[General Topics] ADInfinity1999:
Particularly on Android, PUBG Mobile can be quite taxing on the your phone hardware capping framerate and visual quality to the point where it looks and plays absolutely disastrous. Lower framerate limits your reflexes even during the fast and frantic action moments and poor visual fidelity blinds you from detecting your enemy giving you an unfair disadvantage and thus, lowering down your ratings. This guide aims to provide you with a brief explanation of all the settings that you are provided in the game so that you can tinker them as per your needs. Keep in mind that there do exist multiple applications which fulfill the same purpose albeit none of which allow you to tweak settings in the most minute detail that this guide would enable you to.

r.UserQualitySetting

This setting allows you to select from the default performance presets that the game provides you.

Ranges : 1-Smooth, 2-Balanced, 3-HD, 4-HDR, 5-Ultra HD

This setting is dominant which implies that selecting one of the presets would automatically assign predefined levels of quality to texture, shadow, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, foliage quality etc.

Set this setting to 0 as smooth in order to finely adjust qualities in the coming settings.

r.UserShadowSwitch

This is a toggle setting which either turns on or off rendering of shadows of all game objects based on your preference. Game objects liable of rendering their own shadows include trees, buildings, bushes, vehicles, debris, player models, zombies and other dominant entities except for grass and other small foliage which disappears (get culled) when the player is beyond a certain range of distance.

Ranges : 0-Turn ON shadow rendering, 1-Turn OFF shadow rendering

r.ShadowQuality

This setting allows changing the quality of the shadows (as said by the name itself) of all game objects. It requires the previous setting to enabled to function as usual.

Ranges :

0-Render Under-Foot Shadows (The shadow is displayed constantly below the game object and does not depend on the position of directional sunlight) (Inherited in Smooth preset)

1-Render Pixelated Shadows (Depends on the position of directional sunlight) (Inherited in Balanced preset)

2-Render Anti-Aliased Pixelated Shadows ((Depends on the position of directional sunlight) (Inherited in HD preset)

3-Render Polygon Shadows (Depends on the position of directional sunlight) (Inherited in HDR preset)

4-Render Anti-Aliased Polygon Shadows (Depends on the position of directional sunlight) (Inherited in Ultra HD preset)

5-Render Fine Shadows (Depends on the position of directional sunlight) (Looks Ultra-Realistic but GPU-Intensive so Try at your own risk)

r.MobileContentScaleFactor

This setting allows you to change in-game resolution. Keep in mind that the game is designed predominantly for screens with 16:9 aspect ratio so people with newer phones may experience some space left unoccupied and left free towards the sides as a placeholder for notification bar and in-display navigation bar. The factor scales both UI and game elements.

Ranges : Varied ranges based on how powerful your phone GPU is

0.75 - 960x540 Lowest sanely possible resolution

1.00 - 1280x720 Reference resolution scale

1.125 - 1440x810 Looks way better than reference resolution scale

1.25 - 1600x900

1.50 - 1920x1080

2.00 - 2560x1440 Useless while upscaled on 1080p displays

r.PUBGLDR

No information about this setting is present as of now. Any help is appreciated.

Framerate Settings

Allows selecting permissible framerate limit at that particular predefined performance preset. The higher the values, the more responsive your gameplay would be. Be aware that any value specified beyond the possible refresh rate of your device display is useless as it would get capped to the highest possible rate of your screen which is 60Hz for most of us. Owners of ASUS ROG Phone and Razer Phone can have fun with ultra-responsive gameplay using this setting by going as high as 90 and 120 respectively.

r.PUBGDeviceFPSLow for Smooth preset Ranges : Define framerate in numbers. (I would select 60 for a responsive gameplay experience)

r.PUBGDeviceFPSMid for Balanced preset Ranges : Define framerate in numbers. (I would select 60 for a responsive gameplay experience)

r.PUBGDeviceFPSHigh for HD preset Ranges : Define framerate in numbers. (I would select 60 for a responsive gameplay experience)

r.PUBGDeviceFPSHDR for HDR and Ultra HD presets Ranges : Define framerate in numbers. (I would select 60 for a responsive gameplay experience)

r.MobileHDR

This setting allows for tweaking high dynamic range color display. It requires a device with a display which is capable of reproducing HDR content. It is set to 0.0 by default which corresponds to the fact that HDR is disabled. You can read more about this graphical fidelity here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range. No further information about this setting is present as of now. Any help is appreciated.

r.Mobile.SceneColorFormat

This setting allows for tweaking for the display of graphics in specific color palette. It requires a device with a display which is capable of reproducing color image pipeline content. It is set to 0.0 by default which corresponds to the fact that the current graphics correspond to the RGB color palette. You can read more about this graphical fidelity here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_image_pipeline. No further information about this setting is present as of now. Any help is appreciated.

r.UserHDRSetting

This setting is redundant if r.MobileHDR is turned off. No further information about this setting is present as of now. Any help is appreciated.

r.ACESStyle

No information about this setting is present as of now. Any help is appreciated.

r.UserMSAASetting

This setting allows for toggling Multi-Sampling Anti-Aliasing for both in-game textures and models. For beginners, this technology aims to reduce jagged edges around objects by creating decreased alpha samples of the pixels at certain boundary threshold as decided by the video game designer.

Ranges :

0 - Disabled MSAA

1 - Enabled MSAA

r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing

This setting is enabled by default for tweaking capabilities of FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing) which predominantly uses RAM and is not as taxing as MSAA is. Even this technology reduces jagged edges around objects but the technology is slightly different from the former as this requires almost no processing power but in the downside it also makes the edges looks a bit blurrier.

Ranges :

0 - Disabled FXAA

1 - FXAA enabled. Only texture anti-aliasing.

2 - FXAA enabled. Both texture and model edge anti-aliasing. (2 concurrent samples)

3 - FXAA enabled. Both texture and model edge anti-aliasing. (3 concurrent samples) (Inherited in Smooth preset)

4 - FXAA enabled. Both texture and model edge anti-aliasing. (4 concurrent samples) (Inherited in Balanced and HD presets)

5 - FXAA enabled. Both texture and model edge anti-aliasing. (5 concurrent samples) (Inherited in HDR and Ultra HD presets)

r.MobileMSAA

This setting allows for toggling Multi-Sampling Anti-Aliasing for UI and textures only. This is generally enabled by default and helps making the UI, weapon paintjobs, vehicle stains etc. look more polished and realistically smooth. It is slightly more taxing and GPU intensive than FXAA but it produces nearly sharp results.

Ranges :

0 - Disabled MSAA for UI and texture meshes

1 - Enabled MSAA for UI and texture meshes

r.MSAACount

This setting allows for tweaking Multi-Sampling Anti-Aliasing for UI and textures only by selecting the number of concurrent samples displayed on the screen for a particular UI or texture element at that period of time. Higher values can potentially smooth edges even on a lower rendering resolution. This requires the previous setting to be enabled to function.

Ranges :

0 - Disabled MSAA (UE4 Low Preset)

2 - MSAA enabled. Both texture and model edge anti-aliasing. (2 concurrent samples) (UE4 Medium Preset)

4 - MSAA enabled. Both texture and model edge anti-aliasing. (4 concurrent samples) (UE4 High Preset) (Inherited in Smooth and Balanced presets)

6 - MSAA enabled. Both texture and model edge anti-aliasing. (5 concurrent samples) (UE4 Epic Preset) (Inherited in HD, HDR and Ultra HD presets)

r.MaterialQualityLevel

This setting allows for tweaking the texture quality of certain elements of the game. As of now, PUBG Mobile lets you select from only two presets.

Ranges :

0 - Normal (UE4 Low Preset) (Inherited in Smooth and Balanced presets)

How good are normal quality textures? Certain texture elements are omitted and there is less variety. Stains, mud, rocks etc. textures are repeated more often. Most buildings have single color LOD and meshes. It is fast but not exactly visually appealing. Bullet hole mesh either do not render at all or disappear pretty fast to save GPU memory.

1 - High (UE4 High Preset) (Inherited in HD, HDR and Ultra HD presets)

How good are high quality textures? Lesser texture elements are omitted and there is more variety. Stains, mud, rocks etc. textures are repeated less often making a near photo-realistic experience. Most buildings have single color LOD with detailed stains and meshes. It is slightly slower but more visually appealing. There are different bullet hole mesh renders for different bullet caliber shots with believable depth which disappear a bit slower leaving behind stains to save GPU memory and look realistic at the same time.

This post is a W.I.P. As I go on studying more about these triggers from the Scalability Reference of UE4 engine, I will keep you posted about different functions and their importance. If you are wondering how to use these, you can visit https://tulisae.com/pubgmobile-config-editor/ where you have a detailed and helpful tool of editing the settings file. The common path for the settings file is : Storage/Android/data/com.tencent.ig/files/UE4Game/ShadowTrackerExtra/ShadowTrackerExtra/saved/config/Android/UserCustom.ini. Upload this to the aforesaid link and decode it before editing. Do not forget to encode it back after your edits are complete.

Also, if you are aware of any settings that I have specified about but left undetailed, kindly add them in the comments below. That goes without saying that if you find anything incorrect above, kindly let know of corrections so that they may be addressed soon for the better.

Thank you,

ADInfinity1999