Video Display Options

*This page is about video settings found through the Options tab. For in-game settings, see Game Settings.*

System requirements for the game can be found in System Requirements.

**Display Resolution:** Sets the screen resolution at which the game is displayed.

**Performance Impact:** Very High

Larger resolutions will decrease your performance.

**Fullscreen:** Run the game in fullscreen or windowed mode.

**Performance Impact:** Medium

Windowed mode will have a negative impact on performance in most operating systems.

**Vertical Synchronization:** Combats screen tearing by synchronizing the game to the monitors refresh rate.

**Performance Impact:** Low

This is a great option to cap the FPS of the game at the FPS for your monitor.

**Anti-Aliasing:** Removes jagged edges from objects.

**Performance Impact:** Medium

I would only recommend using this options on a higher-end card.

**Texture Quality:** Saves video memory and performance by setting the texture resolution.

**Performance Impact:** Medium

**Reflection Quality:** How clear reflections are. Provides more realistic lighting.

**Performance Impact:** Very High

At the time of this writing, "Very High" is a bit of an understatement. This feature still needs to be optimized better.

**Reflected Shadows:** Shadows are processed and displayed inside reflections.

**Performance Impact:** High

**Water Quality:** Layers and effects occurring on surface of water planes.

**Performance Impact:** Low

Low quality water is very dark and difficult to see through.

**Gamma:** How bright the game is.

**Performance Impact:** Low

**View Distance:** How far the world can me viewed.

**Performance Impact:** High

**Field of View:** How wide your view angle is.

**Performance Impact:** Low

Higher settings can cause a "fisheye" look with curving at the outer edges of the screen.

**Level of Detail:** The overall maximum level of detail at which the world is displayed. As you move further away from an object, it switches to a lower quality version of the mesh

**Performance Impact:** High

Lower values decrease quality of distanced textures and improve performance.

**Shadow Distance:** Quality and distance of object shadows.

**Performance Impact:** High

This is the second largest item that affects overall performance on most mid/low-range cards.

**Tree Quality:** Overall quality of the trees based on how far away they are.

**Performance Impact:** High

Setting this lower than high will cause distant trees to render as stick poles until you get into closer range. (Like LOD for trees)

**Grass Distance:** The maximum distance at which you can see grass.

**Performance Impact:** Medium

**Motion Blur:** Quality level of motion blur (more pixel samples & smoothing).

**Performance Impact:** High

**UI Background Opacity:** UI wallpaper / background opacity / transparency.

**Performance Impact:** Very Low

**UI Foreground Opacity:** UI outlines and text opacity / transparency.

**Performance Impact:** Very Low

**SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion):** Use the image effect SSAO which draws more detailed shadows on objects.

**Performance Impact:** Medium

**DOF (Depth of Field):** Distant objects get blurred.

**Performance impact:** Medium

Can help to obfuscate a low LOD setting without as large of an impact on performance as a high LOD.

**Sun Shafts:** A.K.A. "God Rays". Shines rays of light from the sun past obstructing objects.

**Performance Impact:** Medium

Author's note: With the above settings I get a very solid 60 FPS with an i7 3930k, and a GTX 660 Ti.