Another Patch for RAGE on PC Coming Soon

News
By Kevin Parrish
published

id Software will soon release a new patch for the PC version that will help sharpen some of the game's textures.

Friday id Software's John Carmack said that a patch is on the way to help alleviate the blurry textures in the PC version of RAGE. The patch will reportedly add a bicubic-upsample+detail texture option that should "de-blur" some of the game's textures.

A "detail texture" is essentially a small texture with some generic detail that's "tiled" across the base texture of an object. Epic Games offers a few screenshots showing the difference, with detail-texturing in the Unreal Engine Development Kit turned off here, and turned on here. This method makes the overall object textures look sharp and detailed even though the base texture is dull and blurry.

"Bicubic-upsample is just a form of interpolation, it isn't going to make it hardly any better," points out one Bethesda forum member. "To make it actually better, we need higher res texture packs, and I hope we don't have to wait a whole year for that."

Unfortunately, it doesn't look as if Carmack & Co. will release a higher-resolution textures pack anytime soon. "Our first test of a higher res page file didn't help much, because most source textures didn't actually have any more detail," Carmack said via Twitter.

So far the team hasn't indicated when the new patch will be released, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: One Tom's reader sent in a very interesting proposition to id Software about hosting hi-res textures for RAGE:

From my understanding, Carmack's statement - "Our first test of a higher res page file didn't help much, because most source textures didn't actually have any more detail" - was about changing the page file's resolution when converting the current HD Photo/JPEG XR insanely compressed textures that shipped with the game.  With those as a starting point, it makes no difference if you transcode them to DXTC at 8192 or 16384 res...

However, should a higher res HD Photo/JPEG XR or native DXTC texture pack come in the future, it would weigh close to 170 GB - 200 GB and would definitely bring better image quality to the game, but I feel they're shying away from such a big download or there would be issues with current PC/videocards having to deal with as much hi-res material for a single scene.  Detail texture overlays smell's like compromise...  Anyway, I feel the tech is very much "forward looking" and it'll only get better with future PCs.  After my initial underwhelmed feeling, I'm actually warming up to Id tech 5!

Hey John, I would gladly help pay for the bandwidth requirements should you release a SIGNIFICANT graphical update through DLC for a reasonable price...

Kevin Parrish
42 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thesnappyfingers
    Eewuhhh, I would be pretty irate if I had an awesome gaming PC, then that funky stuff happens.
    Reply
  • Is this game even remotely fun? Even the videos of it working properly seem so "blah". Just seems like the most generic rehashed game of all time, with a car thrown in.
    Reply
  • saxplayingcompnerd
    Rage= massive flop, the end.

    I was thinking about getting rage when i heard about it, but after seeing how awful the textures are and how the developers seem to not care that oblivion with a few mods has better textures, I don't think ill get it until I can find it for less than $15.
    Reply
  • fb39ca4
    This was bad planning. I think some of the problem was that all the test machines they used had SSDs which wouldn't suffer from the same texture streaming problems. BTW first comment!
    Reply
  • fb39ca4
    never mind fkin unreliable internet connection
    Reply
  • polly the parrot
    Too late for a patch, the game is shit. Non-existent story, invisible walls, terrible problems upon launch, etc.

    id, you really shot yourself in the foot here.
    Reply
  • FulmeR
    Is this game even remotely fun? Even the videos of it working properly seem so "blah". Just seems like the most generic rehashed game of all time, with a car thrown in.

    Thank you! I was starting to feel like I was the only one that was NOT pumped for this game before its realease. It looked like complete crap! Glad to know my "crap-game" spider senses are still working
    Reply
  • clonazepam
    I'd pick it up on Steam for $5-$10, by the time it drops to that price, it might be spiffy.
    Reply
  • Browser
    Yes it is actually a fun game, it's just that it's had such a marred release.

    I've only finished the first few missions / few hours because I figured I'd wait for the patches to come out before really digging into it.

    Once the glitches are sorted out it will be a great game, though id software really dropped the ball on the PC version at release time. It's like they paid little to no specific attention for the PC, which is shocking and disappointing especially from id software.

    To make it worse I don't buy their claims of blaming drivers for pretty much everything and then releasing patches, after all didn't they need drivers to test the game on the PC before release, or did they just skip that part. Also all this talking they're supposedly doing with the driver vendors should have been done before release if there were problems. If the game does present new problems for drivers you can hardly expect updated drivers to come out before the vendors have had time to test, update, retest etc. It's all 100% id software's fault.

    Good game, but id failed in a truly epic fashion with the PC release and their attitude about both that and the PC in general doesn't make me want to be very sympathetic.

    Great game or not, it is the last one I buy from id purely because it's an "id" game.
    Reply
  • v1ze
    I would like to file an internet motion to change the commonly used phrase from "epic fail" to "rage fail"
    Reply