Hey all,

Like many of you I have downloaded the Star Trek: Elite Force II Single Player Demo, and there are a few graphic options that I'm not familiar with; perhaps you can all help me out.  Basically, I want the game to look as pretty as possible, and I think I've got the setting right.

Simple Lighting is unchecked
Simple Lighting Distance is Far
Shadows are Stencil
Flares are Precise
Vertex Lighting, Dynamic Lights, and Dynamic Lightmaps are checked
Entity Fade Distance is Far
Level of Detail Distance is Far

These are the once I wasn't sure about.  Basically, are these set to their prettiest the way I have them.

I have a few questions to, and perhaps a few bugs:

1) What's the difference between Simple and Vertex Lighting?
2) Can someone tell me what Ansitropic Filtering and Antialiasing are?
3) Whenever I exit back to desktop, Dynamic Lights seems to uncheck itself; I always have to re-check it.  Is this happening to anyone else?  I can play through the demo with it enabled, however.
4) Has anyone else noticed a certain "clipping" look with terrain or walls that will be deformed/destroyed in normal vision (Like the bridge outside at the beginning of the second level)?
5) In the very first cutscene, is the Enterprise E's hull completely black for anyone else as well?  Everything else in that cutscene looks fine and colourful (and the shuttle has it's hull).

I have an Intel Pentium 4 1.6 GHz, 512 Megs of DDRam, an MSI GeForce4 MX 440 with the 43.45 drivers, Sound Blaster Live! 5.1, Windows 98 Second Edition with all the updates, and DirectX 9.0a.

Thanks all!

Hey! A n00bz!

*poke*

1) Is there a lightmap setting? If not, simple is probably Lightmapped. Better render, but longer.
2) It's a kind of multi-pass setting that allow the video card to get rid of the edge of an object. You know, a wall on older game is a series of pixels you can easily see. AA and AF do many pass on those edge to make them smooth. Give a way better realistic result.
3) No idea.
4) No idea.
5) Probably a limitation of your video card. Let me remind you a GeForce 4 MX 440 (What I have) is way not powerfull and is as powerfull as a GeForce 2 Ultra... I bet the hull of the EE is some of a huge texture, probably a 1024*1024 or higher. Your card probably don't like that. It happen sometime with some computer while testing the IRez...

welcome to the board! *poke*

5) Turn off vertex lighting. I'm guessing, if you don't have a fully DX9 compatible vid card, such as the GeForve FX or Radion 97/9800, you'll get anomilies like that. And I'm only speculating. But turning off vertex lighting did the trick for me.