Importantly, when prompted to download a collection of standard effects, click Yes. When prompted to select the rendering API, click the Direct3D 10+ option at the bottom.ĥ. Click the large 'Select a game.' button, and browse to where your Fallout4.exe file resides, typically C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout 4, select Fallout4.exe and click Open.Ĥ. Launch the Reshade_setup.exe file you downloaded in step 1.ģ.
Download the free ReShade utility to any directory on your system.Ģ. These instructions for using ReShade should also apply to many other games:ġ. To implement TAA + sharpening in Fallout 4, follow the instructions below. September 2019 Update: The instructions for using the ReShade utility have been completely updated for the latest version. It's important to note that screenshots can't fully capture the difference - it's much more pronounced in-game. A small animated GIF highlighting the texture improvement from adding sharpening to TAA can be seen here. the rust on the car, the ground near the crosshair, and the fuel prices on the sign). As an added bonus, textured surfaces also become more distinct (e.g. The third screenshot, using TAA but with shader-injected sharpening, returns most of the definition, but also retains the smooth edges. The second screenshot, using TAA, smooths everything out, but the foliage in particular loses a lot of definition, with bushes and branches turning into smeared clumps. In the first screenshot, the total lack of AA provides a crisp, but overly jagged and brittle-looking game world. The screenshots below demonstrate the difference: But to counter the Vaseline-like blurriness of TAA, we will use a free post-process injector utility called ReShade to apply sharpening over the TAA, rectifying the blurriness and improving texture crispness while retaining TAA's smooth edges and lack of shimmering. So I recommend starting off with TAA selected for the Antialiasing setting in the Fallout 4 launcher. TAA is the superior Anti-Aliasing setting in Fallout 4, as it does an excellent job of addressing jagged lines on geometry and foliage, while also completely quashing shimmering in motion. The updated portions are prominently noted in bold. I've also added a potential fix for a major problem that now confronts Fallout 4 players: long loading times in exterior/interior transitions. Update: As of September 2019, the guide has been edited to incorporate new instructions for the latest version of ReShade, as its interface changed substantially between 20. Aside from general optimization issues to do with an old and somewhat quirky game engine, this occurs largely because Vertical Synchronization (VSync) is enabled by default in Fallout 4, and there are no in-game settings available to disable it.īelow I cover the solutions to these two major issues, starting with Anti-Aliasing. The second problem relates to poor performance, primarily major FPS drops and mouse lag. While both forms of AA have minimal performance impact, they also significantly blur the screen, making the already mediocre-looking surface textures look even worse. Instead, they only offer two forms of post-process AA: FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing), which is relatively basic and TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing), which is more advanced. This occurs primarily because of the new deferred lighting system used in Fallout 4 - the developers have dropped support for traditional forms of Anti-Aliasing (AA) to smooth jagged edges, such as MSAA (Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing). Depending on your settings, things will either look too jagged and will distractingly shimmer and crawl as you move around, or else everything will look overly hazy and blurry, almost cartoonishly so.
It's probably the first thing you'll notice about Fallout 4 once you enter the outside game world. The first problem has to do with jagged edges and/or blurriness in the game. What I want to quickly cover here are a few methods to specifically address what I consider the major visual and performance problems with the game. Unfortunately, these days I no longer publish detailed game tweak guides (as explained here), but luckily there's a comprehensive Fallout 4 Guide which you can use to find out more about the game's settings and main tweaks. I've also been tweaking Bethesda's Gamebryo/Creation engine since Morrowind back in 2002, so I'm familiar with its many quirks. I really enjoyed Fallout 3, so now that I've finally started playing Fallout 4, I'm happy enough with the fact that it seems to be more of the same, with upgraded graphics.