TF2 is forced lower quality then it really is.

[DigiQ8]

did anybody see this?

You may have noticed the textures in TF2 when up close are kind of blurry. It appears the game is forcing them lower rez then they really are! even at high texture detail.

If you type mat_picmip -1 in the console they become their true size, and makes the game look soooo much better. But it apparently is a cheat, so you can't use it on servers that have cheats disabled? This is rather silly, i think it should be patched so it is no longer a cheat
Maybe there could be an "ultra" setting for textures that turns picmip to -1

Here's some proof:

Gifs:
http://img400.imageshack.us/my.php?i...picmipsnh4.gif
http://img205.imageshack.us/my.php?i...picmipsft6.gif
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/4...picmipsfb1.gif

Images:
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/2...ort0082ye2.jpg
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/9...ort0083hr3.jpg
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/8...ort0077kj7.jpg
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/4...ort0078jm1.jpg
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/3...ort0124ry2.jpg
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/8...ort0125bz7.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...3-36-19-71.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...3-36-14-93.jpg

I found it on the Steam Forum

 

[Iron_cube]

mat_picmip -10 is even better than -1

 

[phantomdesign]

Sometimes they intentionally do that on betas.

 

[Shamrock]

Those pictures have died.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

Pics don't work.

 

[Mahalis]

Pics work if you go to the thread. Interesting stuff... I'll set mine to -0.9 as suggested there until Valve makes it not-cheating to set it lower.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

I set mine to -9.

Wow what a difference!

 

[Letters]

These are all close-ups... if you really look at them in-game you realize they look perfectly fine once you're not staring at them from 2 inches away, which you don't do during normal play.

 

[Silarn]

Letters, I have seen it in-game several times myself. It is noticeable. Not all the time, perhaps, but enough to make a difference.

This may or may not be dependent on your GPU. A couple posts suggested that absolute top-end cards automatically use the full resolution textures. They were too vague for me to be certain, though.

If this is true, however, I'm a bit annoyed. I may not have an 8800 GTX, but my card has a gig of memory and I see no reason why this is not enabled.

 

[Malfunction]

Definitely not Silarn. I have an 8800GTX and I see the same low-res textures. This was always noticeable in Source games, especially HL2. It never bothered me THAT much, but I know it can be "fixed" or upgraded, and I expect all future games to feature hi-res textures. I remember one of my biggest pet peaves in even DoD 1.3, and now Source, was replacing all of my gun's models and skins with if not completely new models, just nicer, hi-res skins.

 

[Kadayi]

If this is true, however, I'm a bit annoyed. I may not have an 8800 GTX, but my card has a gig of memory and I see no reason why this is not enabled.

Probably do you retain decent frame rate at a guess

 

[Silarn]

With everything at the maximum settings, the game has always been perfectly smooth. I've never looked, so I can't give you exact numbers.

By the by, does setting it to -.9 actually do something?

 

[Mahalis]

By the by, does setting it to -.9 actually do something?

Not that I can tell. It's most likely an integer, so -0.9 = 0.

 

[Iron_cube]

The valve gods have answered your prayers.

Restart steam and check out the texture resolution panel.

 

[Laivasse]

Ah, so that's what this mysterious update was...

 

[Lobster]

Seems we now have class counters on the selection screen, a minimal HUD option, suicide toggle on class switch, and they have fixed that new bloom option in the menu also.

 

[Iron_cube]

suicide toggle was included since the very first update