Dead Space 2K100: Mouse Fix, Anti Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering, Fixed Brightness, Proper Vsync, Borderless Window, Bug Fixes

Dead Space suffers from quite some annoyances on the PC plattform. The port isn't the best, sadly.
But the best is: ALL issues are fixable. This guide explains how to experience Dead Space the best way possible!

List of the problems and it's corresponding fixes:

Borderless fullscreen windowed:
The game doesn't have support for this mode by default. It is extremely useful since it fixes multiple problems at once.
FIX: Get Borderless Gaming (Program) and add the Dead Space executable to the program. Make sure to set the ingame settings to windowed instead of fullscreen. Also the native screen resolution is needed! This also fixes the Vsync, brightness and mouse speed problem! This is the best fix in my opinion. Definitely go with this!

Vsync/30FPS lock:
The ingame Vsync limits the game to 30FPS. No idea which developer decided it was a good idea to do this. Probably its a console function which was ported to the PC version.
FIX: Disable the ingame Vsync and force it through the driver with additional tripple buffering.
Not needed in borderless fullscreen window mode.

Mouse speed problem:
We all know this problem. This is perhaps the most annoying thing about Dead Space. The mouse is simply so bad and slow with high FPS.It is caused by the fact that the mouse or engine in general is heavily bound to the games FPS. If you are above 60FPS, its absolutely horrible.
FIX: Force Vsync over your driver control panel for the game. Also make sure to enable Tripple Buffering. Alternatively you can use some limiting software to limit the game to 60FPS.
Weirdly enough using the Anti Aliasing fix, improved the speed for me too. I still had 60FPS though. Don't ask me... Also make sure to higher the mouse speed in the games options. Of course you can also use a higher DPI on your mouse. There are tons of possible fixes for this problem.
Not needed / heavily improved in borderless fullscreen window mode.
Another fix for the mouse speed:
To fix it for low DPI mice or high framerates above 60, download a dll and place it where the game exe is: https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/840-dead-space-mouse-fix/

Very high brightness level in fullscreen mode:
The Brightness level of the game in fullscreen is very bright.
FIX: If you wanna play in fullscreen, you should lower the value to the absolute minimum in the games graphic options.
Not needed in borderless fullscreen window mode.

Anti Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering:
The game doesn't support Anti Aliasing. It only has some bad FXAA in the options.
FIX:
1 - Download and run the NVIDIA Profile Inspector.
2 - Select the Dead Space profile.
3 - Change Antialiasing compatibility to 0x004010C0.
4 - Change Antialiasing Behavior Flags to None.
5 - Change Antialiasing Mode to Override any application setting.
6 - Change Antialiasing Setting to 8x Multisampling or your desired setting.
7 - Change Antialiasing Transparency Supersampling to 8x Sparse Grid Supersampling.
8 - Change Anisotropic Filtering to 16x.
After that just click apply in the tool. Boom! Beautiful anti aliasing and filtering for Dead Space. Really looks a lot better with this! I don't know if anti aliasing works on AMD cards. Try the graphic driver tool.

Doctor Challus Mercer doesn't appear in Chapter 5 at the cryogenic medical lab part:
I had this problem sometimes. Not always weirdly enough.
FIX: SAVE before entering the room. There is a save station just before it. It is after you met Mercer for the first time. Sometimes it works when you restart the game and load the save. If it still shouldn't, activate INGAME Vsync while you go into the room. This definitely fixes the problem.
You can disable it once you see the "good" doctor speaking through the glass.

Weird body physics:
This is a general problem of the game. Often dead bodies move from alone or glitch out. This can actually be scary! LOL! Unintended scary bug I guess. Bodies also spin in wild circles in rooms without gravity. I don't know if that is intended. There doesn't seem to be a completely working fix for it but I noticed that the problems get less the lower the FPS are. As I said the engine is heavily bound to the FPS. With 60FPS you definitely have such problems. With 30FPS it seems to be less. Still, not really worth playing in 30FPS for it. Weirdly enough I think I had less problems with my new 144hz Gsync monitor. Which sounds odd, I know, I expected even more body physics problems but I didn't really have any this time around. Maybe Vsync causes it, no idea.

Gsync/Freesync/144hz/21:9:
If you have Gsync or Freesync, I generally dont recommend borderless fullscreen window, just use fullscreen with vsync off and brightness setting at the lowest. I also tested the game with 144FPS and I weirdly enough didn't have a single issue. However, you might get mice problems at such high framerates. I recommend grabbing the mouse fix for the game. Furthermore, this game actually supports perfect native 21:9 ultrawide. I cant think of any other game from 2008 that offers this, lol.

Play Impossible difficulty without having finished the game or missing a savegame:
Go to C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Electronic Arts\Dead Space and open the settings.txt in Notepad. Change Game.Played = 0 to 1.

Difficulty resets to Medium problem:
If you use "Continue Game" from the main menu, most of the time the game resets its difficulty to medium. To avoid this, DONT use "Continue Game", instead use the "Load Game" option at ALL times. If it already happened, there is also a more complicated fix to fix your save game but I didn't try it yet:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dead_Space#Difficulty_changes_itself_when_multiple_save_files_are_present

For many other fixes, try out:
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dead_Space

[Apoletestry]

have you heard of DXVK?
It's very good, in fact I have it installed now for my first playthrough.

Just drag and drop the d3d9.dll file where the .exe is.

[hollow]

thank you for the borderless gaming option, works fine

[PorcusGrunzus]

I do not recommend the ingame Vsync since it caps the frames to 30FPS with horrible input delay. Instead I recommend to limit your FPS in the driver or force Vsync over the driver but I bet you have Gsync or Freesync so you shouldn't need Vsync and a FPS limit would be better.

[Timefor1776]

Yep I didn’t have vsync I must have forgot to confirm the changes to visuals

[PorcusGrunzus]

Did you try to limit the FPS? Maybe your hardware renders so many frames that the engine literally collapses or your card is pulling too much power. Try 60-120 FPS or something. You could also try switching between fullscreen and windowed and see if that makes a difference.

[Timefor1776]

So i just downloaded this and after the the nicole video ends it goes black but you can hear the guy and the girl after 10 seconds the normal view comes in behing issac. beccas hair is extended straight and foolishly longer im getting a refund i have a ryzen 9 and a 4090 i know about drivers bios and updating well enough and i dont have the problem with aanything else

[PorcusGrunzus]

I used to have a AMD card in the past and most of the time there was no way since the AMD driver isnt as good as the Nvidia one. Though back then there was a tool named Radeon Pro that could do some things at least but such compatiblity ID AA settings might not be possible on AMD. Sorry that I cannot help more. Maybe google.

[BurstIsMildlyOk]

Is there a way to do the Anti Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering fix on an AMD card? The profile inspector won't open for me

[Harold Of Old]

I think the buddy body physics happen at 300 fps or above; I limit my fps with Riva tuner to 144 fps and as a result it's fine.

[Rat_]

I've managed to play through the game fully previously, but recently, after reinstalling it the game will instantly crash with no error messages on start-up. Does anyone know any solutions I could try?