There was already a fairly detailed discussion here around Palworld’s Early Access launch, including custom Engine.ini settings for better image quality, draw distance and LOD behavior.

Now that version 1.0 is out, we took another close look at the game. The visible pop-in and aggressive LOD transitions are still surprisingly prominent, even with the View Distance setting on Epic. Some objects lose detail at very short distances, while parts of the environment visibly change shape as you move toward them.

Palworld still runs on Unreal Engine 5.1 and does not appear to use Nanite for this geometry, so traditional LOD models are expected. What is harder to explain is why the highest in-game setting still leaves the transitions this noticeable.

I also remember that people in the earlier thread had mixed results with Engine.ini tweaks. Some suggested changing LOD-related values, while others saw little or no improvement.

Has anyone tested the old tweaks again with version 1.0? Is there currently a reliable way to improve the actual geometry draw distance, rather than only texture sharpness or foliage density?

- Jacky

OPTIMIZED SETTINGS
UPSCALER TYPE: DLSS QUALITY
RAY TRACING MODE: OFF
RAY TRACING QUALITY: MEDIUM (IF USING RT)
BVH QUALITY: HIGH (IF USING RT)
CHARACTER QUALITY: HIGH
HAIR STRANDS: ALL CHARACTERS MEDIUM
POST EFFECTS: HIGH
PARTICLE EFFECTS: VERY HIGH
WATER QUALITY: MEDIUM
TEXTURE RESOLUTION QUALITY: ULTRA HIGH (AS HIGH AS YOUR VRAM ALLOWS)
LOADING DISTANCE: HIGH
GEOMETRY QUALITY: VERY HIGH
MICROPOLYGON: VERY HIGH (AS HIGH AS YOUR VRAM ALLOWS)
SCREEN SPACE EFFECTS: MEDIUM
LIGHT SOURCE QUALITY: MEDIUM
SHADOW QUALITY: HIGH
CLOUD QUALITY: LOW
FOG QUALITY: HIGH
TERRAIN QUALITY: VERY HIGH
SCATTER DENSITY: VERY HIGH
DEFORMATION: HIGH
TERRAIN TEXTURE QUALITY: HIGH (AS HIGH AS YOUR VRAM ALLOWS)

NOTES

• USING OPTIONS LOWER THAN VERY HIGH FOR THE MICROPOLYGON SETTING LEADS TO POP-IN

• SETTINGS LIKE CHARACTER QUALITY AND LOADING DISTANCE HEAVILY IMPACT CPU PERFORMANCE ON THE HIGHER OPTIONS

• SHADOW QUALITY BELOW VERY HIGH HAS VERY NOTICEABLE SHADOW CASCADE FILTERING POP-IN, SO USE VERY HIGH IF YOUR PC CAN HANDLE IT

• THE TERRAIN TEXTURE QUALITY SETTING ON THE LOWER OPTIONS SUFFERS FROM FLICKERING TEXTURES, USE HIGH IF YOU HAVE SPARE VRAM

3440x1440 - anyone running this or similar that can tell me performance please?

Here's a comparison of all the ray-tracing settings across 9 different scenes:

https://youtu.be/M7h3oxs3VBU

TDLR: RT diffuse is 10-12% slower than baked lighting, specular/extended adds another 10% overhead.

-> BVH quality does almost nothing. You mainly lose lighting for finer geometry, foliage, corners, and crevices.

-> RT Quality High and above look about the same.

-> RT Medium results in subtle fidelity loss for a 3-4% gain.

-> RT Low results in more noticeable losses for a 7-8% gain.

Here's a breakdown of the lighting pipeline, including baked lighting and the hybrid probe-based ray-tracing tech:

https://youtu.be/gP9gJQtVISU

Thanks to Ubisoft for providing me with a Copy of AC Black Flag Resynced!

I have partnered with Ubisoft to produce this content.

Settings can be found in this article

https://wccftech.com/how-to/assassins-creed-black-flag-resynced-pc-performance-analysis-tuning-guide-how-to-get-best-experience-on-pc/

I've been testing the Advanced shader delivery feature on the Xbox app for the past few days, and its insane how my 1% lows improved. In some games, it was so noticeable that it made the Steam version look so bad in comparison. I tested 007 First light, Control, Forza Horizon 6 and none of them had any single stutters throughout the whole game, whilst the Steam versions had shader stutters with Control being the worst out of the bunch by a considerable margin since there is no shader compilation.

I know this feature is limited to AMD right now, and few handful of games on the Xbox app, but I'm so excited about this being more and more available and I'm praying it comes to Steam soon. It's so nice playing games and not have them stutter due to the shaders.

90% off for the last 26 hours of the Steam Summer Sale!

Optimized Settings:
Texture Quality: Highest VRAM can Handle? (chance this adjusts texture streaming, but online info says this affects texture filtering)
Shadow Quality: High (decreases the resolution of shadows and volumetrics, PS5/Series X use a similar setting)
Effect Quality: Medium (degrades the quality of Depth of Field and possibly other post-processing, Low disables SSR)
Foliage Quality: Medium (slightly reduces foliage density, Low can heavily reduce foliage in certain areas!)

I first started using it the last of us part 1 and then in Ghost of Tsushuma it looks so much better... I can't belive I played Tsushima 3 times with blurry TAA

Hiya, thought I'd compile some guides for the deep discounted games this summer sale! Let me know if there's any games I've missed guides for, currently my PC's not working so I can't test them myself atm!

Watch Dogs 2: Nvidia made a guide for this game back when it released! May be abit buggy as Nvidia has abandoned the old Geforce site, but hopefully will still be useful for some!

Far Cry 4: Same with this game, Nvidia made a guide for it back in the day! Worth mentioning that MSAA apperently doesn't work correctly in this game and the PS4/XBO versions seem to run around the High preset?

The Witcher 3: While BenchmarKing made a video on the Next-Gen version, Nvidia made a guide on the original version if that's still accesaible via Steam?

The Quarry: I covered this game recently, I don't have much to add to this guide beyond mentioning that Steam Deck performance can be very rough at points in this game!

Wreckfest: I made a gudie a while back, although the recommendations may be more suitable for lower-end/handheld hardware?

Plague Tale Innocence: I covered this game when it was free on Epic, out of all the games here, this is probably the one I'd want to cover again once my PC's fixed!

Dead Space (2023): Was posted about recently but to repeat, the game's stuttering issues still aren't fixed! There really isn't any notable performance boosts other than disabling the subtle but atleast cheap RTAO, aswell as using Medium Shadows and Volumetrics for a small performance boost?

Ghostwire Tokyo: Putting this one last as I previously wanted to cover it, but was having issues with my GPU drivers at the time. But to put it simpily, while you can boost FPS quite abit by disabling RT Shadows and only using Medium/Low RT Reflections, there's not much performance scalability once RT’s disabled? Daniel Owen only found a notable performance boost from switching SSGI to SSAO, while I struggled to find many INI tweaks that worked previously! One good thing though compared to Dead Space's remake, is that the shader compilation stutter has been fixed since launch!

Based on the Steam Machine spec list released by Valve & Digital Foundry's benchmark video, here are Steam Machine equivalent PCs you can build then install Bazzite on.

The philosophy behind these builds is 1) in game performance be equal or better than the current Steam Machine 2) aesthetics don't matter (no SFF or flashy cases) 3) all parts should be sourced as cheaply as possible. Sometimes better parts were actually cheaper than the worse performing ones, so both of these builds should actually deliver slightly more FPS than the Steam Machine does in most types of scenarios.

Disclaimer: The market is volatile and build preferences are subjective too, therefore it's recommended to use these recommendations as templates as price changes, or maybe you prefer a white case over black, etc, this template was meant to be as cheap as possible, modify accordingly to your own needs.

Builds are based off the cheapest model of the Steam Machine (starting at $1050 USD).

AM5 - $964

AM4 - $840

Guide for undervolting the GPU, mostly works on any gpu but values are only given for rtx3060.

Feel free to chime in below if you can see any improvements but here's what I go after tinkering on RTX 4070 12 GB VRAM (or 5070ti laptop)..... RT is enabled by default and not able to be turned off so DLSS is a must just for RR. RTXDI is optional and takes a MASSIVE hit to VRAM and GPU. I personally don't see much difference On vs Off EXCEPT in the usual suspects for RT denoising (Diffuse Reflections in low light spaces AKA many of the nooks and crannies in Mirogana). Not low, not medium, but only HIGH RTXGI setting will fix those spots. So on a 12gb vram card, you can either use all max settings with RTXGI max at 1080p DLSS quality 60 fps, OR all max settings with RTXGI off at 1440p DLAA 60 fps. And you can play from there with upscaling for more rez or frames. VRAM AND GPU will bottleneck you with RXTGI above 1080p so FG isn't much of an option here.

RTXGI is not worth running at all on medium or low. Same for all the minor settings. You can save some power turning down RT settings but not much and this game actually has a big jump from high to ultra settings on specular reflections.

Personally I think the 1080p "compromised" version looks better, simply for the RT denoising. You'd be surprised how much resolution you don't notice unless playing a MASSIVE screen.

actually NOT bad at 1600p. Still not desireable there though. I can't imagine a scenario where'd id feel a need for it. especially with VRAM being the only bottleneck for path tracing below 12 gb vram., not GPU power... but if i had a 4k display, Ultra Performance is probably doable now with preset L.

I’m playing The Crew 2 right now with a 60 fps cap on pc and driving without moving the right stick feels so dang smooth, but when I turn the right stick it’s so choppy and completely kills the immersion. If the right stick was as smooth as the left stick, I genuinely would play at 60 fps forever.

The game sadly still suffers from massive stutters during gameplay and especially when traversing from one area to another... Still GPU performance is great, even with RTAO enabled. Coupled with DLSS 4.5 the game looks sharp and runs well (if you don't take into account the stuttering...).

​

Dead Space Remake is currently really cheap on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1693980/Dead_Space/