Textures and fade ins

[Imshi-Yallah]

Sorry if this is old news I've spent a while trying to find old or existing topics on the subject.
Currently running HL2 on a lap top and while there is no slow down factor whatsoever there are some annoying graphical failings.

Namely many objects (Wheelie bins, shelfs, even rocks) appear untextured until you walk right up on to them.
Similary some objects only fade into being when the player is within a short distance.
Finally none of the characters (and it took me a while to figure out that this wasnt deliberate :dork: ) have pupils in their eyes.
Now I have played the game to completion so I'm not really looking to upgrade the Mrs' laptop.

But I am curious is this a common symptom of an inadequate graphics card or is it something else.

The laptop is fairly high end Pentium, 512mb, can't remember card details.

thanks in advance.

 

[Przemek]

Yeah, seems like the game was running in DirectX 7 mode.

 

[Imshi-Yallah]

So it would be a case of changing settings rather than hardware?
Since the PC in question already has a higher version of that software installed

 

[Przemek]

It depends on hardware support. You may have DirectX9 installed on your computer, but the graphics card can be DirectX7 compliant only.
To be 100% sure, run HL2, go to the video settings, advanced and it should say near the bottom of the window what hardware DirectX you have ("Hardware DirectX level").