Improved fidelity, performance & stability

I’ve put this guide together because I paid a lot of money for a top-shelf system and a release day game and I’ve been close to abandoning STALKER 2 because of the crashes. Was hoping for a bit more out of UE5 and I’m not fond of waiting on patches. I’m not a software developer, just an enthusiast who spends a lot of time modding games. If you’re convinced this is bogus, don’t try it and don’t expect a response. As with all modding, if you do try it, keep copies of your unmodded files so you can put the game back together again if you break it.

First caveat is, if you have any settings saved for this game in NVIDIA Profile Inspector, be careful what you turn on & avoid messing with ReBAR - it will cause crashes.

Second caveat, this only really applies to RTX30 & RTX40 series cards. May still be useful to RTX20 series owners but you will still have to rely on FSR3.1 frame-gen.

Caveat three, the game really doesn’t like changing setting whilst the engine is engaged. You have to quit to main menu after changing things and then reload to see the actual difference the changes made.

STEPS

1) Download the current release of Streamline SDK from Github - https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/Streamline

2) Then download the ray reconstruction (nvngx_dlssd_3.7.10.zip) from Techpowerup - https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-3-ray-reconstruction-dll/

3) Download DLSS 3.8.1 (nvngx_dlss_3.8.10.zip) from Techpowerup - https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-dll/

4) Navigate to your installation folder for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl. Where this is located depends on where you’ve installed it. From here open Engine - Plugins - Marketplace - DLSS - Binaries - Third Party - Win64. You should see your nvngx_dlss.dll. Go to the DLSS 3.8.1 folder you just downloaded & extract/copy the newer version and paste it into the folder of your installation. Replace the file when asked.

5) Open the ray reconstruction folder you downloaded and extract/copy nvngx_dlssd.dll then paste it into the same installation folder. You should now have the 3.8.1 nvngx_dlss.dll and the new nvngx_dlssd.dll next to each other.

6) Navigate to your installation folder for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl. From here open Engine - Plugins - Marketplace - Streamline - Binaries - Third Party - Win64. You should see a list of files including nvngx_deepdvc.dll, nvngx_dlssg.dll, sl.common.dll, sl.deepdvc.dll, sl.dlss_g.dll, sl.interposer.dll, sl.pcl.dll and sl.reflex.dll. Open/extract the Streamline folder you downloaded and navigate to Streamline-main - bin - x64. Highlight all the files in the Streamline folder you downloaded which are also present in the game installation folder (listed above) and copy/paste them from the folder you downloaded into the game folder. Replace when asked.

7) Also in the streamline folder you downloaded you will see sl.directstr.dll. Copy/paste this from the download folder into the game installation folder. You should now have the new copies of nvngx_deepdvc.dll, nvngx_dlssg.dll, sl.common.dll, sl.deepdvc.dll, sl.dlss_g.dll, sl.interposer.dll, sl.pcl.dll and sl.reflex.dll, as well as the additional sl.directstr.dll.

8) Navigate to your saved date. This will usually be in C:\ - Users - *your username* - AppData - Local - Stalker2 - Saved. From here open GameSettings and you should have a file called AppliedSettings.cfg. Open this with Notepad and search for “RayReconstruction”. Change ‘false’ to ‘true’. Save and close.

9) Navigate back from GameSettings to Saved and open the file Config - Windows. You should have a list of ’.ini’ files in front of you starting with ApexDestruction.ini. Open Notepad and paste the following without quotations
 
“[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0

r.Shadow.DistanceScale=2
r.DFDistanceScale=2
r.ViewDistanceScale=2
foliage.LODDistanceScale=2
grass.CullDistanceScale=2
foliage.DitheredLOD=2
r.LumenScene.FarField=1
r.LightMaxDrawDistanceScale=2
r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale=2
r.LandscapeLOD0DistributionScale=2
r.NT.Lens.ChromaticAberration.Intensity=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.Lumen.TranslucencyReflections.FrontLayer.Allow=1 

[/script/engine.engine]

bAllowMultiThreadedShaderCompile=True

[ConsoleVariables]

UseAllCores=True

[SystemSettings]

r.Lumen.Reflections.DownsampleFactor=0
r.Lumen.Reflections.MaxRoughnessToTrace=0.27
r.NGX.DLSS.denoisermode=1
r.Lumen.Reflections.BilateralFilter=0
r.Lumen.Reflections.ScreenSpaceReconstruction=0
r.Lumen.Reflections.SmoothBias=1
r.lumen.Reflections.Temporal=0
r.Lumen.HardwareRaytracing=1
r.Lumen.Reflections.HardwareRayTracing=1
r.Shadow.Denoiser=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.Shadow.FilterMethod=1”

10) Now you want to click in Notepad - File - Save As. You need to change type from ‘Text documents’ to ‘All files’, change the name to ‘Engine.ini’ and save it alongside the other ‘.ini’ files in the Config folder.

CONGRATULATIONS

You’ve now updated DLSS to the most up-to-date version. This will improve performance/fidelity moderately, even on RTX20 series cards. Although ray reconstruction was released with DLSS 3.5 it continued to be updated and drastically improves DLSS artefacting and ghosting by replacing DLSS’s native denoisers with a superior AI algorithm. Although there is no fixing the smudgy implementation of SSSR’s, the Engine.ini tweaks will make a significant difference in the close-field reflections.

I have an i9-11900K which runs on average 5.1-5.2 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 3200 MHz clocked up to 4300 MHz, RTX4080 clocked up to 2.9 GHz and still had constant crashing, stuttering, pop-in, reflections so pixelated they became very blocky etc. When I could get in, I was getting 70 fps at 1440p most of the time with constant plummeting to 35 fps. Mostly Epic settings and DLSS on Balanced. The picture was smudgy, frame pacing inconsistent and felt like about 40-50 fps irrespective of the counter.

With the above adjustments and caveats seen to, I can play in 4K at 100+ fps, no smudginess. Same settings but drastically increased performance and stability. No crashes at all in about 8 hours of testing.

I only posted this because I felt kinda duty bound as it finally feels and plays the way I was hoping and I wanted to let other people know so maybe they can start enjoying the game more too
 :)

Guide

A brief guide to improve fidelity and performance aimed at RTX card owners.

[♂♀]

how will it affect my equipment? putting a similar mod I got 80-85 degrees on the processor, especially at the bases