PC Games Hardware tried to squeeze the last bit of visual quality out of Valve's aged Source Engine. As test objects we used Dark Messiah of Might & Magic (with LoD mod), Half-Life 2 (with Cinematic Mod 8.2/9/10), Left 4 Dead and Zeno clash.

The screenshots of Dark Messiah and Half-Life 2 have been taken with a Geforce GTX 280 at an original resolution of 1920 x 1200. If possible 16x Super Sampling anti aliasing and 16:1 Anisotropic Filtering have been activated. To improve the quality of Half-Life 2 we installed the Fakefactory Cinematic Mod (some pictures have been made with version 8.2 while the pictures of Jay.Gee also show the CM 9 and 10). In Dark Messiah of Might 6 Magic the LoD was deactivated int eh command console so that the maximum texture quality is also displayed at all distances. The pictures of Left 4 Dead have been taken by the §D Center Forum users Jay.Gee and Grey.

Have fun with our Source Engine screenshots. If you know other games that are based on Valve's development and offer a similarly good visual quality, don't hesitate to tell us in the comments.