Maximizing Visual Clarity - an Engine.ini tweak

Disable some developer-default settings (Film Grain and TAA) that the graphics sliders in-game will not affect to increase potential performance and visual clarity using the UE5 ini files.

Various Disclaimers

Don't worry, modifying ini files is not an exploit. It doesn't touch the game at all, just tells the engine how to render things for your graphics card. By sending off some commands to the engine by writing to its ini files, we can ask it to disable some post effects that can make it both harder to see and harder for the game to run, arguably improving the detail of the game seen in my screenshot.

https://imgur.com/a/AaTGSfa

As you can see, we can see what's far off in the distance of the room very clearly, and the lighting of the environment can be taken in more directly without the film grain, making the graphics more pretty and potentially gaining performance. By removing the built-in anti-aliasing, we no longer suffer the downsides of TAA (see online or below for more info) and have maximum visual clarity, at the cost of some objects in the scene having jagged edges. If this doesn't bother you, you will enjoy the advantages.

What's wrong with Film Grain/TAA?

With film grain? Nothing. It's an artistic choice and I like to keep it on in cinematic story games like Cyberpunk 2077. But this game demands reaction time, and having an overlay that slightly distorts the colors can harm reaction time at crucial moments, making the difference between shooting first or dying.

As for TAA, well. It's great for pictures and it's beautiful at removing jagged edges. But as soon as things start moving on-screen, you can't un-see the "vaseline smear" when you play a game without it. Since the method is applied across multiple frames, it causes many visual issues you can find online that makes it just not worth keeping on. Unfortunately there just isn't a one-beats-all anti-aliasing solution in existence quite yet, but since TAA is the closest to being one due to its ease of implementation, it's what many developers use nowadays, unintentionally butchering graphical fidelity.

The Fix

On your Windows desktop, press the Windows key and type %localappdata% and press enter. This will open a File Explorer under your users local app data folder. Scroll down, find ReadyOrNot, navigate into that folder and go into Saved, Config, Windows, and finally, open Engine.ini.
You're going to see a lot of text already written there, leave it alone. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the file and add this:

[SystemSettings]
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=0
r.AntiAliasingMethod=0

The tonemapper settings affect film grain, and the AA settings both turn off and prevent AA from enabling. You can always remove these settings later if you change your mind.

After that, just press CTRL + S to save the file, and close out of your text editor. When you launch the game you should immediately notice a difference on the main menu!

Here's what my Engine.ini looks like if you're not sure you got it right:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Engine.ini:

[Core.System]
Paths=../../../Engine/Content
Paths=%GAMEDIR%Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/2D/Paper2D/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Animation/ACLPlugin/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Animation/ControlRigSpline/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Animation/ControlRig/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Animation/IKRig/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Bridge/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Compositing/OpenColorIO/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Developer/AnimationSharing/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Developer/Concert/ConcertSync/ConcertSyncClient/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Editor/BlueprintHeaderView/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Editor/ConsoleVariablesEditor/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Editor/GeometryMode/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Editor/ModelingToolsEditorMode/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Editor/ObjectMixer/LightMixer/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Editor/ObjectMixer/ObjectMixer/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Editor/SpeedTreeImporter/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Editor/UVEditor/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Enterprise/DatasmithContent/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Enterprise/GLTFExporter/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/ChaosCaching/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/ChaosClothEditor/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/ChaosNiagara/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/ChaosSolverPlugin/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/Dataflow/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/FullBodyIK/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/GeometryCollectionPlugin/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/PythonScriptPlugin/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Experimental/ToolPresets/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/FX/Niagara/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Fab/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Interchange/Runtime/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Media/MediaCompositing/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Media/MediaPlate/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/MovieScene/MovieRenderPipeline/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/MovieScene/SequencerScripting/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/AudioSynesthesia/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/AudioWidgets/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/CommonUI/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/GeometryProcessing/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/MeshModelingToolset/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/Metasound/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/OpenXR/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/ResonanceAudio/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/RigVM/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/SoundUtilities/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/Synthesis/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/Runtime/WaveTable/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/StatsIntegration/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/TraceUtilities/Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/VirtualProduction/Takes/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/AMRagdoll/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/CustomAnimNode/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/CustomInterfaceModule/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/DevMenu/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/FMODStudio/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/FSR3/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/GameFeatures/ReadyOrNotDevContent/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/IconStudio/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/Modio/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/Nvidia/DLSS/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/ObjectPooler/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/ProAimAssistPlugin/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/ReadyOrNotTests/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/SkinnedDecalComponent/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/UnrealAssetAutomation/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/VictoryPlugin/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/WinLibScePad/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/GameFeatures/ReadyOrNotDLC3/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/GameFeatures/ReadyOrNotDLC2/Content
Paths=../../../ReadyOrNot/Plugins/GameFeatures/ReadyOrNotDLC1/Content

[SystemSettings]
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=0
r.AntiAliasingMethod=0

[GameNetDriver StatelessConnectHandlerComponent]
CachedClientID=18

[Pegasus-1]

With these settings enabled but using DLSS4Q Preset K the IQ is overly sharp. Id say using these settings gives more crisp IQ but i'm not convinced it looks better than DLSS4Q, sharper yes but maybe not as good.

[Magpie]

beautiful, thank you, i hate taa with a burning passion

[Porvaniy Tuz]

Like that's insane, my jaw dropped off by the fact how it boosted my fps and reduced the cpu load, slow applause for you

[Pegasus-1]

Will DLAA still work?

[Trahibidadido]

r.AntiAliasingMethod [0 = Off, 1 = FXAA, 2 = TAA, 3 = MSAA, 4 = TSR]

[Snatch]

This is exactly what I was looking for.

You're an MVP in my heart

[Hunger]

You could try using a ReShade filter at your own risk or mess around with what they have in the AMD/NVIDIA Control Panel (safe).

[ZZero]

Nice, however is it possible to replace TAA with another anti-aliasing method?