3D model quality

[Spycossomatik]

Hello gents,

I didn't find the answer, so i open this thread, sorry if i made a mistake

I tested some differents settings about 3D model quality and i can't notice any difference in term of graphic quality. Fastest and Best looks same to me. Am I blind ? 
Or maybe the difference is not visual ? If someone knows and could explain to me ^^ 

Thanks in advance  

[domfluff]

There are two main quality settings - one you can change in-game, "3D model quality", and the other you can change out of game "texture quality".

The latter uses larger textures, so loads more into RAM (and will increase load times for a scenario). 3D model quality mostly controls the distance that the engine starts to hide detail for scaling.

The easiest way to see this is to load a map with a lot of trees - with 3D model quality on the lowest setting, only nearby trees will be drawn, and there will be a noticeable drop in tree quality a little further out. Beyond that, the trees will not be drawn at all. You'll see the same thing with textures - there will  be a noticeable radius around the camera where textures are drawn with their highest quality settings, then at further distances this will drop off. This kind of Level of Detail (LOD) scaling is commonplace - if a model takes up two pixels on the screen, there's no reason to spend a large amount of resources rendering it, since the user won't notice the difference.

The CM engine being what it is (in terms of age, priorities and development resources), this isn't as powerful or efficient as it could be, and it's a lot more noticeable than some examples - this kind of LOD scaling will happen in most computer games (for an extreme example, the Total War series), but the effects are usually harder to spot.

[Spycossomatik]

Thanks a lot domfluff,

i couldn't have expected a more precise answer.

All is clear now