The compendium of tweaks and fixes for the PC version

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Hello. I follow this guide and tried to use LOD mod which was mentioned here but looks like it doesn't work for me because of this http://i.imgur.com/XQ466Bk.gifv (careful 8MB gif). As you see some objects continue to pop-in (lid of basket, cauldron, animal corpse) and it happens to a lot of stuff in close and mid range. I have a feeling that LOD mod does nothing with Toussaint region. Also should Red engine window appear when I install LOD mod at first? Im asking cuz it just starts game w/o any compiling window stuff unlike other mods which I installed in past.
 
now i know the technical name of the thiny i wanted to change! the "inactive zone" or "deadzone" of the sticks of the xbox controller, i move the sticks and the camera or geralt don't move until the stick reaches certain spot, that deadzone i want to reduce as much as possible
 
I'm having a minor issue with clothing texture pop-in while in Toussant. When turning the camera quickly on some of the clothing, the meshes will appear to be pure white then fairly quickly (maybe 1 second or so) the textures load over the mesh.

Only seems to occur in heavily populated areas though and then only on one or two of the NPC's. haven't noticed it on any other textures, just the clothing. I wondering if increasing the Texturestreamingdistance or some other setting would alleviate this issue.

edit: Asking due to the change in the Texturestreamingdistance settings located within the INI now being something like Texturestreamingdistancesq or whatever with completely different number sets attached to it since deleting my INI and rebuilding it after the patch.

This is why I always recommend deleting the user.settings and user.settings.bak files from your "...\Documents\The Witcher 3" folder whenever a new patch is released, since CD Projekt RED almost always add/remove/tweak the parameters contained therein. Needless to say, if your user.settings was set to "Read-only" before installing a new patch, the new/changed parameters will not apply and you'll be left with all manner of visual bugs and artifacts! ;)

With that being said, I don't think the TextureStreamingDistanceSq and related parameters are directly responsible for the bug you are experiencing. It's just a shot in the dark, but have you tried disabling Motion Blur from the in-game postprocessing menu given that the bug only happens when turning the camera quickly around? :ermm:

Hello. I follow this guide and tried to use LOD mod which was mentioned here but looks like it doesn't work for me because of this http://i.imgur.com/XQ466Bk.gifv (careful 8MB gif). As you see some objects continue to pop-in (lid of basket, cauldron, animal corpse) and it happens to a lot of stuff in close and mid range. I have a feeling that LOD mod does nothing with Toussaint region. Also should Red engine window appear when I install LOD mod at first? Im asking cuz it just starts game w/o any compiling window stuff unlike other mods which I installed in past.

There's actually a good reason for that - the "Increased LOD" mod hasn't been updated at all since 4th December 2015! :ermm:

This means that sjbox - the mod's creator - couldn't have tweaked the LOD distances for the brand new assets that CD Projekt Red created for Blood and Wine from scratch. While the mod certainly works within the base game, it's understandable why the same cannot be said for its newest expansion. The really bad thing is, no one has managed to get a hold of sjbox ever since January this year, so unfortunately his excellent "Increased LOD" mod has likely been abandoned and will probably never be updated now! :(

You're right. I don't even want to add mods to the game. Although I am tempted.

Actually, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is probably the most user-friendly game out there when it comes to simply installing and running it with mods. All you have to do is create a brand new folder called "mods" within your "The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt" installation folder and then download your favourite ones from Nexus Mods, unpack the archives at a separate location and only copy over the extracted folders beginning with the prefix "mod..." (e.g. modHDReworkedProject or modLodAll, etc.).

After that, you simply run the game as usual and the mods will just work straight off like magic. Should you then ever grow tired of a mod, or would like to uninstall one, just delete its corresponding folder from within your "...\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\mods" folder and it's simply gone without any fuss or nasty after-effects! :D

I can wholeheartedly recommend a number of mods that really bring some readily-apparent visual improvements to the vanilla/default game at almost no additional performance cost. These are "The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project" by Halk Hogan PL, "Super Turbo Lighting Mod" by Essenthy, "No Dirty Lens Effect" by RumenWest and "Increased LOD" by sjbox! :p

now i know the technical name of the thingy i wanted to change! the "inactive zone" or "deadzone" of the sticks of the xbox controller, i move the sticks and the camera or geralt don't move until the stick reaches certain spot, that deadzone i want to reduce as much as possible

Alright, then! If that's the case, then you will likely need to increase LeftStickSensitivity to at least a value of "1.0" or even beyond in your platformgameplay.settings file ("...\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\\bin\config\platform\pc" folder)! ;)

I am afraid I don't know of any other parameter that can be changed to alter the sensitivity/deadzone of controller sticks... :ermm:
 
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@Verrenus I want to thank you for keeping this thread alive and up to date. It has made my experiance with this game that much more enjoyable :respect: after a fresh install of the game and a few tweaks I was able to get in a good solid 4 hours of gaming last night following your OP for the most part to a T. (Modified slightly due to runnig a 980ti when it came to hairworks) a questions came to mind on a few adjustments that I could not find an answer to and perhaps this is due to this new fangled console stuff (yes I'm old pencil and paper rpg and pc type) can anyone tell me what these are ?

[Input/Gestures]
EnableSwipe=false
EnablePan=false
EnableGestures=false
EnablePinch=false
[Kinect]
Kinect=false

I made the adjustments as recommended but could not for the life of me find out what they were for. (Just like to know what I am adjusting) Thanks!!
 
Well they seem to be for different types of controllers it would seem, not sure what purpose they really serve but I haven't seen any effect of on or off on PC.
 
This is why I always recommend deleting the user.settings and user.settings.bak files from your "...\Documents\The Witcher 3" folder whenever a new patch is released, since CD Projekt RED almost always add/remove/tweak the parameters contained therein. Needless to say, if your user.settings was set to "Read-only" before installing a new patch, the new/changed parameters will not apply and you'll be left with all manner of visual bugs and artifacts! ;)

With that being said, I don't think the TextureStreamingDistanceSq and related parameters are directly responsible for the bug you are experiencing. It's just a shot in the dark, but have you tried disabling Motion Blur from the in-game postprocessing menu given that the bug only happens when turning the camera quickly around? :ermm:



There's actually a good reason for that - the "Increased LOD" mod hasn't been updated at all since 4th December 2015! :ermm:

This means that sjbox - the mod's creator - couldn't have tweaked the LOD distances for the brand new assets that CD Projekt Red created for Blood and Wine from scratch. While the mod certainly works within the base game, it's understandable why the same cannot be said for its newest expansion. The really bad thing is, no one has managed to get a hold of sjbox ever since January this year, so unfortunately his excellent "Increased LOD" mod has likely been abandoned and will probably never be updated now! :(



Actually, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is probably the most user-friendly game out there when it comes to simply installing and running it with mods. All you have to do is create a brand new folder called "mods" within your "The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt" installation folder and then download your favourite ones from Nexus Mods, unpack the archives at a separate location and only copy over the extracted folders beginning with the prefix "mod..." (e.g. modHDReworkedProject or modLodAll, etc.).

After that, you simply run the game as usual and the mods will just work straight off like magic. Should you then ever grow tired of a mod, or would like to uninstall one, just delete its corresponding folder from within your "...\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\mods" folder and it's simply gone without any fuss or nasty after-effects! :D

I can wholeheartedly recommend a number of mods that really bring some readily-apparent visual improvements to the vanilla/default game at almost no additional performance cost. These are "The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project" by Halk Hogan PL, "Super Turbo Lighting Mod" by Essenthy, "No Dirty Lens Effect" by RumenWest and "Increased LOD" by sjbox! :p



Alright, then! If that's the case, then you will likely need to increase LeftStickSensitivity to at least a value of "1.0" or even beyond in your platformgameplay.settings file ("...\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\\bin\config\platform\pc" folder)! ;)

I am afraid I don't know of any other parameter that can be changed to alter the sensitivity/deadzone of controller sticks... :ermm:
Verrenus, you're getting me all excited. I will look into those mods. Thanks man.
 
@Verrenus I want to thank you for keeping this thread alive and up to date. It has made my experiance with this game that much more enjoyable :respect: after a fresh install of the game and a few tweaks I was able to get in a good solid 4 hours of gaming last night following your OP for the most part to a T. (Modified slightly due to runnig a 980ti when it came to hairworks) a questions came to mind on a few adjustments that I could not find an answer to and perhaps this is due to this new fangled console stuff (yes I'm old pencil and paper rpg and pc type) can anyone tell me what these are ?

[Input/Gestures]
EnableSwipe=false
EnablePan=false
EnableGestures=false
EnablePinch=false

[Kinect]
Kinect=false

[/B]I made the adjustments as recommended but could not for the life of me find out what they were for. (Just like to know what I am adjusting) Thanks!!

Well they seem to be for different types of controllers it would seem, not sure what purpose they really serve but I haven't seen any effect of on or off on PC.

No worries, Helidoc, I am so glad to hear that you find the OP useful! :D

The [Input/Gestures] and [Kinect] sections both feature parameters that are clearly out place on PCs, since they govern console-exclusive functions, specifically the PS4 controller's touchpad gestures and Xbox One's Kinect. :ermm:

I am afraid that these two sections of the user.settings file are proof that CD Projekt RED didn't do an exactly stellar job of optimising The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for the PC platform. We could also get into the argument of them completely ignoring our complaints regarding the extremely short engine-locked LOD and draw distances that a modder had to fix for free, but I guess that's beside the point... :X

Presented with such settings, my only course of action was to set them all to "false" and try to ignore them, since there's nothing else to do about it. It was CD Projekt RED's job to remove them during the optimisation process, but I guess they had other issues to take care of and simply forgot about them even a year after the game launched! ;)

Hi. Have you messed around with the TextureMipBias setting? I see some old hits on Google saying 0 is better than the default -1.

I personally always set the "Texture Quality" in-game graphics setting to "Ultra", but then manually edit TextureMipBias back to "0" to disable this particular feature, since I prefer sharpening my textures using ReShade's LumaSharpen shader. As a rule though, negative TextureMipBias values will sharpen your textures, while positive values will blur them even further compared to default (definitely not a good look!). :p

I would personally give ReShade a try if I were you and see if you don't like one of the dozens of already-existing presets out there. You can find detailed instructions on how to install and configure ReShade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt right here in the OP, specifically section 0d! ;)

Verrenus, you're getting me all excited. I will look into those mods. Thanks man.

That's because the graphics mods for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt really do bring major improvements over the vanilla game. Just check out this latest video by Halk Hogan PL, the creator of the "HD Reworked Project" mod, showcasing his improvements for Blood and Wine's visuals. You tell me that's something you wouldn't like for your game, especially since his mod costs virtually nothing performance-wise! :p
 
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No worries, Helidoc, I am so glad to hear that you find the OP useful! :D

The [Input/Gestures] and [Kinect] sections both feature parameters that are clearly out place on PCs, since they govern console-exclusive functions, specifically the PS4 controller's touchpad gestures and Xbox One's Kinect. :ermm:

I am afraid that these two sections of the user.settings file are proof that CD Projekt RED didn't do an exactly stellar job of optimising The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for the PC platform. We could also get into the argument of them completely ignoring our complaints regarding the extremely short engine-locked LOD and draw distances that a modder had to fix for free, but I guess that's beside the point... :X

Presented with such settings, my only course of action was to set them all to "false" and try to ignore them, since there's nothing else to do about it. It was CD Projekt RED's job to remove them during the optimisation process, but I guess they had other issues to take care of and simply forgot about them even a year after the game launched! ;)



I personally always set the "Texture Quality" in-game graphics setting to "Ultra", but then manually edit TextureMipBias back to "0" to disable this particular feature, since I prefer sharpening my textures using ReShade's LumaSharpen shader. As a rule though, negative TextureMipBias values will sharpen your textures, while positive values will blur them even further compared to default (definitely not a good look!). :p

I would personally give ReShade a try if I were you and see if you don't like one of the dozens of already-existing presets out there. You can find detailed instructions on how to install and configure ReShade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt right here in the OP, specifically section 0d! ;)



That's because the graphics mods for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt really do bring major improvements over the vanilla game. Just check out this latest video by Halk Hogan PL, the creator of the "HD Reworked Project" mod, showcasing his improvements for Blood and Wine's visuals. You tell me that's something you wouldn't like for your game, especially since his mod costs virtually nothing performance-wise! :p


I actually had called my 32 Y.O. Son up and was asking him about those as well, he plays many games with an XBox etc. and he was like... yea dad turn em off.. :yes
+1 on the ReShade and adding the HD Reworked to the game ... night and day differance for very little cost. I just seen in your signature that you also have a DA:I tweak as well ?!?! ... now there is a rabbit hole.... :cheers2:
 
I personally always set the "Texture Quality" in-game graphics setting to "Ultra", but then manually edit TextureMipBias back to "0" to disable this particular feature, since I prefer sharpening my textures using ReShade's LumaSharpen shader. As a rule though, negative TextureMipBias values will sharpen your textures, while positive values will blur them even further compared to default (definitely not a good look!). :p

I would personally give ReShade a try if I were you and see if you don't like one of the dozens of already-existing presets out there. You can find detailed instructions on how to install and configure ReShade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt right here in the OP, specifically section 0d! ;)

Ok, I will give that a shot. Do you also turn off the post-process sharpening filter in-game then?
 
This is why I always recommend deleting the user.settings and user.settings.bak files from your "...\Documents\The Witcher 3" folder whenever a new patch is released, since CD Projekt RED almost always add/remove/tweak the parameters contained therein. Needless to say, if your user.settings was set to "Read-only" before installing a new patch, the new/changed parameters will not apply and you'll be left with all manner of visual bugs and artifacts!

With that being said, I don't think the TextureStreamingDistanceSq and related parameters are directly responsible for the bug you are experiencing. It's just a shot in the dark, but have you tried disabling Motion Blur from the in-game postprocessing menu given that the bug only happens when turning the camera quickly around?
I believe I have found my culprit. Decided to rebuild my settings once again and compared the two and for some reason in the first rebuild I had a setting called EnableGPUClothSimulation enabled, and on the second rebuild that option was altogether not there. Not entirely sure where I goofed up at, but after adjusting all the other settings that one appears to have been the cause of the issue.
 
Hi. Have you messed around with the TextureMipBias setting? I see some old hits on Google saying 0 is better than the default -1.
Yeah about that, could go on a whole debate about that...

Basically, if you use something like -1 then it will make certain textures sharper but it will also introduce shimmering because there aren't any actual 'details' sharpening gives you, it's just noise that we've found pleasing because of gaming trends of high sharpening, high contrast and consider it 'details'. I personally prefer smoothness and softness and I absolutely HATE shimmering so I have it set at -0.6

Depending on your preferences you might want to try slightly lower values than -1 and see how you like it.

(And I also keep the sharpening off)
 
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+1 on the ReShade and adding the HD Reworked to the game ... night and day differance for very little cost. I just seen in your signature that you also have a DA:I tweak as well ?!?! ... now there is a rabbit hole.... :cheers2:

I do indeed have a similar guide in place for Dragon Age: Inquisition, kind sir! :D

Before The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released, DA:I actually was one of my favourite RPGs of all time, but they really are quite different games in both mechanics and subject matter. Still, for a fan of the Dragon Age series, DA:I is indeed a must-play to my mind. Just make sure to get the "Game of the Year" edition which includes all of the DLC released for the game, since it usually goes on sale for at least 50% off during Origin's seasonal sales! ;)

Ok, I will give that a shot. Do you also turn off the post-process sharpening filter in-game then?
(And I also keep the sharpening off)

I do indeed keep it disabled, since the in-game sharpening filter is of poorer quality than ReShade's LumaSharpen shader. If I were to rank them according to quality, it would look something like this:

In-game Sharpening filter < negative TextureMipBias values < ReShade's Lumasharpen ;)

I believe I have found my culprit. Decided to rebuild my settings once again and compared the two and for some reason in the first rebuild I had a setting called EnableGPUClothSimulation enabled, and on the second rebuild that option was altogether not there. Not entirely sure where I goofed up at, but after adjusting all the other settings that one appears to have been the cause of the issue.

That's fantastic to hear! This is exactly why I always recommend deleting the .settings files and letting the installation client refresh them from scratch. ;)

Have a blast playing the game now and do come back if you ever encounter any other issues or have any other questions and we'll sort them all out again together! :D
 
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I do indeed keep it disabled, since the in-game sharpening filter is of poorer quality than ReShade's LumaSharpen shader. If I were to rank them according to quality, it would look something like this:

In-game Sharpening filter < negative TextureMipBias values < ReShade's Lumasharpen ;)

Which preset did you opt for? I looked through a few of them but they were all very exaggerated.
 
Which preset did you opt for? I looked through a few of them but they were all very exaggerated.

Indeed, quite a number of preset creators seem to enjoy these super-saturated, high-contrast visuals which to my mind look garish and completely over-the-top . :X

This is why I almost always gravitate towards K-putt's presets, since they never change the developers' original artistic vision, but rather serve to enhance it in several subtle ways. Needless to say, it's one of his presets that I am personally using with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as well! ;)
 
Indeed, quite a number of preset creators seem to enjoy these super-saturated, high-contrast visuals which to my mind look garish and completely over-the-top . :X

This is why I almost always gravitate towards K-putt's presets, since they never change the developers' original artistic vision, but rather serve to enhance it in several subtle ways. Needless to say, it's one of his presets that I am personally using with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as well! ;)

That looks more like it. Do you also use SMAA like he suggests or stick with in-game one?

---------- Updated at 11:26 PM ----------

Ok. Have not noticed this before. Either the sun started spinning faster or something is up with my shadow settings. I just copied the ones from OP though.
It almost looks like someone picks up the tree and walks away with it:
[video=youtube;h8-0EmS7nOI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8-0EmS7nOI[/video]

I had to disable Reshade to be able to record so I know it's not the culprit.
 
That looks more like it. Do you also use SMAA like he suggests or stick with in-game one?

After inspecting some of my own comparison screenshots, I decided to disable K-putt's preset's SMAA and only leave the in-game AA method enabled, since it resolves not only static aliasing, but temporal aliasing as well. ;)

Ok. Have not noticed this before. Either the sun started spinning faster or something is up with my shadow settings. I just copied the ones from OP though.
It almost looks like someone picks up the tree and walks away with it:
[video=youtube;h8-0EmS7nOI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8-0EmS7nOI[/video]

I had to disable Reshade to be able to record so I know it's not the culprit.

ReShade couldn't have caused the bug from your video, since it only injects specific shaders on top of what the game is already rendering. Since I have never seen this bug for myself using the settings described in section 18 of the OP, I would recommend that you delete both your user.settings and user.settings.bak files, perform a verification from within your installation client and reset all of your in-game settings back to their previous positions. ;)

If you stop seeing this bug after doing that, it's clear that it was triggered by something shady going on in your user.settings file. If not, then it's also possible that this is a bug introduced by either patch 1.21 or even the Blood and Wine expansion itself! :ermm:
 
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After inspecting some of my own comparison screenshots, I decided to disable K-putt's preset's SMAA and only leave the in-game AA method enabled, since it resolves not only static aliasing, but temporal aliasing as well. ;)



ReShade couldn't have caused the bug from your video, since it only injects specific shaders on top of what the game is already rendering. Since I have never seen this bug for myself using the settings described in section 18 of the OP, I would recommend that you delete both your user.settings and user.settings.bak files, perform a verification from within your installation client and reset all of your in-game settings back to their previous positions. ;)

If you stop seeing this bug after doing that, it's clear that it was triggered by something shady going on in your user.settings file. If not, then it's also possible that this is a bug introduced by either patch 1.21 or even the Blood and Wine expansion itself! :ermm:

So it does seem to be a bug with the game. I deleted the settings files and cleaned out all 4 mods I use and re-verified cache(5 files failed). Rebooted game and the bug is still there.

If you want to reproduce it, go to the fast travel point of Fort Ussar in eastern Touissant. Run down the hill just behind the road sign and you'll see it. In-game time is 5.30 AM btw.
 
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