Silent Hill 2 Optimization & Known Fixes

This guide will give you the best settings for optimization as well as known fixes for the Silent Hill 2 Remake.

Introduction

My goal is to make this guide as simple to follow and as accurate as possible, it's good to remember that we all make mistakes, even those who push to be perfect.

If this guide helped you it would be heavily appreciated if you liked, favorited or commented on it!

If you're feeling charitable feel free to give me some steam points ~ check below to learn how!

Optimized Quality Settings

Silent Hill 2 (2024) is a very new game so these settings are subject to change and may not work for your setup specifically. Here I am aiming for graphics that will provide the best experience on any system that meets the specification requirements provided by Bloober and Konami. This section is based on community input and just testing on my own, the below settings are what I found to be the best. If you disagree please comment respectfully and let me know so I can test more!

Due to the nature of how new this game is some of this information is absolutely subject to change based on new updates, I will try my best to periodically update but I WILL miss things. Please leave a comment if you know of a fix I missed, know a correction to one of my fixes or have some insight to provide on my settings.

Screen Mode - Leave this on "Fullscreen" unless you have a reason to use Borderless
Resolution - Personal preference
Raytracing - Off
Frame Rate Cap - Unlimited
VSync - Off
[Ultrawide Users] Panini Projection - Personal preference, I use off
Supersamping - FSR 3.0 is recommended but if you have DLSS you can use that
[Supersamping] Preset - Generally speaking this is preference, but I use "Performance" since FSR 3.0 doesn't rip quality for me. The more to the left the more performance you will get.
Renderer Quality Preset - Custom
Graphic Mode - Default

Advanced Quality Settings

Anything not listed under here can generally be left at High or Medium without much issue. If you are on an absolute potato machine and the entirety of this guide is not working I'd mess with those.
SSR - Off
Shadows Quality - Low. Can lead to a 35% performance gain with minimal visual difference.
Shaders Quality - Low. Can lead to a 7% or so performance gain with minimal visual difference.

FOV Access Guide

For some reason, Bloober deemed it unnecessary to add an FOV slider. I personally do not have much of an issue with this as I am an Ultrawide user and that comes with it's own pseudo FOV slider.

However, I understand many desire this so I am including it here. The odds of getting banned are slim to absolute none but in the extremely rare off chance it happens I am not responsible.

1. Download Unreal Engine 5 Unlocker[kemono.su]
2. Open the unlocker, run the game, add the executable to the app, and inject DLL.
3. Use the Tilde (~) key to open the console, this is normally located over your left TAB button (or set it to a different button under the Configuration menu if you are using a European keyboard).
4. In the console, type "fov 100" (without quotations) or any number of your choice, then hit Enter.

Color Fringing and Ghosting Fix

Similarly to other modern third-person games with lots of post-processing effects (e.g. A Plague Tale: Requiem, Jedi: Survivor, Black Myth: Wukong), when you rotate the camera, there is a very noticeable and distracting, white halo/ghosting/fringing effect around the playable character. Here's how to fix it.

1. Navigate to where your config is saved. This is normally C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\SilentHill2\Saved\Config\Windows
2. Open Engine.ini in Notepad or Notepad++
3. Copy the code below to the end of the ini file and save it.

[SystemSettings]
r.SceneColorFringe.Max=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.motionblurquality=0
r.Distortion=0
r.DisableDistortion=1

Enable Frame Generation

The game doesn't have built-in frame generation support, but Unreal Engine 5 does, at least for FSR. Enabling Frame Generation is a fast and easy wait to get a huge boost in FPS.

You can enable FSR frame generation by following these steps.

1. Navigate to where your config is saved. This is normally C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\SilentHill2\Saved\Config\Windows
2. Open Engine.ini in Notepad or Notepad++
3. Copy the code below to the end of the ini file and save it.

[SystemSettings]
r.FidelityFX.FI.Enabled=1

4. Select the "FSR 3.0 Supersampling" option under Display & Graphics.

Note: If you cannot find AppData\Local I recommend typing Win + R, putting in %appdata% and then clicking "AppData" and you will find the Local file there.

Cutscene Framerate Unlocker

The game has locked framerates in cutscenes.

You can use the Silent Hill 2 FPS Unlocker to fix this.

Note: This is extremely experimental and may not work depending on your system, hence why I recommend method #1 over this method.

There are two versions, while using V1.0, the cutscenes will technically run at unlocked framerates and some animations will be capped at 30 fps. With 1.1, all animations will run at unlocked framerates, but it may introduce some desync with dialogue and mouth movement. However, both versions will fix the inverse ghosting and flicker issue that low framerates introduce on OLED screens and certain TCL TVs while using VRR.

You can unlock framerate in cutscenes by following these steps.

1. Download "Silent.Hill.2.Remake.FPS.unlocker.v[x].zip" here[github.com].
2. Unpack to \Engine\Binaries\Win64\ inside the game folder.

Ultrawide Cutscene Fix

The game has borked cutscenes for ultrawide monitors (suffer from this myself).

You can fix this by following these steps.

1. Download "Silent.Hill.2.Remake.widescreen.v[x].zip" here[github.com].
2. Unpack to \Engine\Binaries\Win64\ inside the game folder.

Stutter Mitigation

It's not possible to fix stutters, but it may be possible to reduce their frequency and intensity.

Method #1 - Vulkan Rendering

Using the DXVK translation layer, you can switch to Vulkan rendering by forcing the game to launch in DX11. This disables AI-based upscaling (so only TSR and FSR 1.0 will work), frame generation, and ray tracing. Also, this very experimental and you may experience visual bugs, crashes or may even need to reinstall the game.
1. Download DXVK[github.com].
2. Copy the contents of the ZIP file (d3d11.dll and dxgi.dll to "SHProto\Binaries\Win64").
3. In Steam, right-click the game and select Properties, then enter '-dx11' (without quotes) under Launch Options.

Some users have reported doing Step 3 alone works for them so that is worth trying before doing Steps 1 and 2.

Method #2 - Forcing Shader Precompilation

Another option is to force the game to compile shaders. You need to copy the following commands to Engine.ini, and launch the game in DirectX 11 mode. Keep in mind that this disables AI-based upscaling (so only TSR and FSR 1.0 will work), frame generation, and ray tracing. Furthermore, you may experience visual bugs.

r.ShaderPipeLineCache.Enabled=1
r.ShaderPipeLineCache.Precompile=1

To run the game in DirectX 11 mode, in Steam, right-click the game and select Properties, then enter '-dx11' (without quotes) under Launch Options.

Additional tweaks

Some users have reported less frequent stuttering with the following Windows settings.

• Disable hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling. In Windows 11, this can be changed by going into Settings, then choosing Graphics, and then changing the default graphics settings. For the setting to take effect, a restart is required. This will also disable frame generation.
  
• Changing CPU priority to High, IO priority to High, and Page priority to Normal. It can be done manually, but there's also a mod[www.nexusmods.com] for it.

Enabling Nvidia Reflex

You can force the game to use Nvidia Reflex which will decrease input latency and make the game more responsive. This is useful for normal play and especially useful for those who want to use frame generation.

I suggest that you only do this if you feel you absolutely need to.

1. Download and install MSI Afterburner[www.msi.com].
2. Download and install RivaTuner Statistics Server[www.guru3d.com].
3. Launch MSI Afterburner (which will also launch RTSS), then inside RTSS, click on Setup, then for the Enable Framerate Limiter option, choose Nvidia Reflex, then hit OK. This will force Nvidia Reflex on globally, but you can also enable it on a game-by-game basis.

Your settings should look like this, but again you are free to change things based on your system:

Closing Remarks

Donations would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much for reading my guide!!

https://ko-fi.com/nullas

If you have any questions regarding ANY of the above fixes or content please feel free to leave a comment below or add me on Steam and DM me. I also recommend checking out my other guides here to see if there are any guides for games you actively play or would like to play!

[bexcam]

im not tech savy so this may seem silly but i STILL can access FSR 3.0 i even google EVERY single solution to "fix" or enable it but zero luck. all i get is fsr 3.1

[N-GaGe]

@Link_Hero_Of_Time enable HDR in Windows settings

[Link_Hero_Of_Time]

Can someone please help me, in game settings it says my laptop/screen is not HDR supported but I know for a fact that it is. Someone have a workaround for this issue?

[Show Me, Rock]

This is devilish work brother.

[ЕБАННЫЙ ♥♥♥♥♥♥]

mine fsr 3.0 doesn't work as i put it in, loading in game its js crashing

[Lime]

Hey Tyler, which settings aren't in the game for you?

[Tyler]

Can anyone help me with this with a nvidia 1080 gpu? Some setting arent the same in game either for me. I want to run it with it atleast looking decent and yeah that pixel affect around james and other things just make me feel like I'm playing a low budget indie title. Which some are pretty good tbh.

[BFishY ><>]

Nah, mini games and item investigations stay WASD and E no matter what. Classic custom key oversight, most games have this :/

[GenericGeorge]

Mine continues to crash no matter whether I reinstall, use a different directory such as -dx11, and I am getting beyond frustrated.

[Lime]

Hey BFishY, I went ahead and checked in-game and it's letting me bind the settings on the main menu. Maybe worth a double check.