Dota 2 maxi graphics pompano

Thread: Video settings, explained?

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Is there anywhere i can find a run down of what each of the setting under the video tab do? That way i can decide if i want them on or off. I dont understand most properly. I searched for this, but didnt see anything come up. Thanks guys.

Please, post here a screen shot of the video tab. Would be nice to help me to help you.

Here’s a list of how each graphics setting actually does to how the game works, and some rough ideas on how important they are to performance/visuals. I don’t know everyone’s computer, so I can’t give exact performance gains and losses. Experiment with what makes your game faster by using this guide to decide what to turn on and off.

Anti-Aliasing: Smoothes the edges of models against the background, so that they don’t look jagged and pixely. Uses a fair amount of performance, so I recommended turning this on last.
Specular: Provides highlights on the terrain, causing it to glow and look more lifelike. I’d prefer to keep this on, as the world looks desaturated without it.
Specular Bloom: Makes the highlight from Specular look. a little brighter? There’s not much noticeable effect from this option, feel free to turn it off.
Water Quality: If on, makes the water in the river transparent and reflect things, along with a few other cool effects. The water still looks pretty decent if this is off, though. (note: if you have water quality low, fog will not work for some reason.)
Fog: Causes wisps of fog to appear around trees and foliage around the map, noticeable at night quite a bit. Doesn’t seem to affect framerate much, so I’d keep it on to make the map appear fuller.
Shadows: High is full shadows casted by everything, including trees, buildings, and heroes. Medium shadows have just a blob of darkness beneath units and heroes. Low has no shadows at all. There doesn’t seem to be too much difference performance-wise between medium and low, so I’d set it on medium if high is too much for you (which it could be, since it’s very intensive).
Animate Portrait: Causes the portrait of the hero on the bottom to move and talk, or be completely still. This actually increases performance a decent amount, so turning this off can be a good place to start, since you don’t look at the portrait often.
Additive Light Pass: Gives units and heroes a glow to them. I highly recommend keeping this on unless you need every frame you can get, since heroes loose a lot of color and character in the world (and it also makes them easier to spot).
World Lighting: Makes the torches, lightposts, and some buildings in the world give off colored lights. Not that noticeable when you’re playing, so it can be turned off early on.
Ambient Occlusion: Makes anything in the world give off a sort of ambient shadow to the ground around it, darkening the world a bit but appearing more rich. Usually a high-end graphics setting that you can turn off unless you have more processing power to use.
Textures: Textures will appear more muddy and pixelated the lower this setting goes. While other settings remove something artistic if turned off, lowering this setting causes the game to appear just ugly, in my opinion. Try to keep this on high unless it gives you a really good framerate boost if you lower it.
Render Quality: Lowering this makes the 3d screen smaller, and then is scaled up again, looking fuzzy. This is like lowering your game resolution, except that the 2d HUD won’t be affected. Can also make the game appear really ugly if lowered too much.
Ambient Creatures: Causes the things like butterflies and frogs to not show up in the game, I think. Never used this setting.

Some notes on Specular Bloom, Water Quality, and Additive Light Pass. Specular Bloom is mainly noticeable at the radiant base (you need Specular set to “On” obviously). With Water Quality set to “Off” you won’t be able to draw on the water in Spectator mode (mainly affects casters). And to best notice what Additive Light Pass does, play as Nyx Assassin. Set to “Off” will greatly change the way he looks, mainly he’s less shiny.

Nice responses guys! thats exactly what i was looking for, and i think that this thread will help many others out as well.