A compendium of tweaks and fixes for the PC version

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The actual tree branches are identical in both, as far as their geometric outlines go. Branches are not anti-aliased at all, or if they are it's temporal and so doesn't show in screenshots. The "branches" that are actually 2D textures, yes they are going to get thinner, but I think you're missing the million leaves that look like giant cartoony pieces of construction paper in the TextureMipBias=0 image.

I've circled the worst problem areas (best to enlarge and compare against the negative mip image):



Basically the distant foliage looks like paint-by-numbers, or coloring paper cutouts. I think the worst is the right most circle, with the dark leaves against the sky. And the middle tree legitimately looks like a painting of a tree and not a tree.

The leftmost circle, the backlighting on the leaves looks very soupy and blocky and impressionistic.

It's even worse in motion because it just looks like these giant cutouts moving in the wind. Whereas with the negative mip bias, more of the sky pokes through so it looks like actual leaves.

Granted, there is a difference but it is so marginal IMHO it's not even worth it. What makes a way crisper image is enabling DSR in Nvidia Control Panel and actually downsampling from 4k to FullHD (my monitor does not support 4k). However with Hairworks on framerate drops from 44-50 to 20-25.
 
Sorry for posting my question here as I don't want to get spoiled by potential other threads: Does the menu-screen change as seen on the demo from January or the hands-on-event from time to time? I realized that I have the same Geralt sitting there the whole time in front of a stone wall with ravens and I expected that it would change like in Witcher 2^^
 
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Sorry for posting my question here as I don't want to get spoiled by potential other threads: Does the menu-screen change as seen on the demo from January or the hands-on-event? I realized that I have the same Geralt sitting there the whole time ^^

You mean the meditation animation and lack thereof? If so it doesn't, I also thought that it'll change further into the game but nope it is what it is.

EDIT: Oh you mean the main menu screen, nope it doesn't, I think.
 
No, I mean the first screen which you get when starting the game from windows. Where you can choose to start a new game, load a game etc etc
 
Yes, because Sharpening is just adding fake detail. TextureMipBias is adding real detail by loading higher resolution mips at further distances. It also dramatically improves the quality of distant foliage. I would go as far to say that foliage almost looks cartoony without a negative mip bias, but I would call it "chunky" or "billboardy" if I were to try to describe it to someone else.

(I suggest opening the images at full size in new tabs)

TextureMipBias=0



TextureMipBias=-1



I believe I have Sharpening set to Low, but if you want to avoid the moire patterns / shimmering on certain ground textures, it will be greatly reduced if you just turn Sharpening completely off.

Anyway, trees just look very... impressionistic without a negative mip bias. I can't stand it and it's definitely worth the couple FPS to fix. I want to make sure people understand they're also worsening the quality of all their foliage.


Yes, also at the cost of it worsening aliasing. Since it's a post process it catches all edges. And again, it's a fake sharpness... Running a sharpening filter on a blurry mip level is a lot different than just sampling a higher resolution mip.

Also, -1 and 0 aren't the only options. If you want higher performance and less ground shimmering, you can always try -0.7 or -0.4.

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I've started using UseMipRefiner=true because it improves textures that even TextureMipBias=-1 does not. For example:

UseMipRefiner=false, TextureMipBias=-1

UseMipRefiner=true, TextureMipBias=-1

The parts with the white thread are improved immensely with UseMipRefiner=true. I believe I already have Sharpening set to Low in both images.

Incidentally, where is this UseMipRefiner thingie? I can't seem to find it in both user.settings and rendering.ini.

P.S. For some reason in my rendering.ini UseHairWorks is set to false while it's fully on in the game. What's up with that?
 
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What makes a way crisper image is enabling DSR in Nvidia Control Panel and actually downsampling from 4k to FullHD (my monitor does not support 4k). However with Hairworks on framerate drops from 44-50 to 20-25.
Yes, well, I play at 1440p and downsampling from 4K definitely improves foliage like negative mip bias, but halves my framerate also. So do I choose TextureMipBias=-1 for like a 2FPS loss or 4K DSR for 30FPS loss? :p

Incidentally, where is this UseMipRefiner thingie? I can't seem to find it in both user.settings and rendering.ini.
You have to manually add it.

I just stuck this at the bottom of user.settings:

[Streaming/Textures]UseMipRefiner=true
ForceCinematicModeOn=true
CinematicModeMipBias=-0.3

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I've decided I'm using the EVGA Step-Up program to step up to a GTX 980 Ti which will only cost me $97 before shipping. The GTX 980 Ti appears to do almost 30% better in Witcher 3 than a GTX 980 at 1440p. It also did an impressive 16% FPS increase with an overclock on top of stock. So that's a potential 50% FPS increase... My 980 was factory overclocked and OCed a little more though, but I bet the 980 Ti will still end up being at least 33% better. So anywhere I get 45FPS now I will manage to be locked at 60. :)
 
guys ! look what i found (thanks to @Kiobi ):


it seems that global illumination is only active during cutscenes, and it looks awesome ! and it looks like the same lightning that was used during the E3 2014 demo. can't we find a way to activate Global illumination at all times and not just in cutscenes ?

Interesting find. Would like that GI enabled as well. I wonder why they disabled it in the first place?
 
Interesting find. Would like that GI enabled as well. I wonder why they disabled it in the first place?
you're right, however some users here have pointed out that it's not GI:

I won't deny conversation mode definitely ups the quality of several things, but that is 100% without a doubt NOT global illumination. It's just different lighting. Directional light is maybe a smidge brighter. The bloom is way higher. The fog is higher. The depth of field is higher. It appears the IBL shaders use a more even lighting probe or some additional fill lights have been turned on. I've noticed the fill lights turn on and off between the game and dialogue personally. The fill lights are there to assure that dialogue is well lit no matter the time of day or weather. But these fill lights are not GI.

Anyway, the one thing definitely not present in any of those images is global illumination. Global illumination is bounced lighting. I can spot bounced lighting a mile away, and even tell you if it's more than one bounce. I think maybe you are mistaking Image Based Lighting for GI. This game definitely uses IBL, and not just in cutscenes. The game calls them "environment probes" as evidenced in the INI values ForceInstantEnvProbeUpdate
and EnvProbeLightsMaxDistance. I am guessing that the game has a fairly sparse grid of these probes which essentially shoot a spherical map of the area in order to convolute a diffuse IBL. This does give you a general feeling of GI, but it's not even remotely close.

Also, if those images are yours, in the captions you say the game is currently not using dynamic lighting. I think you're confounding two ideas. Dynamic = changes. The lighting in this game changes, as in it's not static (baked). Global illumination is also not necessarily dynamic. Global illumination can be baked. In fact there are entire companies build around baking GI.

still, the lightning does feel better overall and less flat ^^
 
Well, since I fixed all my issues I can get back to...shooting. I can't help myself, this game can look so gorgeous. I want to play but... :p

Here are some heavily tweaked (for highest IQ) shots I got with the resources I picked up here and on that nvidia guide: (no spoilers, characters are spawned)








Some more here if you likes.

This is incredible work. Are you able to achieve this level of fidelity in-game or are the images enhanced by photoshop? Can you post your tweaks and reshade?
 
Incidentally, where is this UseMipRefiner thingie? I can't seem to find it in both user.settings and rendering.ini.

P.S. For some reason in my rendering.ini UseHairWorks is set to false while it's fully on in the game. What's up with that?

The user.settings file overrides the rendering.ini file. If you check it you should see the HairWorksLevel line set to 0.
 
What are the max values i can change in each variable?? all i see everywhere are the default values but nowhere upto how much i can change the number in each variable....
 
This is incredible work. Are you able to achieve this level of fidelity in-game or are the images enhanced by photoshop? Can you post your tweaks and reshade?

It's all in-game but of course it's not playable at 4k from which these panoramas are stitched and downscaled. Every shot uses my own ReShade as a base but I slightly change it for each shot to get the most out of it (sometimes add DoF, SSAO, small color tweaks...).
Here's the base ReShade (you need Reshade 0.18.4 with Framework) and the user.config (for 1.03v, I'm still on it) . I've set the TextureMipBias in the rendering ini to -2.
I must say again I use these for screenshots only and since I have a 1440p display when I start playing I will probably go easy with the tweaks.
 
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just wondering, what does the "limit FPS" slider actually do? I mean, it obviously limits your FPS but why would I want to do that? Why should I set it to "60 fps" instead of "unlimited" for example?
 
just wondering, what does the "limit FPS" slider actually do? I mean, it obviously limits your FPS but why would I want to do that? Why should I set it to "60 fps" instead of "unlimited" for example?

Well, that depends fully on you and your screen/monitor. If you are running the game on a 60 Hz display like most people still do, then you'd most likely want to limit your FPS to 60. If you have a 120/144 HZ display, unlimited is fine if you can run game at higher FPS and want to.

Furthermore, keeping the FPS locked/limited to max 60 will also help on GPU heat/workload (if GPU is capable of running at higher FPS that is)

Read this good article for in depth Refresh vs FPS rate:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_1.html
 
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