better graphics ini tweaks?

[ΜΣ†ΛĿ]

Is there a way to increase graphics settings thru an engine .ini tweaks(FFVIIHook)
anyone know of any guides or a list of settings to change in the ini for improvements.
I only have a 60hz 4K TV (Gsync enabled) i'm playing this on and would like to see If I could increase some settings to give the GPU something to chew on.

[Zloth]

I haven't seen any guides. Personally, I just search around and pick out bits and pieces. I asked here about the light getting crazy dithering of some sort here a few weeks ago and got a good answer.

My current ini looks like this:

r.DynamicRes.OperationMode=0
r.DynamicRes.MinScreenPercentage=100

r.DefaultFeature.LensFlare=0

r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale=1.5                  ;default = 1.0
r.LandscapeLOD0DistributionScale=1.5                 ;default = 1.0
r.MeshParticle.MinDetailModeForMotionBlur = 0
r.TessellationAdaptivePixelsPerTriangle=128
r.Water.WaterMesh.TessFactorBias=12	                 ;This value is added to the tessellation factor of each Mesh Component. Negative values will lower the overall density/resolution or the vertex grid, higher values will increase the density/resolution

r.DefaultFeature.MotionBlur=0
r.DepthOfField.FarBlur=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.FastBlurThreshold = 0.000000
r.MotionBlur.Amount = 0
r.MotionBlur.Max = 0
r.MotionBlur.Scale = 0.000000
r.MotionBlurIntensityOverride = 0.000000
r.MotionBlurLimitationOverride = 0.000000
r.MotionBlurQuality = 0
r.MotionBlurRestrainOverride = 0.000000
r.MotionBlurScatter = 0
r.MotionBlurSeparable = 0
r.DOF.Kernel.MaxBackgroundRadius = 0.0000
r.DOF.Kernel.MaxForegroundRadius = 0.0000

r.GlobalIllumination.Denoiser.ReconstructionSamples=16	        ;Maximum number of samples for the reconstruction pass (default = 16).
r.GlobalIllumination.Denoiser.TemporalAccumulation=16	        ;Accumulates the samples over multiple frames.
r.DistanceFieldGI=1
r.SSGI.Enable=1      	                                        ;Whether to enable SSGI (defaults to 0).
r.SSGI.Quality=4	                                            ;Quality setting to control number of ray shot with SSGI, between 1 and 4 (defaults to 4).
r.SSGI.HalfRes=0	                                            ;Whether to do SSGI at half resolution (defaults to 0).
r.HeightfieldGlobalIllumination = 1
r.HeightfieldInnerBounceDistance = 3000.000000
r.HeightfieldOuterBounceDistanceScale = 3.000000
r.HeightfieldTargetUnitsPerTexel = 300.000000
r.HighQualityLightMaps = 1

r.ShaderPipelines=1
r.Shaders.BoundsChecking=1
r.Shaders.FastMath=1
r.ParallelBasePass=1
r.ParallelGatherShadowPrimitives=1
r.ParallelInitViews=1
r.ParallelPrePass=1
r.ParallelShadows=1
r.ParallelShadowsNonWholeScene=0
r.ParallelTranslucency=1
r.ParallelVelocity=1
r.MeshDrawCommands.AllowOnDemandShaderCreation=1	;How to create RHI shaders: 0: Always create them on a Rendering Thread, before executing other MDC tasks. 1: If RHI supports multi-threaded shader creation, create them on demand on tasks threads, at the time of submitting the draws.
r.MeshDrawCommands.DynamicInstancing=1	            ;Whether to dynamically combine multiple compatible visible Mesh Draw Commands into one instanced draw on vertex factories that support it.
r.ForceAllCoresForShaderCompiling=1   	            ;When set to 1, it will ignore INI settings and launch as many ShaderCompileWorker instances as cores are available. Improves shader throughput but for big projects it can make the machine run OOM
r.UseShaderPredraw=1                                ;Predrawing of tracked RHI draw states to eliminate first-use hitches.
r.UseAsyncShaderPrecompilation=1                    ;Asynchronous precompilation of shader code during gameplay
r.AmbientOcclusion.AsyncComputeBudget=4             ;This is a low level developer tweak to get best performance on hardware that supports AsyncCompute. 0: least AsyncCompute, 1: .. (default), 4: most AsyncCompute
r.AsyncCreateLightPrimitiveInteractions=1
r.Streaming.MipBias=0	                            ;0..x reduce texture quality for streaming by a floating point number. 0: use full resolution (default)1: drop one mip 2: drop two mips
r.Streaming.CheckBuildStatus=1	                    ;If non-zero, the engine will check whether texture streaming needs rebuild.
r.Streaming.DefragDynamicBounds=1                   ;If non-zero, unused dynamic bounds will be removed from the update loop
r.Streaming.Boost=1                                 ;=1.0: normal <1.0: decrease wanted mip levels >1.0: increase wanted mip levels
r.Streaming.PoolSize=6000 ; game default = 1000
r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=1000               ;game default = 50, lets increase it a little
r.Streaming.FramesForFullUpdate=5
r.Streaming.HLODStrategy=0
r.Streaming.HiddenPrimitiveScale=0.500000            ;The wanted memory currently taken by non-visible texture mips. This does not include forced mips. To prevent seeing low resolution textures the first time a texture is shown, the streamer prestreams textures in advance, althought usually with one less mip than required.   
r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1
r.UseShaderCaching=1
r.MultithreadedShadowmapEncode=1                    ;Shadowmap encoding after rebuild lightmaps is done multithreaded.
r.MultithreadedLightmapEncode=1                     ;Lightmap encoding after rebuild lightmaps is done multithreaded.
r.CompileShadersForDevelopment=0
r.ShaderComplexity.CacheShaders=1
r.ShaderPipelineCache.PreOptimizeEnabled=1

#TAA settings
r.TemporalAA.Upscaler=1 ;Choose the upscaling algorithm. 0: Forces the default temporal upscaler of the renderer; 1: GTemporalUpscaler which may be overridden by a third party plugin (default).
r.TemporalAA.AllowDownsampling=0
r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight=1 ;Weight of current frame's contribution to the history. Low values cause blurriness and ghosting, high values fail to hide jittering.
r.TemporalAAFilterSize=0.9 ;Size of the filter kernel. (1.0 = smoother, 0.0 = sharper but aliased).
r.TemporalAAUpsampleFitered=1 ;Use filtering to fetch color history during TamporalAA upsampling (see AA_FILTERED define in TAA shader). Disabling this makes TAAU faster, but lower quality.
r.TemporalAASamples=16 ;Number of jittered positions for temporal AA (4, 8=default, 16, 32, 64).
r.TemporalAA.Upsampling=1 ;Whether to do primary screen percentage with temporal AA or not 0: use spatial upscale pass independently of TAA (default); 1: TemporalAA performs spatial and temporal upscale as screen percentage method.
#end TAA settings

r.ScreenPercentage=100 ;To render in lower resolution and upscale for better performance (combined up with the blenable post process setting). 70 is a good value for low aliasing and performance, can be verified with 'show TestImage'in percent, >0 and <=100, larger numbers are possible (supersampling) but the downsampling quality is improvable.<0 is treated like 100.
r.TemporalAA.HistoryScreenPercentage=100 ;Size of temporal AA's history.
r.SeparateTranslucencyScreenPercentage=100 ;Render separate translucency at this percentage of the full resolution. in percent, >0 and <=100, larger numbers are possible (supersampling).<0 is treated like 100.
r.Upscale.Panini.ScreenFit=1.000000
r.Upscale.Quality=5 ;Defines the quality in which ScreenPercentage and WindowedFullscreen scales the 3d rendering. 0: Nearest filtering 1: Simple Bilinear 2: Directional blur with unsharp mask upsample. 3: 5-tap Catmull-Rom bicubic, approximating Lanczos 2. (default) 4: 13-tap Lanczos 3. 5: 36-tap Gaussian-filtered unsharp mask (very expensive, but good for extreme upsampling).
r.Upscale.Softness=1 ;Amount of sharpening for Gaussian Unsharp filter (r.UpscaleQuality=5). Reduce if ringing is visible 1: Normal sharpening (default) 0: No sharpening (pure Gaussian).

[ΜΣ†ΛĿ]

thank you I will give this a try.
have you by any chance try the "GFX PLUS Mod DX12 performance improved Potato to Enhanced Epic UE4 Scalability Groups Rendering settings" from nexus mods?
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy7remake/mods/98?tab=description

[Zloth]

Nope, not me.

[L1ONH3ART]

You can give this a try if you like -

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2839130631

the INI is working pretty well for me at 1440p. With FFVII HD Project Mod though - I am running into stutters around the train station area of Sector 5 Slums - Seems to resolve when increasing streaming pool size, but then running into random heavy fps drops in other chapters in heavy load situations like engaging enemies and spamming strong attacks and abilities. Still trying to find a sweet spot on that one..

If not using FFVII HD Project Mod, it runs like butter :)

[ΜΣ†ΛĿ]

Originally posted by L1ONH3ART:

You can give this a try if you like -

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2839130631

the INI is working pretty well for me at 1440p. With FFVII HD Project Mod though - I am running into stutters around the train station area of Sector 5 Slums - Seems to resolve when increasing streaming pool size, but then running into random heavy fps drops in other chapters in heavy load situations like engaging enemies and spamming strong attacks and abilities. Still trying to find a sweet spot on that one..

If not using FFVII HD Project Mod, it runs like butter :)

thank you,
I will give the HD texture mod a try. I did download your engine.ini to compare to mine, and it seems I have alot of the same tweaks as you + a few more

some of these improvements in the Ini I'm using are:
Volumetric Fog
Particle Effects
Lens Flair & adjustment to color effects
View Distance Quality.Diffused denoising.
Bokeh Depth of Field.
Anti Aliasing 16x TAAU color history during TamporalAA upsampling.
Upscaling 36-tap Gaussian
Shadow CSM distance.
Post Process Quality.
Texture mip LODs Quality.
Particle Effects & emitter.
Foliage Quality & Density distance.
Screen Space Reflections Quality.
Screen Space Shadows details.
Screen Space Global Illumination.
Normals.
Decals.
AmbientOcclusion.
Light Shaft Quality.
Translucency Quality
World LOD Quality
Character LOD Quality
Bloom Quality

but even then GPU load is only around 40-50%, and Memory usage is only around 12-14 GB. I have increased the streaming memory budget to 8gb, and temp max budget to 2gb.

My TV can only do 60hz, so I'm playing in 4K w/ gsync & HDR. I tried supersampling but it seems the game has a bug that will not allow any side of the resolution to go above 4096 or it renders white/green smear on half the screen. I have tried the flawless widescreen Green fix v1 & v2 but could not get it to fix it so I'm stuck at 4K as max resolution.

I'm using a 3090 with 500w bios 2100mhz core clock & a bit of vram OC that gives me slightly above 1000 GB/s of bandwidth.

it seems that the game is simply not that graphically demanding but very memory hungry and is hitting vram limits on GPUs with low amounts of VRAM (less than 12gb) I wish square would have included some graphics setting to increase to actually make use of modern GPU's instead of settling on PS5 potato settings.

[L1ONH3ART]

Originally posted by ΜΣ†ΛĿ:

Originally posted by L1ONH3ART:

You can give this a try if you like -

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2839130631

the INI is working pretty well for me at 1440p. With FFVII HD Project Mod though - I am running into stutters around the train station area of Sector 5 Slums - Seems to resolve when increasing streaming pool size, but then running into random heavy fps drops in other chapters in heavy load situations like engaging enemies and spamming strong attacks and abilities. Still trying to find a sweet spot on that one..

If not using FFVII HD Project Mod, it runs like butter :)

thank you,
I will give the HD texture mod a try. I did download your engine.ini to compare to mine, and it seems I have alot of the same tweaks as you + a few more

some of these improvements in the Ini I'm using are:
Volumetric Fog
Particle Effects
Lens Flair & adjustment to color effects
View Distance Quality.Diffused denoising.
Bokeh Depth of Field.
Anti Aliasing 16x TAAU color history during TamporalAA upsampling.
Upscaling 36-tap Gaussian
Shadow CSM distance.
Post Process Quality.
Texture mip LODs Quality.
Particle Effects & emitter.
Foliage Quality & Density distance.
Screen Space Reflections Quality.
Screen Space Shadows details.
Screen Space Global Illumination.
Normals.
Decals.
AmbientOcclusion.
Light Shaft Quality.
Translucency Quality
World LOD Quality
Character LOD Quality
Bloom Quality

but even then GPU load is only around 40-50%, and Memory usage is only around 12-14 GB. I have increased the streaming memory budget to 8gb, and temp max budget to 2gb.

My TV can only do 60hz, so I'm playing in 4K w/ gsync & HDR. I tried supersampling but it seems the game has a bug that will not allow any side of the resolution to go above 4096 or it renders white/green smear on half the screen. I have tried the flawless widescreen Green fix v1 & v2 but could not get it to fix it so I'm stuck at 4K as max resolution.

I'm using a 3090 with 500w bios 2100mhz core clock & a bit of vram OC that gives me slightly above 1000 GB/s of bandwidth.

it seems that the game is simply not that graphically demanding but very memory hungry and is hitting vram limits on GPUs with low amounts of VRAM (less than 12gb) I wish square would have included some graphics setting to increase to actually make use of modern GPU's instead of settling on PS5 potato settings.

Lol. Guess this game's just a snack for the 3090. Could try bumping up poolsize even more (maybe even make poolsize=0 and limit poolsize to VRAM=1 to maximise 3090's huge memory, but since you're only running 60fps (limited by tv), I don't know if there is much point if there are no texture loading issues.

I'm running pretty much maxed out here with my 3070 at 95-100% usage most of the time. VRAM at 7400-7700. I'm happy at my visuals with my hardware, but dying here trying to get it to run stutter-free with HD mod - I mean avg FPS is well above 120 but still stutters at certain areas. Feels like I'm close but just out of reach.

Is there a method to calculate the sweetspot for poolsize/max temp mem (other than trial and error as I'm doing)? Currently I'm experimenting with 'power of 2' values to see if having values more evenly divisible makes a difference.

With no INI I did notice GPU usage was low. If you don't have in your INI already - could try the Engine & Async Compute, DX12 shader compile, and Asset loading settings.

Game's graphics is decent (bar some areas that look like PS3 graphics lol), but yeah it's not ground breaking or anything. I agree Square should have done much better job in the graphics department for PCs (4k texture packs, more graphics settings, optimisations - not to mention the horrendous stuttering issues...). Good thing the community stepped up to help out..shouldn't have to...but glad they did!

[ΜΣ†ΛĿ]

So I played the game quite a bit, and pretty much don't have any stutter, I mean there is a single split second frame skip here and there and I think it has to do with on the fly shader compile. It usually happens when a new effect appears, but I can reload and replay the same parts over and over and it would be completely smooth since the shader is already compiled and cached
I have played the game some with improved graphics thru engine.ini without the HD mod and with r.Streaming.PoolSize=8000 r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=2000 and it was very smooth, vram usage was on average about 12GB with some spikes to as much as 15gb @ 4K. I downloaded and installed the HD mod and noticed some slight stutter here and there so I increased the memory budgets to r.Streaming.PoolSize=10000 r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=3000 and that fixed it for me, however I have seen memory usage spike up aswell sometimes using as much as 20gb of vram.

On my PC the game runs very smooth. also if the game really compiles shaders on the fly then every time you update a driver or there is a patch I would thing the stutters would come back.

whenever I play games before I play them I always do the same tweaking before I launch the game for the 1st time.
1. on game.exe I disable full screen optimizations, and set run as administrator. (i think dx12 doesn't have exclusive Full screen)
2. in nvcp; In game profile I set power options to prefer maximum performance
3. set shader cache to 100GB or unlimited
4. turn on LLM (ultra)
5. force on Vsync
5. set an FPS cap, for 60hz displays cap to 58 fps, for 144hzcap to 140 fps, for 165hz cap to 160 fps. when using vsync, gsync/ freesync or any sync you typically want to cap FPS a few frames below max refresh rate to ensure the smoothest possible frametimes & input lag. and in the case of gsync vsync must be enabled and fps capped below max hz because gsync doesn't work at max hz and switches to regular vsync and introduces input lag.
6. other things to do also include disabling gamebar and any recording software such as shadow play or whatever nvidia uses nowdays, I don't bother with geforce experience anymore it's not good, and I use Inspector to force on sharpening filters if I need to for a blurry game. also make sure you're not using cloud sync such as microsoft cloud that can and does cause stuttering in a few games.

If all else fails you can try disabling control flow guard (CFG) for ff7.exe thru exploit protection settings. maybe even try 1st since it's fast and easy and reversible. I know some people that solved stutter issues they were experiencing in other DX12 games. I do not disable that, and I also have Resizable BAR enabled which some people also say might cause stuttering in some games.

I understand that not many people have GPU's with 24GB or are playing games with overkill hardware. so there is that. I'm also not sure if Harddrive speed can effect the stutter. I do have a m.2 4x4 7000/5300MB/s drive that's as fast or faster than what is in PS5 I believe.

Good luck with the stutter; I'm convinced that gobs of Vram and memory bandwidth is what is required to smooth things out.

maybe If you din't try yet try forcing the game to dx11 and enable exclusive full screen mode since dx12 doesn't allow it.

[L1ONH3ART]

Originally posted by ΜΣ†ΛĿ:

So I played the game quite a bit, and pretty much don't have any stutter, I mean there is a single split second frame skip here and there and I think it has to do with on the fly shader compile. It usually happens when a new effect appears, but I can reload and replay the same parts over and over and it would be completely smooth since the shader is already compiled and cached
I have played the game some with improved graphics thru engine.ini without the HD mod and with r.Streaming.PoolSize=8000 r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=2000 and it was very smooth, vram usage was on average about 12GB with some spikes to as much as 15gb @ 4K. I downloaded and installed the HD mod and noticed some slight stutter here and there so I increased the memory budgets to r.Streaming.PoolSize=10000 r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=3000 and that fixed it for me, however I have seen memory usage spike up aswell sometimes using as much as 20gb of vram.

On my PC the game runs very smooth. also if the game really compiles shaders on the fly then every time you update a driver or there is a patch I would thing the stutters would come back.

whenever I play games before I play them I always do the same tweaking before I launch the game for the 1st time.
1. on game.exe I disable full screen optimizations, and set run as administrator. (i think dx12 doesn't have exclusive Full screen)
2. in nvcp; In game profile I set power options to prefer maximum performance
3. set shader cache to 100GB or unlimited
4. turn on LLM (ultra)
5. force on Vsync
5. set an FPS cap, for 60hz displays cap to 58 fps, for 144hzcap to 140 fps, for 165hz cap to 160 fps. when using vsync, gsync/ freesync or any sync you typically want to cap FPS a few frames below max refresh rate to ensure the smoothest possible frametimes & input lag. and in the case of gsync vsync must be enabled and fps capped below max hz because gsync doesn't work at max hz and switches to regular vsync and introduces input lag.
6. other things to do also include disabling gamebar and any recording software such as shadow play or whatever nvidia uses nowdays, I don't bother with geforce experience anymore it's not good, and I use Inspector to force on sharpening filters if I need to for a blurry game. also make sure you're not using cloud sync such as microsoft cloud that can and does cause stuttering in a few games.

If all else fails you can try disabling control flow guard (CFG) for ff7.exe thru exploit protection settings. maybe even try 1st since it's fast and easy and reversible. I know some people that solved stutter issues they were experiencing in other DX12 games. I do not disable that, and I also have Resizable BAR enabled which some people also say might cause stuttering in some games.

I understand that not many people have GPU's with 24GB or are playing games with overkill hardware. so there is that. I'm also not sure if Harddrive speed can effect the stutter. I do have a m.2 4x4 7000/5300MB/s drive that's as fast or faster than what is in PS5 I believe.

Good luck with the stutter; I'm convinced that gobs of Vram and memory bandwidth is what is required to smooth things out.

maybe If you din't try yet try forcing the game to dx11 and enable exclusive full screen mode since dx12 doesn't allow it.

Awesome info there! I've also disabled CFG just to see, but can't really tell if it's making a difference.

I've been wondering about Ultra LLM - NVCP says it prioritises latency over render throughput - does that mean what you visually see on screen won't be as 'smooth' due to some potential frames being skipped?

Thanks :)

[ΜΣ†ΛĿ]

not sure; it's an nvidia way of rendering frames and somehow hit the perfect timing to hand it over to the display, i think throughput means maximum fps. I have not notice any frame drops/skips at all.

so it doesn't work in dx12... also only really lowers latency in a range from 60-100 fps.
I always enable it and haven't had any problems but did not feel any difference with it on either (I mostly play with controller and only FPS with mouse, but frames there are way above that)

From some article: "Frames are submitted into the render queue just before the GPU needs them. Besides, NVIDIA says that it will further reduce latency by up to 33% over just using the Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames option"
How much vram does your gpu have? are you hitting vram limits when you see the stutters with the HD mod?

here is more info. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/system-latency-optimization-guide/

[L1ONH3ART]

Originally posted by ΜΣ†ΛĿ:

not sure; it's an nvidia way of rendering frames and somehow hit the perfect timing to hand it over to the display, i think throughput means maximum fps. I have not notice any frame drops/skips at all.

so it doesn't work in dx12... also only really lowers latency in a range from 60-100 fps.
I always enable it and haven't had any problems but did not feel any difference with it on either (I mostly play with controller and only FPS with mouse, but frames there are way above that)

From some article: "Frames are submitted into the render queue just before the GPU needs them. Besides, NVIDIA says that it will further reduce latency by up to 33% over just using the Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames option"
How much vram does your gpu have? are you hitting vram limits when you see the stutters with the HD mod?

here is more info. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/system-latency-optimization-guide/

My GPU's only 8gb - 3070. It gets pretty close to maxing out VRAM - 7100-7700 depending on area. But never seen it go past 7800 in all the different settings/values I've tested.

My worst stutters are in Chapter 8 - FPS doesn't drop too much - stays between ~150-90, but stutters mostly in train station around the junction/passing containers gap and the stalls next to it, and throughout the junk yard and Sector 5 slums (using HD Mod). Noticed VRAM going to 7800 at spots in slum.

In Aerith's house, HD Mod tanks my FPS from 150 to like 40 'cause of the 'HD flowers', but it doesn't stutter much.