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[KCroxtonJr]

Like I said, I think some sort of light emanates from Geralt during gameplay and it's turned off during conversations ( except when it glitches)

Nah it's not that, its a lack of lighting during gameplay. It seems they're disabling some shaders or lightsources or something during gameplay.

 

[Seanspeed]

Sweet. Hoping all is fine for when I switch! I've been playing with everything ultra apart from Foliage distance and shadows being on high, Hairworks off, and getting a solid 30fps.

Might just stick to 30fps with my 970 and get everything up on max, or start tweaking with some ini files and sweetfx now I have that extra headroom.

If you're going to stick with 30fps on a GTX970, one really good option is turning the resolution way up. I had it at a pretty solid 30fps at like 1800p(or something or the other) and good settings(no Hairworks, Foliage on High). I think this is a much better use of the extra horsepower than turning on Hairworks and sticking everything on Ultra while at 1080p. The visuals improve quite dramatically at higher resolutions, especially foliage:

 

[EatChildren]

Grass tweaks are definitely bugged out in my game, and not just grass density. Kaer Morhen, for example, has awful flickering grass if anything is tweaked above standard Ultra settings.

My gut says this has something to do with data streaming for foliage and some limit based on hardware, eg: the game decides to cull grass based on certain camera angles because it's essentially shitting itself trying to render the amount of grass you've set.

I've tried tweaking grass limit budget but it makes no difference.

Nah it's not that, its a lack of lighting during gameplay. It seems they're disabling some shaders or lightsources or something during gameplay.

It wouldn't be unusual for cutscenes to pull up different lighting during cutscenes/dialogue than gameplay. Pretty sure Mass Effect does it too, introducing new directed lighting during dialogue to better light/frame scenes. It's "missing" during gameplay because it's not real, if that makes sense.

 

[Iceternal]

It wouldn't be unusual for cutscenes to pull up different lighting during cutscenes/dialogue than gameplay. Pretty sure Mass Effect does it too, introducing new directed lighting during dialogue to better light/frame scenes. It's "missing" during gameplay because it's not real, if that makes sense.

Yeah .. and when this system doesn't work it becomes painfully obvious like in the video.

 

[CybernatonEvolution]

Some people are put off by the oversaturation of colors in this game, so that's what a lot of them seem to focus on. That, and the initial reveal was a lot less saturated,. so some are trying to emulate that style. You can actually make things MORE saturated if you wanted, but this game is already barfing colors all over the place, so that's not really too productive. There are a ton of other things SweetFX can do, but saturation tends to be more noticeable at first glance.

Even shadows are saturated. I guess they are trying mask something that wasn't in the original release; the latter had better lighting and shadows (kinda like global illumination/ambient lighting).

 

[viveks86]

Grass tweaks are definitely bugged out in my game, and not just grass density. Kaer Morhen, for example, has awful flickering grass if anything is tweaked above standard Ultra settings.

Whaaa? You mean the Kaer Morhen at the beginning of the game? Looked flawless for me after tweaking. Got any shots/clips demonstrating this?

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

If you're going to stick with 30fps on a GTX970, one really good option is turning the resolution way up. I had it at a pretty solid 30fps at like 1800p(or something or the other) and good settings(no Hairworks, Foliage on High). I think this is a much better use of the extra horsepower than turning on Hairworks and sticking everything on Ultra while at 1080p. The visuals improve quite dramatically at higher resolutions, especially foliage:

I need a masterclass on downsampling if that's the case, as I'm playing on my 1080p TV. I haven't dabbled in downsampling at all as I've always been happy with 1080p. But if you have any tips i'll happily take them and look into it!

 

[Cannon Goose]

If you're going to stick with 30fps on a GTX970, one really good option is turning the resolution way up. I had it at a pretty solid 30fps at like 1800p(or something or the other) and good settings(no Hairworks, Foliage on High). I think this is a much better use of the extra horsepower than turning on Hairworks and sticking everything on Ultra while at 1080p. The visuals improve quite dramatically at higher resolutions, especially foliage:

How much playing have you done at 1800p? I tried 2880x1620 and couldn't keep above 30fps at all times.

 

[Seanspeed]

I need a masterclass on downsampling if that's the case, as I'm playing on my 1080p TV. I haven't dabbled in downsampling at all as I've always been happy with 1080p. But if you have any tips i'll happily take them and look into it!

No real tips needed. Enable DSR in Nvidia Control panel(you can do this now if you want), check all the 1.2x, 1.4x boxes and these will give you additional resolution options in-game. 2.0x = 4k(2160p), while 1.4x would be something like 1440p. Even if you don't do this in TW3, you'll want to know about this for other games, especially older games that you'll max out super easily.

How much playing have you done at 1800p? I tried 2880x1620 and couldn't keep above 30fps at all times.

I played for about an hour, mainly just doing this one quest. It wasn't a super rock solid 30fps, but it was pretty close. Pretty sure it was just daytime, and I don't think I went into villages or anything, so maybe performance would be worse in different conditions. Either way, you can definitely go a fair bit higher than 1080p if all you're doing is 30fps. I'd take downsampling over Hairworks any day, but that's just me. Obviously anybody else will make their own decision on what is more worth it, I just wanted to let them know it was an option.

I did mention I had some settings turned down/off though, right? It wasn't all on Ultra. Performed well for me, I just missed the fluidity of 60fps too much.

 

[ISee]

Ignoring the instability of the latest Nvidia driver, is there actually any improvement in performance?

I'm still on the GTA V drivers, only had one crash on release day.

I am even one driver version down to 347.88 and I am still reaching constant 60 fps on my 970 (same settings as with 352.86). Noticed no differences, but of course there could be...

Also those drivers are stable. No crashes, freezes and driver resets so far.

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

No real tips needed. Enable DSR in Nvidia Control panel(you can do this now if you want), check all the 1.2x, 1.4x boxes and these will give you additional resolution options in-game. 2.0x = 4k(2160p), while 1.4x would be something like 1440p. Even if you don't do this in TW3, you'll want to know about this for other games, especially older games that you'll max out super easily.


I played for about an hour, mainly just doing this one quest. It wasn't a super rock solid 30fps, but it was pretty close. Pretty sure it was just daytime, and I don't think I went into villages or anything, so maybe performance would be worse in different conditions. Either way, you can definitely go a fair bit higher than 1080p if all you're doing is 30fps. I'd take downsampling over Hairworks any day, but that's just me. Obviously anybody else will make their own decision on what is more worth it, I just wanted to let them know it was an option.

I did mention I had some settings turned down/off though, right? It wasn't all on Ultra. Performed well for me, I just missed the fluidity of 60fps too much.

Ahh no way that's awesome will definitely be useful for my yearly playthrough of ME1 and Deus Ex Human Revolution lol. Will give this a go.

 

[damidu]

Sweet. Hoping all is fine for when I switch! I've been playing with everything ultra apart from Foliage distance and shadows being on high, Hairworks off, and getting a solid 30fps.

Might just stick to 30fps with my 970 and get everything up on max, or start tweaking with some ini files and sweetfx now I have that extra headroom.

yeah you'll most probably get 60fps with same settings.
from there u can tweak to your liking, to me fps jump feels much more substantial than extra eye candy.

 

[AndyBNV]

If you have user.settings on read only, disable that before you download the new DLC, otherwise it won't be activated properly. Or add the following to config file after the fact if you're afraid of breaking your tweaks

[DLC]
DlcEnabled_dlc_004_001=1
DlcEnabled_dlc_001_001=1
DlcEnabled_dlc_002_001=1
DlcEnabled_dlc_003_001=1

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

yeah you'll most probably get 60fps with same settings.
from there u can tweak to your liking, to me fps jump feels much more substantial than extra eye candy.

Yeah I totally get playing at 60fps. I've just never been all that bothered about 60fps unless it's a fast paced shooter or something of that ilk. When it comes to adventure games like this I'd rather really push the visual fidelity more. So a mix of sweetfx, ini tweaks and downsampling for me. I agree with Sean though, Hairworks seems pretty naff. I actually prefer the hair without it. Especially Geralts.

Whaaa? You mean the Kaer Morhen at the beginning of the game? Looked flawless for me after tweaking. Got any shots/clips demonstrating this?

Vivek how intensive are your ini tweaks? Will a 970 be able to run it ok?

 

[EatChildren]

Whaaa? You mean the Kaer Morhen at the beginning of the game? Looked flawless for me after tweaking. Got any shots/clips demonstrating this?

Ja. Also happened a bit on Skellige and White Orchard. Tinkered and it seems GrassDistanceScale is the culprit, to a lesser extent Grass Density too. I'm almost positive it's something to do with the game hitting a grass "limit" and culling tiers of foliage to maintain budget. For example if I reduce GrassDistanceScale from 4 to 3 in the tested scenarios the foliage flickering remains but is less aggressive.

I've tried fucking with cvMaxAllowedGrass= from 30000 to 90000 just to see if it raised a ceiling that the engine might be messing with, but nope.

Yeah .. and when this system doesn't work it becomes painfully obvious like in the video.

Yeah. Ultimately I think, like so many games, heavy darkness is where the lighting engine falls apart a bit. For example when you're outdoors in bright moonlight the game still looks gorgeous, everything lit by the moon. But if you go somewhere heavily under shadow the lighting looks off; too bright, and flat.

 

[Dries]

So I had some trouble noticing the Mipmap differences between 1.03 and 1.04, but I finally found out why it didn't work.

Because I have AF enabled in the NVCP, it automatically sets the Negative LOD Bias to "clamp". This turned out to be the reason I wasn't seeing the sharpened new foliage. After setting this setting to "Allow" I finally saw the changes 1.04 made.

Compliments go to Skyzard for his post concerning this:

Just a headsup with 1.04 and the mip map stuff.

For some fucked up reason in nvidia control panel, if I set the negative LOD bias to Allow, this stuff works.

If I set it to global (which is set to allow) it doesn't work.

I leave the setting at 0 in the rendering.ini (\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\base) and can freely play with the setting under [Rendering] in the user.settings file (in my documents/witcher 3) (add the line if it doesn't exit - it disappeared a few times for me while trying to figure out what was going on).

This saved me a lot of headaches.

 

[KaiserAlucard]

If you have user.settings on read only, disable that before you download the new DLC, otherwise it won't be activated properly. Or add the following to config file after the fact if you're afraid of breaking your tweaks

[DLC]
DlcEnabled_dlc_004_001=1
DlcEnabled_dlc_001_001=1
DlcEnabled_dlc_002_001=1
DlcEnabled_dlc_003_001=1

Strange, my user.settings weren't read only and yet my DLCs show as uninstalled on Steam. I tried your method but it doesn't change anything.

 

[Dictator93]

Yeah. Ultimately I think, like so many games, heavy darkness is where the lighting engine falls apart a bit. For example when you're outdoors in bright moonlight the game still looks gorgeous, everything lit by the moon. But if you go somewhere heavily under shadow the lighting looks off; too bright, and flat.

Indirect lighting and shadowing R hard. (HBAO+ goes a long way though).

 

[BBboy20]

They really did a good job with the veggetation bouncing light off from them.

So, 7 days since release and problems still going on from the looks of things. Surprised the lack of big time benchmarks for it. From all the I've read so far, it does seem like the 970 might the card for me.

 

[V1LÆM]

Can anyone tell me the difference between HIGH/ULTRA textures? I can't see any difference visually or performance wise. Same for Terrain except I see no difference between low/ultra. Should I get my eyes checked? lol.

 

[Dictator93]

Can anyone tell me the difference between HIGH/ULTRA textures? I can't see any difference visually or performance wise.

More caching on Ultra and LOD bias is difference (higher detail in teh distance at the cost of some aliasing at times).

 

[Self_Destructive]

Can anyone tell me the difference between HIGH/ULTRA textures? I can't see any difference visually or performance wise.

I think the only difference between them is how much room it allows for caching the textures so that there's less streaming/fade in.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[V1LÆM]

Thanks! I guess I'll just keep it on ultra then.

 

[zero shift]

What is the hack to have the draw distance of the game to increase?

 

[Felix Lighter]

I tried the game on my Television using Vsync (I've been playing on a GSync monitor until now, unlocked framerate) and I saw the judder and camera stutter people have been talking about.

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

I tried the game on my Television using Vsync (I've been playing on a GSync monitor until now, unlocked framerate) and I saw the judder and camera stutter people have been talking about.

It's an engine problem. Bloodborne has it, Witcher 3 has it, numerous other games do. It's called frame skipping/frame pacing or something? I think you g-sync probably made it less obvious but it most definitely would of been there. Depends how susceptible you are to noticing it. Once you notice it once in one game, it's hard to forget it and you end up noticing it more lol. One of those things haha

 

[Durante]

I'd just like to reiterate that the studder can be fixed completely with RTSS frame limiting, in my experience.

 

[Evo X]

I haven't noticed the stutter anymore after setting the "Maximum pre-rendered frames" to 1 in the Nvidia control panel. Playing on Gsync.

 

[Felix Lighter]

It's an engine problem. Bloodborne has it, Witcher 3 has it, numerous other games do. It's called frame skipping/frame pacing or something? I think you g-sync probably made it less obvious but it most definitely would of been there. Depends how susceptible you are to noticing it. Once you notice it once in one game, it's hard to forget it and you end up noticing it more lol. One of those things haha

The difference between the unlocked framerate/GSync and 60Hz/Vsync was night and day, unlike any other game I've played in both situations. It was completely obvious and impossible not to notice on the television but after trying everything to perceive it on the monitor, I could not notice any stuttering at all. Walking and slowly moving the camera for what must have been ten minutes just trying to see it. If it's still there, it's beyond my ability to see it even under direct scrutiny.

I'd just like to reiterate that the studder can be fixed completely with RTSS frame limiting, in my experience.

I'll give that a try after work.

 

[spuckthew]

Not just Kepler. My 970. I reinstalled 352.86 yesterday to see if it was any more stable with the new patch, I even clicked the clean install box, but I didn't run a driver cleaner.

Everything seemed to be OK till just a couple minutes ago, two back to back driver crashes while browsing Neogaf. Haven't had a game up for at least an hour. Rolling back to the GTAV drivers again, completely stable there.

I'm not going to wipe my stable-in-every-other-driver-version overclock just because .86 is allergic. I've heard others here state their OCed cards have no problem with .86, but that just goes to show how randomly unstable this release is. Hopefully they can push out a fixed version soon.

I rolled back last night but turned in after 20-30 minutes so I can't yet say if I'm gonna be stable in W3. What I did notice, however, is that the GTA5 drivers -- for me at least -- do not perform as well. I was getting consistently higher GPU usage and sub-30fps in a few places. Despite the crashing, the 86s at least gave me solid performance. Still, I can live with an occasionally choppy frame rate as long as I don't crash. Time will tell!

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

The difference between the unlocked framerate/GSync and 60Hz/Vsync was night and day, unlike any other game I've played in both situations. It was completely obvious and impossible not to notice on the television but after trying everything to perceive it on the monitor, I could not notice any stuttering at all. Walking and slowly moving the camera for what must have been ten minutes just trying to see it. If it's still there, it's beyond my ability to see it even under direct scrutiny.



I'll give that a try after work.

Hmm interesting. I always thought it wasn't possible to rectify unless the devs patched it in. A poster back along mentioned a really good way of noticing the judder. If you look up in the sky standing still and watch a a load of birds fly by, you will notice them slow down and judder every now and then. If I walk sowly or on horseback slowly, i'll get a slight judder every second like clockwork, even though I'm maintaining a solid 30fps.

 

[| Praxis |]

I removed the 30fps cap, knocked shadows and foliage distance down to high and stopped downsampling (hairworks still on) and now average 50-60fps. I don't think I can go back. It's so smooth now,except for that weird movement stutter that I have had since starting.

 

[EatChildren]

Indirect lighting and shadowing R hard. (HBAO+ goes a long way though).

Yeah. The other oddities with Wild Hunt is the asset/light/everything culling when it's out of frame, the light source disappearing even if it would technically illuminate part of the scene. Doesn't always happen, but you can trigger it in gameplay. Say you've got a candlestick in the middle of a room, lighting Geralt and other stuff. Move forward past the stick until it's out of frame, behind the player camera, and both the candle and the light source disappear.

 

[heringer]

If you're going to stick with 30fps on a GTX970, one really good option is turning the resolution way up. I had it at a pretty solid 30fps at like 1800p(or something or the other) and good settings(no Hairworks, Foliage on High). I think this is a much better use of the extra horsepower than turning on Hairworks and sticking everything on Ultra while at 1080p. The visuals improve quite dramatically at higher resolutions, especially foliage:

Hmm, personally I'm sticking with 1440p and hairworks (as well as grass density up to 3600 and everything on ultra). The IQ is good enough and I can't stand Geralts beard without hairworks. He looks like Santa.

 

[notoccupanther]

Quick question ..
I have z97i motherboard which allows you to create a RamDisk for a bit of a speed boost. This was configured pre-Witcher 3 install, and all was grand (didn't notice any performace boost tbh).

I thought the Witcher 3 would be able to avail of this feature .. but alas, it was jerky as fewk. Once I got rid of the RAMDisk the Witcher 3 is hovering around 45-55 FPS ... any suggestions?

So does the RAM Disk actually do anything at all. . or have I misconfigured it by any chance?

 

[Salaadin]

I guess the only thing Nvidia users can do at this point is report their crashes to Nvidia and hope something comes from it. Hopefully they're just being quiet because they're working on a fix and not because it's going to be ignored.

Pretty irritating seeing some on their forum members blaming it on faulty overclocks our other system errors despite many having no issues until the driver.

It's literally the only thing hurting my witcher 3 experience and it sucks.

 

[Easy_D]

Jesus, 1.05 just hit :lol. Patches galore! I think, at least the game downloaded *something*. It didn't list any size though so maybe it's just in preparation for the first few free DLCs/and or patch?
Build number's still 1.04 so

 

[Vlaphor]

Jesus, 1.05 just hit :lol. Patches galore! I think, at least the game downloaded *something*. It didn't list any size though so maybe it's just in preparation for the first few free DLCs/and or patch?
Build number's still 1.04 so

The next two DLC's are out. If you're using Galaxy, then you'll have to go manually activate them.

 

[Dictator93]

Jesus, 1.05 just hit :lol. Patches galore! I think, at least the game downloaded *something*. It didn't list any size though so maybe it's just in preparation for the first few free DLCs/and or patch?
Build number's still 1.04 so

0o0, patchnotes for 1.05 yet?

Also, CDPR has had some great post launch support so far. And in a crazy time proximity to launch. Good stuff.

Hmm, personally I'm sticking with 1440p and hairworks (as well as grass density up to 3600 and everything on ultra). The IQ is good enough and I can't stand Geralts beard without hairworks. He looks like Santa.

Hairworks geralt makes me swoon.

 

[Vlaphor]

Well, this is nice. I just downloaded the new DLC and now it says that my game is corrupted and that I have to redownload the whole thing

 

[Derp]

Can someone with a single 970 PLEASE tell me what frame rate they get at 4k (DSR or native, I don't mind), HairWorks off, shadows medium, AA off, foliage distance scaling high, and everything else maxed out. Please please please you'll be doing me a huge favour because then I'll have an actual legitimate figure to compare something to. It's a long story, but please, if anyone has the time, I'll be eternally grateful.

 

[FlyinJ]

I'd just like to reiterate that the studder can be fixed completely with RTSS frame limiting, in my experience.

This does absolutely nothing to eliminate the panning camera while walking judder for me.

 

[Dictator93]

I'd just like to reiterate that the studder can be fixed completely with RTSS frame limiting, in my experience.

It doesnt seem to fix the way the camera moves with geralt while galloping or running though. Which seems to be an animation or camera animation problem.

 

[Axial]

The GOG Galaxy app is fuuuucked. Just downloaded the two new dlc's, the app installed them automatically, then I had to check both of them in the configuration tab of the game just like the previous two addons except now that option is gone and I can't uncheck these new dlc's because the list only shows the checkboxes for the Temerian Armor and Hairstyles.

 

[Bl@de]

Hmm just tested everything on high with hairworks for everything (and shadows, foliage medium). It seems to hold at 30fps via RivaTuner except some close-ups during cutscenes. Will try that settings for a while instead of unlocked average 45fps without Hairworks.

How my GTX 770 feels about it:

 

[knerl]

This does absolutely nothing to eliminate the panning camera while walking judder for me.

GPU? Driver version? OS? Game version?

 

[Lockjaw333]

Just a PSA that newegg has the MSI 970 for $299 right now. For those of you on older cards might be worth a look.

On my 970 I'm at 1080p ultra everything except no hairworks and foliage distance on high and getting mostly locked 60fps. You can alsoax everything at 1080p at get 35-45 fps ballpark or a locked 30.

 

[MisterM]

How does one download DLC when they have the standalone game (no Galaxy) installed.

I ask because a friend of mine...

EDIT - Nvm, found it on the Gog.com download page for TW3, no patch 1.05 there yet though.

 

[meep!]

This might have been answered previously but anyone heard if they plan to add Tesselation to the environments, both ground and buildings etc? There is some tesselation lines in the ini but afaik there is none in the game and the settings don't do anything, right?

Hopefully this is something they will enable cuz it would make the world look even better!

 

[SmartBase]

Still no Crossfire profile from AMD, what the fuck are they doing? Have to resort to overclocking my primary card about 15% to get acceptable near-max performance at 1440p.

Absolutely no crashes or stuttering though, amusingly enough.