This has been circulating for a while now, but some players have found commands that will improve the graphics display on World of Warcraft. In the category of oops-we-missed-this-one, reader Matthew actually sent us this tip as far back as mid-March after stumbling on a link at the EU forums. We've dug up the commands that he sent as well as the before and after pictures. Simply log into WoW and type up the following macro:

/console groundEffectDensity 256
/console groundEffectDist 200
/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console farclip 999
/console characterAmbient

This macro supposedly pushes the sliders in the Graphics Options part of the game beyond what the controls normally allow, although these values are the maximum allowed by the current game system. Using higher numbers will have no effect and some improvements will only take effect when the game is restarted. Some reports say that using this macro will slow down your Frames Per Second (FPS) while some report no impact on even mid-range systems. If you try it out and find that your performance decreases, however, you can simply type the following macro to return everything to normal:

/console groundEffectDensity 16
/console groundEffectDist 1
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console farclip 177
/console characterAmbient 1
/console smallcull 1
/console skycloudlod 1
/console detailDoodadAlpha 1

If your system can handle it, you should expect more vegetation, more objects visible in the distance, more detailed weather effects, and sharper graphics overall. Important: readers have written in saying that the revert macro described above doesn't revert to your previous set-up, but instead puts all your graphical preferences to the lowest settings. Proceed with caution.

Tags: Display, Graphics, Graphics-options, Macros

Filed under: Tips, Odds and ends