Felt like sharing my experiences with this game after purchasing the GOG version during the Halloween sale. I'm a fan of old games, and don't mind older graphics, since I grew up with them, but I still enjoy playing games looking as good as I can, so here's what I noticed so far.

I'm using a Lenovo Ideapad Y480, a fairly strong gaming laptop I purchased last year for around $1400. It has an Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics card, along with an integrated Intel HD 4000 Graphics chip. Its native resolution is 1366x768.

Running the game vanilla, IE, standard GOG download, your menu options are limited as far as resolution goes when you launch the game and go to the video options. When you change the 3D driver in the video menu, it detects the Intel HD 4000 as the D3D option, with the closest to native resolution being 1024x768. Or you can use the 3dfx driver, and get similar results.

Running the game this way doesn't look bad. But I noticed in the forums, there is a widescreen patch, made by the very awesome drennan, here. With this patch, you can select, as far as I can tell, any standard widescreen resolution, including my native 1366x768, as long as you keep the game in D3D mode. This mode works pretty well for me, but there's a couple small drawbacks. One, is that with this patch and my native resolution, it cuts off some of the visibility of the weapons. IE, with the pistol out, all you can really see the barrel, and with the shaman stone out, you cant see the necklace part dangling down. Not a super big deal, and not very noticeable. But I also noticed a lot of people saying that the game was made for 3dfx, and when using the D3D mode, you miss out on some visual effects.

The drawback to the widescreen patch, is that if you try to use it with the 3dfx driver option to keep the better visuals, and chose anything over 1024x768, the font gets all messed up so you cant read anything in menus or in game, and the 3D graphics themselves look super jagged. I can't find a work around for choosing a higher, widescreen resolution, with the 3dfx driver.

So, not wanting to miss out on 3dfx visual effects I was apparently missing by choosing a custom widescreen resolution in D3D mode, I went back to 1024x768, using the 3dfx driver option from the menus. But then what I did, was quit out of the game, and bring up my nVidia Control Panel. I created a profile for the game under the Manage 3D Settings tab, choosing the games "undying.exe" in the games "system" folder, and forced it to use my nVidia chipset instead of the Intel HD 4000 one. Then I forced on all the available options in the nVidia Control Panel.

Anisotropic filtering - 16x
Antialiasing - FXAA - On
Antialiasing - Gamma correction - On
Antialiasing - Mode - Override any application setting
Antialiasing - Setting - 32x CSAA
Antialiasing - Transparency - 8x (supersample)

The next couple options I left on default then...

Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization - On
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias - Clamp
Texture filtering - Quality - High
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization - On
Threaded optimization - Auto
Triple buffering - On
Vertical sync - On

With these settings, and the game using the 3dfx driver, and 1024x768, I feel like the game looks better than it does with the widescreen patch applied and being forced to use D3D, but granted, 1024x768 is not much of a stretch from my native 1366x768.

Also, those same graphics options can be applied in the nVidia Graphics Control Panel while using the widescreen patch in D3D mode, to choose your custom resolution. But like I said, I noticed the weapons in hand being cut off a little bit (I'm picky, and while its hard to notice, it bothered me once I noticed) and, people claim better effects and visual goodies when using the 3dfx option, so that's why I went with that.

Overall though, with the forced antialiasing and texture options on on the video card options, I dont notice too much of a difference in the games graphics between D3D and 3dfx, so I think you can choose either with the options I have here, and be getting a good experience.

Just felt like sharing what I went with after perusing the forums for the best solutions to my Undying graphics.

In the end do you think you noticed much difference between just the default 3dfx, and going through the trouble of setting a custom profile through your video card?

Yeah, setting up the profile on the video card definitely makes a pretty substantial improvement on 3dfx or D3D, 1024x768 on a modern, larger computer screen, shows its age. If nothing else, you might not need to turn everything on that I did, but forcing on Anti Aliasing really helps smooth things out.

If 1024x768 is close to your native resolution, you might not notice it as much, but the larger the screen, the more 1024x768 will look jagged.

Setting up a custom profile isn't very hard or time consuming either, on nVidia, right click the desktop, bring up the nVidia control panel, and under the program settings tab, you just select the exe, and turn on the graphics options via drop down menus. ATI cards are very similar, it has been a video card generation since the last one I owned, but under the Catalyst Control Panel you should see a similar tab and a similar way to select the .exe and force AA on or off.

To my experience, the main issue is that any attempt to render Undying widescreen means you don't get to see the lower half of your weapons. And I love how the weapons in this game look, and its an important part of the experience. Its just jarring man I dunno. Why is this no issue with other Unreal engine games but this one? That will torture me forever.

It's basically the programmer's decision. It has nothing to do with the engine.
When a game was designed for 4:3 (or 5:4), when you change the resolution to 16:9, you have 2 options: Either increase the view on the side or cut something off on top and bottom.
In some games (especially when they use a id-Software engine) you can set all settings for field of view dynamically in the .ini file. In others you can't. Those games decide for themselves how they adapt.

Using dgVoodoo you can trick the game to run in a different solution. I accidentaly cut off most of the view field for Jedi Knight :) Try to mess around with the settings to see if you can increase the field of view instead.

wow isyankar I feel the same, was so dissapointed when I could not see the Tibetian War Cannon, since I like the dragon haha wow isyankar I feel the same, was so dissapointed when I could not see the Tibetian War Cannon, since I like the dragon haha