It moves it somewhere else, it doesn't delete it. I bet you inserted it at the bottom of the file, and then seen it gone from there and you thought it was deleted. In fact, it's been moved somewhere further up in the file.
@Verrenus
Here we go!
Pay attention to the (missing) bow's shadow, and at what distance it appears! First pic is always the 'limit" distance at which the shadow will appear/disappear. Second pic is one step closer, which makes the shadow appear.
CharacterShadowsFallbackDistance=Default unknown value, which must be very low.
CharacterShadowsFallbackDistance=40
Sorry for it being so hard to see at the last pic! You'll have to zoom in or something, but the shadow is definitely there. Open it in another tab and look closely.
Shadows from NPC hats, bags, weapons and whatever else they carry will no longer pop-in at your face.
________
Regarding the MipRefiner, i did remove UGOM and went to test the tweak. I noticed that when i set it to true
in my user.settings, it does disappears when the game is launched, like @essenthy said. But it works.
However, if set to false, it doesn't disappear. And it does turn the feature off.
This can mean:
1. A patch made the default setting true. (Which would explain why it disappears)
2. Maybe UGOM has altered my settings somehow, and when uninstalled the setting remained defaulted to true.
Comparison. Sorry, i didn't even intend to post the comparison, it's at a bad ToD. But i guess proof is needed.
Default shot has it set to "True" (which disappears when the game is launched), and on mouseover, it goes to False (which doesn't disappear).
I would be glad if someone could confirm if the game is defaulting this to true. Make a save and screenshot the same place twice. Once with it set to true, and once with it set to false.
Those are some great examples of "CharacterShadowsFallbackDistance" at work, Kidoki, superb job! I will get to updating the OP with this lovely tweak right away and am very sorry to not have had it in all this time!
As for "UseMipRefiner", I believe you might be right. There's no reason why CDProjekt RED wouldn't have made the game use it by default in one of the newer patches - it's a definitive improvement over vanilla visuals at no extra performance cost. Ugh, Blood and Wine cannot come out soon enough, your screenshots are really calling out to me!
Hm, will try setting it to false here (never tried that it) and compare it with the setting not being there at all. Will need to wait until I get back to my computer though. Will report back,
Please do try setting "UseMipRefiner" to "false" and report back with your observations whenever you find the time, RealNC, since I think Kidoki made a really good point earlier about it being enabled by default now!
OK, it is indeed enabled by default!
Here's a screenshot with the option not present at all in user.settings:
http://i.imgur.com/I6hUqJa.jpg
And here is a screenshot with the option present and set to "false":
http://i.imgur.com/0ehGnrk.jpg
(No need to upload a screenshot for the setting set to "true", since it looks exactly the same as the one where the setting doesn't exist in the file!)
No wonder I wasn't seeing any difference with it set to "true", since that's the default setting in recent versions.
So, not adding anything to user.settings seems to enable it by default. (But I guess it doesn't hurt to add it, just in case.)
Edit:
I also tested the case where I set it to "false", ran the game, and then removed it from user.settings to see if the game somehow remembers it. But no, removing it resulted in high quality textures again.
Also, many people seem to think that the game deletes the setting from the file because it's not at the end of the file anymore. It doesn't delete it. It just moves it somewhere else in the file since the game keeps the settings sorted.
Here's a screenshot with the option not present at all in user.settings:
http://i.imgur.com/I6hUqJa.jpg
And here is a screenshot with the option present and set to "false":
http://i.imgur.com/0ehGnrk.jpg
(No need to upload a screenshot for the setting set to "true", since it looks exactly the same as the one where the setting doesn't exist in the file!)
No wonder I wasn't seeing any difference with it set to "true", since that's the default setting in recent versions.
So, not adding anything to user.settings seems to enable it by default. (But I guess it doesn't hurt to add it, just in case.)
Edit:
I also tested the case where I set it to "false", ran the game, and then removed it from user.settings to see if the game somehow remembers it. But no, removing it resulted in high quality textures again.
Also, many people seem to think that the game deletes the setting from the file because it's not at the end of the file anymore. It doesn't delete it. It just moves it somewhere else in the file since the game keeps the settings sorted.
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@RealNC That's excellent to hear.
Also, the game does "remove" some of the tweaks if they are present in another file and using the same value.
As an example, if GrassDistanceScale is changed to 0.8 on user.settings, while also being 0.8 on rendering.ini (The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\base), it'll be removed from the first file, but will obviously maintain it's effect.
Well, at least that's what happens here.
@Verrenus You'll want to update the OP, i guess. I'd keep the tweak there, and explain it is being used by default, though users may want to insert it into the settings once, just as a guarantee it's on.
Also, the game does "remove" some of the tweaks if they are present in another file and using the same value.
As an example, if GrassDistanceScale is changed to 0.8 on user.settings, while also being 0.8 on rendering.ini (The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\base), it'll be removed from the first file, but will obviously maintain it's effect.
Well, at least that's what happens here.
@Verrenus You'll want to update the OP, i guess. I'd keep the tweak there, and explain it is being used by default, though users may want to insert it into the settings once, just as a guarantee it's on.
And here's a very easy tweak to fix texture shimmering (very noticeable on the straw roofs of huts.) In the file "bin\config\r4game\user_config_matrix\pc\rendering.xml", search for all occurrences of "TextureMipBias" and set the value to 0 in all of them. Then, run the game and in the video options reposition the texture quality slider for the game to apply the new setting (there is no need to edit user.settings, since changing the slider will make the game update that file automatically.)
This tweak works very well together with driver-enforced anisotropic filter and texture clamp setting, which further reduce texture shimmering. Again, the thing to look at to see the effect, is to look at the straw roofs of hats while walking.
(This cannot be shown on screenshots because shimmering happens when moving. This tweak completely eliminates shimmer on those textures for me on 1920x1080.)
Note that since this tweak alters a game file, the setting will get lost on game updates or when doing a game files validation.
This tweak works very well together with driver-enforced anisotropic filter and texture clamp setting, which further reduce texture shimmering. Again, the thing to look at to see the effect, is to look at the straw roofs of hats while walking.
(This cannot be shown on screenshots because shimmering happens when moving. This tweak completely eliminates shimmer on those textures for me on 1920x1080.)
Note that since this tweak alters a game file, the setting will get lost on game updates or when doing a game files validation.
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@RealNC TextureMipBias can also be changed on user.settings an it will provide the same effect. Sadly, i have a lot of shimmering + temporal aliasing on almost any value, and because of that i settled on -1 ~ -0.7 since it gives sharper, higher detailed textures.
Really, installing UGOM can make just about everything easier when it comes to tweaking graphical settings.
Really, installing UGOM can make just about everything easier when it comes to tweaking graphical settings.
This makes the in-game sliders show as minimum, and the setting gets lost if you touch the slider. Editing rendering.xml instead makes everything "just work."
There's still going to be aliasing shimmer. This setting only deals with texture shimmer, which is a completely different issue compared to aliasing shimmer. Again, watch the shimmer on the straw rooftops. Completely gone when setting it to 0
(Aliasing shimmer is what you get around objects. Texture shimmer is what you get inside objects, not around them. Again, the most extreme example are the straw rooftops.)
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@RealNC I know that. What i said is that i still have shimmering (less of it, obviously) at a value of 0. Like, some textures still have the annoying effect.
Regarding Temporal Aliasing... Yeah, the game has a Temporal Filter but it's not that great.
But it's pretty nice to see more and more developers implementing Temporal Anti-Aliasing in their games, as it effectively combats the type of aliasing that annoys me (and a lot of people) the most. Could've been a bit more powerul in W3's case, but still, it's nice.
But enough of this, i don't wanna go off-topic or something.
Regarding Temporal Aliasing... Yeah, the game has a Temporal Filter but it's not that great.
But it's pretty nice to see more and more developers implementing Temporal Anti-Aliasing in their games, as it effectively combats the type of aliasing that annoys me (and a lot of people) the most. Could've been a bit more powerul in W3's case, but still, it's nice.
But enough of this, i don't wanna go off-topic or something.
Thank you so very much for testing this for us, RealNC, I am now very happy to see that CDProjekt RED do seem to read our thread and take our feedback into consideration, at least partly (the pop-in distances still need fixing)!
I will update the OP with this new information straight away!
Thanks a lot for sharing this tweak with us as well, I know that texture shimmering bothers a lot of people, so learning this should make them quite happy indeed!
On the same note, I always reset the other texture filtering settings (i.e. Anisotropic Filtering Optimization, Negative LOD Bias and Trilinear Optimization), to their default values after they got automatically changed when forcing 16x AF and high quality texture filtering via the NVIDIA Control Panel/Inspector. Considering your previous post on the matter, I guess I shouldn't do that anymore, but which setting is actually responsible for minimising texture shimmering, just Negative LOD Bias set to "Clamp", I presume? :ermm:
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It's both the "anisotropic sample optimization" and "negative LOD bias" setting. They both reduce shimmering whey they are set to "off" and "clamp" respectively. The effect is not very strong though, but since they hardly have any performance cost at all, it makes no sense to not use them.
The trilinear optimization setting doesn't affect shimmering. It's a texture clarity setting that, if enabled, uses a low quality filtering algorithm for textures that the driver thinks don't need the higher quality algorithm. However, on modern GPUs, this has almost no detectable performance gain. At least I've not seen one.
The safe bet is to just let them be at "off/clamp/off." Only the lowest-end GPUs (or very old ones) should see a performance difference. The last time I remember these settings having any performance impact was in 2002 with a Radeon 9500
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It's both the "anisotropic sample optimization" and "negative LOD bias" setting. They both reduce shimmering whey they are set to "off" and "clamp" respectively. The effect is not very strong though, but since they hardly have any performance cost at all, it makes no sense to not use them.
The trilinear optimization setting doesn't affect shimmering. It's a texture clarity setting that, if enabled, uses a low quality filtering algorithm for textures that the driver thinks don't need the higher quality algorithm. However, on modern GPUs, this has almost no detectable performance gain. At least I've not seen one.
The safe bet is to just let them be at "off/clamp/off." Only the lowest-end GPUs (or very old ones) should see a performance difference. The last time I remember these settings having any performance impact was in 2002 with a Radeon 9500
Thank you very much for another prompt and detailed explanation, RealNC!
I routinely consult the NVIDIA GeForce Tweak Guide written by Koroush Ghazi to educate myself on how to correctly tweak these settings, but some extra confirmation never hurts, especially since setting Texture Filtering - Quality to "High quality" should also automatically set both Texture Filtering - Anisotropic Sample Optimization and Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization to "Off"!
Something else about your texture shimmering reducing tweak also just occurred to me: wouldn't setting TextureMipBias to "0" in user.settings achieve the same effect as editing the rendering.xml, since the latter file mainly governs what features are enabled by each general graphics settings preset (i.e. "Low", "Medium", "High", "Ultra") and also considering that the user.settings file will not get overwritten whenever a new patch gets released, unlike rendering.xml? ???
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Both works. But if you only edit user.settings, the texture slider will show "low", even though that's wrong. And, if you change the slider position, the setting is gonna be deleted from user.settings.
But both works. It's just my own preference to tweak the game files instead of user.settings so that in-game sliders in the video options won't delete my tweaks (and of course I have to remember to reapply the tweaks to the game files when there's a game update.)
I see, thanks a lot for clarifying that!
This is the reason why I've included warnings under each section of the OP that can erroneously report settings sliders on "Low" after tweaking - the game will obviously be using the newly-tweaked values, but it will just report the wrong graphics preset. I guess it all comes down to personal tweaking preference in the end, but thank you very much once again for sharing all of this information with us, I really appreciate it!
Should you ever have any other feedback, I am sure we would all love to hear it! Until then, have a blast playing the game!
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Sure thing, RivaTuner Statistics Server works wonders for capping framerates!
If you have a 60 Hz display, then capping your framerate to 60 FPS will prevent your GPU from overworking to produce extra frames that your monitor will never be able to display and it will also keep the card from overheating, so this is something that I would always recommend to anyone!
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Did you try disabling the in-game framerate limiter and VSync and enabling regular VSync via your GPU's control panel? That should help you get rid of screen tearing completely, as well as provide better frame pacing!