Far Cry in HDR

I have been looking at the latest news and benchmarks around the latests graphics card around recently and one particular thing struck me. In most benchmarks that I saw, Far Cry is still being used. Interesting as the game is almost 3 years old. And then I have an idea: why don't I make a revisit to this game, to play it for the second time. However, this time around, I want to enable HDR!

The first time I played the game, my PC was only powered by Athlon XP 1700+ Palomino, 512 MB MB RAM, and graphically not-so-powerful Radeon 9800 SE softmodded to 8-pixel pipelines! The experience was relatively 'wow' although I was probably stuck under 40+ fps in 800x600 res! (I didn't benchmark it AFAICR!)

So, I set up Far Cry with default installation and patch it up to version 1.32, which I think is already sufficient to enable HDR with certain graphical bugfixes applied. Furthermore, I don't play on online server so patch 1.33 and 1.4 are not so important to me.

I maxed out all graphical settings and set the resolution at 1280x1024 (my LCD maxed out at that res!). I set AF level in the driver setting at 16X.

As I was quite impatient, I just took a few snapshots during the early stage of the game comparing Far Cry with and without HDR. To be frank, it's not gonna be a serious Far Cry gaming this time. I think I just want to enjoy the scenery while fragging a bit!

So, here are those screenshots:

Without HDR

With HDR

Without HDR

With HDR

Without HDR

With HDR

Without HDR

With HDR

Without HDR

With HDR

The result is certainly breathtaking! Far Cry HDR is totally impressive in graphics which makes this second visit worth every second of it. There are definitely a lot of corrections in lighting (for example, check the first two pictures!) and the realism is lifted significantly.

I used FRAPS to take the shots and I noticed that for early benchmarks, my framerates never fall below 80 while averaging about 90+ fps. However, I will post the actual benchmark later on.

Stay tuned as more pictures of Far Cry in HDR will be posted!