CS:GO is a tactical first-person shooter game that was released way back in 2012. For the past eight years, this game has been an integral part of the Esports community. The game is widely popular and offers a great competitive atmosphere for players. The unique design and upgrades built upon the old versions of Counter-Strike have made it one of the most popular games of the modern era.
Steam has been pretty good at providing complete support to the players over the years. Furthermore, developers have also continued to make the game better. In addition to that, the game went free recently as well, so the player count has increased. As a matter of fact, CS:GO recorded 1 million simultaneous players for the first time during quarantine recently.
With the latest update released a couple of days ago, Steam has done a massive overhaul of the game. The update focuses on adding a lot of visual improvements to the game. Individual maps have been updated to improve player visibility. Visibility was a big issue since game release, so it’s good to see developers addressing that side of things. Take a look at the image below for proper understanding.
In the new update, one of the more notable features is the Player Contrast Boost. This option applies a filter to stationary characters on the map. The filter increases player contrast and makes them stand out from the background. This makes it easy for the player to spot the target. The filter is subtle and does not do anything to any other objects in the game.
Enabling this feature is pretty easy; just head over to the game settings. Once you’re there, navigate to the Video tab and you will see an option for Boost Player Contrast. Just enable this, and you are good to go.
That is it for the new update options. However, If you wish to go even beyond the official options for player visibility, there is another small trick to improve player visibility. The 4:3 ratio is one of the most common game tweaks among CS:GO players. Even at the competitive level, most players play the game in 4:3 stretched.
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This option introduces some horizontal distortion in the game, which makes players look broader horizontally and, therefore, easier to spot. In the video, settings choose Normal 4:3 in aspect ratio option and make sure the selected resolution is highest available supported by your monitor.
One thing to note though is that this will not stretch the game this will only introduce black bars to the side of your game. To stretch this frame back to 16:9 you need to edit your graphics card settings. However, this step varies from person to person depending on their graphics card model but is pretty straightforward.
In the display or video settings for your device look for scaling options. This is by default set to maintain the original aspect ratio of content. Change this to Stretch and your game should now have 4:3 stretched video without the black bars.
And, that’s about it. Do you like the new visibility changes that Valve has added to CS:GO? Let us know down in the comments below!