Graphics

[Drackonus]

Hi, I had to reinstall the game recently and I totally forgot how to make the graphics not suck. Sooo if anyone could give me a simple walkthru on how to do it, that'd be great! Thanks.

[Ohaigaiz]

C:\Program Files\PlayOnline\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\ToolsUS

This is not advanced.

[yayaok]

think he's talking about regedit
go search wafik's old posts, there's some good stuff

[Mojo]

Optimizing FFXI graphics can be quite advanced, if FFXI config is the only tool you're using to adjust your graphics then you're missing out on quite a bit.

[Mojo]

I considered writing a lengthy guide on this, but I'm gonna do the tl;dr version instead.

The first thing you should do is decide what window size you want to play in. There is no need to stick to any standard resolutions(1280x960, 1024x768, etc.), just choose a size that you find most comfortable looking at. My preferred window size was 940x705. It gave me a very comfortable viewing area that felt natural to me given how much I used the other area of my monitor (1920x1200 native resolution) for other things (browsing the internet, winamp, etc.)

Again, it doesn't matter what window size you choose although if you want to optimize the way FFXI looks, make sure it's in a 4:3, 15:9, 15:10, 16:9, or 16:10 aspect ratio. Those are the aspect ratios that FFXI will render in, so unless you want to have your picture stretched, stick to them.

Now you want to open launcher.txt in notepad and set the x-resolution and y-resolution settings to the window size you chose.

Now, click on the start menu, select run, type in regedit and hit enter. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/PlayOnlineUS/SquareEnix/FinalFantasyXI. You're going to want to change a few of the keys to the following.

0000 - Set this to 6
0001 - Set this to the x value for the window size you chose
0002 - Set this to the y value for the window size you chose
0003 - Set this to twice the x value for the window size you chose
0004 - Set this to twice the y value for the window size you chose
0011 - Set this to 2
0017 - Set this to 1
0018 - Set this to 2
0019 - Set this to 1

And, uh, yeah. That's pretty much the best your FFXI will ever look. FFXI config/launcher_gui can automate some of this, although if you want to do it manually that's how. If you do it manually and also use launcher_gui, click import settings after you've done your manual changes before continuing or everything you did will get overwritten.

[Ohaigaiz]

Judging from his post I figured he just wanted to know where ffxi config is. Woops!

[Vedder]

Wiki is your fren: Graphics - BGWiki

Also, not advanced.

[fishstix]

//edit: nvm

[Zekyr]

Any guides out there for forcing antialiasing/antisotropic (or whatever effect it is that causes that black outline/blur in menus)? I'm not talking about the doubled resolution effect, I've played with that and it looks fucking incredible, but only get like 15-20 FPS. I've seen a bunch of pictures in media with people's equipment semi-blurred with a black outline of sorts and assumed it was due to some sort of forced AA/AS, and was curious about trying it out.

[fishstix]

Black outlines... do you mean something like this?
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p...1x/outline.jpg

This was done using a JP windower, cell shading filter/plugin

[Zekyr]

no, here's an example (stolen from some random media center post)

http://i534.photobucket.com/albums/e...FXI/lolrdm.png

[Mojo]

No idea, although honestly I think that menus and the like look best when they're not filtered.

[Epical]

That text would make me go blind, to be honest.

[ringthree]

I considered writing a lengthy guide on this, but I'm gonna do the tl;dr version instead.

The first thing you should do is decide what window size you want to play in. There is no need to stick to any standard resolutions(1280x960, 1024x768, etc.), just choose a size that you find most comfortable looking at. My preferred window size was 940x705. It gave me a very comfortable viewing area that felt natural to me given how much I used the other area of my monitor (1920x1200 native resolution) for other things (browsing the internet, winamp, etc.)

Again, it doesn't matter what window size you choose although if you want to optimize the way FFXI looks, make sure it's in a 4:3, 15:9, 15:10, 16:9, or 16:10 aspect ratio. Those are the aspect ratios that FFXI will render in, so unless you want to have your picture stretched, stick to them.

Now you want to open launcher.txt in notepad and set the x-resolution and y-resolution settings to the window size you chose.

Now, click on the start menu, select run, type in regedit and hit enter. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/PlayOnlineUS/SquareEnix/FinalFantasyXI. You're going to want to change a few of the keys to the following.

0000 - Set this to 6
0001 - Set this to the x value for the window size you chose
0002 - Set this to the y value for the window size you chose
0003 - Set this to twice the x value for the window size you chose
0004 - Set this to twice the y value for the window size you chose
0011 - Set this to 2
0017 - Set this to 1
0018 - Set this to 2
0019 - Set this to 1

And, uh, yeah. That's pretty much the best your FFXI will ever look. FFXI config/launcher_gui can automate some of this, although if you want to do it manually that's how. If you do it manually and also use launcher_gui, click import settings after you've done your manual changes before continuing or everything you did will get overwritten.

0003 and 0004 are oversampling right? If that is the case and you are using a large widescreen monitor it can cause lag on a mid-level machine (at least thats the case with mine ^.^).

Also the olde wiki has a great guide for this, search for "graphics".

[Drackonus]

Mojo thank you so much, it looks so awesome, but ya I dont think the 0003 and 0004 are right. Cuz i set it to double and the game wouldnt open, but when I set it to the same number as 0001 and 0002 it worked fine.

[Mojo]

The instructions I gave for setting the value of 0003 and 0004 are correct, it shouldn't be crashing unless you're doing something else wrong. Make sure the values you're entering are decimal and not hexadecimal. If the product of 0003 and 0004 exceeds 4,194,304, the game may crash in some cases, so take note of that.

As far as monitor size goes, that has almost nothing to do with it. You are determining your own window size and background resolution, after all. It should be understood that a larger background resolution is going to be require more resources.

But yeah, oversampling is very disproportionate in terms of graphical enhancement and CPU drain. Maybe the windower team can write an LoD control plugin to alleviate this and negate the need to oversample.

[Baelorn]

Stuff

Alternatively you could just download FFXI Calc and click "Highest Quality" under the FFXI Settings tab .

[fishstix]

Personally, I'd rather change the settings myself if I could, instead of using a 3rd party program where I dont know what it does exactly.

[Kohan]

Here is a guide that I wrote a while ago: FFXI Optimization: Graphics & Bandwidth

Hopefully, it'll be of some use to you.