Since BG2 can be played in both 3D and 2D I wanted to open a little discussion about which one everyone thought displayed BG2 better. In my personal experience, BG2 is one of the few games I have ever played in which 2D seems to look better than 3D. I get many more colors and the game actually seems to run better in 2D as well. I have a plenty good enough 3D card, so that is not the reason. So if it is a common opinion that 2D looks better, why on earth is that? It just doesn't make any sense to me. But if there is a simple reason for this, please enlighten me.

I havent tried it 2D yet. I run a Riva TNT 2. It seems to run ok. Slugs down a little though. Definatly slower than BG. Ill be curious to the responses that people post here. Maybe Ill end up running in 2D myself if people have had enough probs!

My sys specs:
P233
64MB Ram
40X CDROM
3.2GB HD
Riva TNT 2
Win 98
Reccomended install

Some slow down. Figured it was just my S**t CPU. If its 3D related though and I can clunk out a few extra frames Ill be glad!

I have a Pentium III 450 with a Matrox G400 Max AGP running at 2X. 128 megs of RAM and a 20.4 gyg hard drive running at 7200 RPM. Certainly not the best, but certainly no slouch either. After trying every trick I knew to get smooth graphics, from getting the latest drivers for everything, to downloading directX 8.0, and even tweeking my BIOS, I finally gave up and began playing in 2D. For some reason BG2 in 3D mode bogs down my computer like no flight sim or space sim can. I think that's just one of those strange computerland glitches for which no one has an answer. Maybe some day we will have a patch from Interplay to fix this, but in the meantime, I guess it's long live 2D!

Just in case anyone was wondering what my "plenty goodenough 3D card" is, it's a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP. My specs are:
AMD K-6 400, 128 megs of RAM, 12G HD, 40x CDROM, Win 98.
I'm well aware that it isn't a super-computer or anything, but why would BG2 actually look better in 2D? And run better? I've always had it the other way around, if any game CAN be played in 3D, it has always been smoother, and better looking...... except this one. Don't get me wrong, I ain't complaining, I love this game and I no longer have any semblance of a life because of it, I'm just curious thats all.

733 mhz
133 mhz via board
Voodoo 3000

I tried both 3d and 2d and found the 2d vastly superior. I dont know what graphics cards the developers tested, but after trying all the settings for both 2d and 3d and also doing some research I found that 3d is only for some configurations and even then the advantages are small. Fog of war is rendered a bit faster in 3d as well as some magic affects. However since the rest of the graphics are made with spirits (non 3d) it really is no trgedy of your 3d card is not supported.

P700mhz intel
voodoo3 3000 AGP
256mb
ME

I too was experiencing slow graphis first, then i installed Directx 8, didnt notice much if any improvement, except d8 screwed my internet access up , nearly totally.rans setup.exe on win me disk, did a 'quick' install from with windows (not from c:&gt then after that i went to windows update , and there appared right before my very eyes, a 'new' voodoo 3 3000 driver, downloaded this and everything looks 'very'' colourfull now. I fully Recomend it!
8*)

kay.........
what did you do gungk?
You went to windows update and there was a new voodoo 3 driver there for you? and now you can play the game in 3D with as many colors as 2D? First of all, I didnt think that was possible. second, I certainly didnt think that the windows update page gives you updated drivers for your video card. I'm not at all saying that you arent telling the truth, I'm just curious on how you did it!

yeah, i was surprised to see a driver too, seemed strange ..but i have the proof inthe form of a printed out installation history it says:

Microsoft - Display (version 6/8/2000) was succesfully installed.
14:38:14 12 November 2000 : 3936

i just did start --> Windows update

like in bg2 the only 3d graphics are smoke, spell effects, torch flames, and all these seemed to improve a lot, and also the scroll speeds smoothed out..id recommend defragging every now and then as well.
hope this helps )
GuNk

3936 should read 55166 - dont think this will be much help though

damn I had nothing but trouble until I went to 2d, and turned down the hardware acceleration. slowdown, and crashes galore.
And I have a wicked rig. 700mhz P3 overclocked to 950mhz, 384 mb ram, a 7200 rpm ata hard drive, and an intel 810 chipset motherboard with a Voodoo 4 PCI card. runs sweet as hell now.

Athlon T-bird 800
128m
7200rpm HD
GeForce2 ddr 32mb 4x agp vid card (this bad boy rocks!)

And with that setup, i still get the occasional slow down!
I'll give 2d a shot and see about quality.

I switched to 2D after my last post on this thread (Ages ago). Game performance is up about 50%. Also, originally when I started playing the movies would stutter, I figured it was just a player problem. With 3D off they run perfectly.

Worth another damn chance this topic to

Why the hell are everyone "unregistered"??http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/no...les/tongue.gif
Why don't you register?
You get more advantages (like a sig) and it's much more fun!http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/no...es/biggrin.gif


------------------
http://imagehosting.bidbay.com/image.php3?imgID=666254

I saw the movie, but I didn't think the action scenes were THAT good.

...Because the forum didn't exist in this format when they posted that? Just look at the date, mr. Caine has been doing some serious digging... http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/no...miles/wink.gif

------------------
Not a member of any clan and is cool with that. http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/No...les/tongue.gif
Talk about anything you want at The Elysium.
For online roleplaying, check The Elysium Gaming Project.

lol i got a 1ghz with top of the end everything and it runns perfectly in 3d tho i get SERIOUS slowdown with sequired magic missiles or whenever you overload on the spells with imprv alarcity and time stop. but othr than that i never have lag at all, but odd thing is if i fire just two magic missile like one from my bard and one from edwin it laggs big time, which i find wierd

i have a 733 P3
318 Megs SdRam
and a crappy intel card, but it all works fine. im gonna get me a GeForce 2 though.

http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/no...les/aniGif.gif



------------------
Morgan Corbesant, Elven BladeSinger, Captain of the army of the Seldarine

look, in my professional(ish) opinion the 3d effects in infinity are poorly implemented - in fact the more i see of infinity the more i find its just not very well put together - and it gets worse with the later games. i suppose its not biowares fault - it is a big complex engine and RPG players tend to care more about plot and stuff than bug fixes.

i tend to find its total the number of effects on screen that counts, rather than complexity. so two magic missiles is ten effects, with transparency. unless you have a 3d card way in advance of the recommended specs (i dont) your gonna get lag.

when i get a geforce 3 GTS ill let u know...

On the subject of Computers. I am running a (lol) Pentium I 166mHz with 32 megs of ram and about 2 gig hard drive. No hardware accelerator or anything. I managed to get Shadows of Amn to work quite well. I didn't have to cut any sound or anything. I have to play on 640-480 res in 2d but it all works!! My friend has a monster of a computer (compared to mine) over 500mHz and such but his doesn't run the game much better!?

I played Shadows of Amn on another powerful computer about 1ghz and fully loaded. Only then did the game run basically without a hitch, even in 2d.



[This message has been edited by Andromedos (edited 10-25-2001).]

Well, I have just upgraded my PC (rubs hands together in glee) and I'm looking forward to trying the 3D effects. My system is:

KT7A RAID mobo
1.1 GHz Athlon processor
256 Mb RAM
Elsa Gladiac 920 graphics card (Geforce 3 chipset) http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/noncgi/smiles/338.gif

I don't think BGII, even in 3D, is likely to be the most spectacular graphics I will ever see, but I never got the thing for the graphics anyway.

------------------
http://www.gldb.com/wayno/e1.jpg http://www.wizardrealm.com/images/epona.gif
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Epona of The Laughing Hyenas
Proud winner of the 'Most Useless Post 250 Has Ever Seen' Award 2001. "I'd just like to thank my friends and family, without whom none of this would have been possible..."

I was unaware you could change from 3d to 2d. How is this done?

If its a case of going into the graphics menu in game just reply with random insults. As its all i deserve.

Cheers

------------------
Nice one fella!!

There is a configuraton tool with bg2, which let´s you set 2d or 3d beside a lot of other things (it ca be selected in the bg2-folder in the start-menu or during startup of the game (choose configure instead of play).

Okay this post isn't towards the 2D or 3D cards but in regards to the people that posted about the game slowing down when they played it.

I use an Nec Versanote
PII 233mhz
64mb Ram
3.2gig HDD
NeoMagigraph Video Card
Maestro Sound card

I found BG2 to be a bit slow during gameplay and the battles (especially with magic use) really slowed down a LOT!

I changed my screen resolution to 640x480 and put the frame rate to 15 Updates per second while giving it a 400mb cache. That made the game pretty normal with very few slowdowns.

If anyone knows of any other way to speed the game up on a crappy comp like this I'd be glad to know of it. I have already checked everything that I can do and this seems the best of it but I'm always open to new ideas. After all most of you here have a ton of experience with this game while I am still new at it.


------------------
http://members.optushome.com.au/drag...s/bokken2s.jpg

Fetch me another plaything. This one seems to be broken.