You might as well, right?"Īccording to Digital Foundry, high-end artwork can actually be run on GPUs with less memory, but you'll run into issues without capping the framerate. "It makes sense to get it out into the world there-we have it, we built it that way to look as good as possible. "Then obviously there's going to be that boundary where our monster development PCs are running it OK-but why not give people the option to crank it up?" Roberts continued. Roberts said the game's artists built the game's assets at "an outrageously high fidelity" before then optimizing them "to fit onto, to fit onto PCs at high-end specs." It is, however, what's making me so sad about having spent a ton of money on a 3 GB video card not so long ago.ĭigital Foundry spoke with lead designer Bob Roberts about why this option is even being offered, given how few people have the necessary hardware. In addition to a 64-bit processor, you'll need at least 8 GB of RAM and a DirectX 11-compatible video card with at least 6 GB of memory. Installing the HD content is now easy enough, but you'll need a fairly ridiculous rig in order to take advantage of this if you follow the recommended requirements. Earlier this week, the pack was only obtainable through an unintuitive process. The option for these Ultra textures are built into the game, but in order to actually activate them, you need to download a free DLC pack from Steam. "For the most part, we found that the high setting-in itself placing a significant video RAM requirement on the user-offers the bulk of the ultra experience," writes Digital Foundry. However, it's not the kind of leap over High that you might be hoping for, particularly because the most-improved areas are hard to notice while playing the game in a normal manner. You can also check out the video below for a comparison of the PS4 and PC (with Ultra textures) versions.Įxpectedly, it's very pretty when running the game at Ultra. In the very likely case that you're unable to take advantage of these yourself, Digital Foundry has provided some impressions of what they're like. Gamers with extremely high-end computers can download a special HD content pack for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor that enables the game's Ultra-level textures.