World of Tanks 1.0 - review and comparison of graphic settings

As you know, and if you didn’t know, now you’ll find out for sure, in the spring of this year the long-awaited release of World of Tanks 1.0 took place, due to which the game was transferred to a more modern enCore engine and which brought the graphics in the game to a new level. In this review, we will look at and compare the impact of various graphics settings on picture quality in the popular game World of Tanks from the Belarusian studio Wargaming.net. There are a very decent number of graphics settings in the game, which allows you to adjust it to almost any hardware configuration, except perhaps ancient dinosaurs. So, let's fight!

Let's start with Antialiasing, which has 4 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High and Off. As you can see from the screenshots, anti-aliasing in the game almost completely removes unevenness. The difference is noticeable between all modes: when moving from Ultra to Maximum, on the one hand the image becomes more “smoothed”, but on the other an unpleasant “soap” appears. The transition from Maximum to High removes blurring, but the edges of objects become sharper and uneven, and turning off anti-aliasing is noticeable without additional comments.

 

 

Let's move on to Texture Quality, 5 modes: Maximum, High, Medium, Low and Minimum. The difference is visible between all modes and it manifests itself in the fact that as the quality decreases, first minor details disappear from the screen, then the textures become more and more blurry and indistinct.

 

Next we have Object Quality, 5 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High, Medium and Low. When moving from Ultra to Maximum, the difference is immediately visible - the tracks on tanks standing a little further away become less detailed, and some textures disappear from buildings and landscape objects. From Maximum to High, the transition, oddly enough, is not noticeable at all. From High to Medium, the transition, although noticeable, is very insignificant, but from Medium to Low is visible very clearly, since the tracks on some tanks and buildings in the distance lose detail.

 

Next is Draw Distance, 4 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High and Low. The transition from Ultra to Maximum is not noticeable at all. When moving from Maximum to High, the difference is also practically unnoticeable, and only when moving from High to Low do some objects in the distance completely disappear from the screen.

 

Lighting quality - 5 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High, Medium and Low. The difference is visible very clearly in all modes. Going from Ultra to Maximum slightly reduces the quality of volumetric shading and removes some of the shadows cast by objects on themselves. Between Maximum and High, the difference is much more noticeable, since the “solar haze” almost completely disappears and in general the picture loses in brightness and quality of global illumination. Going from High to Medium further reduces the quality of volumetric shading and removes most of the soft shadows, and going to Low and all disables self-shading on almost all objects.

 

Shadow quality - 3 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High. The difference, although visible between all modes, is not very noticeable - the transition from Ultra to Maximum removes shadows in the foliage of trees and some shadows in general, and the transition from Maximum to High removes even more shadows in the foliage and makes shadows in general a little more blurry.

 

Post-processing quality - 5 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High, Medium and Low. In this case, the difference is practically unnoticeable between all modes and only when moving from High to Medium, the image loses a little “depth” due to the vignetting being turned off.

 

Water quality - 4 modes: Ultra, Maximum, Medium and Low. Here it was not possible to notice the difference between all modes.

Landscape quality - 6 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High, Medium, Low and Minimum. The difference is visible very clearly between all modes and can be seen in the decrease in the quality and relief of the landscape as the parameters decrease. The difference between Ultra and Maximum is very clearly visible - the landscape immediately loses its “volume” and relief. Between Maximum and High, on the contrary, there is practically no difference, but the transition to Medium is already visible much more clearly, since the landscape becomes even flatter and the textures more blurred. The transition to Low blurs the textures even more, and between Low and Minimum the difference is no longer visible so clearly and manifests itself in the fact that the landscape becomes even flatter and some small objects completely disappear.

 

Landscape tessellation - all 2 parameters: On and Off. The difference is that when turned off, numerous small details disappear from the surface of the landscape, which is why the landscape looks less relief.

Vegetation detail - 4 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High and Low. Oddly enough, although there is a difference between all the modes, it is quite difficult to see it and only upon close examination.

 

 

The amount of grass - 5 modes: Ultra, Maximum, High, Medium and Off. The difference is very clearly noticeable between all modes and manifests itself in a decrease in the number of areas with grass on the surface of the earth, up to its complete shutdown.

 

 

Quality of additional effects - 5 modes: Maximum, High, Medium, Low and Off. The difference is visible between all modes, but it is most clearly visible when moving from Maximum settings to High (the smoke becomes much less transparent), between High and Medium the difference is quite faint, moving from Medium to Low makes the smoke less voluminous, and turning this parameter off completely removes all additional effects such as smoke, fire, etc. from the screen.

 

 

Improved destruction physics - you can only check the difference between on and off parameters in dynamics, so we’ll skip it. The same applies to Effects from under the tracks, so we will skip that too.

And the last thing we have is the Tracks of caterpillars parameter - On and Off. He is, accordingly, responsible for whether tracks from tracks will be displayed on the ground or not (like all the time, your Captain Obviousness!).

 

Let's summarize. The graphics in the game with the transition to the new engine have really moved to a new level and the game looks really new. Almost all the settings in the game, with the exception of only a few, have a significant impact on the quality of the image on the screen and on performance, and it has been improved very well in version 1.0. And if before the transition to the new engine the graphics in the game looked a little outdated due to the antiquity of the old one, now it is at a fairly modern level and pleasantly pleasing to the eye. Although, as far as I know, many players try to lower the graphics settings in the game so that nothing interferes with the bending and so that performance does not decrease, there are also those who prefer to play with all the comfort and all the graphics bells and whistles turned on.