The UserSettings.txt performance thread

Dimillian

Hello guys,

I think it's time for some performances discussion. Yeah I know the client still have some crashs issues, but ignoring that, I think it would be cool for everyone to discuss their Mac specs and post their tips and tricks for improving their FPS.

UserSettings.txt (located in ~/Elder Scrolls Online/liveeu/userSettings.txt) allow you to modify a number of settings (graphics and other) that are not available to modify in the settings panel in the game.

I'll post mine, with some comment. Please use the spoiler tag so we can still read post form each other.

First my specs.
Macbook Pro Retina 15' first gen
I7 2.3 GHZ
8GB RAM 1600 MhZ
512 GB SSD
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

What I did from the graphics settings panel in game is set the general slider on ultra-high, then I reduced shadow quality to low, and water reflection to medium. This will allow you to gain a good amount of FPS while keeping the visual nearly intact.

I'm getting around 25-35FPS in simple combat, calm area, and 15-25FPS in town and group combat. And maybe 40+FPS inside, even in group dungeon.
In PVP I reduce the texture quality to medium in order to DELAY the crash, and got something like 15-20FPS in huge battle, which is totally acceptable on a laptop.

I also modified some values in the UserSettings manually after that.

A few notes:

• The general graphics settings will modify all the value under, but also modify some invisible values you can't modify from the GUI. This is very important to note, for example, if you want the shiny reflection on your armour, you need to set it to medium or higher. Those invisible value can be modified can be modified in the UserSettings.text file.
• Change your UserSettings.txt file only once you're happy with your in game settings. Then quit the game, and make manual changes in your file. If you change the general toggle in game i'll reset your manual values. You can still change other options like texture quality.

SET MouseRawInput "1"
SET MouseSensitivityFirstPerson "0.50000000"
SET MouseSensitivityThirdPerson "1.00000000"
SET MouseSmoothing "0"
SET InvertMouseWheel "1"
SET InvertMouseY "1"
SET InvertMouseX "1"
SET CachedRLREnabled "1"
SET CachedReflectionResolution "4"
SET CachedShadowFiltering "3"
SET ScreenshotFormat "BMP"
SET PregameGammaCheckEnabled "0"
SET HardwareCheckEnabled.2 "0"
SET SUB_SAMPLING "2"
SET REFLECTION_QUALITY_v3 "2"
SET PARTICLE_DENSITY "3"
SET HIGH_RESOLUTION_SHADOWS "0"
SET SHADOWS "1"
SET GAMMA_ADJUSTMENT "113"
SET VIEW_DISTANCE "1.37000000"
SET GPUSmoothingFrames "0"
SET MIP_LOAD_SKIP_LEVELS "0"
SET RAIN_WETNESS "1"
SET LENS_FLARE "1"
SET GOD_RAYS_v2 "1"
SET ANTI_ALIASING_v2 "0"
SET AMBIENT_OCCLUSION "1"
SET COLOR_GRADING_v1 "0"
SET BLOOM "1"
SET DEPTH_OF_FIELD "1"
SET COLOR_CORRECTION "1"
SET SOFT_ALPHA "0"
SET DISTORTION "1"
SET CHARACTER_LIGHTING "1"
SET DIFFUSE_2_MAPS "1"
SET DETAIL_MAPS "1"
SET NORMAL_MAPS "1"
SET SPECULAR_MAPS "1"
SET CLUTTER_2D "1"
SET SIMPLE_SHADERS "0"
SET WATER_FOAM "1"
SET VSYNC "0"
SET MAX_ANISOTROPY "1"
SET FULLSCREEN_v5 "2"
SET PreferMaximizedWindow "0"
SET FullscreenHeight "0"
SET FullscreenWidth "0"
SET WindowedHeight "804"
SET WindowedWidth "1440"
SET SOUND_ENABLED "1"
SET FOOTSTEPS_VOLUME "50.00000000"
SET FOOTSTEPS_ENABLED "1"
SET SPEAKER_SETUP "0"
SET BACKGROUND_AUDIO "0"
SET VO_VOLUME "100.00000000"
SET VO_ENABLED "1"
SET UI_VOLUME "70.00000000"
SET UI_ENABLED "1"
SET AMBIENT_VOLUME "70.00000000"
SET AMBIENT_ENABLED "1"
SET SFX_VOLUME "70.00000000"
SET SFX_ENABLED "1"
SET MUSIC_VOLUME "70.00000000"
SET MUSIC_ENABLED "1"
SET AUDIO_VOLUME "100.00000000"
SET AUDIO_ENABLED "1"
SET TooltipFilter "-1"
SET TooltipNumOptions "2"
SET EffectsLookupViaBinarySearch "1"
SET Language.2 "en"
SET GraphicsDriver.7 "OPENGL"
SET PatchDataPath "game:/GameData/"
SET CacheDataPath "machine:/Cache/"
SET GameCameraFirstPerson "0"
SET AcceptedEULAVersion "3"
SET DirectionalDamageIndictorVisibleInThirdPerson "0"
SET CameraFramingTransitionEnabled "1"
SET SkipPregameVideos "1"
SET HasPlayedPregameVideo "1"
SET RangedKillCamera "0"
SET PlayerKillCamera "1"
SET LastMonsterKillCamera "1"
SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.01000000"
SET ParticlesEnabled "1"
SET RequestedNumThreads "-1"
SET FreeUnusedGrannyFileSections.2 "0"
SET IsTrustedMachine "1"
SET RememberAccountName "1"
SET AccountName "Dimillian"
SET LastRealm "EU Megaserver"
SET CustomUIScale "1.00000000"
SET UseCustomUIScale.2 "0"
SET RollDodgeDoubleTapEnabled "1"
SET RollDodgeDoubleTapTimeWindow.2 "185"
SET CameraZoomDistancesSynced "1"
SET SiegeCameraZoomDistance "6.00000000"
SET WeaponsOutCameraZoomDistance "5.00000000"
SET WeaponsSheathedCameraZoomDistance "5.00000000"
SET MaxNetworkWriteBuffer "10485760"
SET MaxNetworkReadBuffer "10485760"

What I manually modified:

• SET GPUSmoothingFrames "0" => This one is at 10 by default, setting to 0 have no visual impact, and will improve your FPS by 3-5. Its real impact still need to be defined.
• SET HIGH_RESOLUTION_SHADOWS "0" => When the game is on high or ultra it's set to 1. Setting to 0 will restore some FPS (5-10). Your shadow will look more blocky and aliased.
• SET SOFT_ALPHA "0" => By default it's on 1, on 0 it have no impact on visual, and it should give you some more FPS. (If anyone know exactly what it does...)
• SET SkipPregameVideos "1" => Bypass launch images, launch the game directly on the login screen

If you have more tips and tricks to improve performances, post them.
If you have questions, post them.
If you just want to post your Mac specs, and performances, post it too

MorHawk

Tagging this one for later. Some smart tips there.

KhajitFurTrader

Awww, this so reminds me of the happy days of twiddling around with the UnrealTournament.ini, to gain the last quantum of performance from our meager Pentium IIs, running at 266 MHz. A lot of voodoo and smattering regarding the effects of settings have been around back then, and are still to this day. And to think that today UT screams while running in a VM. How times have changed...

Or have they?

I don't want to diminish your efforts, but I want to remind everyone to take everything that regards the UserSettings.txt with a grain of salt. Do not expect miracles form tweaking it. There's no hidden, undocumented switch that suddenly boosts your FPS to a constant 100 when flipped. Indeed, there are a few issues, if not now, then maybe further down the road:

• no-one, except ZOS, knows which of those settings have any effect at all on the graphics engine. The ones that change according to the in-game settings look like a sure-fire hit for the time being, but the rest of them might be simply ignored at best. Or they might just influence DX11 rendering (Mac and Win clients share the same file), but are ignored for OpenGL, and vice versa.
• ZOS can, at any time without prior notice or documentation, change the meaning of those settings, this includes making them deprecated.
• The client, or rather its engine, can and will make decisions about display quality on its own (or might even be overridden by the server, since it has the bigger picture). Point in case: in locations with masses of players on screen, LOD distance seems to get decreased automatically, to keep frame rates up. The point when this happens might depend on the overall graphics quality settings and available memory, but it cannot be avoided (obviously, there's no slider for LOD in the options).

But whatever you decide to do: remember to make a backup of the original, unmodified file. Just in case.

Edit: clarifications

Dimillian

On your last point, yes, the client do a lot of things magically behind the scene. The PVP configuration is not the same as the PVE one, you can clearly see that details on other players and map is decreased when there are ton of peoples around. The game also scale texture resolution regarding available ram left in its 32 bits enclave. Which is nice.

But like UT, and Skyrim, I'm sure there are undocumented lines we don't know yet that we might have fun using, I really like tinkering with it. It won't destroy your game or get you banned after all. Those are just clients and configuration values.

nml

Why are there not more posts here?

ZOS_DaryaK

We're sending this thread back to the tombs where it belongs as it is nearly three years old.