Any good tweaks?

[RandalMcdaniel]

I have the uplay version so i am not sure if the directory is the same but i found in My Documents - Assassins creed syndicate i found a config file called AC

The game runs good at 50-60fps but its not exactly smooth. Im just trying to find any big tweaks that might give me a more consistent experience. I have i7 3770k, r9 290x, 16gb ram, 500gb ssd

I should start by saying i kind of dislike the fog, its just way too strong and feels like a slap across the face to the artists who spent so much time making the buildings/cities look authentic because it makes the draw distance seem like just a mere few meters.

So i changed Fog=1 to Fog=0 And the game looks absolutely stunning, It's unbelievable how much the fog covers. The only con is that it becomes TOO clear and if you view the city from a high point some of the background things (things that are supposed to be hidden by fog) look a bit stupid. If anyone knows how to reduce the fog that would be cooler. Than i could tone it down just a bit

Next i changed bloom=1 to bloom=0 and i noticed no difference whatsoever so i am just going to leave that one off.

Then i changed POSTFX=1 to PostFX=0 (post processing effects) and again i noticed no difference when comparing screenshots. Unless someone can point out to me what exactly this removes then i see no reason to keep it enabled as it gave me quite a few more frames per second.

And i am kind of stupid so i like to change things i know nothing about as well, i changed
MinSkipMipTextureSize=512 to MinSkipMipTextureSize=256 thinking that it would skip more unnecessary textures?? But it didnt seem to change anything so i guess ill just leave it at 256 lol.

Then globalillumination=1 i havent touched because this game has some of the purest-white lighting i have ever seen.

But uhh, does anyone know any other tweaks i can use?

[Shouvanik]

I left the fog on. You are changing the vibe of the city which had lots of smoke going in the air from the chimneys everywhere. Thus lots of fog was always there. It was industrial revolution, dude.

[RandalMcdaniel]

Originally posted by Shouvanik:

I left the fog on. You are changing the vibe of the city which had lots of smoke going in the air from the chimneys everywhere. Thus lots of fog was always there. It was industrial revolution, dude.

I know where you are coming from but there is no way there would be THAT much fog everywhere.. If there was really that much smoke in real life people would drop dead after walking like 15ft.

My first wish would be able to turn down the fog or slightly push it back. But if i have to choose between not being able to see anything and being able to see everything.. ill stick with the latter

i just dont want anything getting in the way of seeing the gorgeous graphics

[Frag Maniac]

I turned off global lighting, which I'm pretty sure is dynamic lighting, but it makes the game look worse. I also agree on the fog, a bit overdone, but a bit too clear and bland without it. They don't even give us a brightness slider, just a bar with a few clicks, some too bright, some too dark.

I read the GeForce graphics guide and decided to turn off volumetric clouds. It's one setting that's not very noticeable (esp with fog on), and makes a fair amount of difference in performance. The clouds will still move, they just don't look quite as 3 dimensional.

I have literally set everything at Med, vs the High it detects my rig at on 1080p, and dropped the res to 900p. This way I get mostly a steady 40 FPS, which I cap with RTSS. There is still hitching and freeze pauses here and there, but mostly in the London borough.

I've read on the Ubi AC forum they are going to come out with yet another patch, but I can't say I'm very optimistic, since the last one was supposed to have performance and stability fixes, yet did little if anything in that regard. I actually got better performance on 1.12.

[RandalMcdaniel]

Thx for the input, i tried disabling globalillumination in the AC file but all my buildings became black as well as my character models. But that volumetric cloud thing looks like something worth investigating.

I just dropped character quality and reflection quality from 2 down to 1 in the config file and i noticed a pretty decent fps boost without any noticable reduction in quality. I seriously cant tell any difference in the character quality at all

Im also using reshade (its a program u drag/drop into the .exe folder of any game and it allows you to force-enable tons of additional graphical features) and im just using that to enable sharpening and HDR which makes the colors pop a bit more and makes the textures look so much better. Its not real HDR tho it just intelligently reads pre-existing colors and makes them a bit deeper. It also makes wet surfaces look a lot better and de-washes out the image a bit.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally posted by RandalMcdaniel:

Im also using reshade (its a program u drag/drop into the .exe folder of any game and it allows you to force-enable tons of additional graphical features) and im just using that to enable sharpening and HDR which makes the colors pop a bit more and makes the textures look so much better. Its not real HDR tho it just intelligently reads pre-existing colors and makes them a bit deeper. It also makes wet surfaces look a lot better and de-washes out the image a bit.

My main problem with Reshade is it's just an injector that uses SweetFX. Most things SweetFX does very well, but the one thing it always messes up is something I struggle with in both Unity and Syndicate, gamma imbalance. SweetFX ALWAYS makes dark areas look too dark, and bright areas look too bright, which only exacerbates the fact that both Unity and Syndicate do not even have Brightness sliders. There's just a bar with a few clicks on it. It's even worse if you have a CCFT lit IPS panel that has any black crush at all.

[RandalMcdaniel]

SweetFX's HDR setting is most likely what you are referring to, instead of the default values of 0.87 and 1.3 i changed it to 0.83 and 1.2 and its not so dark. However it was a tad darker than i liked so i just pressed ctrl+up arrow on my keyboard and turned up the gamma using desktopnerds gamma control (only works if games are set to windowed mode or borderless windowed mode)

[Jamison]

is there a subtitles script you can put into the ini file? I'd rather start the game with subtitles off.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally posted by RandalMcdaniel:

However it was a tad darker than i liked so i just pressed ctrl+up arrow on my keyboard and turned up the gamma using desktopnerds gamma control (only works if games are set to windowed mode or borderless windowed mode)

And that's exactly what I'm talking about. It IS a problem, esp on the type of display I have, and a tool as lauded as SweetFX is ought to have a way to tune it out on it's own. Having to use a 3rd party tool plus be forced to use windowed mode, whether borderless or not, is just ridiculous.

[RandalMcdaniel]

Originally posted by Frag Maniac:

Originally posted by RandalMcdaniel:

However it was a tad darker than i liked so i just pressed ctrl+up arrow on my keyboard and turned up the gamma using desktopnerds gamma control (only works if games are set to windowed mode or borderless windowed mode)

And that's exactly what I'm talking about. It IS a problem, esp on the type of display I have, and a tool as lauded as SweetFX is ought to have a way to tune it out on it's own. Having to use a 3rd party tool plus be forced to use windowed mode, whether borderless or not, is just ridiculous.

I agree the game should have a gamma slider in the options menu

But i think every gamer should have some sort of gamma program running in the background that can control gamma with the press of a button. Literally zero games have the correct gamma setting by default and you have no idea how many times i adjust the gamma in each game every single day. Adjusting the gamma changes a certain kind of lighting that most games brightness slider does not effect. Idk what i would do without gammacontrol (tear streams down face)

When i launch a game i can tell instantly if its too dark or too bright and i just press ctrl+up or ctrl+down until i find the correct gamma spot which you will master quickly. Once you start using a gamma program you will never be able to go without it.

And i totally worded that wrong, i should have said "Some games require windowed mode for gammacontrol to work" but most work just fine in fullscreen mode with the gammacontrol program i use. Some dont and thats when i throw them into borderless windowed mode

[Grouwdi]

Originally posted by RandalMcdaniel:

Originally posted by Shouvanik:

I left the fog on. You are changing the vibe of the city which had lots of smoke going in the air from the chimneys everywhere. Thus lots of fog was always there. It was industrial revolution, dude.

I know where you are coming from but there is no way there would be THAT much fog everywhere.. If there was really that much smoke in real life people would drop dead after walking like 15ft.

My first wish would be able to turn down the fog or slightly push it back. But if i have to choose between not being able to see anything and being able to see everything.. ill stick with the latter

i just dont want anything getting in the way of seeing the gorgeous graphics

Dude. This game was set in the 1860s which was the Industrial revolution. Trust me: THERE WAS FOG AND SMOG. It fits the game era greatly.

[RandalMcdaniel]

I just got back from micro center i bought an i5 6600k, 16gb DDR4-2800, and Z170 motherboard. Using it right now and it seems ridiculously fast. Need to try a game tho.

So technically i just upgraded from an i7 to an i5 lol

[DoomnightK]

How can I disable volumetric clouds? I can't see an option for it in the AC.ini file or in the Nvidia Control Panel.

[CardSharp]

Originally posted by RandalMcdaniel:

I know where you are coming from but there is no way there would be THAT much fog everywhere.. If there was really that much smoke in real life people would drop dead after walking like 15ft.

You obviously don't know how many serious health issues there were back in this era... Of course the fog is historically accurate, and subsequently, turning the fog off wholly detracts from the experience.

Also, this was made in 2015. Devs haven't needed to put fog in games to improve framerates or mask low quality textures for over a decade. Assassin's Creed Syndicate isn't called 'Assassin's Creed Syndicate 64'... The fog is so heavy purely because the representation of Victorian London would look completely false without it.

[Nathan The X-Man]

Originally posted by FIGHTING-VIPER:

Originally posted by RandalMcdaniel:

I know where you are coming from but there is no way there would be THAT much fog everywhere.. If there was really that much smoke in real life people would drop dead after walking like 15ft.

You obviously don't know how many serious health issues there were back in this era... Of course the fog is historically accurate, and subsequently, turning the fog off wholly detracts from the experience.

Also, this was made in 2015. Devs haven't needed to put fog in games to improve framerates or mask low quality textures for over a decade. Assassin's Creed Syndicate isn't called 'Assassin's Creed Syndicate 64'... The fog is so heavy purely because the representation of Victorian London would look completely false without it.

You also replied to a comment from 2015

[RandalMcdaniel]

i dont mind necro's if one single person is viewing it 20 years later then its still an actively relevant topic