Water Detail: This setting controls the realism of the water in the game by determining how complex the reflections on the water are: 'Simple reflections', 'Reflect world', and 'Reflect all' being the three options see the screenshot comparisons above for the difference. To overcome this add mat_picmip -1 to your autoexec.cfg file to automatically force it to start at Very High each time - see the Advanced Tweaking section for more details of how to use an autoexec.cfg file, and for more details about the mat_picmip variable. Note that you may experience a bug with this setting in that if you set it to Very High it will default back to High each time you restart the game. While increasing the texture setting can reduce FPS slightly, and more importantly may contribute to additional stuttering, given the quality of the textures in HL2 are relatively poor, most systems should run at Medium or above.

The difference between Very High and High is difficult to notice, but at Medium there is noticeable blurring, and at Low the textures are quite blurred. Note the clarity of the rock to the right, and the ground in front of you. To see an animated screenshot comparison click this link: HL2_Textures.gif (976KB). The settings here are Low, Medium, High and Very High. Texture Detail: Textures are the 2D images used as the surface of all 3D objects in the game world. If you have an older graphics card, then reducing this setting can improve performance. The Low setting provides the best performance, however objects and in particular characters may seem slightly more angular, and some minor additional detailing may be removed depending on the scene.

The screenshot comparison above shows that in general the difference is not major. There are three settings: Low, Medium and High. Model Detail: This setting controls the number of polygons and extra detailing used for objects in the game.

Half life 2 textures