S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky | Screenshots (DX10 - DX10.1)

OK. I am taking back all the bad mouthing I did for Vista and DX10. Apparently, when you have the correct hardware and the correct game, it is fricking awesome. I had Vista on my gaming laptop but on a DX9 graphics card (GeForce 7850 GTX 512MB) and it sucked big time. GRAW 2 suffered almost 30% performance loss. I measured it after installing XP on the same machine and playing the same game with same settings and looking at the average fps. So I removed Vista and sworn not to install it again.

Alas, came in the new computer with Vista Home Premium 64bit and I converted; converted big time. Now I proclaim Vista to be the best OS ever! And turning off that annoying security feature is just a breeze so stop complaining. (It's good to have it, you don't want it? turn it off.)

What's definitely not so different in DX10?

• Details. DX9 with max settings is as good as it gets. No significant change in any object detail is noticable on DX10

   

   

  What's different in DX10?

   

   

• First and foremost, shadows. They are amazingly real.
• Volumetric lighting. Those clouds are just mouth watering. Kudos Russkies.
• I feel, personally, that DX10 runs faster than DX9. I do get the same if not better fps with DX10, which is not so amazing given the libraries and the memory handling of the new DX - coding of the game is very important though, with STALKER CS you won't be disappointed.
• Wet surfaces. Now that is pretty amazing. When it rains, everything gradually gets wet. The suits, ground, object. You actually see rain drops bouncing off your self, weapon, other people etc. Sweet.
• Full high dynaminc range lighting. You have to see it to believe it. A sunset is a sunset, a sunrise is a sunrise, gun flashes, fires... every color interacts and reflects. Holy crap.
• And Dept of Field. I had no idea this was here. When you reload your weapon, background gets blurred and you focus on the weapon. I cannot tell if it's anywhere else because I am still having problems seeing the screen through my tears of joy.
• Environment: water, sun rays blah. Just looks prettier and prettier with DX10 shaders and AA (I could not really see what the big difference is between DX10 and DX10.1 though. Did notice a slight drop on fps so I turned DX10.1 extensions off).

   

   

  This is not directly related to DX but the dynamic music in this game is beyond imagination. STALKER already had a disturbingly real and edgy atmosphere, but the music changing and rising to the occasion (yeap, you get heavy metal sounding power chorded, fast paced music during intense moments and... well, you have to experience to understand what the big deal is).

  On some screenshots, you will notice weird meshes around distant object. One of the "mods" that I have downloaded did this, but I cannot figure out which one for the life of me. I did so many. Oh yes, without some mods, this game is, sort of "not so much fun" :-)

  Enjoy.