A compendium of tweaks and fixes for the PC version

[Dprelate]

Should you have any other questions, don't hesitate to come here and ask, that's what this thread is all about in the end - helping each other get the most out of our game

Thanks for the warm welcome. it is a marvelous and practical thread indeed.
I'm looking for a way to enhance texture quality. currently the game uses negative LOD (Mipmap Bias) to enhance the texture but that's very unbearable and makes my eyes bleed. have you found out any other way beside those mentioned in the first post to enhance texture quality ?
another problem is those windows in Novigrad. they really look wired; too much aliasing you know. I'm not sure but maybe tweaking shadows could help; since most of the mentioned aliasing are on those dynamic shadows.
thanks in advance.

 

[Verrenus]

Thanks for the warm welcome. it is a marvelous and practical thread indeed.
I'm looking for a way to enhance texture quality. currently the game uses negative LOD (Mipmap Bias) to enhance the texture but that's very unbearable and makes my eyes bleed. have you found out any other way beside those mentioned in the first post to enhance texture quality ?
another problem is those windows in Novigrad. they really look wired; too much aliasing you know. I'm not sure but maybe tweaking shadows could help; since most of the mentioned aliasing are on those dynamic shadows.
thanks in advance.

Thank you very much for your kind words, I really appreciate your support!

Apart from tweaking "TextureMipBias" (i.e. which govers the negative LOD you mentioned), forcing on 16x and high quality anisotropic filtering through NVIDIA Control Panel and setting "UseMipRefiner" to "true" in your "user.settings" file, I am afraid there is not much else to be done on our end. CDPR decided to hard-lock the game's LOD, which makes it impossible for us to manually adjust stuff like object and character pop-in, which have been problematic to say the least ever since the game launched!

I, too, have noticed the aliasing issues with the windows, but I'm sorry to say I have no clear solution for that either. Try tweaking the shadow cascades a bit further and let me know if these changes below help you at all:

User.settings file (.../Documents/The Witcher 3):

[Rendering]
CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=3
CascadeShadowDistanceScale1=3
CascadeShadowDistanceScale2=4
CascadeShadowDistanceScale3=4

Best of luck with your tweaking!

 

[Dprelate]

Try tweaking the shadow cascades a bit further and let me know if these changes below help you at all

I tried and I can surly say that tweaking shadows is a dead end. even tweaked CascadeShadowFadeTreshold and CascadeShadowQuality but . . .
however I did realize that the same thing happens on all walls. you just have to move towards them at an oblique angle.
this issue is maybe because of RED engine trying to change wall texture details instantly. foliage for example has two or three defined radius for its level detail but for wall everything seem to be different. there's got to be another line of code for them or maybe we just have to add some.

 

[berserker66666]

EnableHighPrecision=true

What does enabling this option do exactly?

 

[NlelithZ44]

So, I turned on Prefer maximum performance setting in NVIDIA Control Panel and it eliminated mouse lag.

Please do try playing in both "Full Screen" and "Borderless Windowed" display modes, because the former, at least, is bound to give you increased and/or more stable performance than "Windowed". The same applies to "Prefer maximum performance" - it should make your framerate that much more stable throughout your play sessions!

As for this, the actual FPS doesn't change at all between the modes. But! Windows 7 has this problem with all games, if Aero is turned on. It has to do something with Aero forsing V-Sync when active, and any game in Borderless Windowed or Windowed mode will stutter. I found out about it recently, and just made one more windows theme for gaming with Aero turned off. I just switch between them when I launch/exit any game. It's night and day difference in FPS smoothness.

 

[Verrenus]

I tried and I can surly say that tweaking shadows is a dead end. even tweaked CascadeShadowFadeTreshold and CascadeShadowQuality but . . .

however I did realize that the same thing happens on all walls. you just have to move towards them at an oblique angle.
this issue is maybe because of RED engine trying to change wall texture details instantly. foliage for example has two or three defined radius for its level detail but for wall everything seem to be different. there's got to be another line of code for them or maybe we just have to add some.

Thank you very much for testing the shadow cascade tweaks! I have noticed the disappearing shadows as well, all you need to do is move towards a wall at an angle and the shadows "peel" off of it like old wallpaper the closer you get to them. <_<

It would be so much nicer if CDPR collaborated with us more tightly in fixing these engine bugs, but the fact that they never explained why they locked the LOD system in the first place makes me believe that they want to keep certain things under wraps before they can figure out themselves how to best fix them.

What does enabling this option do exactly?

EnableHighPrecision=true should, in theory, force the usage of higher quality lighting, but I'm not sure the effect is that visible through normal gameplay. It might just be placebo, but I like keeping this line in my "user.settings" file, just in case. Here are some more lighting-related tweaks to try, if you have the time:

User.settings file (.../Documents/The Witcher3)

[Rendering]
EnableDeferredLightsStencil=true
EnableLightChannels=true

[Streaming/Textures]
ForceCinematicModeOn=true

Please report back with your results so that I might update the OP if one of the above tweaks is actually useful! Good luck!

So, I turned on Prefer maximum performance setting in NVIDIA Control Panel and it eliminated mouse lag.

As for this, the actual FPS doesn't change at all between the modes. But! Windows 7 has this problem with all games, if Aero is turned on. It has to do something with Aero forsing V-Sync when active, and any game in Borderless Windowed or Windowed mode will stutter. I found out about it recently, and just made one more windows theme for gaming with Aero turned off. I just switch between them when I launch/exit any game. It's night and day difference in FPS smoothness.

Thank you for confirming that "Prefer maximum performance" is actually beneficial, Nlelith!

I actually did not know Aero was responsible for applying the VSync effect forced on by Windows when playing games in "Borderless Windowed", but believe it or not it is the very reason people choose this display mode, specifically because it auto-applies VSync and removes any tearing, apparently without also introducing the input lag associated with forcing on regular VSync.

I tried using Adaptive VSync (half refresh rate) to try and pace my framerate a bit better, but I couldn't stand the added input lag. I will experiment some more and report back!

 

[NlelithZ44]

Yes, Win 7 Aero will remove screen tearing without input lags, but may cause stutters on GPU heavy games. But, if your FPS in Windowed / Borderless mode is higher than 60, then there won't be any tearing, so I guess it's better to turn off Aero if your FPS >60.

 

[berserker66666]

User.settings file (.../Documents/The Witcher3)

[Rendering]
EnableDeferredLightsStencil=true
EnableLightChannels=true

Well I did fiddle with these two above settings turned on and off and.......unfortunately.....nothing. There's basically no difference.

 

[IrregularJohn]

It is off-topic I know but if anyone wants a uncompressed 5,5 Gb 37 min gameplay footage of the Witcher 3 here it is - https://mega.nz/#!oYdiQRjb!LvZS4Bfc7pp4JmcTej1pYpdUjA5A1xcYeHKLK37wCfs

Courtesy of @mecha_fish. A hundred thanks to him for uploading it in the first place.

 

[darspiron]

Sadly, my game now has terrible terrain and grass pop in at Skellige. No matter what setting I tweak, nothing seems to fix it. I even tried the Hunter's config mod and it made things worse. I love this game, but what I absolutely despise is how the developers simply remain quiet about PC settings and issues. The so called mega patch 1.07 that was supposed to do wonders for the game's visual performance didn't really do jack shit as pop-in still remains, Npcs necklaces appear and disappear at will, beards pop in and pop out, grass literally grows right in front of you. Not a single engine programmer has chimed in to address anything.

Fortunately, there are awesome members of the community like Verrenus and others who do their best to post tweaks and such, but there's only so much they can do.

 

[berserker66666]

It is off-topic I know but if anyone wants a uncompressed 5,5 Gb 37 min gameplay footage of the Witcher 3 here it is - https://mega.nz/#!oYdiQRjb!LvZS4Bfc7...xcYeHKLK37wCfs

Courtesy of @mecha_fish. A hundred thanks to him for uploading it in the first place.

Thanks for the link. I'll take a look at this video and cry some more about the downgrade. DAMN YOU POTATO CONSOLES.

 

[Verrenus]

Yes, Win 7 Aero will remove screen tearing without input lags, but may cause stutters on GPU heavy games. But, if your FPS in Windowed / Borderless mode is higher than 60, then there won't be any tearing, so I guess it's better to turn off Aero if your FPS >60.

Alright, I did not know how this worked before, so thank you very much for the detailed explanation!

Well I did fiddle with these two above settings turned on and off and.......unfortunately.....nothing. There's basically no difference.

Thank you very much for taking the time to test these tweaks, berserker!

This probably means that the game does not make use of those parameters after all. However, Doktor1 reported some interesting sharpening of distant textures with ForceCinematicModeOn=true a while ago, so I guess it might be worth giving that another shot before dismissing it as well! ???

Sadly, my game now has terrible terrain and grass pop in at Skellige. No matter what setting I tweak, nothing seems to fix it. I even tried the Hunter's config mod and it made things worse. I love this game, but what I absolutely despise is how the developers simply remain quiet about PC settings and issues. The so called mega patch 1.07 that was supposed to do wonders for the game's visual performance didn't really do jack shit as pop-in still remains, Npcs necklaces appear and disappear at will, beards pop in and pop out, grass literally grows right in front of you. Not a single engine programmer has chimed in to address anything.

Fortunately, there are awesome members of the community like Verrenus and others who do their best to post tweaks and such, but there's only so much they can do.

Thank you so much for the support, darspiron! I am just as sad as you are that CDPR is not putting enough effort into fixing the underlying technical problems, because otherwise The Witcher 3 is hands-down one of the best games I have ever played in my life. After all, this is the reason why every bug and glitch is so annoying and immersion-breaking.

 

[berserker66666]

However, Doktor1 reported some interesting sharpening of distant textures with ForceCinematicModeOn=true a while ago, so I guess it might be worth giving that another shot before dismissing it as well!

Did some more testing the the ForceCinematicModeOn=true/false along with EnableDeferredLightsStencil=true/false, EnableLightChannels=true/false and EnableHighPrecision=true/false. Still nothing. Disappointing. Maybe the patch 1.07 fixed the low resolution textures? However, I am using UseMipRefiner=true which increases the texture sharpness slightly. At any case, i didn't see any changes so yea.

 

[tamodolo]

I wonder... water in this game is gorgeous! but I didn't find anyone discussing it. I know GlobalOceanTesselationFactor control the tesselation of water but I don't think it's for any water. Anyone know what else control water quality? And the max value too.

 

[Verrenus]

Did some more testing the the ForceCinematicModeOn=true/false along with EnableDeferredLightsStencil=true/false, EnableLightChannels=true/false and EnableHighPrecision=true/false. Still nothing. Disappointing. Maybe the patch 1.07 fixed the low resolution textures? However, I am using UseMipRefiner=true which increases the texture sharpness slightly. At any case, i didn't see any changes so yea.

Thank you so much for putting the time and effort into testing out these tweaks, berserker, I really appreciate it! :cheers2:

It's a shame none of them worked in the end, but I think it was worth giving them a shot. I should probably remove EnableHighPrecision=true from my "user.settings" file then, if only just to keep it as lean as possible.

P.S. Did your post contain screenshots as well, since the links appear to be broken if that is the case? ???

I wonder... water in this game is gorgeous! but I didn't find anyone discussing it. I know GlobalOceanTesselationFactor control the tesselation of water but I don't think it's for any water. Anyone know what else control water quality? And the max value too.

Apparently, increasing the value of GlobalOceanTesselationFactor in your "user.settings" file makes waves bigger during stormy weather! According to MUPETTA, raising it to "128" seems to bring back the waves seen in the VGX trailer from 2013. I've yet to test this for myself, but maybe it's worth giving this tweak a shot as well?

---------- Updated at 01:11 AM ----------

Alright guys, after extensive tweaking and reading several posts from the Witcher 3 PC thread on NeoGAF (especially this one), I have come to the conclusion that the best way to combat the game's framepacing issues is to disable the game's internal frame limiter and VSync and set it to run in fullscreen (i.e. set "Maximum Framer Per Second" to "Unlimited", "VSync" to "Off" and "Display Mode" to "Full Screen"), then open NVIDIA Control Panel and force on both Adaptive VSync (regular or half refresh rate, depending on your maximum desired framerate) and Triple Buffering.

This combination of settings gave me the smoothest frame pacing I've seen thus far, without any tearing and even without the added input lag associated with traditional VSync! Suffice it to say, I gave up on using RTSS entirely and couldn't be happier about it. I'm not sure what Durante was on about earlier, but I think he's been proven wrong by quite a few people since his PC Gamer article went online...

Please give Adaptive VSync + Triple Buffering a try, guys, I'm enjoying the game a lot more now that I've sorted out these problems!

 

[darspiron]

Alright Verrenus , thanks for the update. I'll give this a try and let you know.

 

[berserker66666]

P.S. Did your post contain screenshots as well, since the links appear to be broken if that is the case?

Oops. My screenshot link was broken above. Here is the comparison.

---------- Updated at 05:54 AM ----------

Found this interesting article. It seems this Umbra 3 technology is the cause for those annoying NPC and texture pop-ups. Perhaps CDPR didn't implement this tech in the game as well as they had hoped? If anyone here can get a better sense of this tech and tweak the settings in the Witcher 3 .INI file and increase the radius/distance at which Umbra 3 renders the world, could it be possible to eliminate the pop-ups? Or could be that the engine is locked and tweaking it won't benefit? Will have to do some research on this.

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04...s-show-the-world-and-advanced-occlusion-tech/

 

[svichupocentru]

GlobalOceanTesselationFactor=64

GlobalOceanTesselationFactor=512

trying to add TextureStreamingReduceGameplayLOD switch to ingame menu noticed that game deletes this parameter from user.settings no matter what i do. also game now deletes UseMipRefiner parameter too, if added to ingame menu. don't remember clearly, but i think UseMipRefiner worked fine pre 1.07. so, if anyone using my enhanced menu mod, you'll have to add this two parameters manually to your config. updated mod so the game won't delete the tweaks. also added TextureStreamingHeadsDistanceLimit, TextureStreamingCharacterDistanceLimit and GlobalOceanTesselationFactor (water quality slider) tweaks

 

[amfibiya89]

It is off-topic I know but if anyone wants a uncompressed 5,5 Gb 37 min gameplay footage of the Witcher 3 here it is - https://mega.nz/#!oYdiQRjb!LvZS4Bfc7pp4JmcTej1pYpdUjA5A1xcYeHKLK37wCfs

Courtesy of @mecha_fish. A hundred thanks to him for uploading it in the first place.

Still hurts.

 

[Verrenus]

Oops. My screenshot link was broken above. Here is the comparison.

Found this interesting article. It seems this Umbra 3 technology is the cause for those annoying NPC and texture pop-ups. Perhaps CDPR didn't implement this tech in the game as well as they had hoped? If anyone here can get a better sense of this tech and tweak the settings in the Witcher 3 .INI file and increase the radius/distance at which Umbra 3 renders the world, could it be possible to eliminate the pop-ups? Or could be that the engine is locked and tweaking it won't benefit? Will have to do some research on this.

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04...s-show-the-world-and-advanced-occlusion-tech/

Thank you once again very much for the images, I have now removed EnableHighPrecision=true from my "user.settings" file as a result!

However, that article you found is the real killer, because occlusion culling has to be the reason why pop-in is so annoying in this game! I think there is a problem with the rendering and occlusion cameras not being perfectly synchronised, leading to objects streaming in when they should have been already loaded, or it might be that the game's streaming system is not properly configured to deliver objects and textures on time.

If we could only find some variables to tweak, I think we could make some real progress towards fixing these problems! I will have a closer look through all of the .ini files in the installation and Documents folders and see what I can find.

trying to add TextureStreamingReduceGameplayLOD switch to ingame menu noticed that game deletes this parameter from user.settings no matter what i do. also game now deletes UseMipRefiner parameter too, if added to ingame menu. don't remember clearly, but i think UseMipRefiner worked fine pre 1.07. so, if anyone using my enhanced menu mod, you'll have to add this two parameters manually to your config. updated mod so the game won't delete the tweaks. also added TextureStreamingHeadsDistanceLimit, TextureStreamingCharacterDistanceLimit and GlobalOceanTesselationFactor (water quality slider) tweaks.

Thank you very much for the image comparison and the menu update! Very strange that the game simply deletes those two lines now, but what isn't strange with this game's technical aspects? ???