More knowledgeable feedback and detailed settings... perfect! Some of these parameters are in both user.settings and rendering.ini, I presume I need to match the settings in both right?
Thanks!
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More knowledgeable feedback and detailed settings... perfect! Some of these parameters are in both user.settings and rendering.ini, I presume I need to match the settings in both right?
Thanks!
Only if it doesn't exist in user.settings, but then you can just add the value to user.settings and it will override rendering.ini. Rendering.ini is just a base.
Unless some INI options *must* exist in Rendering.ini and are not allowed in user.settings, I think you never have to touch it.
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Also, increasing the CascadeShadowDistanceScale2 and CascadeShadowDistanceScale3 doesn't really do much without higher-than-Ultra Foliage Distance.
See my previous post here.
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@jonwd7 Hey quick question. What kind of specs you working with on your pc? Are you at or above 60 fps with your settings?
I have an i7-4790k cpu, gtx 980 gpu and 16 gb ram and I find with all settings on ultra (or more) and no hairworks, I cant seem to get the foilage and grass distance scales above 1 without dipping under 60fps. I like keeping 60fps first and foremost, then trying to max everything as much as possible. I really love how the game looks with higher distance scales, but my fps drops too much and makes me sad.
I have an i7-4790k cpu, gtx 980 gpu and 16 gb ram and I find with all settings on ultra (or more) and no hairworks, I cant seem to get the foilage and grass distance scales above 1 without dipping under 60fps. I like keeping 60fps first and foremost, then trying to max everything as much as possible. I really love how the game looks with higher distance scales, but my fps drops too much and makes me sad.
In my case the setting MaxCascadeCount is only present in rendering.ini and not in user.settings. Should I add it to user.settings or leave it alone?
Regarding CascadeShadowDistanceScale2 and CascadeShadowDistanceScale3 in my case I guess I will not adjust it since my distance foliage is set to High in-game.
One more thing if you don't mind, regarding Shadow Map res base, what is the exact parameter? I found CascadeShadowmapSize=2048 in my user.setting and CascadeShadowmapSize=1024 in rendering.ini
Cheers!
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@jonwd7 Hey quick question. What kind of specs you working with on your pc? Are you at or above 60 fps with your settings?
I have an i7-4790k cpu, gtx 980 gpu and 16 gb ram and I find with all settings on ultra (or more) and no hairworks, I cant seem to get the foilage and grass distance scales above 1 without dipping under 60fps. I like keeping 60fps first and foremost, then trying to max everything as much as possible. I really love how the game looks with higher distance scales, but my fps drops too much and makes me sad.
I have the same CPU oced @4.7, same 16GB RAM but a GTX770 4GB. With the latest drivers I even run hairworks on (Iove it on the animals/monsters) and everything Ultra except Background characters, Shadows and Distant Foliage, those are set at High and get FPS between 35-50. I'm quite happy
No.. I game at 1440p with Hairworks and HBAO+ and so 60FPS is basically always out of my reach.
I am similar to you... I have a 3930K (6-core), GTX 980, 32GB RAM. I get about 45FPS on average and I don't mind the framerate at all. Of course, I would love 60FPS, so that's why I'm already in line for a Step-Up through EVGA. I got the 980 two months ago with the Witcher 3 promotion, and now it's going to cost $97 to upgrade to a GTX 980 Ti, but it's completely worth it to me.
Comparing vanilla clocks, the 980 Ti does nearly 30% better than the 980 at 1440p. Additionally, the 980 Ti seems to overclock really well (16% FPS increase in Witcher 3), though who knows how Witcher 3 will deal with it given it hates OCing. I OC slightly on top of my factory overclock though, so let's pretend the 980 Ti at stock clocks will only be 20% faster. If I can overclock it 16% that's still a 40% increase.
So once I get a 980 Ti I expect to go from 45 avg to 60 avg easily.
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The only suggestion I can think of offhand is to lower your Foliage Density to High if it's set at Ultra. That may give you a few FPS, and I really didn't notice a difference in density. Also, prefer to increase FoliageDistanceScale first, and GrassDistanceScale second. Grass is always a framerate killer, but the lack of shadows on distant trees is way more noticeable to me.
I am pretty certain they ruined the GrassDistanceScale in the last patch anyway, because in those large fields of wheat, the default Ultra preset of GrassDistanceScale=1.5 now looks really awful, and there is a lot of pop-in. Whereas before I am pretty certain I could see the entire fields at 1.5. So, I haven't proven it but I think the "new" 1.5 (Ultra default) is more like 3.0.
It seems from your CascadeShadowmapSize=2048 value that you have Shadows set at High. The 1024 value is Low or Medium and that's the default apparently (Rendering.ini holds the default values).
So, given that you don't have Shadows at Ultra anyway, I wouldn't bother with increasing MaxCascadeCount, especially if you are putting Shadows at High to save FPS. Though you can increase the 0/1 cascades a bit to alleviate some of the weird cascade transition glitches. (Edit: Though I recommend increasing CascadeShadowDistanceScale1 to 2 at most)
Also, just an FYI in case you don't know. If you tweak any of the shadow values the in-game menu will falsely report that the Shadow Quality is set to Low, but the game is actually reading the INI settings just fine.
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CascadeShadowQuality
So, CascadeShadowQuality=1 vs CascadeShadowQuality=4 does absolutely nothing for me, despite what the Nvidia tweak guide shows. I am guessing it's some kind of shadow multi- or super- sampling and maybe it was broke in a patch or they disabled it. I even watched some tree branch shadows in motion and they are just as aliased with either setting. I took a bunch of before/after photos, but there is no point in including them because the images are identical.
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CascadeShadowDistanceScale
I took some more images and I am rather pleased with the increases to image quality that the tweaks provide.
The user.settings for Shadow Quality was set to Ultra preset for shadows for the before. The after is using:
CascadeShadowDistanceScale0
This is relevant to the interiors "bug" with shadows.
CascadeShadowDistanceScale1 (and possibly CascadeShadowDistanceScale2)
You can see the full-size images in my gallery here. (Fastest way to view full-size is to click "All" at the bottom and then click "Fullscreen" in the sidebar on the next page)
Re: CascadeShadowDistanceScale3, I'm not positive at what distance it actually kicks in at by default, but I will eventually get around to testing. However it will probably also require higher-than-Ultra values for Foliage Distance.
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Re: Performance... Cost appeared to be negligible. In the interior shot it was 41FPS before, 42FPS after. In the exterior it was 48FPS before, 47FPS after. Could simply be a rounding issue.
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Re: Reduction in shadow resolution... If you look at the full-size images, the near shadows look identical to me. If there is a reduction in quality I certainly can't tell.
So, CascadeShadowQuality=1 vs CascadeShadowQuality=4 does absolutely nothing for me, despite what the Nvidia tweak guide shows. I am guessing it's some kind of shadow multi- or super- sampling and maybe it was broke in a patch or they disabled it. I even watched some tree branch shadows in motion and they are just as aliased with either setting. I took a bunch of before/after photos, but there is no point in including them because the images are identical.
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CascadeShadowDistanceScale
I took some more images and I am rather pleased with the increases to image quality that the tweaks provide.
The user.settings for Shadow Quality was set to Ultra preset for shadows for the before. The after is using:
Code:
CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=2
CascadeShadowDistanceScale1=2
CascadeShadowDistanceScale2=2.5
CascadeShadowDistanceScale3=2.5CascadeShadowDistanceScale0
This is relevant to the interiors "bug" with shadows.
CascadeShadowDistanceScale1 (and possibly CascadeShadowDistanceScale2)
You can see the full-size images in my gallery here. (Fastest way to view full-size is to click "All" at the bottom and then click "Fullscreen" in the sidebar on the next page)
Re: CascadeShadowDistanceScale3, I'm not positive at what distance it actually kicks in at by default, but I will eventually get around to testing. However it will probably also require higher-than-Ultra values for Foliage Distance.
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Re: Performance... Cost appeared to be negligible. In the interior shot it was 41FPS before, 42FPS after. In the exterior it was 48FPS before, 47FPS after. Could simply be a rounding issue.
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Re: Reduction in shadow resolution... If you look at the full-size images, the near shadows look identical to me. If there is a reduction in quality I certainly can't tell.
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Other people's references to "lower than low" settings still looking quite decent..I have to agree with. After playing on the desktop all week I find myself leaving home/back on the laptop (i7 3635QM+Radeon 8770M 12GB + 1GB). Mid 20s frame rates (in the teens quite often) just isn't that great of an experience after after a week of spoiling on the HTPC rig. Lowered the triangle budgets, particles,grass density, scaled back shadows severely. Yes objects at medium/far distances come and go, complex tree shadows fade in and out sometimes. Noticeable (though rare) odd looking terrain drawing at the water's edge (mainly in Novigrad for some reason). The game engine seems quite suited to scaling back as it seems to properly favor resource allocation to close in "stuff". It's still the Witcher3. Gameplay is more responsive when the GPU load isn't pegged, so I locked it to 30hz and FPS pretty much sits there. Awesome. My comment is: Top shelf graphics enhance a good game, but a excellent game isn't necessarily any less enjoyable with more modest rendering. With the tweaks I applied it looks like Fallout3 (with HD textures). Mind you Fallout 3 was and is still an excellent game. Scaled back rendering for lesser (but still capable) hardware doesn't make the Witcher3 any less engaging either. On a 15" screen what I see looks quite adequate, the trick seems to be balancing resources to keep objects/characters reasonably detailed. When it comes to gaming laptops hardware costs a bundle but only keeps pace with new titles for a year (as opposed to desktop hardware that good for 2-3). When playing on the laptop I don't expect it to look as good as the desktop rig. This is a note to developers in general (not just CDPR): If the game actually is worth playing you can make graphics scalable to something between PS3-PS4 quality, it still looks reasonably convincing. As time goes by the masses aren't going to be content using landlocked desktop or console hardware, I'm there already. Portable hardware will never be able to match what can be done on a landlocked machine but ultimately is the future of gaming. Scalability is the key and those that refuse to allocate significant R&D to this area, at some point, gamers are largely going to forget about you. If the next gen consoles (after PS4/XBO) are still designed as landlocked + broadband they're likely to be doomed. The performance level of the 14 month old "capable" $2k laptop I have now will equate to the average APU machine for $400 in a couple more years, if not sooner. Developers would be foolish to ignore them in leau of pressing CGI or bust... Devs should be thinking about game engines that internally test/track GPU resources (bandwidth, fill rates, draw capabilities etc) and tweak stuff on the fly (like what can be fiddled with in user.setttings). Settings would be replace by preferences: "target framerate", "Detailed environment -vs- Smooth lines", etc. On a top end rig these settings would have little/no effect, as the engine would sense the resources aren't tapped and just stay pegged at "ultra". Food for thought.
Ok guys, so it seems that last night, after playing for 35+ hours in total, I had my first problems with The Witcher 3 in the form of a severe system lock-up that I had to "reset" out of!
It happened while I was trying to fast travel between Crow's Perch (Velen) and Woesong Bridge (White Orchard) - as soon as I double-clicked (not pressed "E" on) the Woesong Bridge fast travel point on the map, the loading screen came up, but this time the narration started to turn on and off intermittently, my framerate plummeted to "0.0" (as shown by RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), which I'm using to cap the game at 60 FPS) and my system became completely unresponsive. After a few minutes of seeing that no key combination can return it to operating condition, I pressed the "Reset" button on the case with a heavy heart...
Thankfully, I save my games quite often and my save files were also completely fine after the reboot, but GOG Galaxy completely lost track of the approximately 3 hours that I was playing before the lock-up, as well as likely any achievements that I might have unlocked. I know a lot of people do not care about play timekeeping and achievements, but I'm a completionist with games that I truly love and this soured my evening somewhat.
Only after I had shutdown my PC did I realise that I hadn't checked my system's "Event Viewer" to see exactly what happened before and during the lock-up. I will do so this evening after work and report back with my findings! I personally think it was caused by memory starvation due to some weird engine bug or memory leak, but we'll have to see.
Did anything like this ever happen to you, guys? :-
I posted something about a problem with some similarities to this one in this same thread:
Basically crashes, hang ups or hard locks after sounds/music and possibly other things start to go on and off or go away entirely.
My advice is that if it happens again, wait a long time, in my case the game was still running but it took so long that the first few times I thought I had to reboot or kill the process like you, but after some experimentation the game eventually loaded or continued. You might not be able to play just fine after that, but it can be enough to save and quit the game so that you dont loose progress or Galaxy stats.
Takes some time though, like, go make yourself a sandwich or something and then comeback to see what happened lol
PD: I was having an issue like this always in the same place, making it impossible for me to play a certain part, so I sent a saved game file to CDPR and explained everything, and while the guy played it several times and couldnt recreate the problem, he did the section for me and emailed me a save with all the loot and stuff hehe, very nice support i must say.
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Can anyone confirm if the new nvidia drivers (353.06) offer any performance boost for GT970 graphic cards? I read some great things for the 700 and 600 series but i didn't find anything concrete about the 900 series. As of now i can't decide if i should upgrade. I have intel i-5 3400 series, 8 gb ram, 970 nvidia card. I play 1080p with hairworks on, everything on ultra except shadows on high, HBAO+. I have 38-45 fps.
Follow-up Re: CascadeShadowDistanceScale0
Original Post
It would appear that the closest shadow cascade (the '0' cascade) actually "turns off" in some interiors, like Triss's house near Hierarch Square. From what I can tell there is no way to avoid both issues, in some interiors the dithered edge issue occurs as you get further away from the shadows, and in others it occurs when you get closer.
A possible "plus" of increasing CascadeShadowDistanceScale0 is that in many of the interiors where the '0' cascade "turns off" that basically the entire room will be covered with the '0' cascade and so you won't see any shadows at all and thus not see the shadows disappear as you get close to them. I use "plus" loosely here.
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When I say "turns off", in actuality what appears to be happening is that the meshes in interiors are "flagged" at a certain cascade level, i.e. the '0/1/2/3' cascades. Large objects will be rendered in each cascade (0+1+2+3), whereas tiny objects will only be rendered in the 0 cascade. Medium-sized objects will be rendered in the 0+1 cascades.
So:
1. In the interiors where you walk toward a shadow and it starts to disappear, this interior is not "flagged" to show in the '0' cascade. But it is flagged in the '1' cascade.
2. In the interiors where you walk away from a shadow and it starts to disappear, this interior is not "flagged" to show in the '1' cascade. But it is flagged in the '0' cascade.
Ultimately CDPR will need to fix this if it bothers enough people. We can't fix it on our end, at least not until REDKit 2, and maybe not even then. I am guessing that each mesh is flagged with what shadow cascade levels it should render in. This may or may not be editable via REDKit 2 when it is released.
Original Post
It would appear that the closest shadow cascade (the '0' cascade) actually "turns off" in some interiors, like Triss's house near Hierarch Square. From what I can tell there is no way to avoid both issues, in some interiors the dithered edge issue occurs as you get further away from the shadows, and in others it occurs when you get closer.
A possible "plus" of increasing CascadeShadowDistanceScale0 is that in many of the interiors where the '0' cascade "turns off" that basically the entire room will be covered with the '0' cascade and so you won't see any shadows at all and thus not see the shadows disappear as you get close to them. I use "plus" loosely here.
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When I say "turns off", in actuality what appears to be happening is that the meshes in interiors are "flagged" at a certain cascade level, i.e. the '0/1/2/3' cascades. Large objects will be rendered in each cascade (0+1+2+3), whereas tiny objects will only be rendered in the 0 cascade. Medium-sized objects will be rendered in the 0+1 cascades.
So:
1. In the interiors where you walk toward a shadow and it starts to disappear, this interior is not "flagged" to show in the '0' cascade. But it is flagged in the '1' cascade.
2. In the interiors where you walk away from a shadow and it starts to disappear, this interior is not "flagged" to show in the '1' cascade. But it is flagged in the '0' cascade.
Ultimately CDPR will need to fix this if it bothers enough people. We can't fix it on our end, at least not until REDKit 2, and maybe not even then. I am guessing that each mesh is flagged with what shadow cascade levels it should render in. This may or may not be editable via REDKit 2 when it is released.
Thank you very much for sharing this with us!
I don't think any of this will make a noticeable difference in-game, especially since the video author is also using the in-game 60 FPS limiter which has been known to introduce frame-pacing issues (i.e. stuttering) in and of itself. Of course, this might be useful to people who have implemented too many tweaks and lost track of them, but I personally think this is just placebo.
Oops. I too use in-game 60 FPS limiter. What happens if you turn it off? Do you get an increase/decrease in framerate?
A little help please?
I've been trying to get the ReShader and SweetFX to work as stated in the OP. When I open the game, I see the little text overlay saying its working but I dont see any actual difference in the graphics, also pressing ScrLK doesn't seem to change anything. Not sure what else to do
I've been trying to get the ReShader and SweetFX to work as stated in the OP. When I open the game, I see the little text overlay saying its working but I dont see any actual difference in the graphics, also pressing ScrLK doesn't seem to change anything. Not sure what else to do
A little help please?
I've been trying to get the ReShader and SweetFX to work as stated in the OP. When I open the game, I see the little text overlay saying its working but I dont see any actual difference in the graphics, also pressing ScrLK doesn't seem to change anything. Not sure what else to do
Hey there. Have you swapped SweetFX_settings.txt that appears after you've installed SweetFX with SweetFX_settings.txt from a preset of choice?
Toggling it on and off by pressing ScrollLock I think is screwed right now but I se the difference in mine right from the get-go. Let's hope more knowledgable forumite eight up on this soon as I can't think of anything else that might help.
I'd have to see his settings and what files he's used. Different postprocessing setups can use different files (sweetfx_settings.cfg rather than sweetfx_settings.txt for instance). I'd guess he's mixed and matched. I'd recommend he delete all the files he installed then just download a different zip with everything and extract it into x64. This one, say: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/105/? or perhaps https://sfx.thelazy.net/games/preset/3712/
then adjust as desired
But what I can help with is toggling. Bring up the Steam overlay and it works. (you can add Witcher 3 in Steam as a non-Steam game if you have the GoG version).
So to toggle: tap shift-tab, then hit scroll lock, then shift-tab (assuming you're setup has scroll-lock as the toggle key).
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Follow-up Re: CascadeShadowDistanceScale0
Original Post
It would appear that the closest shadow cascade (the '0' cascade) actually "turns off" in some interiors, like Triss's house near Hierarch Square. From what I can tell there is no way to avoid both issues, in some interiors the dithered edge issue occurs as you get further away from the shadows, and in others it occurs when you get closer.
A possible "plus" of increasing CascadeShadowDistanceScale0 is that in many of the interiors where the '0' cascade "turns off" that basically the entire room will be covered with the '0' cascade and so you won't see any shadows at all and thus not see the shadows disappear as you get close to them. I use "plus" loosely here.
---
When I say "turns off", in actuality what appears to be happening is that the meshes in interiors are "flagged" at a certain cascade level, i.e. the '0/1/2/3' cascades. Large objects will be rendered in each cascade (0+1+2+3), whereas tiny objects will only be rendered in the 0 cascade. Medium-sized objects will be rendered in the 0+1 cascades.
So:
1. In the interiors where you walk toward a shadow and it starts to disappear, this interior is not "flagged" to show in the '0' cascade. But it is flagged in the '1' cascade.
2. In the interiors where you walk away from a shadow and it starts to disappear, this interior is not "flagged" to show in the '1' cascade. But it is flagged in the '0' cascade.
Ultimately CDPR will need to fix this if it bothers enough people. We can't fix it on our end, at least not until REDKit 2, and maybe not even then. I am guessing that each mesh is flagged with what shadow cascade levels it should render in. This may or may not be editable via REDKit 2 when it is released.
Thanks for all your work jonwd7, those sceeen shot galleries show a markedly better image quality with the shadows. I haven't started playing yet, waiting for more patches, but given the above post then what do you recommend for the cascade settings? Keep to the ones in your previous post or have you changed your mind with the above revelation?
Well, in interiors where the meshes aren't flagged for the nearest shadow cascade, you're going to have the issue no matter what your CascadeShadowDistanceScale0 value is (except 0, but that's a terrible idea!
). It's noticeable at 1, and it's noticeable at 2. But it's probably less noticeable at 2 since the cascade covers a wider area and thus more of the interior will be without shadows (so you may never see the issue). Depending on the time of day, you might not even know what windows are even supposed to be receiving sunlight so a complete lack of shadows might be preferable to shadows suddenly vanishing as you near them.So, for the interiors with the incorrect cascade flags, you have two options. Make the '0' cascade large enough so that you just don't see sunlight shadows in those interiors, or leave the '0' cascade at 1 and deal with shadows disappearing as you approach them. Obviously this isn't ideal, and the third option would be to fix those interiors.
Generally speaking, increasing the '0' cascade scale will put the 0<->1 transition further away from you, meaning any oddities with one mesh not being flagged for the other cascade will at least take up less of the screen. There are lots of small objects that aren't flagged to render in the '1' cascade, so if the 0<->1 transition is close to you you're much more likely to see these shadows pop in.
Honestly it took me a while to even find an interior with any sunlight whatsoever. Maybe that was because the ones I entered were so small that the '0' cascade covered the entire area, or maybe because they have tiny windows and only get sun at very specific times of day.
It seems CDPR limited the amount of buildings with sizable windows so they could employ a more aggressive occlusion culling strategy.----
So I say go ahead and increase CascadeShadowDistanceScale0. It fixes interiors with the inverse issue at least, and the number of these interiors could actually be more common, but I haven't catalogued which interiors have which type of cascade issue.
I can try to find more examples of small objects not appearing in the '1' cascade in exteriors. Though I believe this Nvidia comparison shows it. The stool to the right is flagged only to be rendered by the '0' cascade for example.
A little help please?
I've been trying to get the ReShader and SweetFX to work as stated in the OP. When I open the game, I see the little text overlay saying its working but I dont see any actual difference in the graphics, also pressing ScrLK doesn't seem to change anything. Not sure what else to do
If you want the toggle to work, just use the previous version reshade 16.
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