The Witcher 2 - Enhanced Edition Released

Originally Posted by vurt
Don't care as much about graphics as i care for good controlls though, so i'd take the 360 version any day if it indeed has much better controlls. I've gotten so used to playing third person games with a gamepad, especially now after playing Dark Souls a lot..

I'm playing the EE on my PC at 1920x1200 with almost everything set to max (except for ubersampling) and it runs smooth as butter. I see no control issue with the PC version, mouse + keyboard. Runs smooth and looks amazing on my newly aquired GTX 560 Ti.

Originally Posted by vurt
Don't care as much about graphics as i care for good controlls though, so i'd take the 360 version any day if it indeed has much better controlls. I've gotten so used to playing third person games with a gamepad, especially now after playing Dark Souls a lot..

But there's nothing wrong with the pc controls. The gameplay is excellent. The inventory is a little messed up and seems to be made for cosole rather than pc. It could use a skyui type mod.

I agree with sakichop, there's nothing wrong with the pc controls. I've played it both with a gamepad and keyboard and mouse. Response time is fine with either one.

3D stereoscopic is even better I believe or at least now it's beyond excellent. It's been a while since I played W2 with 3D, but IIRC there were some issues with it. Those are gone now. It's one of the best 3D games I've played. The sky is messed up a bit, but there always seems to be issues with the sky in all the games I've played in 3D.

One thing I'm curious about though. They added some narration by the bard after the prologue, but there was no video to accompany the narration. It's just a big black screen. I wonder if this is intentional or if anyone had a cutscene during the narration after the prologue.

If it's intentional then it's a little odd to be staring at a black screen. They could have thrown in the comic format of Dandelion talking or give me a loading screen. I didn't like staring at a black screen.

Originally Posted by sakichop
But there's nothing wrong with the pc controls. The gameplay is excellent. The inventory is a little messed up and seems to be made for cosole rather than pc. It could use a skyui type mod.

Yeah there are some UI mods here, but nothing so significant:

http://modsreloaded.com/witcher-2/ui-mods
http://witcher.nexusmods.com/

Personally I'd like a mod that just skipped the meditation animation. I have no problem not being able to use potions in combat, but going through he menus and watching the animation gets mildly tedious. Maybe they'll release a dev kit eventually?

So you've all compared 360 version with PC (with 360 controller)? There was no difference, like someone claimed?

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
One thing I'm curious about though. They added some narration by the bard after the prologue, but there was no video to accompany the narration. It's just a big black screen. I wonder if this is intentional or if anyone had a cutscene during the narration after the prologue.

If it's intentional then it's a little odd to be staring at a black screen. They could have thrown in the comic format of Dandelion talking or give me a loading screen. I didn't like staring at a black screen.

That's the issue I was referring to in the first post.

Strangely enough the narrated video between Chapter 1 and 2 worked fine for me.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
I'm playing the EE on my PC at 1920x1200 with almost everything set to max (except for ubersampling) and it runs smooth as butter. I see no control issue with the PC version, mouse + keyboard. Runs smooth and looks amazing on my newly aquired GTX 560 Ti.

You can set ubersambling to 1 (basically 16AF) or set 16AF from your control panel (works on my 5870) to get even better quality if you have not already…

The game looks amazing, no doubt about it…
(and runs flawlessly in my 2+ years old 5870 at my 1680x1050 lcd)

Originally Posted by vurt
So you've all compared 360 version with PC (with 360 controller)? There was no difference, like someone claimed?

According to the gametrailers review the gameplay controls on the xbox are the same as on the pc EE with a 360 controller but the menu controls are worse on the pc with a controller than on the xbox.

Thanks, good to know. I'll skip buying the 360 version.

Originally Posted by JonNik
You can set ubersambling to 1 (basically 16AF) or set 16AF from your control panel (works on my 5870) to get even better quality if you have not already…

The game looks amazing, no doubt about it…
(and runs flawlessly in my 2+ years old 5870 at my 1680x1050 lcd)

I doubt that the game runs flawlessly with UberSampling enabled on your system. UberSampling does a lot more than 16x AF and is known to kill performance even on the highest end cards.
Check here for benchmarks (scroll all the way down) of a GTX 680 and HD 7970. They produce ~15 - 17 frames per second with UberSampling enabled so a 5870 just isn't going to cut it.
There is no graphics card on this planet (yet) that can produce playable FPS with UberSampling enabled.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
I doubt that the game runs flawlessly with UberSampling enabled on your system. UberSampling does a lot more than 16x AF and is known to kill performance even on the highest end cards.
Check here for benchmarks (scroll all the way down) of a GTX 680 and HD 7970. They produce ~15 - 17 frames per second with UberSampling enabled so a 5870 just isn't going to cut it.
There is no graphics card on this planet (yet) that can produce playable FPS with UberSampling enabled.

I think they meant they were forcing AF x16 on in their card settings, not personally running Ubersampling.

Originally Posted by jhwisner
I think they meant they were forcing AF x16 on in their card settings, not personally running Ubersampling.

Well, he said to set UberSampling to 1 (which would mean to enable it) so I thought he was recommending to enable UberSampling and that it would be about the same as enabling 16x AF which is not correct because at least as far as I know what UberSampling does is SuperSampling, i.e. rendering the image at a much higher resolution than the final output plus post-processing which is extremely demanding on the GPU. Anisotropic filtering on the other hand (and even 16x AF) only has a very small impact on performance and its only purpose is to sharpen textures whereas UberSampling increases the image quality on a whole.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Well, he said to set UberSampling to 1 (which would mean to enable it) so I thought he was recommending to enable UberSampling and that it would be about the same as enabling 16x AF which is not correct because at least as far as I know what UberSampling does is SuperSampling, i.e. rendering the image at a much higher resolution than the final output plus post-processing which is extremely demanding on the GPU. Anisotropic filtering on the other hand (and even 16x AF) only has a very small impact on performance and its only purpose is to sharpen textures whereas UberSampling increases the image quality on a whole.

Oh yeah I agree with you that they seem to be very different things - espescially performance wise. It's the difference between ~40 fps and ~8 for me.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
There is no graphics card on this planet (yet) that can produce playable FPS with UberSampling enabled.

That means only one thing. The game will look even better in 10 years!

And then we'll talk again which game aged well and which didn't…
Then we'll remember it was the first game that had free DLC…
In any case, they're (re)writing history.

Didn't Ubersampling have multiple levels? I think when enabled from the configuration tool it would be set to 2 but you could edit an .ini file to set it to 1.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
I doubt that the game runs flawlessly with UberSampling enabled on your system. UberSampling does a lot more than 16x AF and is known to kill performance even on the highest end cards.

Umm, like Kostaz pointed out what I said is:

You can set ubersambling to 1 (basically 16AF) or set 16AF from your control panel (works on my 5870) to get even better quality if you have not already…

Personally I just set AF16 from the control panel but iirc(been a while) its the same.
(I could check with fraps if anyone is interested)

Perhaps I should have spelled it out that I meant by editing the ini but it was somehow clear to my mind (as there are no numerical values in the game's configurator and did say the 16AF bit)…

Wut, did you think I somehow missed everyone and his dog moaning about ubersampling and just made a wild claim ?

Ubersampling isn't just AF though…

Can't really say what it did I guess without inside knowledge (people were claiming that = 1 was only AF16 but I am not going to stake my life on it ).

My recollection was that setting to 1 brought only a modest fps drop and just seemed to sharpen the image a bit. Setting 16 AF from the catalyst control panel looked better (with a marginally bigger fps drop. That happens quite often btw, setting 16AF from the panel looks better than ingame 16AF settings certainly did for G3 and older source games iirc)…

Anyways

In my case ubersampling really kills the framerate. On my system (Q6600 @ 2.4ghz, GTX 560 Ti, 8 Gigs Ram) it just flawlessly with everything set to max except for ubersampling. That's a real killer, and from what I've seen in screenshots there isn't very much of an improvement in having ubersampling active.

My only issue right now is that I'm force to run the game in 16:9. Otherwise I get a black screen in some cinematics. It looks ok in 16:9, but I'd prefer it to use 16:10 since I'm running in 1920x1200.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
That's a real killer, and from what I've seen in screenshots there isn't very much of an improvement in having ubersampling active.

Well, if Ubersampling=2 (the value set by the ingame configurator) means Super Sample Antialiazing it should significantly sharpen the image (particularly semi transparent i.e foliage textures). I guess on a side by side on your system it will be easier to pick up the differences…

I have to admit not even having tried the =2 value (I just tried the =1 value from the ini as I saw it posted here, then just settled on the control panel option on the few mins I fiddled with those things on my first install).

I am sure most of us here can do without and just focus on enjoying the game