Stalker: Clear Sky - Is Your System Ready?

Sun Test

The following pictures compare the illumination quality at the maximum setting. The order is: static illumination, dynamic illumination of objects, dynamic illumination, extended dynamic illumination, and extended dynamic illumination of objects.

The activated switches and positions of the sidebar are copied into the picture, as before. Usually you’ll find them in the extended graphics menu. The frame rate is displayed on the top left. And the test system consists of a Core 2 Duo E6750 CPU running at a standard frequency of 2.66 GHz, 4 GB of memory, and a GeForce 8800 GTS 512. Anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering (AF) are deactivated, and the resolution is 1920x1200 pixels.

In the test scene, Stalker stands in the camp of Clear Sky looking directly into the sun. The sun test shows differences in frame rates between the various illumination models the best. In the two lowest settings — static illumination (first picture) and dynamic illumination of objects (second picture) — the sun is displayed slightly to the left, which makes the shadows form differently. Overall, the scene is pretty dark with static illumination, but switching to the better dynamic illumination model costs you 50% in performance.

The difference in going to DirectX 10 illumination (images 4 and 5) is hard to see in the direct sunlight. Only if the sun is covered by a tree or post will you see rays of light and shadow lines. The test scene is supposed to outline the different positions of the sun through the illumination model, and the extreme differences in frame rate. If you want to adjust the minimum frame rate in Stalker, you should use a scene with direct sunlight.

The best choice is dynamic illumination, because you still reach more than 25 fps. The loss between static and dynamic illumination is extremely high at 50%. If your graphic card is good enough, you should switch, because many textures lose depth at the lower settings.