A compendium of tweaks and fixes for the PC version

[Domhnallaich]

Absolutely not, you can definitely use it with any another Texture Quality setting, but you're likely to see the most benefit from it when running High and Ultra quality textures (which are exactly the same visually, since the Ultra level only introduces larger TextureMipBias and TextureMemoryBudget values)!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I also have some fresh tweaking ideas for all you lovely PC ladies and gentlemen!

1) There is a video on YouTube instructing people to navigate to "...\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\x64" and delete the APEX_ClothingGPU_x64.dll file in order to get a sizable framerate gain (i.e. up to 10 FPS) on NVIDIA Kepler GPUs. Apparently this .dll is tied to the NVIDIA GameWorks library and is causing the PhysX calculations for realistic clothing simulation to get dumped on the GPU instead of the CPU, as was originally intended. By deleting this file, the CPU once again handles these calculations and your GPU gains a little headroom, improving your framerate!

However, since the video went online people on NeoGAF have reported the same framerate gains by setting the CPU as the PhysX processor in the NVIDIA Control Panel. Since then, the video author himself started recommending this tweak, rather than deleting the file from the x64 folder. You can find instructions on how to do this in the OP!

2) People with NVIDIA Kepler GPUs have been reporting some moderate but overall framerate gains (i.e. 3-6 FPS) when reverting back to the 347.88 drivers. Might be something we ought to try, since it's so easy to switch between drivers with NVIDIA's clean install option!

Thanks for the info. Do you know if Physx affects AMD video cards? Not sure how to check, if it is,I suppose deleting the DLL file will probably be the best way.

 

[Verrenus]

Hi,

Does anybody know how to adjust the sharpness of the game in one of the config files? Ingame you have off - low - high. I want something in the middle of low and high. How can i achieve this if its possible at all.

I tried sweetfx preset 1000 times better but i costs me to much fps.

Sure thing! Just open your user.settings file and tweak the following variable:

[PostProcess]
SharpenAmount=0

"0" means sharpening is off. Try entering "1", "2" or "3", then see how the game looks with those values and tweak the variable further up or down until it fits your personal preference!

Thanks for the info. Do you know if Physx affects AMD video cards? Not sure how to check, if it is,I suppose deleting the DLL file will probably be the best way.

It shouldn't and that is one of the reasons AMD GPUs are currently performing quite a lot better at this (sadly NVIDIA endorsed) title. You can always try to move it to another folder and see if your game benefits from it, but I think it's highly unlikely.

 

[Chapie]

Thanks for your help. I tried it but it doesnt work. Maybe its hard coded OFF - LOW - HIGH.

 

[Asmodean778]

Hi guys. I need your help! I have this annoying bug with my customised user.settings file that whenever I'm indoors and get close to certain shadows they disappear. It doesn't happen when I use the default Ultra settings.

Here's a quick video demonstrating the issue:
https://youtu.be/lUf2GtwAbvo

And here's my user.settings:

[Gameplay/EntityPool]
SpawnedLimit=150
[Hidden]
HasSetup=true
uiVerticalFrameScale=1
uiHorizontalFrameScale=1
[Localization]
SpeechLanguage=EN
TextLanguage=EN
[Viewport]
VSync=false
Resolution="1920x1080"
FullScreenMode=2
VSyncThreshold=0
OutputMonitor=-1
[System]
HWPreset=0
[Budget]
cvMaxAllowedLightsShadowTime=3
cvMaxAllowedApexDestroTickedTime=0.2
cvMaxAllowedGrass=60000
cvMaxAllowedDecalsDynamic=20
cvMaxAllowedDynMeshes=104857600
cvMaxAllowedChunksSkinnedTime=3.5
cvMaxAllowedTrianglesSkinned=100000
cvMaxAllowedDecalsSSTime=0.1
cvMaxAllowedLightsShadow=5
TerrainTileMipDataBudget=100
cvMaxAllowedApexTicked=60
cvMaxAllowedActiveEnvProbesTime=0.3
cvMaxAllowedStatTextures=514572800
cvMaxAllowedSpeedTree=5000
cvMaxAllowedLightsNonShadowsTime=0.2
cvMaxAllowedSpeedTreeTime=2.2
cvMaxAllowedChunksStatic=1500
cvMaxAllowedTrianglesStatic=500000
cvMaxAllowedHiresChunks=25
cvMaxAllowedDecalsDynamicTime=0.5
cvMaxAllowedLightsNonShadows=40
cvMaxAllowedChunksStaticTime=1.5
cvMaxAllowedChunksSkinned=400
cvMaxAllowedApexDestroTicked=40
cvMaxAllowedStatMeshes=409715200
TerrainTileMinTimeout=2
cvMaxAllowedHiresChunksTime=0.2
cvMaxAllowedApexTickedTime=0.5
cvMaxAllowedCharTextures=209715200
cvMaxAllowedParticlesCountTime=0.2
cvMaxAllowedParticlesCount=2000
cvMaxAllowedGrassTime=1.5
TerrainTileTimeout=10
OcclusionQueryAdditionalMemory=20
TerrainTileLoadingTimeout=5
cvMaxAllowedDecalsSS=160
[Audio]
Subtitles=true
[LoadingScreen/TCR]
ShowProgress=true
[Game]
DoNotPauseWhileStopped=false
[PostProcess]
AllowChromaticAberration=false
SharpenAmount=0
MotionBlurPositionTreshold=0.05
MotionBlurRotationTreshold=1
SSAOSolution=2
[Input]
PadVibrationEnabled=true
KeyboardCooldownSpeed=0.1
InvertCameraXOnMouse=false
InvertCameraYOnMouse=false
CameraAutoRotX=true
InvertCameraX=false
UIMouseSensitivity=1
CameraAutoRotY=true
RightStickCameraSensitivity=1
InvertCameraY=false
RightStickAimSensitivity=1
MouseSensitivity=0.5
[DLC]
DlcEnabled_dlc_001_001=1
DlcEnabled_dlc_002_001=1
[Gameplay]
Difficulty=0
[LevelOfDetail]
SwarmHideDistance=400
DecalsHideDistance=80
DimmerHideDistance=260
DynamicDecalsHideDistance=100
StripeHideDistance=120
[General]
ConfigVersion=1
[LoadingScreen/Editor]
Disabled=false
[LoadingOverlay/TCR]
FadeOutCooldownExtraTime=1
FadeInSpinnerTime=1
NoninteractiveSpinnerTime=3
FadeOutSpinnerTime=1
NoninteractiveEndCooldown=1
[Visuals]
InventoryBgColorScaleB=0.036
InventoryFixedLuminance=0.25
InventoryBgColorScaleG=0.034
MovieFramerate=60
GammaValue=0.8
InventoryBgColorScaleR=0.02
[Rendering]
GrassDensity=3600
TextureMipBias=-2
EnableDeferredLightsStencil=true
EnableHighPrecision=true
HiResEntityShadowsForceFullRes=true
CharacterShadowsFallbackDistance=40
TextureStreamingReduceGameplayLOD=false
DecalsSpawnDistanceCutoff=20
TextureStreamingHeadsDistanceLimit=20
GlobalOceanTesselationFactor=128
TextureStreamingCharacterDistanceLimit=70
CascadeShadowFadeTreshold=0.2
CascadeShadowDistanceScale2=3
MaxTextureAnizotropy=8
TextureStreamingDistanceLimit=60000
TextureMemoryBudget=2400
CascadeShadowDistanceScale3=3
MeshLODDistanceScale=2
ScaleformTextureUnstreamDelay=2.5
DecalsChance=1
TerrainReadAheadDistance=600
HairWorksLevel=2
MaxTextureAnisotropy=16
TerrainScreenSpaceErrorThreshold=1.6
MaxTerrainShadowAtlasCount=8
HardwareCursor=true
TextureInFlightCountBudget=12
TerrainErrorMetricMultiplier=6
CascadeShadowmapSize=4096
CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=4
MeshRenderingDistanceScale=2
CascadeShadowQuality=4
CascadeShadowDistanceScale1=4
[Input/Gestures]
EnableSwipe=true
EnablePan=true
EnableGestures=true
EnablePinch=true
[LoadingScreen]
FadeInTime=3
SkipShowWithAnyKey=true
GameRevealTime=3
SkipHideDelay=3
SkipInputDelay=0.25
FadeOutTime=1.5
SkipAutoshow=false
[Engine]
LimitFPS=60
[Rendering/SpeedTree]
GrassGenerationEfficiency=0.001
GrassDistanceScale=3
FoliageDistanceScale=3
FoliageShadowDistanceScale=108
GrassRingSize=16777216
[Save]
ShowCompatWarning=true
[Kinect]
Kinect=true
[Foliage]
MaxVisibilityDepth=48
[Streaming/Textures]
UseMipRefiner=true
ForceCinematicModeOn=true
CinematicModeMipBias=0
[Streaming/Sectors/Filter]
AllowRigidBodies=true

Any idea what specific setting causes this? I've gone through a few in a trial+error kind of method but with no luck.

EDIT: I found the culprit.
It was under rendering.ini; these two lines:
MaxCubeShadowSize=2048
MaxSpotShadowSize=2048

changed from 2048 to 1024. Game must not properly support higher resolution.

EDIT 2: It turns out that didn't solve the entire issue. I still have occasional shadow "flickering" indoors. I've run through most of the user.settings tweaks I've made and I can't seem to find the issue. The problem still disappears when I turn shadows in-game to "ultra" (aka dismiss my tweaks), so it's gotta be something I did.

Change MaxCubeShadowSize, and MaxSpotShadowSize back to 512. Read below for more info.

I mentioned this previously, in another thread (here). Forgot to post it here. Some tweaks cause problems (other than obvious ones like memory-related ones set incorrectly, etc)

 

[doktor1]

Where did you find these images, by the way?

In comments on nvidia guide page....

 

[CrocPoulet]

A tweak for people who experiment black screen with a driver lost issue for Nvidia GTX 970 OC

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/thre...l-a-fix-from-Nvida-CDPR?p=1719340#post1719340

 

[Asmodean778]

What is tweak for dynamic shadows?

I found this:
Vanilla
http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...482/A967B9A44B266B78FC0212AE97B0D4E0E9C9753B/
Moded
http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...226/D2796F5A675CC1A82E994DB38B6304C2BBD455B2/

Dynamic lighting is already in the game. Firstly - those two screenshots aren't even in the same spot. Dynamic lighting isn't done on a global "on/off", they're typically done on a local, area-by-area bases.

"All" lights in the game are supposed to be dynamic(apparently), but it looks like they missed some. Somebody spotted it, took a screenshot to show the difference.

 

[doktor1]

 

[Geralt_of_bsas]

Hey guys I've been having a problem that I'm yet to see mentioned in the forums and that I might be able to help with:

A special "type" of crash, more like a hang-up, occurs shortly after music seemingly stops loading while in the game world (not inventory or menu). Other elements stop loading too, like parts of the minimap, which start appearing all black, and icons of buffs losing the inner drawing and showing just like a black circle.

Once the game gets into this "state", if you open a menu or inventory or whatever, the game hangs up or crashes, and even if you keep playing without opening any of those the game eventually stops.
More importantly, this can happen always in the same place, same time, same saved game, so it might literally stop you from going somewhere or completing a quest. In my first time, it stopped me from going into a certain trap location during the first keira metz quest.

Now what I discovered, is that the game doesnt actually crash or stops permanently, its still loading, but very very slowly, so if you wait instead of killing the process, wait like more than 5 full minutes, the game might continue, music will return, and stuff will load. However even this might not allow you to continue fully, as the game can shortly return to the bad state again, so in that situation the best thing I've done so far, is just make the game load another "version" of the map again, and then save.

See, when you make your save, it appears as if the map where you are in gets stored and if thats "corrupted" with this problem or whatever, it continues to produce it in the exact same place always, so instead of going where it gets problematic, go to a sign post, move to white orchard or another map with fast travel, and then come back to the map you were in, chances are the problem will not be there anymore, maybe because its fully gone or because it moved to a different area, but whatever happened you can continue to play there now.

So if you ever forgot to save and reached a moment like this unexpectedly and dont want to lose progress, dont kill the game just yet, wait until it gets more stable back again, wait a long ass time, and then when music is back and menus and inventory can be loaded, save in another location and try to get to a sing post to fast travel, or just move on to do another quest if you want.

 

[shishimaru1000]

Some of the rendering.ini lines are the same as user's one. What's the difference? Should I keep them the same?

 

[Domhnallaich]

@varrenus I just tried the TextureMipBias=0 settings and noticed that this changes the in-game texture quality to Low. Is this supposed to happen? I thought one of the advantages of having the Texture set to High / Ultra is that is loads more textures into VRAM to avoid texture streaming.

---------- Updated at 08:22 PM ----------

Anyone able to get the AMD work around to work on hairworks? I have tried forcing tessellation on the driver but it makes zero impact to the hair.

 

[Asmodean778]

Hey guys I've been having a problem that I'm yet to see mentioned in the forums and that I might be able to help with:

A special "type" of crash, more like a hang-up, occurs shortly after music seemingly stops loading while in the game world (not inventory or menu). Other elements stop loading too, like parts of the minimap, which start appearing all black, and icons of buffs losing the inner drawing and showing just like a black circle.

Once the game gets into this "state", if you open a menu or inventory or whatever, the game hangs up or crashes, and even if you keep playing without opening any of those the game eventually stops.
More importantly, this can happen always in the same place, same time, same saved game, so it might literally stop you from going somewhere or completing a quest. In my first time, it stopped me from going into a certain trap location during the first keira metz quest.

Now what I discovered, is that the game doesnt actually crash or stops permanently, its still loading, but very very slowly, so if you wait instead of killing the process, wait like more than 5 full minutes, the game might continue, music will return, and stuff will load. However even this might not allow you to continue fully, as the game can shortly return to the bad state again, so in that situation the best thing I've done so far, is just make the game load another "version" of the map again, and then save.

See, when you make your save, it appears as if the map where you are in gets stored and if thats "corrupted" with this problem or whatever, it continues to produce it in the exact same place always, so instead of going where it gets problematic, go to a sign post, move to white orchard or another map with fast travel, and then come back to the map you were in, chances are the problem will not be there anymore, maybe because its fully gone or because it moved to a different area, but whatever happened you can continue to play there now.

So if you ever forgot to save and reached a moment like this unexpectedly and dont want to lose progress, dont kill the game just yet, wait until it gets more stable back again, wait a long ass time, and then when music is back and menus and inventory can be loaded, save in another location and try to get to a sing post to fast travel, or just move on to do another quest if you want.

If you're using GoG Galaxy, or Steam. Try verifying your game's cache / files with those. It sounds like either A: a hardware issue, or B: something of the game's file system is corrupt.

Some of the rendering.ini lines are the same as user's one. What's the difference? Should I keep them the same?

For an answer to that, see this post.

@varrenus I just tried the TextureMipBias=0 settings and noticed that this changes the in-game texture quality to Low. Is this supposed to happen? I thought one of the advantages of having the Texture set to High / Ultra is that is loads more textures into VRAM to avoid texture streaming.

Ignore that. If you make tweaks to the defined preset options, outside of their normal predefined setting values. The game's GUI doesn't know what to make of it, so it just returns default low on the sliders. It's not actually on low. It's just the GUI isn't coded to take tweaking into account. i.e. there's no "custom" value for the sliders to show if they're changed.

 

[jonwd7]

@varrenus I just tried the TextureMipBias=0 settings and noticed that this changes the in-game texture quality to Low. Is this supposed to happen? I thought one of the advantages of having the Texture set to High / Ultra is that is loads more textures into VRAM to avoid texture streaming.

If ANY of the INI values associated with a certain quality level are not what they are supposed to be, the in-game menu reports "Low" for that category. It's basically the same as it saying "Custom". The Texture Quality is not actually set to Low or you'd definitely notice.

 

[Domhnallaich]

Thanks folks.

---------- Updated at 09:04 PM ----------

Change MaxCubeShadowSize, and MaxSpotShadowSize back to 512. Read below for more info.

I mentioned this previously, in another thread (here). Forgot to post it here. Some tweaks cause problems (other than obvious ones like memory-related ones set incorrectly, etc)

I just noticed some shadow pop issues. I am at the Bloody Barons place and I see wall shadows appear when I am a few feet away and vanosh as I walk away. I tried adjusting the settings you mentioned but they were already set like ths (apart from extureStreamingReduceGameplayLOD) - I am trying to upload a video to YouTube but is taking ages. It's pretty similar to the YouTube video posted with the only difference being that it is the opposite (extra shadows appear as you get close, not dissapear)

 

[natty.dread.011]

I was wondering if anyone can help me concerning the user.settings defaulting out all of a sudden.
Everything was fine all this time - I have a tweaked user.settings set to read-only and when I get in the game the sliders correlating to the changes I made are set to low as it should be but now everything is set to ultra and even in post process everything is turned on (even tho I disabled motion blur, blur and AA).
If I delete the user.settings it's auto-generated with read-only set on it. Is that normal? I don't think it was read-only at first.
I'm still on 1.03
All I did was upgrade my GPU but I can't possibly see how that's related.

 

[Geralt_of_bsas]

@Asmodean778

"If you're using GoG Galaxy, or Steam. Try verifying your game's cache / files with those. It sounds like either A: a hardware issue, or B: something of the game's file system is corrupt."

Yeah thanks for the suggestion I was thinking about that but got kind of lazy playing

I dont have it installed either by galaxy or steam, but my stand alone installation got sort of recognized in galaxy, so maybe i can do that.

I doubt its a hardware issue when a saved game does the exact same thing over an over in the exact same place, all with different settings, configurations and all, unless hardware somehow ruined a save, by I never heard of anything similar.

Probably something about the files, but im also afraid of reinstalling and screwing something else up since the game is running very well for me. Might try if it gets worse.

 

[BrotherCool]

@varrenus I just tried the TextureMipBias=0 settings and noticed that this changes the in-game texture quality to Low. Is this supposed to happen? I thought one of the advantages of having the Texture set to High / Ultra is that is loads more textures into VRAM to avoid texture streaming.

Anyone able to get the AMD work around to work on hairworks? I have tried forcing tessellation on the driver but it makes zero impact to the hair.

Hey, if you want texturemipbias=0 to be true for other settings than low and medium, you need to open your rendering.xml file and find the line
<Entry varId="TextureMipBias" value="-0.4 for high and -1.0 for ultra"/> and change it to 0
When you go in game, reselect your texture setting, by selecting low, medium, whatever you don't use and then selecting high/ultra again

 

[Witcherman]

Dynamic lighting is already in the game. Firstly - those two screenshots aren't even in the same spot. Dynamic lighting isn't done on a global "on/off", they're typically done on a local, area-by-area bases.

"All" lights in the game are supposed to be dynamic(apparently), but it looks like they missed some. Somebody spotted it, took a screenshot to show the difference.

I haven't tested it out too much but it seems that during cutscenes all lights start working as they should unlike when you're out of a cutscene. It's a shame that the "ForceCinematicModeOn" setting you found doesn't seem to do anything.

 

[Verrenus]

Thanks for your help. I tried it but it doesnt work. Maybe its hard coded OFF - LOW - HIGH.

No problem, Chapie! I just checked my own user.settings and my SharpenAmount is currently at "1", since I have Sharpening set to "Low" via the in-game options menu. This means that the effect is probably hardcoded to either "0" (Off), "1" (Low) and "2" (High). I'm very sorry this didn't work out for you in the end!

Change MaxCubeShadowSize, and MaxSpotShadowSize back to 512. Read below for more info.

I mentioned this previously, in another thread (here). Forgot to post it here. Some tweaks cause problems (other than obvious ones like memory-related ones set incorrectly, etc)

That is indeed something to bear in mind, thank you very much for pointing this out, Asmodean!

A tweak for people who experiment black screen with a driver lost issue for Nvidia GTX 970 OC

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/thre...l-a-fix-from-Nvida-CDPR?p=1719340#post1719340

Thank you very much for sharing it with us, CrocPoulet! Hopefully someone who is still struggling will make good use of it!

Dynamic lighting is already in the game. Firstly - those two screenshots aren't even in the same spot. Dynamic lighting isn't done on a global "on/off", they're typically done on a local, area-by-area bases.

"All" lights in the game are supposed to be dynamic(apparently), but it looks like they missed some. Somebody spotted it, took a screenshot to show the difference.

I see now, thank you for clearing that up! Given the ginormous size of the game, I am really not surprised a lot of lights are missing some dynamic magic. Maybe this is something CD Projekt RED will address properly for The Witcher 3: Enhanced Edition!

I was wondering if anyone can help me concerning the user.settings defaulting out all of a sudden.
Everything was fine all this time - I have a tweaked user.settings set to read-only and when I get in the game the sliders correlating to the changes I made are set to low as it should be but now everything is set to ultra and even in post process everything is turned on (even tho I disabled motion blur, blur and AA).
If I delete the user.settings it's auto-generated with read-only set on it. Is that normal? I don't think it was read-only at first.
I'm still on 1.03
All I did was upgrade my GPU but I can't possibly see how that's related.

Upgrading your GPU is exactly the reason your in-game settings changed and your user.settings file got modified!

The game is set to automatically adjust its settings to certain parameters when you first start it. When you upgraded your GPU, the game recognised this and upped your settings because your new GPU is clearly more powerful than the last! I'm not sure why your user.settings file got modified, given that it was read-only, but you should be able to redo all of your tweaks and not worry about them being overwritten any longer.

Congratulations on your upgrade, by the way, may it serve you well for many years of quality gaming!

Hey, if you want texturemipbias=0 to be true for other settings than low and medium, you need to open your rendering.xml file and find the line
<Entry varId="TextureMipBias" value="-0.4 for high and -1.0 for ultra"/> and change it to 0
When you go in game, reselect your texture setting, by selecting low, medium, whatever you don't use and then selecting high/ultra again

That's great to know, BrotherCool, thank you very much for sharing this with us!

I haven't tested it out too much but it seems that during cutscenes all lights start working as they should unlike when you're out of a cutscene. It's a shame that the "ForceCinematicModeOn" setting you found doesn't seem to do anything.

That's indeed a shame, since I was planning on testing it myself tonight and I was hoping it did just that - make all light sources behave like they do in cutscenes. Oh well, thank you very much for clearing this up!

 

[Domhnallaich]

This thread is very much in the spirit of The Witcher community, I just wanted to say a huge thanks to everyone for their tweaks and ideas, I love this community. Thanks for all your help.