Heat of Battle Shader Cache addon

The shader cache is what causes the “Please wait, optimizing shaders” message. It can affect the shininess and reflectivity of the weapon models. This is particularly important for Heat of Battle, since the realistic weapon lighting is highly dependent on environment map shininess. If your weapons don’t look the way they do in my screenshots, try installing this custom shader cache.

To install:

• Navigate to Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache.
• Open the most recently modified folder. It should be something like {D7B71... If you don't have this folder, start the game and load a map so the game can optimize shaders first, then come back.
• Open the shader cache zip. Drag the individual files in the zip into the Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache\{D7B71... folder. Replace everything.
• If for whatever reason it doesn't work or you don't like the results, delete the entire {D7B71... folder and load a map so the game optimizes shaders.
• In the future, if you update your graphics drivers and the game optimizes shaders again, you'll have to repeat this process so the weapons look shiny again.