LFS can look REALLY good if you know what to do, so heres my guide on how you can get LFS to look better.

Firstly, you'll want to set LFS up for the optimal in-game settings, provided you have a relatively modern GFX card this shouldn't have much of an impact on FPS.

Go into LFS>Options>Graphics and change the options to the ones below:

Please note, "Mip Bias" is a matter of personal preference, ie i prefer a value of 0

Then go to LFS>Options>Misc and set "Dynamic LOD Reduction" to "0".

If you want more graphical improvement, then you will need to start fiddling around in your graphics drivers.

If you have an nVidia card:
Firstly, go to your nVidia Control Panel (You can access it by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting "NVIDIA Control Panel"), clicking "3D Settings" and then "Adjust Image Settings With Preview" and checking the "Let The 3D Application Decide"

I recommend you download the great nHancer (download) utility, and install it. Open nHancer, and follow the steps and you will end up with a screen like this:


Click "Add" and call the profile "LFS", then click the "Add" above "Add (with path)", and select your LFS.exe, clicking ok.

Now to add the image enhancement, ideally you want to select something like this:

(To activate each control, check the check box next to the heading)

Anti-Aliasing has a big impact on performance, and if it has too bigger impact on your performance then click "Multi-Sampling" and click "2x". You may also want to set "Transparency AA" to "Multi-" if you get too much of an FPS drop.

Then click on the "Optimizations" tab and check "Texture filtering" and select "High Quality" and set "Negative LOD Bias" to "Clamp".



You can now close nHancer, the profile is saved. You do not need to run nHancer to have the graphics settings applied.

If the above is done and yet you still appear to have the same image quality then use the following settings in addition to the ones above.



If you have an ATi Card:




Electrik Kar has written a guide for ATi cards here (Warning a .doc file, needs Word, OpenOffice or similar)

I also recommend that you download some custom hi-res textures, which can be found at the LFS Texture Database, the owner of this site has compiled a pack which is here, however i'd recommend you look round the site yourself and see what you like most.

Got any grammatical/spelling improvements? Hints? Tips? Wanna shout at me and call me a n00b? Post away!

Thanks to Highsider9 for the ATi section screenshots.

AFAIK, LFS doesn't support any form of supersampling for transparency, so that setting will do you no good whatsoever. Example being the chainlink fences.

I agree with all of that but I have haze switched off.

Might be worth putting this into the wiki...

The only thing I personally can't recommend is to turn on Supersampling Transparency AA, because it produces graphics errors in LFS for me. Though it might be my 6600GT causing this.

Awesome work Jakg, im on it, will post a screenshot when I'm done

Which setting will get rid of the horrible moire effect I get on the kerbs? I've got a metric assload of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering going on - I shouldn't have fuzzy kerbs!

What flavor GFX you using Kev?

SD.

It's a Vinviddier something, it's got something like six hundred Megs, and it's about the size of a house brick and weighs the same. I think it can create a lot of graphics, enough to keep my 22" monitor full anyway.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

It's a Vinviddier something, it's got something like six hundred Megs, and it's about the size of a house brick and weighs the same. I think it can create a lot of graphics, enough to keep my 22" monitor full anyway.

ahh yes you need to adjust your mortar settings (try moving the mip bias?)

worth a mention for LCD owners, running LFS at any other resolution appart from your monitors actual 1:1 native resolution can cause some blurring ect, always use the cable supplied with the display (DVI is superior to VGA)

Jak I personally use the dither function dont see much difference with it off, whats it do?

I have an old ATI X850PE and use Tray Tools to adjust everything to max quality via that, but I remember a gfx problem with advanced trilinear filtering on my card that made the kerbs look fuzzy Ill have to test

SD.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Which setting will get rid of the horrible moire effect I get on the kerbs? I've got a metric assload of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering going on - I shouldn't have fuzzy kerbs!

The anisotropic filtering.

If you can, 8XAA and 16AF gives great image quality.

Personally i can't tell the difference between 4xAA and 8xAA, and it won't use 8xAA over 1024*1280, which makes it crap for my screen

so. how do you take screen shots?

You can press "Control" and "S" and it will save a file in the LFS>Data>Shots folder, but it will be a bitmap. My personal favourite is "Grabby", even though it's 6 years old!

Quote from Stone in Focus :

so. how do you take screen shots?

CTRL+S takes a screenie and saves into 'LFS/data/shots', or you can use 3rd party apps such as Fraps.

Couple of tips...

Use Shift+F to remove the HUD.
Use Shift+U for custom views, space hides/unhides the view controls.

heres a basic one at the specs jakg specified, unfortunately this is slightly too much for my system, running at about 25-30 in hotlapping mode.

Whats the best thing to do to up the fps, with out losing too much quality?

Nice guide.

Note, displays must be mentioned because I can get no where near the clean screenshot as others can with my limited 1152x864 without going 60 Hz refresh on my 17 inch CRT. Resolution can make a huge difference. I'm at max settings in LFS and max of 6x/16x AA/AS in my ATI drivers. Though it looks fantastic, it looks no where near what you guys have with your mega resolutions.

Quote from Jakg :

Personally i can't tell the difference between 4xAA and 8xAA, and it won't use 8xAA over 1024*1280, which makes it crap for my screen

I use 1600x1000, I find a big difference between 8x and 4x. I have an Nvidia 7900gt card though which is quite frankly poor at anti-aliasing compared to say a 1900xt, up until the very latest generation of cards ATI 4X = NVIDIA 8X imo.

yeah i had a mojor problem today. I set my desktop res to 2000*1600 or something ridiculous like that, and the screen (some 15" 50 year old thing) couldnt take it, and it wouldnt revert back, so i was stuck with a blank screen and no way to revert it haahhah good times I LOVE COMPUTERS. All fixed now though.

Anyway, yeah, i need a new monitor... Woah off topic, i tried to bring it back but alas, it was too far gone...

Quote from Stone in Focus :

heres a basic one at the specs jakg specified, unfortunately this is slightly too much for my system, running at about 25-30 in hotlapping mode.

Whats the best thing to do to up the fps, with out losing too much quality?

tried using Less AA? Put it to "Quality" rather than High Quality? You might have to just admit defeat

Quote from Jakg :

tried using Less AA? Put it to "Quality" rather than High Quality? You might have to just admit defeat

Never!

Quote from Tweaker :

AFAIK, LFS doesn't support any form of supersampling for transparency, so that setting will do you no good whatsoever. Example being the chainlink fences.

That's not true. Works like charm on my ATI X800

Ive found that the best my system can do is about 2xAA 16xAF and set at High Quality. Thats very smooth and great looking.

The gfx card cost me $60 and was well worth it, can expect too much for that price.

OK... I've got the graphics settings that Jakqui recommends in LFS itself, attachment 1 is the LFS settings in nVidia CP. Attachments 2 and 3 show the distracting mess I get from textures like kerbs and armco barriers.

Any suggestions?

Edit: Textures are LFS default - I don't have any replacement texture packs. Would these help? And if so, which ones are good?

If i remember rightly, Kev's got an 8800? If so theres something called "Convergent Anti-Aliasing" (i think, the only 8800 in this house sits on top of a fecking printer!) which is "better".

You might want to try nHancer, it opens up more options...