20th November 2003, 12:34 PM
That's scaling, which means that the poly count (and etc.) changes depending on how good the video card you are using is. Doom 3 also uses scaling technology, as do many other recent PC games. It's not just used in order to solve the problem of different video cards, however. It's also used in several 3D games to change the poly count of characters and environments on-screen depending on how much is going on. So for instance, if you were playing say, Fable, and you were walking by yourself the poly count of your character and surroundings would be very high, but if you were to come across several other characters the engine would lower the poly count of all the characters on screen in order to maintain a good balance, so that the game doesn't experience any serious slowdown.