Ways to optimize Fallout 76?

[TheKerevas]

I started playing Fallout 76 again and I didn't remember that it was so unstable, it has some absurd dropps, is there any guide to follow to improve the situation?

[Big Boss]

ini editing and theres a couple of mods that have optimized textures.
Textures:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout76/mods/949

Ini mod:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout76/mods/464?tab=files

[mgDuckyyy^.-]

Turn off grass.

Download texture optimisers.

Lower Shadows by 80% in the ini.


Fallout 4 ultra settings are half the distance Fallout 76 uses on Low.

[PotatoBasket]

Play on console, apparently.

PS.
Console can burn

[TheKerevas]

Until 1 year ago I was playing everything to the maximum (except for shadow quality) in 1080p with few drops and in a few areas, now it is absurd that in too many areas I have drops, before I played with a HardDisk and now I even have an NVMe... I have tried with the changes to the .ini files and the optimized textures but saturated too often the VRAM of my 1060 6GB

[mgDuckyyy^.-]

Originally posted by TheKerevas:

Until 1 year ago I was playing everything to the maximum (except for shadow quality) in 1080p with few drops and in a few areas, now it is absurd that in too many areas I have drops, before I played with a HardDisk and now I even have an NVMe... I have tried with the changes to the .ini files and the optimized textures but saturated too often the VRAM of my 1060 6GB

I'm on a 3060 and suffer drops.
The game is just badly made.

[Doko]

Turn off grass (gives some perf back and it's easier to spot insects/loot, and lore wise, the nukes would have eliminated much of the grass anyway).

Crank down shadow distance a lot.

My Shadow settings:
[Display]
fShadowDistance=20000.0000
fDirShadowDistance=20000.0000
iShadowMapResolution=4096
uiShadowFilter=2
uiOrthoShadowFilter=2
fBlendSplitDirShadow=384.0000
iMaxFocusShadows=0

If you want to lower the distance even more you can aim for 8000 (make sure both top lines contain the same number).

Disable Godrays (or if you must have them on, keep them at quality lv 1 instead of 2).

I you've got the VRAM to spare, crank up textures to ultra.

My texture settings:

[Texture]
iLargeTextureArrayMipSkip=0
iTextureMipSkipBC1UNormSrgb=1
iTextureMipSkipBC3UNormSrgb=1
iTextureMipSkipBC1UNorm=1
iTextureMipSkipBC5SNorm=1
iTextureMipSkipBC4UNorm=1
iTextureMipSkipMinDimension=1024
iLargeTextureArrayDim=2048
iTextureQualityLevel=3
iLargeTextureArrayCount=32

If you don't like everything being wet and shiny, disable Wetness occlusion (can save a bit on perf)

Screen Space reflections to this day still look horrid with reflections repeating in stripe formation, so it's best to just disable it and save some perf:

[LightingShader]
bScreenSpaceReflections=0

If you get black water, change the water settings in the Prefs.Ini file as follows:

[Water]
bUseWaterHiRes=1
bUseWaterDisplacements=1
bUseWaterRefractions=0
bUseWaterReflections=0
bUseWaterDepth=1

Distant LoD's get smudgy from a far distance anyways, so cranking them down a bit can save on some perf:

[TerrainManager]
fBlockMaximumDistance=200000.0000
fBlockLevel2Distance=900000.0000
fBlockLevel1Distance=70000.0000
fBlockLevel0Distance=50000.0000
fTreeLoadDistance=50000.0000
fSplitDistanceMult=1.0000
bShowLODInEditor=0
bUseNewTerrainSystem=1
bEnableCrossfading=0
bEnableLoadedAreaCrossfading=0

Disabling the fog can also help (Regular atmosphere fog is not affected):

[Weather]
iRainOcclusionMapResolution=512
bFogEnabled=0

I've found these two guides quite handy for tweaking to find a middle ground for perf/visual quality:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/gup3ws/pc_visually_indistinguishable_ini_tweaks_to_get/

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout76/mods/593?tab=files

I would also cap your fps manually via your GPU's control panel or 3rd party software, to a more stable framerate you know your PC can reach (in my case I play at 144hz, so I cap my game at 72fps which is half of 144 and my drops aren't the long and are only dire whenever Scorchbest events go down).

If you need any more help, or would like a copy of my Prefs.Ini/Custom.ini settings, feel free to DM.

[Taweret]

[TerrainManager] this setting can make a lot of difference if you put lower values

Originally posted by Duckyyy^.-:

Originally posted by TheKerevas:

Until 1 year ago I was playing everything to the maximum (except for shadow quality) in 1080p with few drops and in a few areas, now it is absurd that in too many areas I have drops, before I played with a HardDisk and now I even have an NVMe... I have tried with the changes to the .ini files and the optimized textures but saturated too often the VRAM of my 1060 6GB

I'm on a 3060 and suffer drops.
The game is just badly made.

the game is not badly made is just made beyond the limits of the engine. everything is hand crafted and each square metre looks like piece of art you could put in frame. when i play any other game it feels flat and procedurally generated compared to F76

[Yautja]

Taweret will blame the dips on amd cpus lol. The engine isn't cable of taking full advantage of hardware when it gets hit hard with cpu instructions. Such has heavily unoptimized areas or areas with lots of npcs fighting. Been a issue with all their games.

[Doko]

Originally posted by Taweret:

[TerrainManager] this setting can make a lot of difference if you put lower values

Originally posted by Duckyyy^.-:

I'm on a 3060 and suffer drops.
The game is just badly made.

the game is not badly made is just made beyond the limits of the engine. everything is hand crafted and each square metre looks like piece of art you could put in frame. when i play any other game it feels flat and procedurally generated compared to F76

I seriously hope you're being sarcastic, because beth has been documented as using the same assets across multiple games before, like many devs tend to do to cut down on costs/dev time.

[Taweret]

Originally posted by Doko:

Originally posted by Taweret:

[TerrainManager] this setting can make a lot of difference if you put lower values

the game is not badly made is just made beyond the limits of the engine. everything is hand crafted and each square metre looks like piece of art you could put in frame. when i play any other game it feels flat and procedurally generated compared to F76

I seriously hope you're being sarcastic, because beth has been documented as using the same assets across multiple games before, like many devs tend to do to cut down on costs/dev time.

sure models can be reused but you still need to arrange them into scenery and that's the real task, i never said that they don't reuse models. also this game has really atmospheric lighting/shading work, i don't know what other modern game gives me same feeling, maybe red dead redemption has also nice lightning and mountains.

[Doko]

Originally posted by Taweret:

sure models can be reused but you still need to arrange them into scenery and that's the real task, i never said that they don't reuse models. also this game has really atmospheric lighting/shading work, i don't know what other modern game gives me same feeling, maybe red dead redemption has also nice lightning and mountains.

No, the task at hand is to construct a new game using previous assets in order to cut down on game dev time schedules. I know this, you should know this by now, it's been a thing for years and years.

The game has *an* atmosphere, but it has not been executed properly, in that we still see an overuse of bloom, light sources still relying on baked source instead of being independent ones, volumetric light that doesn't entirely bleed through holes it is supposed to, AO that is still horribly low res and blotchy with terrain and foliage like grass, screen space reflections that repeat stripes when they are not supposed to (other games that execute it correctly do not do this).

I have played many modern games that do better jobs in different areas, Fallout 76 is not even close to being a master of all, let alone one trade aspect of technological fidelity.

Red Dead 2 makes good use of atmospheric lighting, but again, it sucks at draw distance detail, like every other open world game, including 76, suffers from. AI is something all games have been letting slide over the years as well. I've still yet to play a game with AI that are on the same level as FEAR's, and even then, FEAR's AI was still scripted, but scripted good nonetheless.

The only truly good aspect that comes from beth games is mod support, as they have some of the most modded games on the planet, but for half good reasons and half bad (the bad being us having to mod their games in order to fix performance/graphical errors/uplift graphical fidelity to modern standards).

[Arcanix]

You are trying to optimize a broken game. Ok.

[Doko]

Believe it or not, it can and has been done before.

[Arcanix]

Originally posted by Doko:

Believe it or not, it can and has been done before.

That point is moot. You fix the game before optimizing it.

[Doko]

Originally posted by Arcanix:

Originally posted by Doko:

Believe it or not, it can and has been done before.

That point is moot. You fix the game before optimizing it.

And yet every dev still has to fix their game, yet that still doesn't stop others from modifying it to gain performance.

The point doesn't remain moot since modders exist. I know you like to think you're right at every turn, but this is not it. OP asked for measures to gain performance and they have been given as such, from the modding community at that.

besides, your original post doesn't really offer anything of helpfulness to the OP's quandary, so you're clearly not here to offer advice now, are you?.