I recently got this game after it was on sale, I've always wanted it and I was jumping for joy that I finally got the chance to do so, ever since I started playing, however, I've had a never-ending stream of graphical problems and glitches, I'll be listing all of them here, major, minor, middling, organised into categories as I see fit.
Specs:
Processing Unit: Core i7-8700 @3.2 GHz base clock, 4.6 GHz factory OC
CPU Cooler: Standard Alienware Aurora AIO
GPU: Blower Nvidia GEFORCE GTX 1070 in a x8 gen 3 PCIE slot @ ~1550 MHz clock speed, reaches 1.9- 2GHz with OC | 8GB GDDR4 Dedicated memory, I think the frequency is around 4 GHz, that’s what it says on MSI Afterburner, I think there’s a formula to calculating it but IDK
RAM: 2x8GB Dual Channel DDR4 Memory @2666 MHz
PSU: Standard Dell Alienware 460w Power Supply
Storage: 128GB M.2 SSD + 2TB HDD 7.2K RPM
Soundcard, Wi-Fi Card, and Bluetooth card: Not really sure, don’t really think they’re relevant
Problems:
Rendering and Lighting:
-Shadows are extremely dark (even at blindingly high gamma, at normal gamma, they are practically solid black)
-shadows sometimes act weirdly: shadows coming from distant objects are blob-like and flicker, shadows that are far away look very bad (mostly fixed by tweaking .ini settings, namely the cascade shadow scale settings) this problem seems to be called dithering?
-shadows are a solid colour, no gradient or shading as I've seen in screenshots of the game
-shadows are blocky, and stutter when they move (fixed with the .ini tweaks mentioned above)
-shadows act weirdly with Geralt's non-hairworked hair
-lighting changes abruptly upon entering and exiting areas with different lighting, and sometimes during cutscenes (I think this started happening after I performed a clean install of my drivers)
-the infamous shimmering effect, although I seem to experience a more prominent effect than others (improved through a combination of .ini tweaks, resolution changing and various Nvidia control panel tweaking)
Models, Animation, and Textures:
-clipping of dwarves' beards into their necks, and sideburns into their temples, a good example of this is Zoltan
-clipping of hands through arms when they are folded (happens randomly to random NPCs)
-clipping of Dandelion's scarf
-clipping of small sections of the body through clothes, pretty noticeable on Rosa Var Attre
-clipping of Geralt's hair through his armor (less noticeable with hairworks for some reason
-Geralt's hair appears fuzzy or blurry around the edges in some scenes. only happens when non-hairworked, might be a DOF problem
-during the Wolven Storm cutscene (Priscilla's Song) her lute clipped with her thigh a bit, saw a video on youtube afterwards, and there was no such clipping
-NPC animations sometimes start and stop randomly and abruptly,and are generally very stuttery (maybe a problem with the timing between the ending of one animation and the beginning of another) this also happens a lot to background NPCs during cutscenes, as well as Geralt and whoever he's talking to/with
-skin textures on some random NPCs are stretched (mostly dwarves)
Physics:
Disclaimer: I have tried capping my FPS using V-sync and framerate cap, as well as the V-sync setting in the Nvidia Control Panel, so far the problems still present are the hair problems
-objects on characters flutter randomly and look very weird, I think this is intentional, but not to this degree
-Geralt's hair sometimes does this "bouncing" effect whenever the camera switches to him in a cutscene, as if it has just spawned in and fell, this also happens in the inventory to his preview model after I equip or drop something, this also sometimes happens to NPCs that have long hair, like Priscilla
-sometimes, albeit rarely, random clutter in a scene will behave weirdly in cutscenes, like for example a jug on a table tipping over when the person seated at said table moves
Miscellaneous:
-after ending a conversation with an NPC, said character often spawns slightly in front of where they are usually situated, and then walk back to said location and assume their animation, often abruptly
-whenever I end a conversation with the innkeep at the Seven Cats inn, Geralt spawns in the middle of the tavern rather than in front of the lady where I began the conversation
-After stopping for whatever reason, Roach doesn't respond to any movement commands for about a second and then abruptly starts walking, in general, movement with Roach is quite hard and I'm not a fan of how he controls, same with Geralt, but to a lesser degree
-enemy AI is very clunky and often causes the enemy to run into obstacles while fighting, drowners seem to be te worst
Specs:
Processing Unit: Core i7-8700 @3.2 GHz base clock, 4.6 GHz factory OC
CPU Cooler: Standard Alienware Aurora AIO
GPU: Blower Nvidia GEFORCE GTX 1070 in a x8 gen 3 PCIE slot @ ~1550 MHz clock speed, reaches 1.9- 2GHz with OC | 8GB GDDR4 Dedicated memory, I think the frequency is around 4 GHz, that’s what it says on MSI Afterburner, I think there’s a formula to calculating it but IDK
RAM: 2x8GB Dual Channel DDR4 Memory @2666 MHz
PSU: Standard Dell Alienware 460w Power Supply
Storage: 128GB M.2 SSD + 2TB HDD 7.2K RPM
Soundcard, Wi-Fi Card, and Bluetooth card: Not really sure, don’t really think they’re relevant
Problems:
Rendering and Lighting:
-Shadows are extremely dark (even at blindingly high gamma, at normal gamma, they are practically solid black)
-shadows sometimes act weirdly: shadows coming from distant objects are blob-like and flicker, shadows that are far away look very bad (mostly fixed by tweaking .ini settings, namely the cascade shadow scale settings) this problem seems to be called dithering?
-shadows are a solid colour, no gradient or shading as I've seen in screenshots of the game
-shadows are blocky, and stutter when they move (fixed with the .ini tweaks mentioned above)
-shadows act weirdly with Geralt's non-hairworked hair
-lighting changes abruptly upon entering and exiting areas with different lighting, and sometimes during cutscenes (I think this started happening after I performed a clean install of my drivers)
-the infamous shimmering effect, although I seem to experience a more prominent effect than others (improved through a combination of .ini tweaks, resolution changing and various Nvidia control panel tweaking)
Models, Animation, and Textures:
-clipping of dwarves' beards into their necks, and sideburns into their temples, a good example of this is Zoltan
-clipping of hands through arms when they are folded (happens randomly to random NPCs)
-clipping of Dandelion's scarf
-clipping of small sections of the body through clothes, pretty noticeable on Rosa Var Attre
-clipping of Geralt's hair through his armor (less noticeable with hairworks for some reason
-Geralt's hair appears fuzzy or blurry around the edges in some scenes. only happens when non-hairworked, might be a DOF problem
-during the Wolven Storm cutscene (Priscilla's Song) her lute clipped with her thigh a bit, saw a video on youtube afterwards, and there was no such clipping
-NPC animations sometimes start and stop randomly and abruptly,and are generally very stuttery (maybe a problem with the timing between the ending of one animation and the beginning of another) this also happens a lot to background NPCs during cutscenes, as well as Geralt and whoever he's talking to/with
-skin textures on some random NPCs are stretched (mostly dwarves)
Physics:
Disclaimer: I have tried capping my FPS using V-sync and framerate cap, as well as the V-sync setting in the Nvidia Control Panel, so far the problems still present are the hair problems
-objects on characters flutter randomly and look very weird, I think this is intentional, but not to this degree
-Geralt's hair sometimes does this "bouncing" effect whenever the camera switches to him in a cutscene, as if it has just spawned in and fell, this also happens in the inventory to his preview model after I equip or drop something, this also sometimes happens to NPCs that have long hair, like Priscilla
-sometimes, albeit rarely, random clutter in a scene will behave weirdly in cutscenes, like for example a jug on a table tipping over when the person seated at said table moves
Miscellaneous:
-after ending a conversation with an NPC, said character often spawns slightly in front of where they are usually situated, and then walk back to said location and assume their animation, often abruptly
-whenever I end a conversation with the innkeep at the Seven Cats inn, Geralt spawns in the middle of the tavern rather than in front of the lady where I began the conversation
-After stopping for whatever reason, Roach doesn't respond to any movement commands for about a second and then abruptly starts walking, in general, movement with Roach is quite hard and I'm not a fan of how he controls, same with Geralt, but to a lesser degree
-enemy AI is very clunky and often causes the enemy to run into obstacles while fighting, drowners seem to be te worst