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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Graphics Settings: Screen Percentage= AMD FSR? Grainy Global Illumination
Uncommon Sense
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I've been playing around with graphics options trying to find an optimal setting for mid range hardware.
Logging in for the first time the shadows and hair appear very grainy. I've experienced this kind of symptom using upscalers.
The graphics options do not list DLSS/FSR but I am aware AMD FSR is baked into UE5 to some extent.
So looking at the graphics option there appears to be a (Screen Percentage) with options between Native, then High Quality - Performance.
The setting is Balanced by default...Switching back to Native dropped FPS from about 60 down to 30 (4k Display setting) Quality bumped up to 55
It would appear the Alpha performance is using relying on some iteration of Upscalers by default...which is a bit disappointing.
Going to native setting did not remove the grainy shadows/hair...however the performance frame-rate hit is significant. So Quality seems to be the compromise. I am using an AMD RX6800. Perhaps a Nvidia GPU handles it better?
Any shadow setting below medium hurts visual fidelity. Global Illumination appears to be the main culprit and exacerbates the grainy issue 10x and would set to Medium if you graphics look grainy.
Still playing around with the settings the GPU is using about 12gb of VRAM at 4k which is an improvement from the last Alpha Test.
System RAM is still about 20GB from last week.
Logging in for the first time the shadows and hair appear very grainy. I've experienced this kind of symptom using upscalers.
The graphics options do not list DLSS/FSR but I am aware AMD FSR is baked into UE5 to some extent.
So looking at the graphics option there appears to be a (Screen Percentage) with options between Native, then High Quality - Performance.
The setting is Balanced by default...Switching back to Native dropped FPS from about 60 down to 30 (4k Display setting) Quality bumped up to 55
It would appear the Alpha performance is using relying on some iteration of Upscalers by default...which is a bit disappointing.
Going to native setting did not remove the grainy shadows/hair...however the performance frame-rate hit is significant. So Quality seems to be the compromise. I am using an AMD RX6800. Perhaps a Nvidia GPU handles it better?
Any shadow setting below medium hurts visual fidelity. Global Illumination appears to be the main culprit and exacerbates the grainy issue 10x and would set to Medium if you graphics look grainy.
Still playing around with the settings the GPU is using about 12gb of VRAM at 4k which is an improvement from the last Alpha Test.
System RAM is still about 20GB from last week.
0
Comments
This shouldn't be disappointing at all, it is becoming a new standard given the state of upscaler technology such as DLSS. The game is simply set to use upscaler by default yet no one is forcing you to utilize it , a reason you can switch to native however I see no point when in many cases the upscaler at quality setting will give you equivalent/comparable image quality to native ,if not better + better FPS which is the main point behind the upscaler. Upscaler also takes care of antialiasing. With this being said ,if DLSS or FSR is implemented properly and works as it should, there is no reason not to use it for better performance. You can't use DLSS with AMD GPU ,because it is a hardware based technology meant to run on Nvidia GPU's only, AMD FSR is software based upscaler that runs on all GPU's and should give a performance boost however not better image quality in many cases, DLSS is superior. With this being said, the option that comes up under super resolution, it does not specify rather to use DLSS or FSR, not sure ,if the game is auto selecting based on GPU.
DLSS is a little better than AMD FSR3. Though This post is not about GPU manufactures features and price to performance.
I brought up if anyone using a NVIDIA GPU is also experiencing the grainy global illumination issues...
Perhaps its how the game is auto detecting hardware... I am trying to find the primary setting that is causing the sand in the eyes, grainy hair and shadows.
FSR is known to have some shimmering/ghosting which has not been a major issue so far.
Screen Percentage appears to be some iteration of FSR Upscaling. Native resolution to Balanced % appears to double frame rate. I have found Quality better looking and only a minor fps hit from Balanced which was my system auto default setting.
However Global illumination setting seems to be the main cause of the sandy/grainy details/shadows. Which I have set to Medium.
I was hoping to to find that Native resolution+global illumination would remove the grainy shadows= It did not
Upscaling should not be the "New standard" Native resolution optimization should always be the primary goal. Upscaling should be seen as way to allow people with sub optimal hardware a way to achieve playable frame rates.
Otherwise it just becomes a lazy development crutch...