My fix for framerate drops \ low fps

[TonaZ]

So, this game is extremely demanding regarding shadows and foliage.
I modified some of the settings in order to have better FPS, less drops, while keeping a good looking visuals.
I reduced a bit the shadow map size, the shadow draw distance, and the most demanding the foliage LOD. This means that trees and bushes in distance are low-mid poly generated, when you get closer the geometry gets better.
When you are driving fast, you will not notice a big difference in visuals.

Open "Engine.ini" with notepad, located in C:\Users\*YOUR USER NAME*\AppData\Local\Dakar18Game\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor
after the paths list add the following:

[SystemSettings]
r.LightFunctionQuality=1
r.ShadowQuality=2
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=2
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=512
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.06
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=0.7
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=0.3
r.TranslucencyLightingVolumeDim=32
r.RefractionQuality=2
r.SSR.Quality=1
r.SceneColorFormat=3
r.DetailMode=1
r.TranslucencyVolumeBlur=1
r.MaterialQualityLevel=1
r.Streaming.MipBias=0
r.MaxAnisotropy=16
r.Streaming.PoolSize=-1
foliage.LODDistanceScale=0.4
foliage.MinLOD=0

Ingame setting:
Epic for distance view (Cinema seems to be almost the same but causes drops)
High for Antialiasing, higher setting doesn't seems to change that much

If you are not happy with that, just remove all the lines from [SystemSettings] to the end.

I hope this helps. Have a wild raid!

[V.I.C.]

Just tested it at the rain-heavy Stage 6......IT WORKS! The framerate always stays above 60 FPS when in the past it was crawling at 45 or even lower.

Thank you so much. This needs to be pinned

[TonaZ]

Glad to help

[RippieFlippie]

Most of those things can be changed at runtime in Unreal Engine. They should just expose them in the options menu. For example LOD transtions with foliage.LODDistanceScale=0.4. This is a heavy hitter and can be changed while the game is running.

[TonaZ]

That's true that you can change every single very specific setting, but in UE4 there are the so called scalability groups, and developers relies on those (laziness?). I think that too much settings for the user to choose from would make nonsense. The thing missing here (and many, many games) is TESTING from devs... Because those scalability groups can be set for optimal performance, if they are well set the user do not have to go crazy with hundreds of graphic options...

[KG_03]

Laziness? 100% no... Lack of testing from devs? 100% no... Those guys work like ants... Did you see a dev team that work on official game and release updates so often? That reply to suggestions and issues so fast? Those guys are amazing, you can even meet developers playing online with us what is big fun as they know the tracks so good we don't need to navigate lol 😁

[TonaZ]

Points of view.
In the meantime it was ME that i worked hard on this fix testing and testing and testing.

[KG_03]

Imagine that you have only one problem and they have many to solve, meet people expectations, develop new things and so on...

You cant just say someone is lazy just because there are things you dont like. I just told you how amazing their team is. For me its prescious that people developing an official licenced game work actively with gamers to meet their expectations. Please lets not destroy it...

Please feel that community is greatful for your help, no doubt some people used this tip (I didnt honesly).

[TonaZ]

Again, that's your point of view, that i respect.
No dubts Bigmoon they are a very good developers team.
The point is that i know how UE4 works, and IN MY OWN OPINION they just didn't put enough effort to graphic optimization (otherwise there would be no framerate drops, don't you think?).
About all the rest, they are amazing.
No one wants to destroy nothing.

[KG_03]

Thank you for understanding 😊
As for programming I just cant say anything...im just a consumer. I press power button on PC and play 😊

[Jez Hammond]

Thanks for these settings. Reading through them I assumed even my old i5/R9 would handle higher values; but I just thoroughly enjoyed a previously demanding stage 5 and it looked great! No popups. Even the shadows were good enough with just the two cascades.

[TonaZ]

Glad to help. indeed 2 cascades are fair enough. not much visual difference with 3 or 4, but high fps impact.

[Jez Hammond]

It's great this thread is pinned, I remember one or two stages later being much more demanding.
I would always assume 3 cascades is the way to go, but that would be walking around or standing still. It doesn't even feel as low as 2 with a low-res texture, it's an impressive graphics engine much more than I thought.

edit: actually I'm thinking of returning to 3 cascades and a larger shadow texture...sunset was a little too chessboard, and I'm sure that Unreal engine is fine with this on my older hardware. I'm sure the other settings will keep things running at 60fps :)

edit 2: The last two stages were a little tough for my older PC, I managed to unlock Legend at last but for the last stage I did go back again to just 2 shadow cascades. Though I did increase their resolution to 1024. This resolved the framerate back to a locked 60 on an old i5/R9.

One thing I didn't like much a few stages back; was rocks in a rio which would pop-in only around 250m away. Any suggestions to improve that by double would be useful.

[TNG-Tmabb7]

Can we see this fix in game as part of an update ?

[Daishuku]

Just tried these setting.

These command would override any option in Option Menu.
Yes, they are advanced tweak options.

To looking command difference, we could read these :
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Performance/Scalability/ScalabilityReference

Reference to Document about Scalability

in-game option are :

View Distance = r.ViewDistanceScale
Effect = sg.EffectsQuality
Anti-Aliasing = r.PostProcessAAQuality
Post Processing= sg.PostProcessQuality
Shadows = sg.ShadowQuality
Textures = sg.TextureQuality 0
Foliage = FoliageQuality

Also, sg.XXXX is group up serveal r.XXXX command. if you need tweak something, don't use sg.XXXX command.

[TonaZ]

with update 10 looks like stutters comes back again. so my fix is useless.