Mass Effect 2 is a great looking game, but it can be tweaked to look better. Not only that, but the tweaks can improve visual quality without performance loss, and in some rare cases, even improve frame-rate. The following guide is a product of two months of testing various driver versions, settings, .ini tweaks, FRAPS frame-rate measurements, and not least, compiling the best tweaks from various forums discussing Mass Effect 2.
This guide presumes that your PC can handle Mass Effect 2 at stock max settings; don't be scared to experiment, performance varies on the PC platform and you should try to maximize what your personal setup can do!
NOTE: Some settings may work with the Xbox360 as well, if you can modify your coalesced.ini file. I advise you to take a lot a the guide, just in case.
GENERAL SETTINGS:
The following settings do not require you to modify any .ini files and are related to GPU driver settings.
- A feature that is lacking in Mass Effect 2 is anti-aliasing. This is a graphics process that smooths the image and tries to remove the "jaggies" around 3D objects. The only way to turn AA on is with your GPU driver control panel, or a third-party GPU settings program (Enchancer, for example).
Mass Effect 2 works best only with Super-Sampling AA (SSAA). All other AA modes result in variation of image quality, where some objects are smoothed, while others are not. SSAA has the biggest performance hit, but by far the best image quality (most visible on the Normandy SR-2 - only SSAA smooths objects such as handles, rails, stairs etc.). Also, it works best with the bloom effect. I highly recommend to run Mass Effect 2 with at least 2x SSAA.
If you have the retail version of the game, and forcing anti-aliasing through the driver does not work, rename the executable (in Mass Effect2/Binaries/MassEffect2.exe) to " UT3.exe ".
Always test your tweaks on dialogue cut-scenes! Performance impact on the third-person sections is negligible, but in cut-scenes and dialogues it can cut your frame-rate by half. Be warned!
- Always close any background programs to free more memory and processor power.
ATI Specific:
- I strongly recommend the Catalyst driver version 9.11 and previous to any HD4xxx series owners; testing with HD4670, HD4770 and HD4850 has produced best results with the late 9.xx drivers; on my HD4770 in particular with 9.10.
- To enable AA:
- go to the Catalyst Control Center - set "Anti-Aliasing" to desired value - 2x, 4x or 8x, "Box" filter
- set "Catalyst A.I." to "Advanced" - this results in best image quality ("Standard" may cause bloom effect issues).
- set "Adaptive Anti-Aliasing" to "Quality" - this is the SSAA mode.
NOTE: - "Box" filter is highly recommended - the "Tent" filters result in image distortion, while "Edge-Detect" in heavy performance impact. Values above 4x are also not recommended!
- "Adaptive Anti-aliasing" setting is crucial- otherwise, you run either regular or multi-sampling AA which does not improve quality much, but still impacts performance.
Mass Effect 2 Steam version: As renaming the executable does not work, you may need the 10.1 hotfix driver to run the game with AA.
nVidia Specific: As I do not own a gForce GPU, I am not familiar with the exact driver settings, however, be sure to check whether or not AA is set to full-screen anti-aliasing , multi-sampling or super-sampling.
nVidia uses the exact terms, so it should not be a problem. Again, values above 4x SSAA are not recommended!
ADVANCED TWEAKS:
The following are the core to improving the image quality. You'll need the:
Mass Effect 2 Mod Manager, by RoadCrewWorker
You an either set the values manually, or use a mod package (NOTE: I'll compile one in the following days).
TO INSTALL: Extract "Mod Manager" to a folder; open the "Mod Manager" application, select coalesced.ini file and set desired valuues, "apply" and "save"! Now all you need to do is test in-game. You need to have enabled MAXIMUM Graphics settings in-game / with configuration utility before applying the tweaks!
Now, let's start the real tweaks:
Textures:
MaxAnisotropy=8 to 16 - enables best texture-filter version; originally limited to 8x only;
NOTE: You must edit the line that BIOCompat.ini/AppCompatBucket5/MaxAnisotropy for this to work - this is the line for highest in-game settings (lower "bucket" number - lower in-game settings).
Trilinear=False to True - enables better texture optimization; works in tandem with AF.
Effects:
EnableHighPolyChars=False to TRUE - enables higher-polygon character models in and outside of cut-scenes;
MaxMultisamples=1 to 2 or 4 * - supposedly helps when AA is turned on, may not work; no performance impact; experiment with it to get best results;
BIOVertexShaderVersion=vs_2_0 to v_3_0 - enables newer shader model (all modern GPUs are Shader 3 or 4)
Shadows:
ShadowFilterQualityBias=0 to 2 - improves shadows;
MinShadowResolution=32 to 64 - greatly improves shadows at negligible performance loss;
MaxShadowResolution=512 to 1024 - improves shadows; not recommended, great performance loss!
bEnableBranchingPCFShadows=False to True - small performance increase on my setup;
ATI Specific: DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=True to False
nViia Specific: UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization = True to False
If you have any suggestion on graphics tweaks, please post them!
Well, here's hoping that someone bothers to read this and test it - I hope you'll see the improvements, esp. with aliasing.
Modifié par Burdokva, 26 juin 2010 - 08:12 .
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