A compendium of tweaks and fixes for the PC version

[Verrenus]

No problem at all, Calvin, I'm glad to be of help, especially since I use ReShade + SweetFX with every game I play. Once I saw how good games can look with even minor changes to colour, contrast and sharpening, I simply could not stand their vanilla look anymore!

That being said, I would like to remind everyone that the current ReShade + SweetFX version in the OP is just a placeholder at the moment. While I'm 99% sure that tutorial will be correct come launch, it still needs proper testing, which I'm just itching to do!

 

[Sapath]

why would you regret your purchase?

Because Nvidia has been pulling some dirty business practices lately, and I feel bad for giving them my money. Still have the 30-day return window, so no problems there

Anyway, I wonder how tweakable the LOD settings will be. It will be the first thing I will look up here.

 

[CheekyNand0s]

Thanks for going the extra mile and prepping this thread! Will be watching closely...

 

[Verrenus]

Because Nvidia has been pulling some dirty business practices lately, and I feel bad for giving them my money. Still have the 30-day return window, so no problems there

Anyway, I wonder how tweakable the LOD settings will be. It will be the first thing I will look up here.

Oh yes, the GTX 970 video memory debacle! Sorry, I had forgotten about that, but still, the GTX 980 has no such problems and will definitely last you for a long time now. Just think about Batman: Arkham Knight and Metal Gear Solid V coming up later this year!

As for the LOD being tweakable, there's a lot of such variables that in the game's .xml files. I am fairly sure all of them can be tweaked manually, even if you can't normally access those settings from the in-game menu!

Thanks for going the extra mile and prepping this thread! Will be watching closely...

Thank you for your kind words and I'm sure you're going to enjoy the OP in a few days!

 

[Sardukhar]

Nice work, Verrenus

 

[Vestinious]

Bookmarked and thank you very much for your info and help

 

[Verrenus]

Nice work, Verrenus

Thank you very much, I really appreciate the support!

By the way, your username sounds almost like "Sardaukar", the Padishah Emperor's elite military forces in Frank Herbert's Dune universe.

Bookmarked and thank you very much for your info and help

Thank you for the vote of confidence, Vestinious, I aim to bring you only the best information!

 

[ghostwalkr]

What are the chances to have this topic pinned at the top?
Would hate to see this get 'lost' once more people start playing the game and they start to post topics in this section.

 

[Vestinious]

I vote for a sticky as well for the very same reasons you have stated.

 

[Verrenus]

What are the chances to have this topic pinned at the top?
Would hate to see this get 'lost' once more people start playing the game and they start to post topics in this section.

I vote for a sticky as well for the very same reasons you have stated.

Believe me, I would like that as much as you guys! My similar thread for Dragon Age: Inquisition always gets buried under countless others, but then again I posted it under the general non-spoilers forum because BioWare chose to move their tech support to EA's Answer HQ. <_<

If Sardukhar or any of the other mods deem the thread worthy enough to be stickied, I'm sure they will make it so in the following days. Nixxes themselves stickied my Thief tweaks and fixes thread after a while and I would be greatly humbled if the Witcher mods would lend their support to our cause as well! :respect:

---------- Updated at 09:49 PM ----------

It seems I managed to get a hold of the Day 1 patch notes for all systems and I've updated the OP's Appendix section with the URL. They don't give a lot of specific details, but RED promised a framerate increase across the board, so let's hope for the best and, above all, that the servers will be able to hold in the face of enormous demand tomorrow night! :up:

 

[Jasheon]

I thought the day 1 patch increased visual fidelity from what i read on other forums? The patch notes mentions nothing about any kind of increase in gfx.

 

[D4rKy2014]

I need to correct this save file thing, u dont need to make a seperate savefile for the witcher 3 steam version, if u have already the witcher 2 on steam, it wil automaticly find your safe and plays it i gues because there is no other way.

Also the witcher 2 on steam is steam cloud binded, even when u switch it off, so its pretty imposible to get the safe files, just start the witcher 3 while u have your lastsave on the witcher 2 it should find it automaticly.

And another thing is steam cloud saves are saved in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\32441366\20920\remote and even if u copie them to witcher 2 savemap then the game still dont see them because they are steam cloud based,.

so i am not really sure how this works with steam and the witcher 2 and 3, lets wait for an official respons from the developers hopefuly verry soon.

 

[Calvin132]

No problem at all, Calvin, I'm glad to be of help, especially since I use ReShade + SweetFX with every game I play. Once I saw how good games can look with even minor changes to colour, contrast and sharpening, I simply could not stand their vanilla look anymore!

That being said, I would like to remind everyone that the current ReShade + SweetFX version in the OP is just a placeholder at the moment. While I'm 99% sure that tutorial will be correct come launch, it still needs proper testing, which I'm just itching to do!

This is actually my first time using SweetFX haha, and especially for this game, its nice to see such a detailed guide on this matter : )

I was wondering however, if you can clarify this one concern of mine when adjusting the parameters for the game? I'm not too familiar with the sensitivity of the parameters and how much it would change per setting - does the program allow some sort of side by side comparison? Or will I need to load the game everytime I make new adjustments?

Thanks for the hard work!

 

[D4rKy2014]

Can anyone here tell me how the save import works if u have the steam version of the wicher 2 and 3 ?

 

[Verrenus]

I thought the day 1 patch increased visual fidelity from what i read on other forums? The patch notes mentions nothing about any kind of increase in gfx.

I am afraid that's all we're getting in the first patch...

Personally, I am not a fan of very general patch notes (e.g. "multiple stability fixes" and "overall performance improvements", etc.) and would like to see more detail in the following ones, but if the Day 1 patch really does touch upon all those points I would still be glad.

As for the increased visual fidelity, we as PC gamers will have to step in and do our tweaking, at least until the Enhanced Edition comes up! *hint, hint CDProjekt RED!*

---------- Updated at 10:03 AM ----------

Scratch that, guys, it seems the Day 1 patch does indeed bring with it enhanced visual fidelity on PC!

Check out the comparison images here: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/The-Witcher-3-PC-237266/Specials/The-Witcher-3-Screenshots-1159185/.

Performance without Hairworks seems to be very good, as well!

This is actually my first time using SweetFX haha, and especially for this game, its nice to see such a detailed guide on this matter : )

I was wondering however, if you can clarify this one concern of mine when adjusting the parameters for the game? I'm not too familiar with the sensitivity of the parameters and how much it would change per setting - does the program allow some sort of side by side comparison? Or will I need to load the game everytime I make new adjustments?

Thanks for the hard work!

I'm very glad you find it to your liking, Calvin! That being said, I'm sure I can improve upon it and the rest of the OP in the following days.

Since SweetFX has dozens of toggleable effects, each with dozens of its own tweakable parameters with no easy side-by-side comparison, it can be quite a bit daunting to make your own preset from scratch, especially if you've never used SweetFX before. However, don't panic as all is not lost!

My advice to you would be to keep an eye on the Witcher 3 SweetFX database webpage (also linked in the OP). It is there that people will upload their working SweetFX presets, complete with ON/OFF comparison images, so after you've had a look at all the presets and settled on a favourite, just click "Download Preset" on its individual webpage and then follow my guide in the OP.

Should you encounter any problems at all running it, just let me know here and we will sort them out together, ok?

Can anyone here tell me how the save import works if u have the steam version of the wicher 2 and 3 ?

According to the PC manual, all save files meant to be imported into Witcher 3 must be stored at the following address, regardless of the version of Witcher 2 that you were playing (e.g. Steam, GOG, Origin, etc.):

%SystemDrive%\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents\Witcher 2\gamesaves

If you don't have these specific folders yourself, just create them from scratch and dump the Witcher 2 .sav files that you want to import to Witcher 3 in the "gamesaves" folder!

---------- Updated at 02:21 PM ----------

NVIDIA's official graphics, performance and tweaking guide is now online, guys! Get it while it's hot!

 

[OriginalBars]

Dont know if its been asked before, but on my rig the GoG version isnt detected by Nvidia Geforce experience or the Controlpanel, is this because the EXE is not released yet?

Or do y'all have a tweak for that

 

[sabbath80]

Nice thread! :like:

 

[Verrenus]

Dont know if its been asked before, but on my rig the GoG version isnt detected by Nvidia Geforce experience or the Controlpanel, is this because the EXE is not released yet? Or do y'all have a tweak for that

Hehe, I wouldn't worry about that if I were you - the current witcher3.exe is only a placeholder for the real .exe that will come with the unlocking files download at midnight GMT. I'm 100% sure it will be detected by GeForce Experience after that!

Nice thread! :like:

Thank you very much for your appreciation, sabbath! :cheers2:

I'm currently working on overhauling the thread for launch and it will take me some time to bring every bit of relevant information together and making it as accessible as possible, so please bear with me while I tame this monster!

---------- Updated at 09:58 PM ----------

This is weird, guys - I'm getting "500 Internal Server Error" messages whenever I try to edit the OP. I lost so much text already it's ridiculous. Is there a size limit to posts that I wasn't aware of? Or is it just RED's servers beginning to be stressed out ahead of launch?

I really wanted to get the graphics options and .xml tweaking sections out of the way before launch, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen if I keep getting these errors...

 

[Calvin132]

@Verrenus Appreciated : ) I just launched Witcher 3, and now back out trying to tweak the files suggested from the nvidia thread haha.

 

[Kyubix22]

The configuration tweaks herehttp://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide are amazing. Also demanding........