The big thing first, what made me write this in the first place. A well known problem with the game is the implementation of (slapping on seems more like it) pixel shading routines, causing big problems for people who have come accustomed to running games with Anisotropic Filtering and Anti Aliasing. Well, here's a workaround that lets you use both AF and AA without major graphics flaws ruining the experience. The key setting is to lower the Graphics Quality slider to a very low position, so that the game does not load up its pixel shading part of the engine. Try Low or Lowest. (Low has the benefit of shinier guns and stuff, but since I also see some wierd pixels sometimes I think I prefer Lowest.)
This way you are kindof getting the basic engine of BF:1942. Unless you have an older card you'll want to keep the texture setting on its max to keep the core of the image quality. Try with and without Lightmaps/Shadows to see wich gives you the best quality/performance. Likewise with the Geometry.
Text and AA: Just like with BF:1942 the in-game text is adversely affected by AntiAliasing, but using the ATI Direct3D driver setting Alternate Pixel Center can help. It's a matter of taste, resolution and monitor I guess, so give it a try.
For RadLinker users: add a couple of seconds to the Timeout setting. Because this game has the very unusual behavior of quitting and restarting itself every time the map changes. A 3s timeout is fine for me, but a slow system might need more.
On audio: any EAX mode seem to cause problems for players with all kinds of sound hardware, so try the simple Miles Positional 2D for pure performance. This part of the game will need about as much patching as the graphics. If you still want to try using EAX, there is a tweak setting that seems to help some. Edit the file INIT.CON and add a line saying "game.soundbuffersize 400".
Faster startup: Add "+restart 1" to the end of the shortcut with wich you launch the game. If you use a RadLink, just put it in the Command Line Arguments field.
A request:
If there is any way to change the FOV for this game (to standard 90) I'm dying to hear about it. The game seems to use something around 75 wich makes it almost claustrofobic whenever fighting indoors.
Enjoy.
