Based on our observations there does appear to be an error or two with the Auto-Balancer - though disabled for the screenshots, the on-screen frame rate display never moved below Rage’s sixty frames per second cap with 8k textures enabled, so why does the Auto-Balancer need to utilize lower-resolution assets? Perhaps it's overly-conservative to ensure that the frame rate never fluctuates? Regardless of the reason, the lack of detal is especially noticeable on the speed limit sign to the right and the ‘Loft Finder’ billboard above the collapsed building.

As mentioned, we visited other areas of the game also, primarily to judge the veracity of our results and observations. In outdoor areas packed with detail the results were identical, but in enclosed areas, such as the Mayor’s office in Wellspring, there was absolutely no difference between any of the three detail levels. In larger enclosed areas there was a difference in visual fidelity, albeit to a far lesser extent.

There are other tweaks being passed around on forums, but at this time their impact cannot be properly assessed, so we’d recommend using only the tweaks above as they work without issue on our GeForce GTX 580 systems and only improve the visual fidelity, rather than modifying it, thereby skewing the developer's original design.

We’d also like to say that Rage is a fantastic-looking game when tweaked and we’re hopeful that id Software can iron out the kinks in its Auto-Balancer to allow all gamers to see its beauty. In general, we’ve found Rage to be an enjoyable first-person shooter based on nine hours of campaign action, and we’ve yet to delve into the co-op or competitive multiplayer modes.