BOOST FPS, no joke works, using MOD Shadowboost

[CromX]

Hey guys,

I went ahead and tried out Shadowboost from FO4 mods. I wanted to see if it'd work, and it does. I recommend giving it a try as it is just a drag and drop into the FO4VR data folder of a few files.

In my fallout4vr INI files I have shadow resolution at 2048 and everything at default. I recommend doing that as well and just trying to solve this with Shadow boost. What is does here is it dynamically adjusts the draw range of shadows to match a desired FPS target.

I doesn't do anything but draw distance, but it's seamless and it really smoothed out some areas. I jumped into my Red Rocket base, butter smooth where it had been choppy. I tried Diamond City, still a little choppy but a huge increase. Lexington was smooth, and I tried Cambridge which was very smooth. And it still looks nice.

Its noticeable immediately and makes the game a lot more fun as you are always getting the best quality your rig can give you. I am running a 1080ti and had reprojection like crazy.

Here is the mod link https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1822?tab=description

You'll get these three files in a zip file. All three go in your data folder for F04VR.

ShadowBoost.asi
ShadowBoost.ini
xinput1_3.dll

In particular you'll want to open the ini file and configure it. As it's setup for a regular F04 game. But this is easy, and I'll give you what I used for mine.


[MAIN]
fTargetFramerate=80.0
fDistChangeSpeed=1.0
fShadowDrawDistMin=1000.0
fShadowDrawDistMax=3000.0


Just change the lines to match these. Its fairly easy. I just eyeballed it and dropped in 80 fps as the target FPS and it seems to do alright.

Min and Max distance I put at 1000 and 3000. 3000 is the default draw distance anyways. So when things are all going fine you will get default quality. And when it gets krappy it will draw down to 1000.

1000 is what a lot of people suggest using to fix performance. But you can go lower, it's just you will see less shadows in intense areas. But with the settings I have its perfectly fine for me.

Its a huge difference, I recommending giving it a try. It takes a matter of minutes to setup.

My Rig is a 1080ti

TAA on
SS 1.0
All other settings default


Let me know if it helps you too.

/peaceout

[Blunsky]

I have allready found the best settings for 1080ti / 8700k
TAA OFF
SS Ingame 0.85
Steam VR SS 1.5
all 4 ingame graphic settings on max
It is a huge Difference, i play nearly 60 Hours with this Settings and its perfect

[CromX]

Wasnt my experience that it was smooth at all with any of those settings you have there. As before this mod, I have messed with SS settings backwards and forwards. And toggled TAA on and off. And its now smoother with this MOD, to a very nice degree but even still in some of the worst offender areas there can be some reprojection.

I think it comes down to what you can tolerate in regards to reprojection. But good luck with the "best" settings. I know I have been there. But it's always the shadows that are the real FPS killer.

[Buatha]

Thanks, CromX. I will test this out and throw it into my growing mega-guide if it works out!

[KamikaziFly]

What does reprojection mean?
We are getting a choppyness to the HTC Vive view screen in game, that we can recreate pretty easily on the launch screen. The wands are not choppy. Just the view when we turn our heads.

[femma]

Some have reported that this does not work, but if it does still, great.

[CromX]

Originally posted by Japa:

Some have reported that this does not work, but if it does still, great.

Yeah it did work for me, but I am still evaluating. Its not the a silver bullet but it did noticeably help

[Spider]

Originally posted by Jan85:

I have allready found the best settings for 1080ti / 8700k
TAA OFF
SS Ingame 0.85
Steam VR SS 1.5
all 4 ingame graphic settings on max
It is a huge Difference, i play nearly 60 Hours with this Settings and its perfect

I have kind of a dumb question:
what's the difference between using these settings and just setting in-game SS to 1.0 and SteamVR SS to 1.2 (or 1.3, since the product of the first two is 1.275)?

[KamikaziFly]

Originally posted by Jan85:

I have allready found the best settings for 1080ti / 8700k
TAA OFF
SS Ingame 0.85
Steam VR SS 1.5
all 4 ingame graphic settings on max
It is a huge Difference, i play nearly 60 Hours with this Settings and its perfect

I can't find these settings in FO4vr... where are they?

[Blunsky]

I dont know but with ingame SS 1.0 and Steam VR at 1.2 its stuttering hard
But with this Settings it runs smooth with the same Quality

[Spider]

Originally posted by Jan85:

I dont know but with ingame SS 1.0 and Steam VR at 1.2 its stuttering hard
But with this Settings it runs smooth with the same Quality

Interesting.... I'll give it a try this weekend and see if it makes a difference for me. I'm running at 4.0 SS in SteamVR (it's mostly reprojection) and it's a heck of a lot crisper than when I tried running it at 1.3 SS or even 2.0 SS in SteamVR, but I have 1.0 for in-game, so maybe there's a difference. Anyway, I'll try it.

[RED-FROG]

The game runs great on a 1080ti 1.5x SS. imo this is not for 1080ti owners.

I'll skip shadow boost as it will only dumb down graphics fidelity. You cannot sell shadow boost like it doesn't hurt the graphics/atmosphere.

Vanilla
https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/1822-2-1448086391.jpg

With boost:
https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/1822-1-1448086392.jpg

Notice how the plants on the house no longer drop shadows and how structures in the distance look too bright. This does look even worse in VR.

"I doesn't do anything but draw distance"
Yes...and dumbed down draw distance usually always looks worse in every game.

Every little change you do, will reduce the immersion and fidelity step by step. Remove rocks here, remove shadows and light sources there... suddenly the game looks crap.


---
On Win10 Fall Creators update just make sure you check "disable fullscreen optimizations" in the compatibility tab of the game exe. Don't go higher than 1.4x-1.5x on a 1080ti. Don't use interleaved reprojection. Use Always Reprojection.

[CromX]

Originally posted by RED-FROG:

The game runs great on a 1080ti 1.5x SS. imo this is not for 1080ti owners.

I'll skip shadow boost as it will only dumb down graphics fidelity. You cannot sell shadow boost like it doesn't hurt the graphics/atmosphere.

Vanilla
https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/1822-2-1448086391.jpg

With boost:
https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/1822-1-1448086392.jpg

Notice how the plants on the house no longer drop shadows and how structures in the distance look too bright. This does look even worse in VR.

"I doesn't do anything but draw distance"
Yes...and dumbed down draw distance usually always looks worse in every game.

Every little change you do, will reduce the immersion and fidelity step by step. Remove rocks here, remove shadows and light sources there... suddenly the game looks crap.


---
On Win10 Fall Creators update just make sure you check "disable fullscreen optimizations" in the compatibility tab of the game exe. Don't go higher than 1.4x-1.5x on a 1080ti. Don't use interleaved reprojection. Use Always Reprojection.

But it does not run smooth on a 1080ti with those settings. Certainly not at 90 fps which is where it needs to be for proper VR.

I'd recommend trying shadowboost before knocking it. The shadows only adjust when the game fails to maintain the FPS threshold. In that case you'd be better off with no re-projection and a shorter draw distance.

By the way did you even check before posting those pics, default shadow distance for FO4VR is 3000, the pics you are showing there far exceed that. The pictures you posted are of shadow draw distance at 15000.

So that is 12000 more than you are seeing now. It's likely shadow boost dropped the draw distance to around 8000 or so in the shadow boosted picture still some 5000 more than FO4VR max settings.

In other words both those pictures are better quality than you are getting in game right now.

This mod does work, and is configurable. My shadow draw distance goes from MAX 3000 (default) to a MIN of 1000. And its smoothed things out tremendously. If you were more aggressive with it say 500 or so it'd run even better.

And it seems that FO4VR renders shadows it can't even see half the time. In some of the interiors like the Corvega Factory you'd never even miss the shadow distance.

[RED-FROG]

Ok that sounds better now.
I'll give it a try and do comparison screenshots myself. And Ill run the game on like 2.0xss to see the fps difference.

Most of the shadow tweaks have been annoying in the past. Imo it simply looks dumb when shadows build up just under the feet. But this mod sounds to be a different approach.

[Brother Acerbitas]

any idear how to fix the controller? cant spend any points its so annoyng

[RED-FROG]

Oculus Rift?