That did it for me. Thanks!

Just got Quake IV and did this. Works great and looks even greater! Thanks!

Many Thanx for this! :) And for Member GUTER, too!

First, thanks to the people creating this topic and offering possible solutions.

I tried the settings from Guter. This configuration produced a MUCH better looking (sharp, clear, detailed) game, in my case at least.

Again, thanks for the information.

Thanks a lot for help! It did help and game runs smootthly on modern PC. I just wondering why framerate is stuck on 62FPS (with vsync on and off).

changed mainly graphic settings for maximum image quality and performance (8192 "downsize" limit makes the game look really good). further changes to sound and other various engine and rendering performance tweaks. after modifying your config file lock it to read only before launching the game. if you dont lock the file and launch quake4 it will automatically remove and adapt some settings again.

note that r_useSMP (multicore support) causes my game to freeze after loading the map, so its disabled. otherwise try to enable it and see if it works for you. vsync and fps limit to 60fps should be enabled or the physic engine will start to fail.

[edit]

check these websites for information on each command and options for tweaking:

https://tweakguides.pcgamingwiki.com/Quake4_8.html

[url=https://modwiki.dhewm3.org/CVars_(Quake_4)]https://modwiki.dhewm3.org/CVars_(Quake_4)[/url]

one important command for example seems to be r_renderer. it can be changed if there are issues with old nvidia and amd / ati gpus. arb2 seems to be the most uptodate renderer, which has the highest image quality and should be used for modern gpus.

https://modwiki.dhewm3.org/R_renderer_%28cvar%29

Best - The engine automatically determines the best path to use.
ARB2 - Best quality path which enables the use of vertex and fragment programs . Needs an ATi Radeon 9500 or nVidia GeForce 5200 or better.
R200 - ATi specific. Needs an ATi Radeon 8500 or better.
NV20 - nVidia specific. Needs a nVidia GeForce 3 or better.
NV10 - nVidia specific. Needs a nVidia GeForce or better (but only nVidia GeForce 4 MX is officially supported by Doom 3).
ARB - Needs an ATi Radeon or nVidia GeForce or better (not officially supported by Doom 3)
Cg - nVidia specific. Needs a nVidia GeForce 5200 or better. (not officially supported by Doom 3).
Exp - Experimental path (not officially supported by Doom 3).

beautiful work, really. i just have one issue. the flashlight seems to be bugged. its too close, its catching the end of the gun when it should not be. the flashlight also vanishes when you look down. i am not sure what causes this. would you happen to know?

found out which one is it:

g_showPlayerShadow [0,1] - If set to 1, the player will cast a shadow when standing near lights. If set to 0, the player casts no shadow, which improves performance.

set this to 0 and flashlight works. player shadow is blocking flashlight.

yeah ive already notice this too. i believe its due to sphere culling and shadow culling etc. or maybe a bug there are several options on shadow rendering. it may be one of these settings or a combination of them. but my first guess would be sphere culling. there are some instances though where the flashlight does actually work when you shine to the ground and that is in scripted sequences and in vehicles, noticed it first in death convoy but there where other cases too so it basically works but theres an issue with default first person view. its strange.

you would want to disable all kinds of culling and disable optimized and turbo shadows. basically disable all or a single one or remove all of these settings:

you can also check the default setting of each of these settings from the console ingame. i just checked the settings in my config and these are set like default.

cm_backFaceCull [0,1] - If set to 1, removes all polygons behind the direction the player is facing - that is, all the things the player cannot see. This can noticeably improve performance without any image quality loss, but if you experience any visual anomalies or increased loading pauses when entering new areas, set this back to 0. Note it's cm_backFaceCull, not com_backFaceCull.

r_usePortals [0,1] - If set to 1, uses portals to perform area culling, otherwise everything is drawn. Setting this to 1 provides the best performance.

r_useOptimizedShadows [0,1] - When set to 1, uses the dmap generated static shadow volumes, which provides optimal performance.

r_useShadowCulling [0,1] - If set to 1, tries to remove shadows from partially visible lights. This provides optimal performance.

r_useLightCulling [0,1,2,3] - Determines the light culling method. 0 is no culling, 1 is box culling, 2 is the exact clip of polyhedron faces, and 3 also includes areas. This should be set to 3 for optimal performance. Other methods can reduce visual anomalies with lighting but will reduce performance.

r_useCulling [0,1,2] - Determines the object culling method. 0 is no culling, 1 is sphere culling and 2 is sphere and box culling. Setting this to 2 provides optimal performance, but other methods can be tried to reduce visual anomalies.

r_useTurboShadow [0,1] - If set to 1, uses the infinite projection with W technique for dynamic shadows which improves performance without a noticeable drop in image quality.

r_useShadowVertexProgram [0,1] - If set to 1, does the shadow projection in the vertex program on graphics cards with this capability. If you set this to 1 and experience problems or a crash, it is because your graphics card does not support this functionality.

r_useShadowProjectedCull [0,1] - If set to 1, removes polygons which would fall completely inside shadows, optimizing performance.

r_useLightPortalFlow [0,1] - If set to 1, this uses a use a more precise area reference determination for lighting. Setting this to 0 improves performance but may result in graphical anomalies.

r_znear [value] - This setting determines the distance at which z-buffer clipping occurs. The default value is 3, and lower values can result in graphical anomalies for distant objects but improve performance, while higher values may help reduce any z-buffer graphical anomalies, but may reduce performance.

r_useInfiniteFarZ [0,1] - If set to 1, this uses the no-far-clip-plane trick which provides optimal performance.

r_useTwoSidedStencil [0,1] - If set to 1, optimizes the processing of stencil shadows.

com_fixedTic [-1,0,1] - If set to 0 (the default) Quake 4's ticrate is capped at 60, meaning the game framerate cannot exceed 60FPS, except when running a timedemo. If you want to remove this cap, set com_fixedTic to -1. Setting it to 1 removes the cap, but causes the game physics to go out of sync. Removing the FPS cap doesn't necessarily improve performance, and can lead to more variable framerates. Any frames over 60FPS will typically be duplicates and hence there is no real performance benefit. Note that as of the 1.04 patch that com_fixedtic -1 is no longer accepted, 0 and 1 are the only working options.

So I tried to put the .cfg file into read only just for it to switch everything back. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

read only prevents everything from switching back.

if you want to restore the default cfg file delete the cfg file and repair / verifiy q4 install.

if you have deleted the cfg file that should already be enough for q4 to place a new cfg file on its own on next launch.

whenever you delete the cfg file and launch q4 it should create a new default cfg file.

Anything I copy and paste doesn't work with any of them. The graphics are the same crap as default :(

(Finally working...)

But I still don't understand why they didn't fix it in the game if it's a known fact

yeah, it needs to be patched.

you can also create or edit autoexec.cfg in the /q4base folder where quake4config.cfg resides - or - just paste the tweaks into the autoexec.cfg.

in autoexec.cfg at the end add the line "exec tweaks.cfg".

seta sys_lang "english"
exec tweaks.cfg

then create a file by the name of tweaks.cfg, paste the tweaks and place it in the same directory.

when q4 launches it will execute autoexec.cfg and then tweaks.cfg.

ive added a echo "tweaks loaded" at the end for confirmation.

when the tweaks have been loaded typ "vid_restart" to restart the game and apply all changes.

UPDATED CONFIG

seta s_useOcclusion "1"
seta s_clipVolumes "1"
seta r_skipSky "0"
seta r_forceAmbient "0"
seta r_forceLoadImages "0"
seta r_shadows "1"
seta r_useSMP "0"
seta r_skipBump "0"
seta r_skipSpecular "0"
seta r_skipNewAmbient "0"
seta r_skipUpdates "0"
seta r_skipDeforms "0"
seta r_skipFogLights "0"
seta r_skipTranslucent "0"
seta r_skipDiffuse "0"
seta r_skipInteractions "0"
seta r_skipMegaTexture "0"
seta r_skipGuiShaders "0"
seta r_useShadowCulling "1"
seta r_useLightCulling "3"
seta r_useCulling "2"
seta r_ignoreGLErrors "1"
seta r_znear "3"
seta r_useInfiniteFarZ "1"
seta r_useStateCaching "1"
seta r_useIndexBuffers "0"
seta r_useVertexBuffers "1"
seta r_useCachedDynamicModels "1"
seta r_useTwoSidedStencil "1"
seta r_useTurboShadow "1"
seta r_useShadowVertexProgram "1"
seta r_useShadowProjectedCull "1"
seta r_useTripleTextureARB "1"
seta r_useConstantMaterials "1"
seta r_useLightPortalFlow "1"
seta r_renderer "arb2"
seta r_swapInterval "1"
seta r_alphaToCoverage "1"
seta r_multiSamples "16"
seta r_usePreciseTriangleInteractions "1"
seta r_useFastSkinning "1"
seta image_downSizeLimit "8192"
seta image_ignoreHighQuality "0"
seta image_downSizeBumpLimit "8192"
seta image_downSizeSpecularLimit "8192"
seta image_downSizeBump "1"
seta image_downSizeSpecular "1"
seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "4096"
seta image_cacheMinK "1"
seta image_usePrecompressedTextures "1"
seta image_useNormalCompressionLoadDDSForPal "1"
seta image_useNormalCompression "2"
seta image_useAllFormats "1"
seta image_useCompression "1"
seta image_preload "1"
seta image_downSize "1"
seta image_lodbias "0"
seta image_anisotropy "16"
seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR"
//(note: cm is correct.)
seta cm_backFaceCull "1"
seta com_fixedTic "0"
seta r_orderIndexes "1"
seta r_usePortals "1"
seta r_useOptimizedShadows "1"
seta com_videoRam "-1"
seta com_showFPS "1"
seta com_allowConsole "1"
seta com_purgeAll "1"
seta com_machineSpec "3"
seta g_gunViewStyle "0"
seta g_brassTime "2"
seta g_showProjectilePct "0"
seta g_showHud "1"
seta g_simpleItems "0"
seta g_showPlayerShadow "0"
seta g_decals "1"
seta g_doubleVision "1"
seta g_projectileLights "1"
seta g_muzzleFlash "1"
seta g_perfTest_aiNoRagdoll "0"
seta g_perfTest_weaponNoFX "0"
seta g_skipViewEffects "0"
seta g_skipFX "0"
seta g_skipParticles "0"
seta r_jitter "0"
echo "tweaks loaded"

Looks like not all arguments listed here (in whole thread) are needed in autoexec.cfg. should be one-two(-more?) for allow to use ingame setings and make them work properly.
Right?

yes, mainly image_* commands are used for better graphics.

the rest you can leave out.

when using autoexec or separate tweak file you can leave quake4config unlocked.