Intro Mass Effect 2 is a truly epic gaming experience that
every PC gamer should embark upon at some point, however, in order to
get the most out of the PC version of the game and your hardware, some
additional tweaks may be required. I just wanted to put them all in
one place to make it easier to read and access. Most of these steps
are just from previous experience with games that use the Unreal Engine
3 along with some trial and error.
Here's an overview of the sections to help you navigate quickly:
- I. Skip the Intro Splash Movies
- II. UE3 INI Tweaking
- III. Forcing AA and SLI on Nvidia Hardware
- IV. nHancer Tips and Troubleshooting
- V. Comparative Pictures
I. Skip the Intro Splash Movies Navigate to %:\\\\\\\\Mass Effect 2\\\\\\\\BioGame\\\\\\\\Movies and locate the two following:
- ME_EAsig_720p_v2_raw.bik
- BWLogo.bik
II. UE3 INI Tweaking
For those who are familiar with UE3 games, you're probably familiar
with the previous system that would typically have a
[gamename]Engine.ini file with numerous settings that could be changed
located somewhere in %:\\\\\\\\Users\\\\\\\\%\\\\\\\\Documents folder. ME2 still uses this
system but exposes much fewer options in the GamerSettings.ini located at %:\\\\\\\\Users\\\\\\\\%\\\\\\\\Documents\\\\\\\\BioWare\\\\\\\\Mass Effect 2\\\\\\\\BIOGame\\\\\\\\Config.
This file serves as an override and will take precedence over the
default settings found in DefaultEngine.ini, or in the case of ME2,
Coalesced.ini. Instead of placing most of these override settings
directly into the User\\\\\\\\Documents file, they put them into Coalesced.ini
and as the name implies, smushed them all together so its very
difficult to navigate or make any sense of. No problem, just use the
same settings you've grown accustomed to in the past from UE3 games to
tweak the settings you want to and put them into your GamerSettings.ini
file. You don't want to mess with Coalesced.ini or DefaultEngine.ini
as the game may not launch if you alter these or may make your game
unplayable if you mess with a setting you shouldn't have.
Here's a list of the ones I've changed and why:
- DepthOfField=False
Not only does this take away the blurry foreground/background blurring,
it also significantly decreases the dark shadows/lighting. - UseVsync=False Some may prefer Vsync On, but this will allow you to turn off Vsync if only to verify performance/SLI scaling.
- bSmoothFrameRate=False Similar to turning off Vsync, the UE3 additionally uses frame rate smoothing which acts as an FPS cap (62 FPS)
- MinSmoothedFrameRate=22.000000
- MaxSmoothedFrameRate=200.000000 You also need to change this setting, as its set to a 62 FPS cap by default
that everything is under [SystemSettings] header instead of
[Engine.GameEngine] as its commented out anyways. You should be able
to add other settings from other UE3 game engine.ini although it may
not have any effect, or may even have negative effects. Just delete
GamerSettings.ini if that happens and the launcher will create a new
one.
I haven't really gotten around to messing with any other settings, in
the past with UE3 games I've had to go in and mess with the sound
settings to get EAX/7.1 to stick but no need this time around. Also no
need to mess with the shadow resolution this time around as they're
much better than ME1, but some people may want to try and tweak them to
see if they can't improve performance or visuals.
III. Forcing AA and SLI on Nvidia hardware
A few ways to go about this, but UE3 is notorious for having
compatibility issues with AA and/or SLI due to its use of deferred
rendering. Both Nvidia and ATI have developed driver workarounds to be
able to handle both AA and HDR under DX9, however, they need to
specifically enable compatibility flags in their drivers or the
settings in the NVCP or CCC will not know how to handle and apply
AA/SLI for UE3 titles.
For Nvidia users there's numerous options to get AA and SLI working properly:
- EVGA SLI Enhancement Pack: http://www.evga.com/articles/00463/
- nHancer: http://www.nhancer.com/ with ME2 profile http://forum.nhancer...p=6064#post6064
proper compatibility bits for both AA and SLI even if the latest Nvidia
or EVGA profiles aren't properly updated. This means you're never
really at the mercy of any particular IHV or ISV to fix their driver or
games, if you know the engine used and AA or SLI was supported before,
there's a very good chance you'll be able to force AA or SLI with a few
checkbox clicks.
You can force AA in ME2 with either of the following compatibility flags:
- 080100C5: Unreal Tournament 3
- 00000045: AA & HDR
IV. nHancer Tips and Troubleshooting
Setting up and navigating nHancer is pretty straightforward, its very
similar to the NVCP, just laid out in a better format, imo. It simply
exposes the settings and features already included in Nvidia's driver
and NVapps.xml and co-exists with NVCP in a safe manner.
Typically, here's the steps I take when I get a new game that doesn't
support AA natively, or doesn't seem to benefit from SLI:
- Step
1 - Check the default driver profile flags, if you know what engine the
game uses and the flags look like generic flags or don't match the
flags you're expecting, that's most likely why SLI or AA isn't
working. Look up some similar games where you know for a fact SLI or
AA is working and look to apply them for this game. In this case, I
can just look at ME1 and see that the original ME2 flags weren't
correct, so I used ME1 flags I know were working properly as a starting
point. - Step 2 - Set the proper compatibility flags you
identified in Step 1. If you're not comfortable yet with the various
game engines and don't want to try trial and error, just google your
game title + AA or SLI + nhancer compatibility and you should get some
hits with the proper flag identified. - Step 3 - If you have all
the flags set and AA or SLI still doesn't seem to be taking, make sure
the game profile is pointing to the proper game.exe file. You can
manually add additional .exe or launcher files as needed.
For AA, just look at the jaggies on geometry edges, you should see
noticeably decreased jaggies and edge shimmering when moving around
even with 4xMSAA at the cost of 30-50% FPS. Enabling Transparency
SuperSampling AA will help with foliage, hair, gratings, handrails etc,
although performance can drop considerably depending on how many
transparencies/billboards are in a scene. The most expensive form of
AA and true full-scene anti-aliasing with SuperSampling AA will not
only smooth edges on geometry, but also improve IQ on all
finely-patterned textures, shaders, decals etc. as the game engine is
simply rendering the scene at a higher resolution and then downsampling
to your target resolution.
Besides the dramatic
in-game IQ differences, you should be able to verify AA is working by
using Precision's ability to monitor VRAM usage. The amount of VRAM
will scale as you increase AA, for example at 1920x1200 with no AA ME2
uses ~300MB, 600MB with 4xMSAA, 700MB with 8xCSAA, and a whopping 900MB
with 8xSQ (2x2 SSAA + 2xMSAA). Make sure you close out anything that
uses VRAM when gaming....for example, preparing this write-up, I had 6x
Photo Gallery Viewers open and even running 8xCSAA I noticed a big drop
in FPS simply because VRAM usage had pushed into the 800MB range due to
all the photos open.
For SLI, make sure you have
Vsync disabled and FPS smoothing off, set max to something higher than
62, like 200. Also helps to enable SLI 3D Visualization from the NVCP,
the more solid the green bar, the more efficiently the GPUs in SLI are
being used. You can also use Precision's new features of GPU %
monitoring to see how much of each GPU is being utilized.
V. Comparative Pictures
Depth of Field On - notice both Shephard and background characters are
very dark to the point you can't see any detail on their bodies.
Lighting overall is also much darker.
Depth of Field Off - much more detail visible, shadows aren't as dark.
Depth of Field On - background and foreground images are blurred as
camera focus is on the speaker. More cinematic but overly dark.
Depth of Field Off - both background and foreground images are much
better focused, less cinematic but more detail visible.
Might be a bug with Depth of Field and lighting effects, as Depth of
Field shouldn't dramatically impact lighting so much.....may be worth
keeping an eye on this in future patches as the dark shadows have been
a noticeable complaint by many. Turning Depth of Field off solves this
problem but at the expense of a more cinematic feel to cut-scenes.
No AA - Notice the jaggies just about everywhere, much more noticeable
when playing as the entire scene will seem as if its "crawling".
4xMSAA - Jaggies on geometry (tables, weapons, individual solid colored
pipes) significantly reduced. The group of pipes in the right
background still noticeably jaggy due to shader aliasing. Textures
with inlaid patterns also still show aliasing. Running around the
normandy you'll still see these embedded patterns on walls shimmer as
you walk by.
8xSQ - Remaining scene elements noticeably less aliased, that
problematic group of pipes in the back right corner are noticeably less
jaggy. Again, this will be much more noticeable in actual gameplay,
however, 2x2 SSAA isn't playable at 1920x1200 with a single GTX 280,
you'll most likely need SLI or GF100 to play at these settings.
I'll see if I can find some other areas that help illustrate the
differences a bit better, I do remember quite a few landing missions
that did a much better job of illustrating the differences with
Transparency AA with foliage and/or floor gratings etc. I'll keep
adding tweaks and tips, let me know if you have any issues you'd like
to see addressed or if you have a suggestion for a good tweak. My
personal favorites are AA and turning Depth of Field Off as they'll
make your game look much better without sacrificing too much
performance. Hope this helps you focus on this excellent game instead
of fretting too much about getting enhancements or features working!
Modifié par Akimb0, 03 février 2010 - 01:30 .
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