Wirehead Studios

See title and subtitle. What kinds of improvements do they offer over High Geometric detail?

Those control the handling of the following cvar:

low:  r_lodbias 2
medium:  r_lodbias 1
high:  r_lodbias 0
enhanced:  r_lodbias -1
extreme:  r_lodbias -2

Player models and weapons in Q3 typically have three models.  Let's take Doom for example.  For his torso, you have an upper.md3, upper_1.md3, and upper_2.md3.  Upper.md3 is what is shown up close.  Upper_1.md3 is shown at a more medium distance, and upper_2.md3 at an extreme distance.  Each one has less detail than the other.  Setting r_lodbias above 0 nudges the model detail lower.  Setting it below zero nudges the detail higher.  If you set r_lodbias to 1 (or medium geometric detail) the player models will look a bit more chunky.  Setting r_lodbias to 2 (or low geometric detail) will make the player models look absolutely primitive.  This isn't as noticeable on the Gen weapons since we never really got around to LOD'ing the guns, and we can't really do that properly until they're animated.  The exception is the BFG9000, which I did some LOD work on when I initially built the mesh to see if it worked the way I thought.

If you set r_lodbias to -1 (enhanced geometric detail) or -2 (extreme geometric detail) it "pushes back" the falloff distance for using the lower detailed meshes.  -1 will only render upper.md3 at all ranges up to where upper_2.md3 is normally rendered, and will render upper_1.md3 where upper_2.md3 would normally be rendered.   Setting to -2 will always render upper.md3 as opposed to the lower detailed meshes.  The Enhanced and Extreme options were added for those people who don't like seeing the lower detailed player models at any range.

Oooo, nice tech note I didn't know about. Thanks!