BEST WAY TO OPTIMISE ARK ASCENDED

[VALLANCE]

Ok, first open Nvidia control panel and set Image scaling to on aka NIS
Put the slider at 20% or 30%.
Uncheck the last box that displays if NIS is enabled.
Set a refresh limit to your native max refresh limit.

Then load up the game and type ` to bring up the console.
In console type the following
r.VolumetricCloud 0 (Press Enter),
r.VolumetricFog 0 (Press Enter),
r.Water.SingleLayer.Reflection 0 (Press Enter)
and lastly type r.DistanceFieldShadowing 1 (Press Enter). <This is a minor fps cost.

The r.DistanceFieldshadows will improve visuals, if you want ugly then don't enter it.

Ok, in the Video menu, change your Resolution to one lower than your native
eg, If you run 2560 X 1440, select 1920 x 1080.

Set window mode to Fullscreen (NOT WINDOWEDFULLSCREEN)
Changing your resolution enables NIS as above and will boost your FPS.

run all options on the left to low aside from View distance and Foliage quality, set these to medium, a low view distance will result in floating trees and a low foliage quality will result in immersion breaking "Pop in".

On the right side set your Max frame rate to your native and check the box.
fixing frame rates will prevent you from jumping from your average fps in game to over 300 in menus, this is not healthy for your GPU and can be louder as your fans work harder.
set all other options to OFF and sliders to lowest aside from "Enable Foliage & Fluid Interaction. Set Foliage interaction Distance Multiplier to 0.03, This will remove the floating rocks that you may have seen.
Set Disable HLOD to ON, this seems to help at times but I am still figuring it out, I basically doubled my fps.

For those of you who have RTX, set DLSS to ON, performance and keep Nvidia low latency On.

In UI Set Melee camera animation to Off, it sucks.

In Camera turn everything Off and keep Field of view no higher than 70, the reason is you will impact your FPS slightly and your right arm will clip when you run with your weapon such as Bow is equipped.

I also turned off Underwater bubble particle multiplier in Advanced for good measure.

So using these settings I went from the Default performance of 15fps to 90 and I run a 2080 Super. Every tutorial vid has a guy running a 4090 which helps almost NOBODY.

The last thing you can do also to smoothen out your fps is to open CMD as administrator and type these;
bcdedit /set useplatformtick yes

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

Do these one at a time pressing enter after each of them then restart your PC.

From what I have learned is the fps which are rendered per second struggle as your computer has a Timer resolution at 0.997, 0.496 etc, you absolutely NEED to have them at 1.0 and 0.5. I tested this in Rocket League and my frames are much more stable so the game looks cleaner and runs buttery smooth.

Hope this helps!!!!

[Jackulwulf]

Thanks so much for this, the game is still not perfect but it's running better then it was and my poor CPU isn't trying to start on fire anymore, and the graphics still look halfway decent.

[cacti46]

yeah the volumetric stuff is incredibly memory intensive. Devs need to either figure out a way to chop the usage by at least half, or remove them all together. some of your adjustments I have tried, but the biggy was most certainly volumetric clouds. killing that nearly tripled my fps

[VALLANCE]

Ok I have an update
I discovered a way to have clouds but at a lesser cost
use this > r.VolumetricCloud.StepSizeOnZeroConservativeDensity 10

You can change the number for better fps, the higher the number the less clouds but it does remove that cool atmospheric immersion, so I set mine at 2

[Jackulwulf]

Okay thanks, I'll give it a try tonight.

[Hohenheim117]

Originally posted by VALLANCE:

Ok I have an update
I discovered a way to have clouds but at a lesser cost
use this > r.VolumetricCloud.StepSizeOnZeroConservativeDensity 10

You can change the number for better fps, the higher the number the less clouds but it does remove that cool atmospheric immersion, so I set mine at 2

This gained me a solid 10 FPS! Ty!

[VALLANCE]

I have some more tricks,
grass.CullDistanceScale 2 Removes pop-in of stones and foliage
r.Shadow.DistanceScale 0 Removes shadows slideshow and overall looks much better
grass.sizeScale 1.5
grass.DensityScale 1

These are to make your game look better than it does on low, gaining fps is good for spending elsewhere too :)

[Steel]

This is not optimization but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that will make the game look like a piece of crap. What's the point of playing a remastered map at settings below the minimum. It's easier to install the original Ark and the same card, and play at higher settings with better graphics and almost no bugs

[Balls]

Originally posted by Deep space:

This is not optimization but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that will make the game look like a piece of crap. What's the point of playing a remastered map at settings below the minimum. It's easier to install the original Ark and the same card, and play at higher settings with better graphics and almost no bugs

With my ♥♥♥♥♥♥ rig ASA actually runs and looks better then ASE. I'll stick with this game.

[Skunks]

Apply for a REFUND IS THE BEST WAY!!!

[Jackulwulf]

Thanks for your continued efforts on adding tips and working through settings to help those with mid range pc's to improve their gameplay. Ignore the haters posting here, spewing their anger and not adding anything helpful to the thread.

I had little hope of being able to enjoy this game at all in the first few days and it seemed no other threads or guides made any difference until I came along yours. Now I can even get 60fps is some places and the majority of the time I get a range of 35 to 50 and that is plenty for me to enjoy the game in it's current state. It looks better then ASE and runs better then ASE on my system as there isn't that stuttering and huge lag spikes that plagued ASE no matter what I did with my settings.

For now I'm satisfied as my gaming laptop is only two years old and I don't really want to go about upgrading at the moment. Perhaps consider posting all this in the guide section where it will be easier for others to find and not get lost in the sea of toxicity and anger that is plaguing the forums here on Steam. I imagine a lot of other people my be just as thankful to find this information as I am.

[VALLANCE]

Originally posted by Jackulwulf:

Thanks for your continued efforts on adding tips and working through settings to help those with mid range pc's to improve their gameplay. Ignore the haters posting here, spewing their anger and not adding anything helpful to the thread.

I had little hope of being able to enjoy this game at all in the first few days and it seemed no other threads or guides made any difference until I came along yours. Now I can even get 60fps is some places and the majority of the time I get a range of 35 to 50 and that is plenty for me to enjoy the game in it's current state. It looks better then ASE and runs better then ASE on my system as there isn't that stuttering and huge lag spikes that plagued ASE no matter what I did with my settings.

For now I'm satisfied as my gaming laptop is only two years old and I don't really want to go about upgrading at the moment. Perhaps consider posting all this in the guide section where it will be easier for others to find and not get lost in the sea of toxicity and anger that is plaguing the forums here on Steam. I imagine a lot of other people my be just as thankful to find this information as I am.

Thank you for your feedback, little do the trolls know is that refunds do get declined so I am stuck with my purchase, I am not that mad about it tho as I know the game will get more optimised and I will enjoy it at its best one day, they are missing the point in that we can still get Ark ascended to look and feel great and better than Ark Evolved even on low rigs like ours. I have a 2080 super so I really need the squeeze to enjoy this game as even those with 40 series cards have to rely on frame gen just to get a playable fps at high settings, so to get the game almost on par with them is not a bad way to contribute.

[snK]

Yeah just turn everything off that you paid for guys, so you can play basically the old game but with the delusional player base that thinks they're playing a new game.
Have fun.

[VALLANCE]

Originally posted by Monkey King:

Yeah just turn everything off that you paid for guys, so you can play basically the old game but with the delusional player base that thinks they're playing a new game.
Have fun.

That is a bit of a lame comment, most people adjust settings in their games regardless of how optimised it is, or in this game.....isn't, so as an EA title it is expected to run into poor performance on GPUs that can and should run this game at higher FPS than 15 etc from the default settings.

We HAVE to remove the Unreal 5 look just to play the game enjoyably, however using command lines we can regain that Unreal 5 look without the massive FPS cost.

The problem you guys don't understand is that Unreal engine 5 is a bloated engine packed with all sorts of features that weigh this game down heavily, so games run slower across all cards hence why 40 Series cards are barely performing without using frame generation. What would help is if UE5 was barebones similar to UE4, than this game can be optimised more accurately and we would not have to muck about.

[Ignazio]

Hm. I really have it strange. On regular Low preset on 1920 x 1080 it runs on like 40-90 FPS for me, and I have the exact same GPU (RTX 2080 Super), with the i9 9900 KF processor. The strange part is all these recommended settings drastically worsened my GFX quality, but haven't really changed much in terms of performance. Strangely enough even on Epic it's quite playable, though I was curious if I can reach 120 on full HD on Low. Still, there is some good advice here for me too, thanks!

[Cryptix]

I swear the clouds are fixed now. Whenever I change them I get maybe 5 extra fps AT BEST and now my average fps when I leave it on is the same as when I would turn it off before.

Maybe it is just systems with less video memory?