[Stallion Free]

A Stallion Free Joint.

• 2 screenshots per post. Any more and you will get about 25 people reprimanding you. If you have more than 2, do more posts or use thumbnails.
• Don't you dare even contemplate posting screenshots without the game title. In fact, do it for every post, even if they are one after the other.
• No compression. No one wants to see your compressed-ass jpeg, it better be 90% quality or higher. You will get called out on this. By me.
• No artistic shots, only shots from when you were actually playing the game. This doesn't mean it can't be hudless as some games allow you to play without them.
• No screens of you trying to show off shitty textures or how ugly a game can be. Go post that in the OT for the game. No one want to look at that shit in here. No
  one cares what you have to prove.
• No downsampling below 1600x900. We are PC, we will not lower ourselves to 720p or other low resolutions. Keep some respect, but it is ok to keep pics a
  manageable size if you have a big-ass monitor.
• If you are playing on a 4:3 monitor and the game forces black bars, please for the love of god crop them out.
• Use anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. AA isn't critical, but AF is as it is super-simple to force it and it wont hurt performance.
• Screens should be taken from settings that are playable. 30 fps is playable if you want super-sampling on modern games.
• Emulator screens are fine. However, you should list the emulator used.
• Use one of the suggested hosts. Don't you dare fucking use Imgur or other various hosts that shit on jpegs with compression.
• No stretched-ass screenshots. If it's 4:3 material it better not be stretched to a 16:9 resolution.
• Think before you post. Is the screenshot really worth posting?

• Fraps: DON'T TAKE JPEGS WITH THIS, the free version takes .bmps and that should be the initial format you take screens in as it is lossless.
• Irfanview/Photoshop: Use one of these to convert to jpeg at 100% quality or crop out black bars or resize pictures.
• Imagicon: Another useful program for converting screenshots to jpeg. It can easily do batches too.
• Nvidia Inspector: Program for Nvidia cards for fine tweaking AA/AF and other graphical settings for games.
• Radeon Pro: Program for ATI cards for fine tweaking AA/AF and other graphical settings for games.

• Picpar; Brought to you by none other than X3sphere, a simple and efficient image host.
• Abload: Easy to use, doesn't compress jpegs further, auto-converts bmps to png nicely.
• Skydrive: 25 gb of storage, easy to set up folders, slideshows, no picture size limit.
• Flickr: Good stuff if you are a paid user. Otherwise you are stuck with some limitations and shouldn't really use it.
• Imagehost: Forces you to use thumbnails for jpegs over 1mb, but is otherwise a solid alt. to Abload.

Click for full-size. These were resized simply to maintain consistency in width in the OT.

Darksiders


Far Cry 2


I bet you are like OMG Stallion why only two screens? And I'm like what's the point in having rules if they are broken in the first post.

[Kayhan]

Here we go - Metro 2033

[Durante]

Yay!

I'll start this year with Fallout: New Vegas.

[iNvid02]

reserved for assassins creed brotherhood on max (when i get my first gaming pc too :lol )

[Durante]

Some more.

[subversus]

Metro 2033 looks like a next-gen game in 1920, 4AA, DX11, very high, tesselation on. Photorealistic look.

Mass Effect 2.

[Dascu]

I don't wish to impose, but it's rather useful when the title of the post mentions what game the screenshots are from.

[PjotrStroganov]

Crysis. CCC config set to 4+

[dejan]

Stallion Free
Banned
(Today, 05:43 PM)

Huh?

[Kayhan]

Stallion Free Banned (Today, 05:43 PM) Huh?

WTH?

The curse lives on: Make PC thread - get banned :lol

[Lime]

Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadowbroker DLC @ 1920x1080 4xAA (box) 16xAF:

[Salacious Crumb]

NFS: HP

[I <3 Memes]

WTH? The curse lives on: Make PC thread - get banned :lol

Damn what is that for? Without any info I would guess it's from the "PC exclusives vs. Console exclusives" thread. I've been avoiding that thread so far. I could see that it was a deathtrap just from the title.

Also, why is Dennis banned? I hope neither is perm'd.

[Foliorum Viridum]

Far Cry 2 still looks stunning. It was atmospheric on consoles, but on PC? Damnnn.






Shame that the rest of the game is rather horrid.

[Dick Laurent]

ah, xenus2. so relaxing.

[subversus]

NFS: HP

do you use any AA solutions?

[Salacious Crumb]

ah, xenus2. so relaxing.

Are there any DD services selling boiling point?

[DMPrince]

taken from the postcard mode of Dawn of Discovery (Campaign)



just for the lols. very low settings :lol

[darkpaladinmfc]

Are there any DD services selling boiling point?

GamersGate

[Salacious Crumb]

do you use any AA solutions?

4xSSAA, at least that's what it's set to in CCC.

GamersGate

Sweet, thanks.

[TheExodu5]

ah, xenus2. so relaxing.

I swear I keep thinking this is a Counter-Strike map.

[DSN2K]

Oldy but goody, Star Trek Armada II(Fleet Ops Mod)

[Dick Laurent]

Are there any DD services selling boiling point?

atari's metaboli store (and metaboli/gamesplanet). gamersgate only have xenus2 whitegold and precursors, I think. would be nice if boiling point landed on gog at some point this year.

[subversus]

4xSSAA, at least that's what it's set to in CCC.

ah, I forgot to enable MSAA in RadeonPro.

[kharma45]

Playing some Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Shots at 1280x1024 with 8x AA seems the AA doesn't seem to have worked in these screens :\. I'm still yet to embrace the world of widescreen gaming on my main PC.





Game still looks great even after all these years.

[TheOctagon]

Sub Zero, Fireball, Buzz Saw, Dennis2K and Stallion Free. Say their names with reverend pride. They punished crime and served the law. As patriots they died.

Now stick this up your exhaust.



Hot Pursuit 2010 with Nvidia's leaked beta drivers, 2xSGSSAA. I'll post another in a sec which shows the less glamorous side (hint: the AA's far from perfect).

[TheOctagon]

And here it is.

Gorgeous, gorgeous game, as the artshots thread is about to find out.

EDIT: I'm going to have to edit this as I can't say a bad word about this game. My eyes, they melt.

[Trickster]

Playing some Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Shots at 1280x1024 with 8x AA. I'm still yet to embrace the world of widescreen gaming on my main PC. http://i.min.us/idDeWi.png http://i.min.us/id8BTw.png Game still looks great even after all these years.

You say there's 8xAA in those shots, but honestly, I can't see any hint of AA in them, the jaggies are very obvious.

[Kayhan]

You there's 8xAA in those shots, but honestly, I can't see any hint of AA in them, the jaggies are very obvious.

Maybe that is what 8xAA looked like in them olden days.....:lol

[kharma45]

You there's 8xAA in those shots, but honestly, I can't see any hint of AA in them, the jaggies are very obvious.

Radeon Pro is supposed to forcing it over the top as AA isn't available in the game if you've got shaders on.

Edit - Now you point it out it doesn't look the best from those shots, looked better in-game/in-motion.

[Grimm Fandango]

Dead Space. Game runs very well on PC (although somewhat limited in visual options) and is great with headphones.

[rj118]

Dead Space. Game runs very well on PC (although somewhat limited in visual options) and is great with headphones.

Those can't be the highest settings, not to mention no AA :( I agree about the headphones though! The game is extremely atmospheric and I'd almost say you aren't playing it properly if you don't use them.

[TheOctagon]

!



These kinda belong in artshots but they are realtime, albeit taken in photo mode. I'll grab one from in-game in a sec.

[Clockwork]

Radeon Pro is supposed to forcing it over the top as AA isn't available in the game if you've got shaders on.

Nope, there is no AA in those shots.

[TheExodu5]

Playing some Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Shots at 1280x1024 with 8x AA. I'm still yet to embrace the world of widescreen gaming on my main PC.

There's definitely no AA in those shots. Either that, or resizing introduced more aliasing.

[kharma45]

Nope, there is no AA in those shots.

I'll go back and have a look later, definitely doesn't look that bad in-game. Maybe it's a problem with the Radeon Pro screenshot utility.

There's definitely no AA in those shots. Either that, or resizing introduced more aliasing.

They weren't resized so it won't have been that. I'll look later when I get a chance.

[Kayhan]

There's definitely no AA in those shots. Either that, or resizing introduced more aliasing.

When downsampling goes wrong.....:lol

Dead Space looks jagged as fuck. Bad IQ.

[Dizzy-4U]

Those Hot Pursuit shots looks absolutely amazing....and it has a nice discount on steam today. Arrgghh, why are you doing this to me!

Mass Effect 2 (1920x1080/16xAF/8AAQ/Locked 60fps) (Through Nvidia Panel, though I'm not sure if they are working. UE3 is a pain in the ass to configure). An absolute delight to play this on Pc.

[Dick Laurent]

more Xenus 2 White Gold





some hints of artifacting here, abload failed every time I tried to upload the jpegs with no compression. edit: there is quite a bit of artifacting in the two other shots I uploaded, forgot to set my compression rate before those. I'll reupload those, as the artifacting is quite noticable.

[.nimrod]

From my first Crysis playthrough using the Extreme Quality config 1.34 and no AA (~45fps most of the time):



I just love the Ambient Occlusion in Crysis:

[.nimrod]

Just Cause 2 maxed out, with Superman mod:



Metro 2033, high settings with no AA @constant 60fps:

[Blizzard]

For whenever someone has a chance at editing the OP, I notice that downsampling seems forbidden in this thread (and thus neither this thread NOR the art thread allows you to post downsampled images with HUD enabled), since it says that PR bullshots with tiledshot etc. are forbidden. Unless it depends how one interprets downsampling. :P Perhaps a rule about mentioning in the post if you use downsampling/resizing would be good?

FFS, use proper image compression. I think I speak for many when I say that my eyes are precious to me. Occasionally, I'll use them for things other than playing videogames so don't want them injured by other people's laziness, ignorance or low standards. It's bad enough that my mobile broadband provider likes to compress the living bollocks out of images, so we can do without it here. Posting images full of giant macro-blocks and mosquito noise tells me nothing about the game and defeats the whole purpose of posting them.

This talks about using proper compression, but unless I missed it I don't see an explanation of how to use proper compression. Presumably Stallion Free would suggest that people use PNG, or photoshop to convert images to JPEG at near 100% JPEG quality. I tend to use like 96%-97% quality myself but maybe I'm crazy.

Presumably the other have of the equation is not using tinypic for images larger than 1280x1024, or whatever their size limit is, since they will resample your image and it may end up looking woeful.

I don't wish to impose, but it's rather useful when the title of the post mentions what game the screenshots are from.

I agree with this as well, it would be a nice rule to have because otherwise everyone (like me) might be asking constantly.

[Blizzard]

I don't have absolute max settings, but this is something like 4xAA, 16xAF, all max except for effects, shadows, and no HBAO. I like the soft look of some areas, even though if you ever look at the skybox you may see stairstep mountains and such. I think framerate is usually 40-70 depending on the situation.

Battlefield Bad Company 2:

[Blizzard]

Continued BCBF2

[lastplayed]

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

[lastplayed]

[Grimm Fandango]

Those can't be the highest settings, not to mention no AA :( I agree about the headphones though! The game is extremely atmospheric and I'd almost say you aren't playing it properly if you don't use them.

I'll look again but as far as I saw, there was only an on/off option for AA. Maybe I can force it via the Nvidia control panel.

[TheOctagon]

For whenever someone has a chance at editing the OP, I notice that downsampling seems forbidden in this thread (and thus neither this thread NOR the art thread allows you to post downsampled images with HUD enabled), since it says that PR bullshots with tiledshot etc. are forbidden. Unless it depends how one interprets downsampling. :P Perhaps a rule about mentioning in the post if you use downsampling/resizing would be good? This talks about using proper compression, but unless I missed it I don't see an explanation of how to use proper compression. Presumably Stallion Free would suggest that people use PNG, or photoshop to convert images to JPEG at near 100% JPEG quality. I tend to use like 96%-97% quality myself but maybe I'm crazy. Presumably the other have of the equation is not using tinypic for images larger than 1280x1024, or whatever their size limit is, since they will resample your image and it may end up looking woeful. I agree with this as well, it would be a nice rule to have because otherwise everyone (like me) might be asking constantly.

I'll post a quick guide to saving as JPG in GIMP and Photoshop later tonight, then Stallion can work it into the OP. Regarding downsampling, did I specifically mention it? I thought I only mentioned bullshot functions like the Unreal tiledshot which are incompatible with HUDs anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

[Kayhan]

Some downsampling is necessary or we are going to get huge 2560x1600 screens that are hard to watch.

Downsampling from 1600p to 1200p obviously adds some fake SSAA but its not like the screens in the Artshot thread or anything.

[TheOctagon]

Some downsampling is necessary or we are going to get huge 2560x1600 screens that are hard to watch. Downsampling from 1600p to 1200p obviously adds some fake SSAA but its not like the screens in the Artshot thread or anything.

That's a very good point, actually. We should clarify that in the OP.

This is 2xSGSSAA using the leaked 264.44 beta drivers, which I must add certainly feel beta: every now and again Hot Pursuit will just freeze for a few seconds. Notice how the new AA fix is still very selective, especially when it comes to scenery.