 FPS)
Difference: 3.7 FPS

Visual Observations: Details are slightly sharper with Bloom enabled. This is most evident if you compare the mountains in the above images. The difference here wasn't very noticeable, and would not be considered enough to sacrifice FPS. The default setting is off.


View distance

How far into the distance you can see. The slider will take you from 50m to 3500m.

View Distance: 50m
View Distance: 3500m
View Distance: 50m: 55.0 FPS
View Distance: 3500m: 42.0 FPS
Difference: 3.0 FPS

Visual Observations: Your field of view is greatly diminished at 50m. If you are experiencing system lag in Age of Conan we recommend keeping the slider somewhere around 2000m. Shave off FPS elsewhere or you won't be able to see two feet in front of you.


Advanced Settings

Global

Shader Model Version
Shaders are used by the graphic resources primarily to perform rendering effects. Available options are 2.0, 2.x, 3.0 and 4.0 if you are using DirectX 10. Shader complexity depends on the version of Direct3D used.


Shader Model Version: 2.0
Shader Model Version: 2.X
Shader Model Version: 3.0
Shader model version: 2.0 (74.9 FPS)
Shader model version: 2.x (52.0 FPS)
Shader model version: 3.0 (41.2 FPS)
Difference: 33.7 FPS

Visual Observations: The difference in shader models is more evident in smaller details than in the big picture. If you compare the images above, you will see that both 2.x and 3.0 provide higher quality detailing in things such as the character's robe, the sail on the boat and the wood grain of the dock. Both 2.0 and 2.x sacrifice moving foliage. The shader model version was also noticeable in details such as character eyes and body markings. Finally, 2.x appeared to over-write the 3.0 contrast settings to some degree. If you're looking for a drop in FPS and normally play with grass disabled then 2.x should be adequate.


Shadows


Shadow Quality
Fairly self explanatory, available options are Disabled, From characters only and From everything.

Shadow quality: Disabled (60.1 FPS)
Shadow quality: From everything (41.2 FPS)
Difference: 18.9 FPS

Visual Observations: As expected, setting shadows to "disabled" removes shadows from the game. If shadows are important to you then you will also take another FPS hit when you set your shadow resolution (see below).


Shadow Resolution
The quality of shadows. Settings are: Low, Medium, High and Ultra.


Shadow Resolution: Low
Shadow Resolution: Ultra
Shadow resolution: Low (44.5 FPS)
Shadow resolution: High (41.2 FPS)
Shadow resolution: Ultra (40.0 FPS)
Difference: 4.5 FPS

Visusal Observations: If you are going to play with shadows enabled then you will have to set shadow resolution to high in order to get the full effect. Setting to low makes shadows more blobby, and there's not much point taking a FPS cut for both having shadows enabled and setting a shadow resolution if you are not going to have them at high quality.


3D Ambient Occlusion Quality

Ambient occlusion is a shading method used in 3D computer graphics which helps add realism to local reflection models by taking into account attenuation of light due to occlusion. Available options are Disabled, Low, High.


Ambient Occlusion: Disabled
Ambient Occlusion: High
3D ambient occlusion quality: Disabled (43.8 FPS)
3D ambient occlusion quality: High (41.2 FPS)
Difference: 2.6 FPS

Visual Observations: If you compare the two images above, you may note that playing with ambient disabled gives the background a more "cartoon-ish" look. Whereas playing with ambient set to high appears to give the game a slightly more realistic feel. The changes here are very subtle, disable ambient occlusion to save a couple of frames per second.


View Ranges


High Quality View Distance
Controls density of texture pixels on the screen. Disabling will improve frame rates.

High Quality View Distance: 0%
High Quality View Distance: 100%
0%: 42.6 FPS
100%: 40.9 FPS
Difference: 1.7 FPS

Visual Observations: The differences here are best seen in the mountain pillars and the buildings in Pashtun. Both show a higher level of detail with the high quality view distance at 100%. This would probably be a good place to cut back a bit.


Low Quality View Distance
Defines cut off point for normal rendering. Beyond the world will be rendered with lower quality. Ranges from 0m to 2048m.


Low Quality View Distance: 0m
0m: 73.8 FPS
2048m: 41.2 FPS
Difference: 32.6 FPS

Visual Observations: The changes here are night and day. If you can't run Age of Conan with low quality view distance set towards the high end of the slider, then you are sacrificing one of the features that AoC is known for... great graphics!


Particle View Distance
How far particles will be rendered. Ranges from 0m to 1000m. Screenshots taken while spell casting.

Particle View Distance: 0m
Particle View Distance: 1000m
0m: 41.2 FPS
500m: 39.5 FPS
1000m: 34.0 FPS
Difference: 7.2 FPS

Visual Observations: Recommend that at a minimum you keep the slider in the middle. While you will sacrifice some FPS doing this, if you put the slider at 50m then you will miss out on things such as particles from harvesting nodes, smoke in the distance and other details that can help you throughout the game. In addition, with the slider on low you will not even see your own spells being cast. If you raid or siege this setting should be turned to low prior to starting, or your FPS will drop drastically with all of the spell casting in your vicinity.


View NPC Distance
How far NPCs and player characters will be rendered. Range is 5m to 500m.

View NPC Distance: 5m
View NPC Distance: 500m
5m: 44.4 FPS
200m: 41.2 FPS
500m: 40.4 FPS
Difference: 4.0 FPS

Visual Observations: As you can see from the first image, the view distance of 5m is such short range that you will not even be able to fully scroll out in 3rd person view. The default "High" setting for view NPC distance is 200m, which provides as much quality as a setting of 500m. In the second image, both settings of 200m and 500m will allow you to see mobs in Pashtun.

[Vulturian]

NPC High Quality View Distance

Range where you see all high quality lods for NPCs.

0m: 42.5 FPS
2048m: 40.2 FPS
Difference: 2.3 FPS

Visual Observations: This setting was tested in a number of locales and we did not notice any difference between 0m and 2048m. This could be an issue based on our system set up.

Grass View Distance How far grass will be rendered.

Grass View Distance: 0m
Grass View Distance: 1000m
0m: 41.9 FPS
1000m: 40.1 FPS
Difference: 0.8 FPS

Visual Observations: Unless you prefer not to see the grass around you, then we recommend leaving the slider at around the halfway mark. There isn't much difference (visually) between 100m and 1000m.

Ground Quality View Distance
How far high resolution ground will be rendered.

Ground Quality View: 16m
16m: 42.5 FPS
256m: 37.0 FPS
Difference: 5.5 FPS

Visual Observations: Objects in the distance will begin to blur. In the image above this evident by looking at the rock formations in the distance. We recommend that you set ground quality at least to the "High" default setting which is 64m.

Textures

System Memory Texture Cache Size

Supposed to increase performance on systems (such as laptops) using graphics cards with shared memory.
Note: The game allowed us to set texture cache size to 440MB. No difference in frame rate was noticed with texture cache size enabled.


Texture Filtering Quality

Texture filtering blends the texture pixels together by breaking them up into smaller pixels. Another term for texture filtering is called texture smoothing. Bilinear filtering is a texture filtering method used to smooth textures when displayed larger or smaller than they actually are. Trilinear filtering is an extension of the bilinear texture filtering method, which also performs linear interpolation between mipmaps. Like bilinear and trilinear filtering, Anisotropic filtering eliminates aliasing effects, but introduces less blur at extreme viewing angles and thus preserves more detail.


Texture Filtering Quality: Anisotropic
Texture Filtering Quality: Trilinear
Texture Filtering Quality: Bilinear
Anisotropic: 41.2 FPS
Trilinear: 42.2 FPS
Bilinear: 42.8 FPS
Difference: 1.6 FPS

Visual Observations: No visual changes noticed. Changes will be more apparent in some areas than others. If you are running at 2.0 or 2.x you may notice more blurring or a blocky appearance to some things in the game.

Texture Resolution
Higher texture resolution provides better texture quality.

Texture Resolution: Low
Low: 41.7 FPS
High: 41.2 FPS
Difference: 0.5 FPS

Visual Observations: Considering that keeping texture resolution on high didn't cause much of an FPS drop, we would probably recommend keeping it on high. However, the difference won't be terribly noticeable between the two. Details are sharper on high (such as more detail in the character's robe and a more realistic wood grain on the dock), but it's not going to make or break your AoC experience.


Anisotropic Filtering Quality
Improves the way textures are rendered, resulting in better depth representation.

Anistropic Filtering Quality: 1
Anistropic Filtering Quality: 16
1: 41.9 FPS
16: 41.2 FPS
Difference: 0.7 FPS

Visual Observations: No visual changes noticed. Changes in texture quality may be more noticeable on some systems over others. If you are not using Anisotropic texture filtering quality then this setting will not make a difference. If you are using Anisotropic texture quality then you may want to play around with the filtering quality slider and see what works best for you, both visually and performance-wise.


Enable Parallax Mapping

Parallax mapping is an enhancement of the bump mapping or normal mapping techniques applied to textures in 3D rendering applications such as video games. To the end user, this means that textures such as stone walls, will have more apparent depth and thus greater realism.

Enable Parallax Mapping: Disabled
Enable Parallax Mapping: Enabled
1: 42.8 FPS
16: 41.2 FPS
Difference: 1.6 FPS
Visual Observations: No visual changes noticed.

Enable Advanced Transparency

Requires anti-aliasing to be enabled. Tested with 16xQ and advanced transparency box ticked. Transparency allows you to see your character while in deep foliage.

Advanced Transparency: Disabled
Advanced Transparency: Enabled
Enabled: 39.7 FPS
Disabled: 41.2 FPS
Difference: 2.5 FPS

Visual Observations: As you can see by comparing the two images above, this feature does make a significant difference in how well you can see your character through deep foliage. This should have really been tested in Purple Lotus Swamp, you may want to consider that when testing this setting on your own. Regardless of any benefits for transparency, there are also two drawbacks. First, you must enable Anti-Aliasing before you can enable Advanced Transparency. This means that you are taking two FPS cuts. However, if you already play with AA on then you may want to go the extra mile and slap on transparency. How much you will use it is questionable.


Remove Foliage From Around Character
Simply removes most types of foliage from around the feet of the character.

Foliage

Remove Foliage From Around Character: Enabled
Enabled: 41.2 FPS
Disabled: 42.0 FPS
Difference: 0.8 FPS

Visual Observations: If you like to keep grass enabled then this option can come in handy for things such as seeing NPCs and loot bags in deep foliage.


Ground

Ground Render Quality
Texture quality of the ground.

Ground Render Quality: Normal
Ground Render Quality: High
Normal: 46.3 FPS
High: 41.2 FPS
Difference: 5.1 FPS

Visual Observations: Structures in the distance become blurred. This is most evident in the above screenshots if you look at the tall rock formation in the centre. On high quality the rock formation is still textured, on normal the quality has degraded.

Enable Grass
Turns foliage off and on.

Enable Grass: Disabled
Enable: 41.2 FPS
Disable: 43.5 FPS
Difference: 2.3 FPS

Visual Observations: Doesn't remove all foliage, but gets rid of a fair chunk. This is down to personal preference. If you like your maps lush then you'll want to keep foliage enabled. But if grass just gets in your way then disabling grass will give a nice little boost to the FPS count.

Water

Water Reflection Quality

Water reflection setting will determine how many reflections you will see in water. Setting to none will give you less realistic looking water and no reflections. Setting to ground only should only reflect the land around around the water. Setting to reflection from everything will provide full quality water rendering with reflections from everything.

Water Reflection: None
Water Reflection From Ground
Water Reflection From Everything
None: 46.3 FPS
From ground: 44.1
From everything: 41.2 FPS
Difference: 5.1 FPS

Visual Observations: Clearly water looks fantastic when set to "from everything". If you look carefully you will see a distorted shadow from the character on the screen, and the water ripples when set at highest add a whole new dimension to water rendering. If you're a stickler for graphics and have the juice to spare then go for the gusto! Otherwise, you can turn off water reflections to shave a few frames.


Particles

Enable Particles
Should disable particles altogether (?), but disabling particles provided low quality particles effects.
Enable: 41.2 FPS
Disable: 41.2 FPS
Difference: No difference.

Visual Observations: This funtion does not appear to work.

Particle Render Quality

How detailed particles will be (spell effects, harvesting effects, etc.). FPS taken while spell casting.

Particle Render Quality: Low
Particle Render Quality: Medium
Particle Render Quality: High
Low: 40.2 FPS
Medium: 39.9 FPS
High: 39.1 FPS
Difference: 1.1 FPS

Visual Observations: Each setting is clearly better than the next. Far more particle detail is shown when rendering in high quality. If you are raiding or sieging you may want to turn particle quality to low, or turn them off altogether. If you like fancy effects then high quality rendering is a must. If you notice that you are lagging while in combat then medium quality might do the trick.


Limit Particle Effects To

While spell casting.
Don't show anything: No change to FPS.
Show all particles: Set to high particle quality.
Difference: -1.1 FPS

Maximum Settings

Notes: With maximum settings enabled we did experience the occasional "Out of Memory" error and shutdown. Maximum frames per second in Khopshef Province using these settings was 56 FPS, with an average of 25 FPS.

Optimal Settings

Although Age of Conan was very playable using the game's default "High" setting, using the tweaks below we managed to shave off some extra FPS to increase game performance. We did not have to sacrifice visuals too much to achieve a much higher FPS. Maximum frames per second in Khopshef Province shot up to an average of 76.5 FPS.


Summary

Tweaks: Improving Your Frame Rates
The biggest hits to your frames per second are in Shader Model Version, Shadow Quality and Low Quality View Distance. If Age of Conan is running rough, consider the following:
• Exit unecessary tools in your Windows System Tray.
• Defragment your hard drive.
• Play in full screen mode and not windowed.
• Leave bloom disabled.
• Set anti-aliasing to none.
• Set view distance to around 2000m.
• Try using shader model 2.x.
• Lower shadow quality or turn shadows off.
• Disable grass.
• Set water reflection to "from ground".

Note to Vista Users: You may have a lot of unnecessary programs running at startup. Disabling background programs running at startup can provide you with more available system resources for your game enhancing pleasure! To optimize your system follow the below directions to manage startup programs, adjust visual effects, disk cleanup and more.

Control Panel -> Additional Options -> System and Maintenance -> Performance Information and Tools -> Manage Startup Programs.