current version manual .ini graphic settings recommendations?

[Avarus_Lux]

https://www.reddit.com/r/mechwarrior/comments/ex2wz4/mechwarrior_5_improved_graphical_settings_v2/

after reading this reddit post on the game it's graphics settings and the previous post linked in that i tried those (V2) out and it looked great, was running 80FPS average on maps though in the ship (especially with the "better lighting" mod) my FPS tanks hard. i know the ship is more intensive but damn, the ship interior basically cuts your FPS in half if not more (especially with the better lighting mod).

these optimized settings however are old and i suppose fairly outdated seeing they're a year old and made long before many updates, the big patch and DLC.

is there anyone running an updated version or knows a link where to find these instead?

[Canniballistic]

The effects setting is what tanks the hanger IIRC.

I dont believe MW5 can be made to run reasonably compared to how bad it looks but hey, if you work out how to make it not look a decade old and/or run consistently no matter the ugly weather effect going on, do let me know.

[Avarus_Lux]

Originally posted by Canniballistic:

The effects setting is what tanks the hanger IIRC.

I dont believe MW5 can be made to run reasonably compared to how bad it looks but hey, if you work out how to make it not look a decade old and/or run consistently no matter the ugly weather effect going on, do let me know.

The effects settings? Not the shadows, postprocessing and lighting settings combined? (seeing light and other reflections in glass look terribly dithered like a dot matrix instead of smooth even on max settings...)

Hmmm... Well even knowing that i still don't know if the manual .ini settings from that reddit post still work as intended if at all deu to updates and changes to values or if one needs remove and or add new entries altogether in that options list...

[Canniballistic]

Originally posted by Avarus_Lux:

The effects settings? Not the shadows, postprocessing and lighting settings combined? (seeing light and other reflections in glass look terribly dithered like a dot matrix instead of smooth even on max settings...)

Hmmm... Well even knowing that i still don't know if the manual .ini settings from that reddit post still work as intended if at all deu to updates and changes to values or if one needs remove and or add new entries altogether in that options list...

Ill address each setting in game with what I understand and you can feel free to take w/e value you find from that, and if you find anything better, great, post it.

Effects setting is a massive draw and afaik doesnt really do much, its probably a bug considering how crap the developers are.

If youre seeing dotty textures its one of two things and one is your shadow setting, on max you will see dots in shadows, just drop it down to high.

Textures set to max as long as you have a modern gfx card as it will just use your gfx cards ram, no biggie.

Foliage seems to do well at medium for me, setting it to low removes grass without much improvement and setting it higher than medium increase the density of grass and increases the LOD for trees which can be nice but it seems to be a big hit for god knows what reason. *le sigh*

Post processing seems to do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, so I leave it on low.

TAA is always nice but its a mean hog in MW5 because ofc it is, but using FXAA on max quality will cover thin lines breaking when moving the camera and other blemishes in this ugly game, without much of a performance hit.

Aniso is so subtle at best, the only noticeable (could be placebo) difference I found was between 0 and 2, so I left it at 2 to not risk a performance hit.

FidelityFX is ♥♥♥♥, as ♥♥♥♥ as PGI, Russ Bullock and the MW5 team, and its another setting that can give you dots on your textures, so "off".

There are no lighting settings in game so if they are in the .ini GL IDK I wouldnt bother touching them.


Those are the settings I use atm on my 1070 and i5-9600 and I get a smooth 60@4k, smooth enough of the time to generally not rage at this crap game, but some weather effects run it into the ground.

The only vanilla settings I wish I could use would be to turn up the foliage so they dont look like clay and pop in and out constantly, and use TXAA which covers up how ugly a lot of this game is without being as blurry as FXAA, other than that nothing strikes me as limited by the settings so far.

So again, take what you can from that, if you work out anything post it.

GL.

[Avarus_Lux]

Good info, though i'm more interested in the ini commands themselves that are listed in that reddit post, especially seeing in the first reddit post, aka V1, the commands differ quite a bit from V2 (which i posted a link of here) and my guess is some of those commands got altered, removed or changed again in the current game iteration.

I'll test and try.

I just got my hands on a RTX 3060 and am running a i5-9600K and 32GB of ram... yet this game can bring the whole thing down on a whim it seems and i have that isseu much less in say star citizen.

With your info here i'll see if i can resolve the dot shi* without losing details...

It'll be a while before i have something workable though and i'm not sure if my settings then scale back to say a GTX 1070...

[QbeX]

I've tweaked that scalability.ini file quite a bit. Added cinematic effects like tonemap, lens flares, light shafts, ssr shadows, multiple light sources and higher shadow and foliage draw distances. Game looks vastly better imho, whole world takes colour from the star etc etc. Its more performance taxing than the one you listed. I'm getting 80-120 fps on rtx3080 and 3840x1600p with DLSS on quality and rtx off. Content of my tweaked file :

[AntiAliasingQuality@0]
r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=0

[AntiAliasingQuality@4]
r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=2
r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight=0.8
r.TemporalAASamples=2
r.TemporalAA.AllowDownsampling=0
r.TemporalAA.Upsampling=0
r.TemporalAAUpsampleFiltered=0
r.ScreenPercentage=100
FrameRateLimit=0.000000

[PostProcessQuality@4]
r.DefaultFeature.MotionBlur=0
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=2
r.LensFlareQuality=2
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringe.Max=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=2
r.FastBlurThreshold=0
r.EyeAdaptionQuality=2
r.DefaultFeature.Bloom=1
r.VolumetricFog.Jitter=0
r.BloomQuality=5
r.UseShaderCaching=1
r.UseShaderPredraw=1
r.MaxQualityMode=1
r.BlurGBuffer=-1
r.Tonemapper.Quality=1
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0
r.AmbientOcclusionLevels=3
r.AmbientOcclusionRadiusScale=1.0

[EffectsQuality@4]
r.SSR.Quality=2
r.SSR.MaxRoughness=0.1
r.SceneColorFormat=4
r.DetailMode=2
r.TranslucencyVolumeBlur=1
r.MaterialQualityLevel=1
r.TranslucencyLightingVolumeDim=64
r.SSGI.Quality=1
r.LightShafts=1
r.LightShaftQuality=1
r.IndirectLightingCache=1

[TextureQuality@4]
r.MaxAnisotropy=0
r.Streaming.FramesForFullUpdate=1
r.Streaming.MipBias=0
r.Streaming.PoolSize=6144
r.Streaming.HLODStrategy=2
r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=256
r.SeparateTranslucency=0
r.VirtualTexture=1
r.VirtualTextureReducedMemory=1

[ShadowQuality@4]
r.ShadowQuality=4
r.LightFunctionQuality=1
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=2
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=2048
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.04
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=1.5
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=1
r.DistanceFieldAO=1

[FoliageQuality@4]
foliage.MinInstancesPerOcclusionQuery=1024

[ViewDistanceQuality@4]
foliage.LODDistanceScale=5
r.ViewDistanceScale=10
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.1
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
r.MipMapLODBias=-10

[Avarus_Lux]

Originally posted by QbeX:

I've tweaked that scalability.ini file quite a bit. Added cinematic effects like tonemap, lens flares, light shafts, ssr shadows, multiple light sources and higher shadow and foliage draw distances. Game looks vastly better imho, whole world takes colour from the star etc etc. Its more performance taxing than the one you listed. I'm getting 80-120 fps on rtx3080 and 3840x1600p with DLSS on quality and rtx off. Content of my tweaked file :

...
[PostProcessQuality@4]
r.LensFlareQuality=2
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=2
r.EyeAdaptionQuality=2
r.DefaultFeature.Bloom=1
r.BloomQuality=5
r.BlurGBuffer=-1
r.Tonemapper.Quality=1

[EffectsQuality@4]
r.SSR.Quality=2
r.SSGI.Quality=1
r.LightShafts=1
r.LightShaftQuality=1
r.IndirectLightingCache=1

[TextureQuality@4]
r.MaxAnisotropy=0
r.Streaming.PoolSize=6144
r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=256

[ShadowQuality@4]
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=2048
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=1.5
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=1

[ViewDistanceQuality@4]
foliage.LODDistanceScale=5
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.1

these are the changes you added or changed compared to the reddit post, now i don't agree with a few of these such as stuff under the postprocessing (nothing personal, who the heck in their right mind likes (bad) bloom, lens flares and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ DoF effects) and shadow header (eats resources, why increase the values so much?) though i would like to know your reasoning behind these changes.
like, anisotrophy to 0, i agree 16 is too much and 2 or 4 seems best, 0 makes for some jarring side-effect though, r.BlurGBuffer=-1 does that turn off the blur entirely, buffer or try to counter it? i thought 0 was off here... same for the two Viewdistancequality entries, going from 10 to 5, 0.05 to 0.1 isn't that adding more popping at shorter ranges or am i missing something?

did adding the following entries:

r.SSGI.Quality=1
r.LightShafts=1
r.LightShaftQuality=1
r.IndirectLightingCache=1

do all that much as effects overall seem quite taxing with little return for the investment for performance

EDIT:
damnit, had something going and now the latest update introduced:
sg.ShadingQuality=3

into the GameUserSettings.ini file and now i have to figure out what the heck goes under that header...

[QbeX]

as you said , vfx are a matter of preferences, in some games I never enable things like dof, bloom , flares but since vanilla mw5 looks is very clinical adding those effects makes it look better imo.
Have a look at adding just r.Tonemapper.Quality=1 it changes global lighting quite dramatically (try red rust planet evening, it relay on time of day and amount of light outside) add mod that gets cockpit dynamic light and it looks awesome.

[Avarus_Lux]

Originally posted by QbeX:

as you said , vfx are a matter of preferences, in some games I never enable things like dof, bloom , flares but since vanilla mw5 looks is very clinical adding those effects makes it look better imo.
Have a look at adding just r.Tonemapper.Quality=1 it changes global lighting quite dramatically (try red rust planet evening, it relay on time of day and amount of light outside) add mod that gets cockpit dynamic light and it looks awesome.

while personal opinion, Flares are just a hard no from me since our eyes aren't cameras etc... i'll try adding a little bloom again to see if that adds something with the other settings though i've always hated it...

I can definitely agree on the tonemapper, and a couple others as well, i have my own version of this list as well but am still trying to find the biggest resource hogs and adjusting settings to keep performance up. Currently getting 60-80fps on maps and 40 in the hangar, 20 in the hangar with the better lighting mod on a i5-9600K and a RTX 3060 so performance imho should be better.

I am using the cockpit glass mod and the cockpit light mod as those don't conflict and indeed it makes things look a lot better at a small price haha.

[Avarus_Lux]

update, using a i5-9600K, 32GR RAM and a RTX 3060 12GB at resolution 3440x1440 my FPS is between 50-90 depending on ingame shenanigans that will vary wildly, in ship hangar without mod its about 30-50, with better lighting mod its anywhere between 20-40FPS:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2512761480
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2512761617
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2512724961
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2512731282
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2512742873
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2512743361
is how my game looks as is.


to apply/install these new settings:

Step 1: Open this folder:
%localappdata%\MW5Mercs\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor

Step 2: open the following file:
GameUserSettings.ini

Step 3: Add/Replace the following text at the beginning of the file and save changes:

[ScalabilityGroups]
sg.ResolutionQuality=100.000000
sg.ViewDistanceQuality=4
sg.AntiAliasingQuality=4
sg.ShadowQuality=4
sg.PostProcessQuality=4
sg.TextureQuality=4
sg.EffectsQuality=4
sg.FoliageQuality=4
sg.ShadingQuality=4

Step 4: open the following file:
Scalability.ini

Step 5: Add/Replace the following text to the empty file, or fully replace any existing content and save changes:

[AntiAliasingQuality@0]
r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=0

[AntiAliasingQuality@4]
r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=2
r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight=0.35
r.TemporalAASamples=16
r.TemporalAASharpness=0.75
r.TemporalAA.AllowDownsampling=0
r.TemporalAA.Upsampling=1
r.TemporalAAUpsampleFiltered=0
r.ScreenPercentage=100
FrameRateLimit=0.000000

[PostProcessQuality@4]
r.DefaultFeature.MotionBlur=0
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=2
r.LensFlareQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringe.Max=0
r.Color.Max=1.05
r.Color.Mid=0.45
r.Color.Min=-0.05
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=1
r.FastBlurThreshold=0
r.EyeAdaptionQuality=2
r.ExtendDefaultLuminanceRange=1
r.DefaultFeature.Bloom=1
r.VolumetricFog.Jitter=0
r.BloomQuality=1
r.Bloom.Cross=0.4
r.UseShaderCaching=1
r.UseShaderPredraw=1
r.MaxQualityMode=1
r.BlurGBuffer=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=1
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0.65
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0
r.AmbientOcclusionLevels=1
r.AmbientOcclusionRadiusScale=1.0

[EffectsQuality@4]
r.SSR.Quality=1
r.SSR.MaxRoughness=0.1
r.SceneColorFormat=4
r.DetailMode=2
r.TranslucencyVolumeBlur=1
r.MaterialQualityLevel=1
r.TranslucencyLightingVolumeDim=32
r.SSGI.Quality=1
r.LightShafts=1
r.LightShaftQuality=1
r.IndirectLightingCache=1

[TextureQuality@4]
r.MaxAnisotropy=4
r.Streaming.FramesForFullUpdate=1
r.Streaming.MipBias=0
r.Streaming.PoolSize=1000
r.Streaming.HLODStrategy=2
r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=1024
r.SeparateTranslucency=0
r.VirtualTexture=1
r.VirtualTextureReducedMemory=1

[ShadowQuality@4]
r.ShadowQuality=3
r.LightFunctionQuality=1
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=3
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=2048
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.03
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=1.4
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=1
r.DistanceFieldAO=1
r.DistanceFieldShadowing=1

[FoliageQuality@4]
foliage.MinInstancesPerOcclusionQuery=1024
foliage.DensityScale=1.0
grass.DensityScale=0.5

[ViewDistanceQuality@4]
foliage.LODDistanceScale=10
foliage.DitheredLOD=5
r.ViewDistanceScale=10
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.05
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
r.MipMapLODBias=-10
r.landscapelodbias=-3

Step 6: this is an optional FoV fix for Ultrawide monitor gameplay, the inserted command line will force the FoV for all cameras to the +Hoz and not the default -vert.

open the following file:
engine.ini

Step 7: Add the following text to the bottom of the file:

[/script/engine.localplayer]
AspectRatioAxisConstraint=AspectRatio_MaintainYFOV

i used various resources for values, with these providing the most info, though not all of it usefull or applicable to this game:
http://www.kosmokleaner.de/ownsoft/UE4CVarBrowser.html
https://www.ultrabend.org/blog/en/r-console-commands/
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/TestingAndOptimization/PerformanceAndProfiling/Scalability/ScalabilityReference/

i'm not a 100% happy with this, but it's a start.... let me know how things turn out and if there are any issues/recommendations for settings or commands as i am not sure if all things in there are 100% correct.

[Canniballistic]

Where can you find that cockpit light mod?

EDIT: nvm found it, Ultra Visual & Weather mod.

[Avarus_Lux]

Originally posted by Canniballistic:

Where can you find that cockpit light mod?

EDIT: nvm found it, Ultra Visual & Weather mod.

yep, it's on nexus, for those wondering still, here's a link:
https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/178?tab=files

same for the cockpit glass mod:
https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/256

i have to say though, i haven't gotten the same shadows from switches and such as the mod its screenshots show, probably because of the altered shadow settings here or something else, still testing that.

[QbeX]

good find for ultrawide fov fix

[Avarus_Lux]

Originally posted by QbeX:

good find for ultrawide fov fix :104:

Glad i could be of service, to me it made the game a lot more as if i am actually sitting in a cockpit instead of nose stuck to the windshield @3440x1440.