what should i set to ultra? reflection or water?

[isaif_at]

so i have 2 options if i want to have constant 50 to 60fps, i can either set reflection to medium and water at ultra OR set reflection to ultra and water i cant have both at ultra because the fps would drop to 40 fps or less to i have to choose one of of them which would be more worth it? and why?

[s0b3k]

I think I would take the extra frames. Otherwise I think I would go with water. I think it would make more of an immersive difference overall.

[Meiwow]

The only thing you should have on ultra is the textures, everything else medium.

[xBonzaii]

Hey there, I've been benchmarking the game's settings since it launched ("Remember, remember the 5th of november, .." - Guy Fawkes nursery rhyme.) to be able to play at 4k30fps, 1440p60fps or 1080p60fps with minimal loss in visual quality and great performance.
In my opinion, the following settings give you the best performance/visual quality ratio..

Triple Buffering: Off (This setting also comes at a performance cost. And for most people, myself included, this setting is already enabled by default in the NVIDIA Control Panel. So to also enable it in-game is just wasted performance.)

Standard Settings

Texture Quality: Ultra / Anisotropic Filtering: 16x / Lighting Quality: Medium ('High' can tank performance in night scenes with lots of lights.) / Global Illumination: Medium (Visual difference from 'Ultra' is minor, and performance is better.) / Shadow Quality: High ('Ultra' is unnecessary, even at 4k. And 'Medium' gives jagged edges.) / Far Shadow Quality: Ultra (Visually better transitions from distant into near shadows, and very performance-friendly.) / SSAO: Medium (Higher settings barely make a difference.) / Reflection Quality: Medium (Higher settings tank performance, for a negligible difference in overall image quality.) / Mirror Quality: Ultra / Particle Quality: Medium* / Tessellation Quality: High / TAA: Medium (This is good enough at 4k, I don't know about 1080p though.) FXAA: Off / MSAA: Off

Advanced Settings

Graphics API: Vulkan / Near Volumetric Resolution: Medium (Higher settings tank performance, and even at 4k I can barely spot the improvements.) / Far Volumetric Resolution: Ultra** / Volumetric Lighting Quality: Ultra** / Unlocked Volumetric Raymarch Resolution: On (Turning this off will give you a lot of blocky artifacts in very distant clouds.) / Particle Lighting Quality: Medium* / Soft Shadows: High ('Medium' can produce visible artifacts around your character's shadow, and 'High' seems to have about the same performance cost.) / Grass Shadows: Medium (You can only tell the difference between 'High' and 'Medium' when doing a screenshot comparison, not during gameplay.) / Long Shadows: On / Full Resolution SSAO: Off (You'll barely be able to tell the difference, and turning this on comes at a performance cost.) / Water Refraction Quality: Medium / Water Reflection Quality: Medium / Water Physics Quality: Halfway / Resolution Scale: Off / TAA Sharpening: Max / Motion Blur: Off / Reflection MSAA: 4x (Only applies to mirrors, and the performance cost is minor.) / Geometry LoD: Max / Grass LoD: Halfway (Even at 4k, increasing this setting beyond the halfway mark doesn't seem to make a visual difference.) / Tree Quality: High ('Medium' will give you visible pop-in. 'Ultra' will make performance drop in dense forests, for no actual visible improvement.) / Parallax Occlusion Mapping: Ultra (Also make sure that 'deepsurfaceQuality' is set to 'kSettingLevel_Ultra' in the 'system.xml' file.) / Decal Quality: Ultra / Fur Quality: High / Tree Tessellation: Off

* Particle quality is really underestimated in this game. Even on the lower settings, throwing a fire bottle on a wagon or two and walking around it will absolutely tank performance. So I suggest leaving these on the 'Medium' setting, because even then, the particle effects still look great.

** If you don't want any visible artifacts when looking at the clouds, both these settings have to be set to 'Ultra'. But the performance cost is only minor, so you might as well.

These settings give me a solid 30fps at 4k on a 8700k/1080 ti with gpu load hovering around 70%, so there's still some headroom left. The only time performance drops is when I'm literally throwing fire bottles all over the place and I'm jumping around in the flames, but I guess that will tank performance on any setup..

There you go, I hope this helps and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.. ;)

Also, for people who have better gpu's, like a 2080 ti for example. The only settings that I would increase to get even better overall image quality are setting 'Near Volumetric Resolution' to 'Ultra' and maybe even turning on 'Full Resolution SSAO'.

In my opinion, increasing other settings beyond this, seems almost pointless. Compared to max settings the visual improvements would be negligible, for a very high performance cost..

By the way, here are some in-game screenshots as proof and to show you my method.

- https://i.imgur.com/Pp8iSuk.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/YRKEvhB.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/5hnRWEw.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/OLVpN1K.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/5wIMTfX.jpg

Here are also some screenshots to showcase 1440p60fps with the same settings.

- https://i.imgur.com/iFQK7hA.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/oGVIDn2.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/fSu5xDH.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/cXsT8gu.png
- https://i.imgur.com/pPTgvxr.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/KvuGBtM.png
- https://i.imgur.com/CzLyUpC.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/eYaAznS.png
- https://i.imgur.com/larmDfy.jpg
- https://i.imgur.com/agS0X5U.png

And lastly, here are some screenshots to showcase 1080p60fps.

- https://i.imgur.com/MEQTsNb.png
- https://i.imgur.com/4mIidim.png
- https://i.imgur.com/wwr33Kv.png
- https://i.imgur.com/ukoaI3D.png
- https://i.imgur.com/BC2Gj4C.png