Graphics settings

Graphics settings are a set of options that allow customisation of the display of RuneScape.

NXT client
There are pre-set options called min, low, mid, high and ultra with increasing graphical fidelity for each of the changeable graphics settings. There is also the option for auto setup that tries to select optimal settings for your hardware. The following settings can be manually customised and doing so changes the pre-setting into "custom".

Remove roofs
This setting controls when roofs are removed.


 * Always: Removes roofs regardless of location or camera
 * Selectively: Removes the roofs that lie between the camera and your character
 * All: Removes all the roofs when some roof lies between the camera and your character

Draw distance
Draw distance determines the maximum distance an object can be and still render. There are four settings: low, medium, high and ultra.

VSync
VSync controls the frame rate by synchronising it with your monitor's refresh rate. There are options to disable VSync (off), always on (on) or enable it when the frame rate is at least the same value as the monitor's refresh rate (adaptive).

Shadow Quality
Shadow quality controls the realism of object and scenery shadows. Changing this requires shadows to be on. There are four settings: low, medium, high and ultra.

Anti-aliasing Mode
Two anti-aliasing techniques are available: FXAA and MSAA. FXAA provides lower quality but is less intensive whereas MSAA provides higher quality but is more intensive. You can choose to use neither (off), FXAA, MSAA or a combination of both (FXAA+MSA.).

Anti-aliasing Quality
Anti-aliasing quality determines the level of performance for anti-aliasing. Changing this requires Anti-Aliasing Mode to be on something else than "off". There are four settings: low, medium, high and ultra.

Water
The water setting controls how realistic water looks. There are four settings: low, medium, high and ultra.

Lighting detail
Lighting detail controls the ambient lighting. Lighting detail is not required for areas to have darker or brighter ambient lighting, as there is no "off" setting. Setting lighting detail to "low" will simply give less impact to the lighting than "high" would. There are four settings: low, medium, high and ultra.

Ambient Occlusion
is only available for certain graphics cards. It controls shading of smaller and more intricate models with a greater specificity in detail. You can choose to turn this option off or use one of two ambient occlusion techniques available: SSAO and HBAO (horizon based ambient occlusion). SSAO is less accurate but also less intensive whereas HBAO is more accurate but also more intensive.

Bloom
Bloom is a lighting graphics setting that controls additional brightness and impact of glowing effects. There are four options: off, low, medium and high.

Brightness
Brightness controls the level of overall lighting and shade. It can be changed with a slider.

Textures
Controls whether textures are compressed or uncompressed. The uncompressed option currently provides minimal improvement in texture quality.

Anistropic Filtering
Improves the appearance of textures, particularly terrain, when viewed from extreme angles and distances. There are five settings: off, x2, x4, x8 and x16.

Flickering effects
Flickering effects are full screen flashes that provide dramatic ambiance to an area. An example of such an area is the Killerwatt plane. This option can be switched either off or on.

It is recommended that players who are prone to epileptic seizures play with flickering effects turned off.

Shadows
The shadows setting controls whether or not shadows appear. This setting controls NPC, player and scenery shadows. This option can be switched either off or on.

Textures
Textures are extra skins that are placed over models to give an appearance that polygons or other graphics cannot. This option can be switched either off or on.

Custom cursors
Custom cursors are mouseover cursors that are specific to certain actions. This option can be switched either off or on.

Loading screens
This setting controls whether or not loading screens are used. This option can be switched either off or on.

Screen Sizing
Either resizable or fullscreen game windows can be selected.

Resolution
Controls the display resolution when in fullscreen. Options are dependent on the display resolution of your computer monitor.

Display mode
Display mode chooses which API the client will use to render graphics:
 * Direct-X
 * OpenGL

CPU usage
CPU usage controls how much of your computer's resources RuneScape can use. Despite this option's name, it appears that CPU usage refers to resources from the CPU and the graphics card.

Remove roofs
This setting controls when roofs are removed.


 * Selectively: Removes roofs when you are inside the building
 * All: Removes roofs when your camera is focused inside the building
 * Always: Removes roofs regardless of location or camera

Idle animations
Idle animations are animations that play when characters are not performing an action. This setting controls how many players can have idle animations playing.

Scenery shadows
Scenery shadows are shadows from non character models. Scenery shadows require textures to be on.

Scenery shadows has 3 options:
 * None: No piece of scenery will produce a shadow
 * Static: Scenery will have shadows, but these shadows will be stationary
 * Dynamic: Scenery will have shadows, and these shadows will change with the object

Lighting detail
Lighting detail controls the ambient lighting. Lighting detail is not required for areas to have darker or brighter ambient lighting, as there is no "off" setting. Setting lighting detail to "low" will simply give less impact to the lighting than "high" would. Lighting detail is required for bloom. Lighting detail also affects the maximum performance of water detail.

Water detail
Water detail controls how realistic water appears. High water detail requires fog to be on. Proper display of high water detail also requires lighting detail to be high. Without lighting detail, high water detail just makes the environment slightly darker.

Anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing is a blending of edges to give objects a less jagged appearance. RuneScape uses. Anti-aliasing with this method is done by looking at surrounding pixels, combining their colours to create a blend. 2x and 4x refer to the number of iterations that are performed for sampling. 4x anti-aliasing is not necessarily twice as good as 2x, but it is noticeably better.

Particles
Particles are extra fuzzy or small effects that are created without polygons or textures. This setting determines how many objects are allowed to generate particles.

Max screen size
Max screen size determines what resolution the game will be rendered for when using full screen mode. It has no effect on the other modes.

Brightness
Brightness controls the level of overall lighting and shade.

Ground decoration
Ground decoration is the placement of extra models to make the overworld feel less bare. Ground decoration does not require ground blending or textures to be on; however, it is affected by the latter.

Flickering effects
Flickering effects are full screen flashes that provide dramatic ambiance to an area. An example of such an area is the Killerwatt plane.

It is recommended that players who are prone to epileptic seizures play with flickering effects turned off.

Character shadows
Character shadows are shadows that appear under NPC and player models.

Fog
Fog is a blur that makes the background appear as if it's too far away, rather than unloaded.

Custom cursors
Custom cursors are mouseover cursors that are specific to certain actions.

Ground blending
Ground blending is an option that merges the gridlines of the overworld to create a smoother appearance. Ground blending is also required to use textures.

Textures
Textures are extra skins that are placed over models to give an appearance that polygons or other graphics cannot. Textures requires ground blending to be on.

Skyboxes
Skyboxes are backgrounds added to the main backdrop, behind the overworld. Skyboxes paste an image over the blank canvas background that create a fuller ambiance for the setting. While not all areas have specific images to add as a skybox, this setting also controls blending and sky colour, to an extent.

Bloom
Bloom is a lighting graphics setting that controls additional brightness and impact of glowing effects. The effect was mentioned in the developer blog for RuneTek 5 as one of the additional graphical effects that will be possible in HD mode with the new engine. Bloom requires lighting detail to be high.