Assassin’s Creed: Unity left its fans dumbfounded with its hideous optimization across all platforms. Just when Ubisoft was picked apart by its fans, Far Cry 4 came to the rescue.
Featuring both brilliant visual fidelity and decent optimization, Far Cry restored fans’ faith in Ubisoft. Those of you who still wish to better their overall experience with the game, refer to the tweaks provided below for a balance between visual fidelity and playable FPS:
Far Cry 4 contains two ‘config-files’ which will enable you to fine-tune your overall gameplay experience and adjust a larger number of graphical options. These two files – GamerProfile.xml and GFXSettings.FarCry464.xml – can be accessed from:
C:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents\My Games\Far Cry 4\Default
Do make sure to tick ‘Read-Only’ to ensure that your altered changes does not revert to their original state. Additionally, set the visual quality to ‘Custom’ to make changes.
Tip: If your game, somehow, fails to load, delete these two files and start the game to regenerate these two files.
Default Graphics Settings
The in-game graphics settings include: Low; Medium; High; Very High; Ultra; Nvidia [Ultra + Soft Shadows]
- Motion Blur: Off/On
- Textures: Low; Medium; High; Very High; Ultra
- Shadows: Low; Medium; High; Very High; Ultra; Soft shadows
- Post FX: Low; Medium; High; Ultra
- Geometry: Low; High; Very High; Ultra
- Vegetation: Low; Medium; High; Ultra
- Terrain: Low; Medium; High; Ultra
- Water: Low; Medium; High; Very High; Ultra
- Environment: Low; High; Ultra
- Ambient Occlusion: Off; SSAO; SSBC; HBAO+
- Anti-aliasing: Off; 2x MSAA; 4x MSAA; 8x MSAA; SMAA; 2x TXAA; 4x TXAA
- Godrays: Off, Volumetric Fog, Enhanced
- Fur: On/Off
- Trees Relief:On/Off
Alpha to Coverage
Those of you who experienced Far Cry 3 in its full glory might be familiar with ATOC.
ATOC in Far Cry 3 had a decent impact on flora of the game. This thing is back in Far Cry 4, but is not half as effective as it used to be in Far Cry 3. This option is only accessible from ‘GamerProfile.xml’ in Far Cry 4.
ATOC is auto-enabled in Far Cry 4 and it is recommended that you set ‘AlphaToCoverage’ to “0” in ‘GamerProfile.xml’. You can also go with “1” instead of “0” but it is not recommended.
Field of View
Field of View is present in in-game settings, but for those of you who wish to fine-tune things should, once again, refer to ‘GamerProfile.xml’. Once you have opened up the ‘GamerProfile.xml’, adjust ‘FOVScaleFactor=’ to any value, even something like 1.56789.
Lightning
Lightning is nothing alien to PC gamers. It is the in-game lightning and how it interacs with the other in-game objects. It is accessible from both ‘GamerProfile.xml’ & ‘GFXSettings.FarCry464.xml’ and can be altered as per your will.
There is not much difference when we talk about shifting from ‘Ultra High’ to ‘High’, but you will notice considerable difference when shifting from ‘High’ to ‘Low’.
Although setting it to ‘Low’ will improve the performance to some extent, we would NOT recommend it since it removes lightning from certain areas and cause them to become dark which consequently ruins the scenery.
Still, if you’re struggling to to get decent FPS and consider a couple of increased FPS a treat, go with setting it to ‘Low’.
Mouse Settings
Some players might be witnessing jittering in movements. Those players can set ‘MouseAccelerationOn’ and ‘MouseAcceleration’, ‘Smoothness’, ‘Smoothness_Ironsight’, and ‘UseMouseSmooth’ to “0”.
Stuttering Issues
If you are facing mitigate stuttering issues, you can follow the below provided tweaks, but remember that it will slightly increase your VRAM usage. Inside ‘GamerProfile.xml’, change the following values:
‘DisableLoadingMip0’ to “1”
‘GPUMaxBufferedFrames’ to something between “1” to “3”
Skipping Intro. Videos
In order to do this, you need to create a ‘Shortcut’ of the game’s ‘.exe’ file and add ‘-skipintro’ without commas to the target line.
FPS Cap
In order to do so, you need to download RivaTuner Statistics Server and input your desired FPS in the ‘Framerate Limit’ box.
RTSS is particularly useful if your rig is not capable of maintaining 60FPS and you do not want those minor fluctuations.
Read our Far Cry 4 Errors Crashes for workarounds to resolve general bugs and errors. Need further assistance? Let us know in the comments below!
