Image Quality

Editor’s Note: As it takes place at night, the environments within Chaos Theory are very dark. In order to provide more helpful screenshots that are easier to see minute details, we’ve cranked up the gamma in the following screenshots. As a result, in some of the darker images, colors are over-saturated.

Anti-alising

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a very dark game. Remember, as a spy you’d have a hard time sneaking through corridors in the middle of broad daylight. As a result, AA doesn’t play as large of a role as it does in other games. In fact, in the first Splinter Cell title Ubisoft didn’t provide AA support. Both ATI and NVIDIA cards offer crisp images with AA on:

GeForce 6800 GT 0xAA/0xAF

GeForce 6800 GT 4xAA/8xAF

X850 XT 0xAA/0xAF

X850 XT 4xAA/8xAF

GeForce 6800 GT 0xAA/0xAF

GeForce 6800 GT 4xAA/8xAF

X850 XT 4xAA/8xAF

1.1 vs 3.0 Shader mode and HDR

Next lets take a look at a few different environments rendered with shader model 1.1 versus 3.0.

GeForce 6800 GT 1.1 shader mode

GeForce 6800 GT 3.0 shader mode

RADEON X850 XT 1.1 shaders only

GeForce 6800 GT 1.1 shader mode

GeForce 6800 GT 3.0 shader mode

RADEON X850 XT 1.1 shader mode

Looking at the images, it’s hard to spot any differences in the water between the two shader modes. How does HDR lighting look though, let’s see:

6800 GT HDR Off

GeForce 6800 GT HDR On

GeForce 6800 GT HDR Off

GeForce 6800 GT HDR On

Clearly we can see the greater intensity HDR lighting brings to Chaos Theory. In the second batch of shots you can see Sam’s cheekbones more clearly as the green hue of light from Sam’s IR goggles shines on his face. Images 15 and 16 show clear differences as well.

Knowing this, the final question we had was if 3.0 shaders produce lighting superior to 1.1 shaders or not:

GeForce 6800 GT 1.1 lighting

GeForce 6800 GT 3.0 lighting with HDR Off

In the image above you can clearly see that in the 3.0 shader mode, the light is brighter than when running in 1.1 mode.