Game:

Far Cry (2004)

Duration: 0:00

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52

REAL HARDWARE CAPTURE IN 4:3 ASPECT RATIO.

This is another capture of Far Cry (Crytek/Ubisoft, March 2004) running on a PC from late 2003 but this time with a different render mode being used; the Cartoon mode! The cartoon render mode isn't covered very well on Youtube (or in general, really) so I felt compelled to upload some decent reference footage for what it looks like when set up right. The black outlining is hard to notice at higher resolutions, so my recommendation is to play Far Cry in Cartoon mode using, at most, 1024x768 pixels (give or take) or anything below that for the best effect.

When using the Cartoon render mode in Far Cry, many effects like multi-texture effects (Normal Mapping, Environment-mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM), Cube Mapping, Gloss Mapping etc.), projected textures (for ceiling lights and canopy shadows), real-time/active Shadow Mapping and stencil-buffered shadows (shadow volumes), the reflective EMBM water (and more!) take on a more silhouetted and artistically colored look that I very much enjoy! It's kind of like toon shading/cel-shading but it has some quirks of its own that makes it look distinctive from other cel-shaded games of the time. The cartoon effect is harder to notice in dark scenes with little to no lighting (presumably because the shader program responsible for the silhouetting relies on scene colors for the effect to work) but using the flashlight or thermal goggles usually fixes that.

How does it run in cartoon mode?
Pretty much the exact same way as the Default render mode! Read the description on my non-cartoon mode video for more information on how Far Cry runs in general, with or without cartoon mode.

This is the original DVD-ROM retail version (1.0) without any patches installed.

- GAME SETTINGS - -
Unlike my previous default render mode footage, not every video setting in-game is maxed out; both anti-aliasing and anisotropic texture filtering are turned OFF. The reason why anisotropic filtering is disabled has to do with how it negatively affects visual quality in Far Cry's cartoon renderer. The outlining effect stops working as intended for any surface edges and textures that are close to the camera. This results in blurry and generally bad-looking textures unless they are viewed from further away.

Vertical Sync was turned off, meaning that you might observe a lot of torn frames in the footage. Let me know if you want me to try V. Sync for future captures! I try to avoid using V. Sync if it's too aggressive (i.e. it rounds down to nearest multiple of 30hz).

The sound settings have hardware mixing and EAX both enabled.

- SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS - -
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP SP3.
Drivers for Radeon 9800 XT: Catalyst 4.3 (around March 10th 2004).
Drivers for Sound Blaster Audigy 2: EAX 4.0 drivers (October 31st 2003, from file sba2_eax4drv_031031.exe).

This footage and audio was captured from the following computer:
MSI K8T Neo (MS-6702, Ver 1.0) motherboard (manufactured August/September 2003).
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor (manufactured week 33 2003, as marked on heatspreader).
VIA K8T800 chipset.
ATi Radeon 9800XT (256 MB) video card (manufactured week 42 2003 according to serial number sticker).
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (SB0240) sound card (manufactured in 2002 or 2003, don't remember exactly when).
1 GB of DDR SDRAM; Corsair XMS Pro TwinX1024-3200C2PRO (2x512MB, manufactured week 40 2003), clock speed is DDR400 & latency is 2-3-3-6.

The capturing was done with VCS (which can be found on the Internet Archive) and OBS Studio using a Datapath VisionRGB-E1S PCI-Express capture card. A DVI cable is connected between the source computer and the Datapath capture card to enable video capturing. Audio capture was done by feeding a 3.5mm stereo jack cable from the sound card of the vintage computer to the capture system’s on-board line in connector. Resizing/upscaling of the raw original 1024x768 capture to 3072x2304 was done using VirtualDub2.

Timestamps
0:00 - Training
2:11 - Fort
5:34 - Pier
7:35 - Research (seawater pumping station)
9:04 - Treehouse
10:48 - Steam
11:43 - Control
12:37 - Boat