RO2/RS Graphics Settings and Fixes

Just explaning some graphics settings and some tweaks to improve performance, also how to improve graphics.

Introduction

In this guide I will explain the game graphics settings, so you can use them correctly, especially for new players that notice how bad the game runs, and I will show you other things that I use to make the game run better and look better. I will be updating this guide adding more tweaks or to make it more accurate.

2021 Edit: thnak RussianSeppukuE03 for the feedback.

Please comment if you have a doubt, I always respond questions!

También hablo español, no dudes en preguntar si tienes alguna duda.

Unlocking the Framerate

**VERY IMPORTANT IF YOU PLAY AT VERY HIGH FPS 80+**

Unlocking the framerate to more than 60 is really important if your game runs choppy or you are having fps drops with a good pc. HOWEVER, I highly recommed locking the frame rate either with smoothframerate or some third party program, because the more fps you play, the more you gun sways when you're tired(game issue), in my case I've never noticed this because my game runs below 80fps, but if you have a super PC and 144hz monitor you may get a slightly or a high disadvantage.

**EVIDENCE**
This video is not mine, it from TheQwampa's youtube channel
Link to the video

**VERY IMPORTANT**

Also I have noticed when the fps hit the cap, your cpu usage goes to 100%. I'm currently locking my framerates with nvidia inspector and using at the same time nvidia adaptive sync, my cpu usage doesn't hit 100% and the game runs very well. LOCK YOUR FPS!

Look the cpu usage at the top left(click the img to enlarge):

With smooth framerate ON:
.

With smooth framerate OFF:

.
Notice that when the smooth frame rate is ON at least one of the cores reach 100% cpu usage
So at first find your My Documents ro2 config folder and open ROEngine.ini
It's in Documents\My Games\RedOrchestra2\ROGame\Config
.
if you want to keep SmoothFramerate because you're having a lot a tearing but you would like to have more fps than 62, change the values of MaxSmoothedFrameRate to more than 62


But if you want to get rid of this and use other software to cap the fps, or just play it uncapped, search bSmoothFramerate(should be 2 results, but if you have only 1 it's ok) and change them to False

Understanding RO2 graphic settings Part 1

Lets check the game video settings and their cost in fps using low setting as baseline

Detail Mode:

This setting controls the additional details on various maps, such as fog, ice and dripping water.

Character Detail:

Affect the quality of textures and some animations of the soldiers,
anything above medium seems to be the same.

Texture Quality:

I always recomend to put this setting on high if you have 1gb of vram or ultra if you have more, the cost in fps is very low, and there is a big difference between high and medium, this setting is very important because it makes the game looks much better.

Medium setting (~2 FPS hit)
High (~3 FPS hit)
Ultra (~13 FPS hit, The fps drop is because it uses 16xAF) (May cause stuttering if you have less than 2gb of vram)

**IMPORTANT**
Ultra and High are pretty much the same except for AF(Anisotropic Filtering), use 'high' if you want to keep it simple; if you want better quality with just 5fps drop, you have to change AF manually because the big fps gap is caused because in Ultra the game uses 16x Anisotropic Filtering for the first time and it is very demanding.
I'm using ultra textures with 4x AF, you can change the AF using the editor I've created or editing it manually in your roengine.ini in your ro2 folder inside documents/my games folder (look above for more info) then look for the line MaxAnisotropy and change the value to 2, 4, 8 or 16.
I recommed 4, because is a good quality and also you won't notice the difference between 4x or 16x, and 16x is like 10fps less so don't use it.


ULTRA


HIGH


MEDIUM


LOW

Shadow Quality:

I personally use medium settings, because the fade distance on high settings is too low, and ultra settings is like -20fps
Medium (2-5 FPS hit)
High (7-10 FPS hit)
Ultra (12-25 FPS hit)

The conclusion is: don't use ultra settings shadows, they dont help to mitigate bottleneck, it's just a net loss of fps, and at least for me they look way too sharp.

I highly recommend using the shadows on medium, the game still looks pretty good and you will get like +20fps, also it looks like softshadows

FX Quality:

Bullet despawn, Particle LOD Bias, probably death screams(not sure about this), Set this on high I havent noticed any fps drop.

Antialiasing(AA):

is a technique used to minimize the appearance of "jagged" edges on in-game objects.
FXAA Low (1 FPS hit)
FXAA Medium (2 FPS hit)
FXAA High (3-4 FPS hit)
MLAA Ultra (Up to 23fps hit!!!!!)

**IMPORTANT***
Using MLAA may increase your gpu usage and help to decrease bottleneck, despite of this, I think is bad like the ingame AO, it is just too bad optimized, the quality isn't that good either, so stay away from MLAA .
Note: If you want quality AA with a low cost use some AA injector f.e. Reshade FXAA looks better than MLAA ultra and just for a cost of 6fps, or force some AA in your NVIDIA, AMD panel.

NO AA:


FXAA LOW:


FXAA MEDIUM:


FXAA HIGH:


MLAA ULTRA:

Post Processing Quality:

Ajusts the quality of the Depht of Field(proved), so basically is a useless setting.
*updated 01/27/17

Lighting Quality:

Controls the amout and quality of the ilumination
Medium (~6-8 FPS hit)
High (~8 FPS hit)
Ultra (~13 FPS hit)
*edited 01/26/17
Note: use at least medium setting, because on low or lowest the game turns dark.

LOW:


MEDIUM:


HIGH:


ULTRA(The same as high but now it is dynamic, now cloud's movement affect the lighting):

Foliage Quality:

It just controls the Foliage Visibility Range
Medium (2-3 FPS hit)
High (4-6 FPS hit)

Occlusion Quality:

it controls the quality of things that are far, It might not be noticeable, so just keep it on normal.

Understanding RO2 graphic settings Part 2

Bloom:

is a postprocessing effect that can improve overall lighting, it is very noticeable in ro2 maps, and it maybe annoying for some, it insignificant performance cost (~1fps)
look at those shiny rocks

Motion Blur:

the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still image or a sequence of images. Only really visible during fights, it's performance impact is likely minimal (~1fps)

Light Shafts:

This setting enables the rendering of Light Shafts AKA God Rays, is the light you can see projecting between trees and foliage (~1-2fps)

Ambient Occlusion:

Adds shadows on the edges of all the objets on the screen making them more realistic.
It make the game look much better especially in some maps, However I recomend to turn this off, this settings is way too demanding, in BF4 HBAO is -7fps, in RO2 a low quality SSAO is -30fps, it's just too bad optimized; your game will look better, though.
(15-30fps hit!!!)
Note: Using AO will increase your gpu usage and help to decrease bottleneck, but only use it if you have a powerful GPU.


.

Depth of Field:

is a post-processing technique that simulates the real-world blurring of details over vast distances, it has an insignificant performance cost; some people like it, some not too much; I don't like it so I've disabled it.

Post Processing Preset:

It changes the game palette of colors.

NORMAL(kawa is just too red)



ENHANCED(recommended)



WAR MOVIE

NVIDIA: Fixing rs/ro2 missing profile (SLI Fix, Low GPU usage fix)

Some users have reported that doing this improved their fps a lot, especially for those that have a nice videocard but the game is running bad for no reason

**DISCLAIMER**
I don't own an AMD graphics card; I don't know if this issue is also present on amd cards.

**EXPLANATION**
Basically the profile for ro2/rs in nvidia graphics cards is broken, it has 2 profiles one for Red Orchestra 2 which has all the settings, and another for Rising Storm which is empty, the problem is that the game uses the empty Rising Storm profile.This may affect performance, nvidia might have put some settings that make the game run better; also if the profile is empty SLI will NOT WORK!.


First download Nvidia Inspector (this is only a refference link, you can search other link in google)
Nvidia Inspector 2.13[ci.appveyor.com]

Steps to fix the profile! (They are several ways to do this, this is just the way I did)

1. open nvidiaProfileInspector.exe
Should look like this



2. Click the Export button and select nvidia text format-



3. Save the file in a proper location.




4. Open the file that you just saved.
Should look like this:




5. Search for Red Orchestra 2 and copy ONLY what is selected in the image (lines that start with the word 'setting').




6. Search for Rising Storm and replace all the lines that start with 'setting' with the lines that you just copied from red orchestra 2's profile (the image is referencial, yours may look a little different).






7. The final result should look like this:




8. Return to Nvidia inspector and IMPORT the file you just modified, if asked for replace say yes.




9. Now if you want to change some setting in your nvidia panel or through nvidia inspector YOU MUST ADDRESS THE GAME USING THE RISING STORM PROFILE!!!.
Sli profiles, and others should be fixed, HOWEVER there are better SLI profiles on internet

After this you may put the Power management mode to Maximum Performance

**IMPORTANT - MORE INFO HERE!**
More SLI, AA, and other tweaks using nvidia inspector:

Credits to it's creator.
link[www.forum-3dcenter.org]

REMEMBER!! USE RISING STORM PROFILE NOT RED ORCHESTRA 2 PROFILE!!!!!

NVIDIA: Fixing rs/ro2 missing profile (SLI Fix, Low GPU usage fix) part 2

Our friend RussianSeppukuE03 created a new profile that combines all the Nvidia profile fixes, including RS1 settings, missing RO2 profile settings, SGSSAA and SLI flags, Reshade depth bit fix, HBAO fix, Max Pre-Rendered Fames to 1 to fix jitter. The installation of this profile is explained in the section above.

Profile "Rising Storm"
ShowOn GeForce
ProfileType Application
Executable "binaries/win32/rogame.exe"
Setting ID_0x10115c8b = 0x0000003c
Setting ID_0x105e2a1d = 0x00000004
Setting ID_0x106d5cff = 0x00000000
Setting ID_0x10f9dc81 = 0x00000011
Setting ID_0x80857a28 = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x002c7f45 = 0x00000002
Setting ID_0x00664339 = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x00d55f7d = 0x084000C1
Setting ID_0x007ba09e = 0x00000001
Setting ID_0x1033cec1 = 0x00000003
Setting ID_0x1033dcd2 = 0x00000004
Setting ID_0x1034cb89 = 0x00000000
Setting ID_0x106d5cff = 0x00000000
Setting ID_0x1095def8 = 0x02422605
Setting ID_0x10ecdb82 = 0x00000004
Setting ID_0x10f9dc81 = 0x00000011
Setting ID_0x701eb457 = 0x2241ab21 InternalSettingFlag=V0
SettingString ID_0x7049c7ec = "4.0"
SettingString ID_0x7051e5f5 = "4"
SettingString ID_0x705fafec = "2011-07-06 00:00:00"
Setting ID_0x708db8c5 = 0x2328d2da InternalSettingFlag=V0
Setting ID_0x709a1ddf = 0x4b1cd968 InternalSettingFlag=V0
SettingString ID_0x70b5603f = "D3D"
Setting ID_0x70d10d2b = 0xea58d3d0 InternalSettingFlag=V0
Setting ID_0x70edb381 = 0x24208b6c InternalSettingFlag=V0
EndProfile

How to get better shadow quality with less fps cost

If you want to play competitively, I strongly recommed staying with medium shadows, since high and ultra shadows will give you a disadvantage in RS because enemies can hide in tree shadows.

Like I wrote before (Understanding RO2 settings section) I dont like Ultra shadows because they are wayto sharp, and the cost like 25fps, however, you can tweak the settings in order to get something in between medium and high/ultra shadows

First go to your game and change the shadow quality to medium if you already haven't.

Then you'll find these settings in your ROEngine.ini or like in the screenshot you can see them in the ro2 settings editor just by pressing the + button next to shadow quality.

• The first one is very important because it enables the dynamic shadows (shadows of the trees and foliage that move) set it to True.
  
  bAllowWholeSceneDominantShadows=True
  
  
• The 2nd I think is the resolution of the dominant shadows(It's different from shadow resolution. Ultra shadows have this on 2048)
  
  MaxWholeSceneDominantShadowResolution=2048
  
  
• The 3rd Is the maximum radius for the scene dynamic shadows, after this the shadows will fade
  
  ShadowGroupRampCutoff=2500.000000
  WholeSceneDynamicShadowRadius=2048.000000

So basically you're getting the same shadows as ultra but with less resolution, fade distance etc, less resolution looks better and more natural in my opinion.

How to increase the possibility of hearing a death moan

The death moans are bugged in ro2/rs, IOM mod fixed it, it's also fixed in RS2, but until now there is not a solution for the vanilla ro2/rs. However increasing the maxchannels to 128 allows you to hear them sometimes, but it's better that not hearing them at all.

But...what's a death moan?

This:
Youtube
that video is not mine; it's from DvD's YT channel.

How to make them more frequent

1.Right click the speaker on your tray and click Playback Devices


2.Then select your current playback device and right click it, then go to properties


3.Go to advanced options and change the sound quality to the best quality, then apply the changes


4.Go to Red orchestra 2 and change the max channels to 128

A posible fix for stuttering and texture pop in

Go to Documents\My Games\Red Orchestra 2\ROGame\Config
open ROEngine.ini and change the value of PoolSize=160 to 400, 500 or so until your problem is gone.

Invisible walls, textures, black sky.

If you have this problem:

btw the image is not mine!

Just open the console with the console button(depends on your keyboard), usually the key that is below ESC, or F3 or Ñ if you use a spanish keyboard.
then type umbra culling, and your problem should be fixed; sadly you'll have to do this everytime this happens.

You can also bind this command to a keyboard key using the following command:

setbind YOUR_KEY umbra culling

Example: setbind p umbra culling

No servers showed, only empty servers are shown

First CHECH YOUR FILTERS!!, the game tend change the filters, and it wil hide most servers.
If your server filters are ok and it still not working, delete all the config files located in(sadly this will change all your settings to default):
Documents\My Games\RedOrchestra2\ROGame\Config

If that doesn't work, chill out, everything is going to be ok; do this:

I highly recommend using gametracker to see if they are players
Gametracker[www.gametracker.com]

Find the server you want and copy its ip, then server you can connect directly via IP using the console, just write open ip, for instance:
open 66.150.214.58:7777

Remember to add the servers that you like to Favorites, it's really helpful because the server browser sometimes doesn't work properly.

How to use Nvidia HBAO+ in RO2

Disclaimer

Like I said before I don't own an AMD graphics card (currently I have a gtx1070), but I think I've read that you also can inject AO using the amd catalyst thing.

What is Ambient Occlusion(AO)?

"Adds shadows on the edges of all the objets on the screen making them more realistic."
Sounds simple but Ambient Oclusion and other ilumination technologies are what separate modern games from older ones, the most popular techniques of this are SSAO, HDAO(amd), HBAO+(Nvidia); ro2 has a build-in ssao, that is poorly implemented because it is poorly optimized.
(for more information about fps cost read the Understanding ro2 setting part 2 that is above this)

IMPORTANT

Nvidia HBAO is a very cool feature that will make your game look gorgeous, your game quality will improve from 2008 game to a 2013-ish game. However this setting is quite demanding, is less demanding that the build-in Ambient Occlusion. But still a good alternative to default AO.

Pros:

• Good loking Ambient Occlusion.
  
• Can be up to 50% faster than build-in AO.
  
• Much better vegetation AO.
  
• Generaly better than build-in AO.

Cons:

• In some locations perform exactly equal to the build-in AO.
  
• Despite of the fact of being faster than build-in SSAO, it still very demanding(-15fps average).
  
• Glichy in some maps (i.e phosphate plant, saipan blinks sometimes).

How to activate it

1: Open nvidia inspector and go to Rising Storm profile, and change the AO part to the same as the image


2: Go to the section 5 and change it to same as the image then apply changes, remember to disable build-in Ambient Occlusion in the game settings

Using both Build-In SSAO + NVIDIA HBAO

The good thing is that you can use both, build-in SSAO + NVIDIA HBAO Obviously it comes with a catastrophic perfomance loss, so only do this if you have something like a GTX970(for 1080p) and like a 980 or better for higher resolutions, because this is really demanding like -40fps.
Just do all the steps above and also Enable Ambient Occlusion In your game Settings and that's all

Pros:

• The best AO quality.
  
• Combines the best of both worlds, build-in and nvidia HBAO
  
• Far better graphics quality.
  
• You can be proud of RO2 graphics.

Cons:

• Catastrophic perfomance loss (30-40 fps loss).
  
• Only playable in high-end cards.

Using ReShade In order to Improve Texture Quality

The game is very blurry, FXAA and MLAA make the game even more blurrier
also there is not contrast options in the game.
but...¿Why I don't use SweetFX?
Since I tested both, Reshade 2.0.3f1 runs much better just a 2-3 fps cost.
Download: https://reshade.me/forum/general-discussion/294-reshade-repository-new-host

**IMPORTANT**

This may cause punkbuster conflicts; however, I have been using it for several years in ro2 and rs2 with no issues.

The configuration below, is my personal configuration, you can search for more ro2 presets on internet or make your own.
This may not work on a little number servers(works fine almost all servers), if you want to play in one of them, just delete the rogame.exe profile in reshade, your presets will not be deleted and you can add rogame again if you want it back.

Open the reshade assistant and go to profiles, then press the + button

Search your ROGame.exe

Select dx9

Double Click ROGame in your profiles, it will go to it's presets

Add a new preset, after that Double click it

Select Curves and Lumasharpen, If you want you can activate SMAA or FXAA
Note: Curves is contrast, Lumasharpen is like anisotropic filtering it makes the textures look sharper(It helps a lot because ro2 textures aren't too good)

This is my personal configuration for curves and lumasharpen(Actually now i'm using only 0.80 on lumasharpen because with 1.00 was too sharp)

No ReShade (blurry)

ReShade (Curves + LumaSharpen) It's hard to see it in a Screenshot but in the game the textures look much better

Display Resolution: Using Nvidia DSR and AMD VSR

"Virtual resolutions allows games to render at higher resolutions and then rescales them down to a lower native display resolution. Using this, you can get quality that rivals up to 4K, even on a 1080p display while playing your favorite games."
-AMD

"Our new Maxwell architecture introduces Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) enhancing any game that supports resolutions above 1920x1080. What does DSR do? Simply put, it renders a game at a higher, more detailed resolution and intelligently shrinks the result back down to the resolution of your monitor, giving you 4K, 3840x2160-quality graphics on any screen."
-Nvidia

So that's it, its simple, you can get rid of the AA and get a much better quality and it really helps if you gpu is with low gpu usage caused by the cpu bottleneck.
for example in my case my monitor is only 1366x768 and if i stay at that resolution , my gpu usage is ~40%, and my fps sometimes drops to 40-50. Now I use Nvidia DSR 2.25x (2049x1152) and my gpu is 90%+ usage 80fps avg , with no fps drops, and -I mean- a huge improve on quality.

Enabling Nvidia DSR

1.Go to your nvidia control panel and enable dsr by checking the factors you want
.
2.Set the lvl of smoothness (use your personal preference)
.

Enabling AMD VSR

.
1.Go to your AMD control panel and click on display
.
2.activate vsr
.

Now Change the resolution from inside the game, you should be able to see higher resolutions that your monitor can handle if not, ingame open the console and type for example: setres 1920x1080

DEMO 2732x1536:

Using RO2 Settings Editor

This is an app that I'm developing, It's not finished yet, some features don't work yet, however I'll be happy if you help me by using my app and commenting here the bugs that you may find or some suggestions, It will really help the develop of this app, so if you make the app crash it's good, just tell me and I'll will try to fix it.

***IMPORTANT***

• This app is in EARLY ALPHA, I Strongly recomend to make a backup of your ROEngine.ini and your ROGame.ini before using it.
  
• You need at least Net Framework 4.5
  
• The source code is on GitHub, you can use it if you want.
  
• This may be not functional at all.
  
• Before using the application be sure that the graphics quality preset is on custom

***Update 11/02/17 v0.0004***

• video Preset works.
  
• improved advanced settings

Download:
GitHub[github.com]

Screenshots:

Bottleneck related to CPU usage

Unreal Engine 3 is a old engine, but it is used in many games, ro2 was built in a dx9 version of UE3, it has some bottleneck problems especially if you have a CPU with low single core performance anda high end video card, in fact it only uses only 3 cores. so you need a lot of single core performance if you want to mach the power of your videocard.

Case:

"it can't be possible, I have a nvidia gtx 780 and I can barely hit 60fps"
-His cpu is 10years old

We have 3 settings that affect the gpu usage, in order to mitigate bottleneck you should experiment with them.

• Ambient Occlusion
  
• Display Resolution
  
• Antialiasing

Usually, Increasing these settings increase gpu usage, but may also reduce performance, so it depends on your pc.

(4th gen Intel)Haswell Locked CPU's Uncore Ratio

Disclaimer

As you know this game is quite old and it doesnt work properly in new cpus, in this case I will teach you what I did in my haswell cpu (Intel 4XXX, 4th generation intel), I dont know how to do something similar in other cpus like amd or other intel generation because I dont have them, but it might work in other intel cpu's that have this uncore thing.
What I did is not a hack or trick and it may not affect at all your pc, or maybe it will work for you, but at least in UE3 games I've gain a lot of fps because this configuration reduced a lot the bottleneck (I had bottleneck with a i5 4690).

What is bottleneck?

"it refers to a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or small number of components or resources."

The basic symptoms is that you will run the game at the same fps on low or ultra in 720p or 1080p and a lot of fps drops.

How to see what's your Uncore Ratio:

-download cpu-z
-nb frecuency, uncore ratio, cache ratio, ring bus ratio is the same
-look for this; the nb frecuency should be close to your cpu base frecuency, if not, you can set it manually by going to the bios(mine is 3300 because I set it manually(before it was 700!!). However I have a friend whose default nb frecuency was the same as his base clock by default, he hadn't to change anything, so It could change depending your motherboard manufacturer, if you already have the nb frecuency the same or close to your base clock you're ok and don't have to do anything.

What is Uncore ratio

Go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncore
Summary
Basically intel separated theirs cpus in to parts core and uncore since Sandy Bridge cpus, uncore is the part that interacts with pci express and other bunch of parts of the pc. they should be running at the same speed.

As you now UE3 games are not well optimized for modern cpus, so after months of research I found this video.

so basically this guys is changing the cache ratio (can be called uncore ratio / ring bus ratio on other BIOSES) 100mhz lower than his BASE CORE ratio, and it probably will give you a slightly performance boost.

Optimal value.
the uncore ratio optimal value is 1:1 with the cpu ratio (overclockers should now this) if you are an overclocker you may have put this in it's optimal value already, but in locked cpus the motherboard make the decision for you, and sometimes the choise it's not the best, so you have to put the value manually. I personally have it 200mhz lower than the cpu ratio so that i have the maximun performance of my cpu, you could try experimenting but always remeber that the value should be the same or lower than your cpu base clock(not boost).

Results on my PC:

• In new games like the Witcher 3, Rise of Tomb Raider nothing changed.
  
• Bottleneck almost gone in RO2 and other UE3 games and older ones.

Geekbench:
DEFAULT SETTING IN BIOS(700mhz by default, LOL I shouldn't have bought a cheap mb):




MANUAL SETTING 200MHZ LOWER THAN CPU BASE SPEED(3.5 GHZ - 200mhz = 3300mhz):



As you can notice there is a slightly increase in performance especially in singlecore performance, but he biggest difference is in singlecore memory performance (this may help older games to work better). And i think thats why ro2 and a lot of older games perform better with this configuration.

[EmotionallyBroken]

"and your problem should be fixed; sadly you'll have to do this everytime this happens."

Thats not what fix means

[jaybee]

Adding to what Derdekeas said, don't just use the default DXVK, https://gitlab.com/Ph42oN/dxvk-gplasync , use this AND follow this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUmwhLMdLk4

[Derdekeas]

You need this — https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3045765371

[Padrovisc]

Could someone help me? I have an RX 6400 and my games keep crashing.

[Da Bones]

I was wondering if its normal to not have a file located within documents? Since I don't see a Red Orchestra 2 folder within my games for some reason.

[Krammondo ✠]

Sorry but can this guide fix the crash of the game?
I have an issue with crashing when I join the server.

p.s. I use AMD drivers

[Paulie Gualtieri]

How to turn off grass,I have a low end pc

[Chisparex777]

Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in the responses, thanks for your support!!

[julien4z]

Another update: I had a new PC a few months ago which is less powerful but more recent, and now the game runs perfectly. Thanks for the help as well.

[kano]

THANK YOU THIS WAS REALLY HELPFUL