American Truck Simulator has just been updated with its own version of Euro Truck 2’s Special Transport DLC. ATS: Special Transport adds in specialist heavy loads like silos, homes, and even helicopters, testing the driving abilities of even the most skilled mothertruckers.
SCS Software is offering up 11 distinct new cargoes with this expansion, weighing up to 85 tons and measuring up to 6.5m wide, 5m high, and 16m long. I can barely drive my hatchback without pranging a lamppost so this all sounds mighty worrying.
Other features for American Truck Simulator – Special Transport are special transport trailers, unique job routes through the base map and New Mexico, trained police escorts, and over 90 special transport jobs to complete.
Resident GD’er Bluej511 has given the DLC some hands-on time this week and says “Finally American Truck Simulator is getting some more loving, with a new DLC and a brand new (to the game) Volvo truck. It seems that SCS Software has come to terms with Volvo and added the beautiful VNL into the game, albeit the previous generation. Now we can only hope the new generation VNL will be integrated into the game. Now if we could also have Mac and Freightliner it would give a much greater amount of choices in truck purchases compared to having only Kenworth and Peterbilt.
“And finally, we now get the amazing Special Transport DLC for ATS. Something that ETS2 players have been playing for a few months already, it now makes its way across the pond. It’s not for the faint of heart as the cargos are also much heavier, they are also much longer and much wider, making it very difficult to maneuver; it’s why the escort vehicles are there. It’s quite a bit more difficult then any other cargo and any kind of damage will ruin a perfect delivery, all the road must be used when making turns and driving on back roads. Overall a very well done DLC, just as SCS has done in the past.”
American Truck Simulator: Special Transport is out now on PC. Be sure to check out Bluej’s review of the recent Oregon expansion pack as well; it adds several thousand new Oregonian highways on which to cruise.
To the casual observer, it can feel as if the Fortnite phenomenon has already picked. Well, think again. Epic Games Korea CEO Sung Chul Park has just confirmed Fortnite is peaking with 8.3 million concurrent players. That’s 8.3m people playing Fortnite around the world at the exact same time.
I mean, that is really quite something. PUBG’s highest ever peak was 3.2 million in January of this year, once the 1.0 release had arrived. This figure doesn’t take into account Xbox One players though Meanwhile, the most successful free-to-play game ever on Steam is Valve’s own DOTA 2, a game which had an all-time-high peak of 1.3 million players back in March 2016. Both of these games now currently peak at 0.7-1m over a 24-hour period.
Based upon this data, Fortnite is now 6.4x as popular as DOTA 2 has ever been. That puts Fortnite right up there in the absolute top tier of popularity, alongside the mighty League of Legends.
The big question now is whether Fortnite has the staying power the League of Legends does. The recent roll-out to Korea suggests Epic is only just getting started with this particular cash cow though, and if history has taught us anything it’s to never underestimate the success, appeal, and popularity of Fortnite.
Double-dipping, or the art of buying the same games multiple times, is more prevalent than we’d ever dreamed of according to a report published by PlayTracker. Earlier this week, PlayTracker claimed 45% of Grand Theft Auto V players had bought Rockstar’s game multiple times, accounting for 37.3% of all copies of the game sold.
They claim a margin of error of 2% on this data, which seems suspect at best. Taking them at their word though, that’s 37.3 million copies of GTA V sold to people who already owned the game. At an average of $40 per copy, that’s $1.5 billion.
Where the numbers are out of whack or not, among PlayTracker’s user base at least there is decent evidence that gamers are doing this in large numbers. There are numerous reasons for this, whether it’s buying a game on console before it comes to PC, buying the same game of two generations of hardware, buying a game on multiple platforms to play with multiple groups of friends, or even buying a game on several different platforms so players can unlock several different sets of achievements.
The figures being touted are massive though. It’s much higher than I’d personally expected. I’d always figured the number of players actually double-dipping was almost inconsequential, even suggesting there was a bit tinfoil hat theorising from those suggesting it’s a plot from publishers to extract some cash, rather than a matter of resources. Clearly, there’s an abundant amount of cash to be made, from the bigger titles at least, from staggering releases across platforms and generations.
Thankfully, if you’re gaming on PC alone then double dipping is practically non-existent these days. There was a period about eight years back where I was snapping up digital copies of the games I originally owned on disc, but now our libraries can stay with us forever. There are still a few opportunities to double dip though, including rebuying games DRM-free through GOG that we already own on Steam or, if we’re pushing the boundaries of the definition slightly, paying out for a paid remaster like Dark Souls Remastered. These instances are few and far between though, so double-dipping now tends to revolve around buying the same game multiple times across various console platforms, or picking up a console-exclusive game before it comes to PC.
It does happen though, so it would be great to get a feel for how widespread it is among GD’ers, which should provide us with a more PC-focused answer.
I’ll go first and say I have double-dipped, but the number of times I’ve done it are few and far between. For single-player focused games I basically don’t do it at all. If I’ve already completed games on one platform, I’d rather play something new than purchase it for another platform and play it again, no matter how much better it’ll be. There’s no chance I’m buying Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, for example, I’ll probably be busying myself with Cyberpunk 2077 by then.
I have been known to buy multiple copies of a game if it really digs into my nostalgia though. I’ve bought Super Mario World on SNES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, Wii, and the SNES Mini, and I’d probably buy it in a flash if it resurfaced on Switch. It doesn’t make much sense but I do it anyway, mainly because I find it gaming comfort food. Something I can tuck into and already know every intimate detail, running through the motions.
Multiplayer games can be a little different though. I’ve got copies of Rainbow Six Siege and Rocket League on both PC and PS4, the same with Battlefield. If people I know are playing on different platforms, I generally think it’s worth it as long as I plan to put considerable time into the games.
Over to you then, do you double dip on games? Get voting, and let us what games and why in the comments below!
Agent 47 is back in Hitman 2, a globe-trotting adventure of murderous thrills, ingenious gadgets, and ever-more-ridiculous ways to take out your targets. Hitman 2 has received a graphical upgrade over 2016’s Hitman episodic series though, meaning increased PC system requirements.
If you’re hoping to run Hitman 2, you may find it is more demanding than Hitman 1 and will have to tweak a few graphics settings to achieve optimum performance. Hopefully, this handy little Hitman 2 (2018) PC performance guide can help you hit the sweet spot between graphics and performance.
Using the chart below you can find out just how demanding each graphics option is in Hitman 2. Along with this, we’ve given priority scores based on how important we believe it is to enable these graphics options for the optimum PC gaming experience with H2.
Hitman 2 System Requirements
For the benchmark results below we used a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, an Intel Core i7-5820K processor, and 16GB DDR4 memory. We ran through the Miami level in Hitman 2 to stress the GPU and CPU with large and dense crowds.
Hitman 2 Graphics Options Performance Breakdown
The further right the bar goes, the more demanding the graphics option is.
Hitman 2 Graphics Settings
There aren’t really a huge amount of graphics settings to mess around with in Hitman 2, with a number of graphical effects such as reflections and lighting that are unable to be tweaked. In Hitman 2, enemies can spot Agent 47 in mirrors, so this is probably why reflections have to be enabled regardless of the performance. For the visual options that are in Hitman 2, here is the performance impact and the graphical differences.
Supersampling
Supersampling is a method of rendering at a higher internal resolution before outputting at a lower native resolution. This setting produces sharper image quality, although it comes at a massive performance hit in Hitman 2.
Performance Impact – 5/5
Priority – 1/5
Level of Detail
Level of Detail concerns the distance at which objects are rendered in at a greater level of detail in Hitman 2. It’s actually very difficult to discern any major graphical differences between Low and Ultra, so if you’re struggling with your Hitman 2 frame rate, garotte this graphics setting.
Performance Impact – 3/5
Priority – 1/5
Texture Quality
This does pretty much exactly what you’d expect it to. Texture Quality affects the quality and resolution of textures present in Hitman 2’s levels. Look at the payphone for an example of this in action. Texture Quality is dependant on how much video memory you have available on your graphics card, but we recommend you crank this graphics setting up as high as you can possibly go.
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 4/5
Texture Filtering
Texture Filtering, also known as Anisotropic Filtering, is a method for sharping textures when viewed at extreme angles. It’s not always the most noticeable graphics option but you can see in the arrow on the floor in the picture that it can have a decent impact on Hitman 2’s visual quality.
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 3/5
SSAO
SSAO, or Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, adds contact shadows where two objects meet in Hitman 2. This lends the environments more weight and believability and is utilised fairly obviously on the steps in the pair of images shown below.
Performance Impact – 3/5
Priority – 3/5
Shadow Quality
Always one of the nicer looking graphics settings but also one of the more expensive, Shadows don’t actually come with an overly large performance hit in Hitman 2. They will knock a few frames of your frame rate but if you’ve got performance to spare, it’s certainly worth turning Shadows up to at least High.
Performance Impact – 3/5
Priority – 4/5
Keep your eyes peeled for more performance analysis of Hitman 2 shortly…
While Nvidia has been hogging the limelight with the RTX 2060 this week, AMD has been waiting patiently in the wings for its own CES 2019 keynote.
There’s a lot of big question marks over this AMD keynote which makes it interesting in and of itself. AMD could feasibly announce a ton of new stuff or it could feed us scraps, it’s difficult to say.
What we do know is that AMD potentially has a lot of goodies in store for us. 2019 is set to be the year of 7nm for AMD, and we could see everything from Zen 2 Ryzen desktop processors to new EPYC chips, as well as the potential for 7nm Vega and 7nm Navi Radeon graphics cards. A number of rumours have been swirling lately that AMD could be preparing new GPUs with fantastic price to performance, something which could go down well after Nvidia’s Turing price-hike.
Regardless, we’ll know for sure when we watch the keynote unfold later today. You can watch AMD’s CES 2019 live stream keynote right here, live at:
UPDATE: Right, we’re back on this merry-go-round again. Microsoft has officially re-released the Windows 10 October update, version 1809. Let’s hope it’s fifth time lucky.
There was an initial release a few days ago but this was causing file deletion problems. Microsoft pulled it down and worked on another fix before finally ushering it into the world yesterday evening.
In a statement, Microsoft said: “On November 13, 2018, we will begin the re-release of the Windows 10 October Update (version 1809), Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server, version 1809. We encourage you to wait until the feature update is offered to your device automatically.”
The big change here for gamers is the official support for DirectX Raytracing (DXR). DICE has just confirmed that support for RTX raytracing on compatible GeForce RTX 20 Series graphics cards has been patched into Battlefield V, meaning we have our first ever playable raytraced game on the market.
If you have a GeForce RTX graphics card and want to give BFV a shot, the Early Enlister version is out tomorrow, the standard game is out on November 20th, or it’s playable right now with an Origin Access subscription.
UPDATE: 11-Oct-2018 – Re-Released Windows 10 October 2018 Cumulative Patch is Causing BSOD For Some Users
Okay, this is just getting embarrassing. Fresh from re-releasing a patched version of its fumbled Windows 10 October 2018 update that deleted users’ files, the fixed cumulative update is now allegedly causing a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) for HP PC users.
According to Windows Latest, the recent Windows 10 KB4464330 patch is causing certain HP computers to crash to the fabled blue error screen and become unresponsive. For now, it appears this second botched update is limited to select HP workstations and computers, with a number of user reports suggesting machines are now refusing to boot since the update.
Suffice to say, if you have an HP computer, which represents 21% of all pre-built PCs sold in the world, then you may want to give this latest Windows 10 update a wide berth for now.
“We are having the same issue on HP prodesk 400 G3 Windows 10 machines today. It is definitely related to KB4462919 and/or the HP keyboard driver at the top of your screenshot. We do NOT push out any driver updates, and we are not using HP keyboards with these PCs,” said Reddit user R1PLEY, and they aren’t alone.
For now, it appears there may be a fix that is working for some users, provided they can even get their machines to boot at all. Users are recommended to delete the “HpqKbFiltr.sys” file from system32/drivers.
UPDATE: 10-Oct-2018 – Microsoft Re-Releases Fixed Windows 10 October 2018 Update That Was Deleting User Files
Microsoft has begun re-releasing its botched Windows 10 October 2018 update to Windows Insiders. The update was originally pulled last week after reports it was deleting users’ files. As a precaution, Microsoft rolled the version 1809 update back while it investigated the issue.
Microsoft claims reports of users missing files after updating was limited to one-hundredth of one percent of version 1809 installs, although this only takes into account users which actively reported the deletion of files.
“We have fully investigated all reports of data loss, identified and fixed all known issues in the update, and conducted internal validation,” explains Microsoft. “Today we take the next step towards the re-release of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update by providing the updated version to our Windows Insider community. We will carefully study the results, feedback, and diagnostic data from our Insiders before taking additional steps towards re-releasing more broadly.”
However few the number of users reporting missing files though, any number above zero isn’t really acceptable. Nobody wants to enter a lottery when performing a simple OS update. Microsoft is at pains to explain how thorough it is when issuing updates, but evidently it wasn’t thorough enough.
If you’re after the specifics of this issue, it centres around a feature known as Known Folder Redirection (KFR). Anytime a user movies the standard Windows folders (Documents, Pictures, Screenshots, Desktop, etc) from their default location, the KFR points to the new location. During a previous April 2018 update, Windows 10 users using KFR reported empty duplicates of their Known Folders. In this October 2018 update, Microsoft added a new sequence that deleted the duplicate Known Folders. However, this targeted the original KFR folders rather than the empty duplicates, leaving affected users with empty documents folders.
The Windows 10 October 2018 update is now available to Windows Insiders, or you can download it manually from Microsoft right now if you’re feeling brave enough. Do be sure to let us know how it goes below…
UPDATE:07-Oct-2018 – Microsoft Pulls Windows 10 October 2018 Update Entirely After Reports of Deleting Users’ Files
Microsoft has stopped distributing the Windows 10 October 2018 Update entirely. The disastrous rollout has been causing some Windows 10 users to lose their entire documents folder, with little hope of recovering the lost files.
As a result of these reports Microsoft has pulled the Windows 10 version 1809 update, saying “We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating.”
If you have run into problems as a direct result of this update, Microsoft is recommending you contact them. It’s unlikely there’s much hope of Microsoft recovering your files but you never know, and it’s all probably going to help Microsoft get to the bottom of what’s causing this issue.
Should you have downloaded the Windows 10 October 2018 Update manually, Microsoft’s official recommendation is that you don’t install it. A new version of the update will eventually be made available.
As far as gaffe’s go, deleting potentially very important files is about as bad as it gets for Microsoft. Fingers crossed that not too many users have been affected by the bug, but do let us know if you’ve run into any issues via the comments section below.
Original Story: 07-Oct-2018 – Windows 10 October Update Cancelled For Intel 6th Gen and Up, Complaints of Deleting Files
A couple of major problems with Microsoft latest Windows 10 October 2018 update has forced Microsoft to take an action. For gamers, the big addition with the Windows 10 v1809 update is the addition of DirectX Raytracing support, finally unleashing the full capabilities of the GeForce RTX 20 Series graphics cards. However, it may pay to hold fire.
The first key issue is a compatibility issue with Intel Display Audio device drivers. Those who encounter the issue will discover the installation process for the Windows 10 October update will fail. Should you successfully install the update anyway, the bug can cause excessive processor demand and reduced battery life.
“If you see a “What needs your attention” notification when you run the October Update, you have an Intel Display Audio device driver (intcdaud.sys, versions 10.25.0.3 – 10.25.0.8) installed in your system,” said Microsoft.
As a result of this, Microsoft is now blocking various devices from being offered Windows 10 version 1809. Those with Intel 6th Gen CPUs and newer will be affected by the change and will be unable to install the new Windows update until a solution is found.
The second, potentially more heinous problem, is a number of users are beginning to report the Windows 10 October 2018 is deleting files en masse. Users across Twitter, Reddit, and the Microsoft support forums are claiming the update has deleted the contents of their storage, including the entire contents of their Documents, Pictures and Music folders.
“Heads up to anyone updating windows,” said Kevin Quintero on Twitter. “Apparently, if you have documents saved in your user directory, i.e. users/JohnDoe, and not one drive, the update will delete EVERYTHING in that location. So if your “Documents” or “Pictures” don’t have a one drive symbol, MIGRATE IMMEDIATELY!”
Meanwhile over on Reddit, users Nordrynn says “So after updating i discovered that my documents, pictures, music, videos are gone. Wtf? How can i recover them?”
They certainly aren’t alone in the matter either, with Redditor ‘picaresque’ saying “I upgraded three devices yesterday (desktop PC, laptop, Surface) – on two the upgrade went perfectly, but on the desktop PC one profile had the documents and pictures folder deleted. Completely gone, nothing in Windows.old either. Restored to the previous Windows version, but files were still missing.”
In terms of disastrous consequences of OS updates, deleting files is right there near the top. Users have attempted to roll back their system but to no avail. Should you be thinking of installing the latest Windows update, which is rolling out in waves this week, ensure you have back-ups of an particularly important documents and files.
Have you encountered any issues with the latest Windows 10 update? Let us know below!
Our Favorite Comments
35
“I just wanted to say to everyone who is using windows 10 thank you for being an alpha tester”
TimeLordJason –
11
“Just installed the new update using Upgrade Assistant tool. No problem so far. Intel 6th gen and I don’t have Intel Audio Device on my hardware – update looks fine and I see they solved the HDR issue.”
emier2308 –
8
“Nah I like to fly by the seat of my pants and see what happenswatches entire documents library delete”
THQ Nordic has taken some time out from buying beloved-yet-forgotten gaming IPs to… buy up a pair of studios instead. This morning, THQ Nordic announced it has purchased both Coffee Stain Studios and Bugbear Entertainment.
Coffee Stain Studios inadvertently shot to fame with Goat Simulator but has since taken its tongue out of its cheek with well-received titles such as Deep Rock Galactic, A Story About My Uncle, and the much anticipated Satisfactory.
Meanwhile, Bugbear Entertainment has spent the last six or so years working on Wreckfest, a spiritual successor to Flatout. It’s been earning strong reviews since it left Early Access a few months ago, and there are also console versions right around the corner.
“We are creating a complementary digital native pillar to THQ Nordic,” said Lars Wingefors, THQ Nordic CEO. “Coffee Stain is a passionate and highly competent team creating and publishing great games. After some years without major releases, the pipeline of new game releases such as Satisfactory and Deep Rock Galactic look strong. I look forward to working together with Anton Westbergh and his team in the future.”
Janne Alanenpää, CEO of Bugbear Entertainment, said “We are very excited to join forces with the THQ Nordic team. I believe THQ Nordic will become a perfect home for Bugbear to support our passion for games and for our customer. We look forward to accelerating our development of high-quality racing games to contribute to THQ Nordic’s portfolio and future growth.” High-quality racing games at a faster rate is certainly something we can get behind. Wreckfest is fantastic but it is was loitering in Steam Early Access for half a decade under the guise of Next Car Game.
Coffee Stain Studios also has the potential to be an absolute cash cow. Satisfactory has all the workings of an underground smash hit provided the dev team plays its cards right. “I strongly believe that THQ Nordic is a great home for Coffee Stain,” added Anton Westbergh, CEO of Coffee Stain. “In addition to having long experience within games development and publishing, THQ Nordic has the skills, willingness and capital to support our new releases and growth in the future.”
The already-bulging ranks of THQ Nordic continue to expand. The publisher now has a formidable stack of studios and IPs, with a staggering 55+ games in active development. It’s turning out to be quite the catalogue.
A Russian retailer appears to have leaked AMD’s upcoming Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors. Retailer ‘E-Katalog’ has listed a grand total of five Ryzen 3000 CPUs for pre-order, covering Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, and the top-tier Ryzen 9.
It’s now looking extremely likely that AMD is planning some sort of Ryzen 3000 reveal during CES 2019, which begins this coming Tuesday, 8th January.
The AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors will be the first desktop CPUs to utilise the new 7nm process, shrunk down from the 12nm fabrication used for Zen+ and the Ryzen 2000 series. The 7nm process offers architectural improvements that allow for greater energy efficiency, higher clock speeds, and increased IPC.
Sitting at the top of the heap is the alleged flagship, the AMD Ryzen 9 3800X. This part could be set to come in an blow the current Ryzen 7 2700X away, doubling the core count to 16 Cores and 32 Threads. The Ryzen 9 3800X will have a base clock speed of 3.9 GHz and a boost clock of 4.7 GHz. It’ll guzzle more than the previous-gen due to the core-doubling, consuming a maximum TDP of 125W compared to 95W for the 2700X.
Slotting in below the Ryzen 9 3800X are the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and the Ryzen 7 3700. Both of these CPUs are set to feature 12C/24T. The Ryzen 7 3700X is clocked at 4.2GHz base and 5.0GHz boost, while the Ryzen 7 3700 is ~10% slower at 3.8GHz base and 4.6GHz boost clock speed. The 3700X has 105W TDP while the 3700 utilises 95W.
Lastly, we’ve got the mid-tier chips, although they’re the weakest Ryzen 3000 series revealed in this leak. The AMD Ryzen 5 3600X and Ryzen 5 3600 will both have 8C/16T, up from 6C/12T on the equivalent 2000 series parts. The AMD Ryzen 5 3600X is clocked at 4.0GHz base, 4.8GHz boost, while the Ryzen 5 3600 comes in at 3.6GHz base, 4.4 GHz boost. They have a 95W and 65W TDP respectively.
All in all, we could be looking at a very decent upgrade over the previous-gen here. AMD is pushing the core counts much higher and is helping to set octa-core as the new standard. Not a lot of games will take huge advantage of this but anything above and beyond quad-core provides some great overhead, particularly for multitasking.
We’ll be sure to keep an eye on CES 2019 next week, where we’ll hopefully get the first confirmed details as well as potential pricing for AMD’s next-gen processors.
Intel used its CES 2019 keynote to deliver the announced of a range of new 9th Generation Intel Core processors. The Coffee Lake refresh CPUs are once again on the 14nm process and covers models from the Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 and Core i9 processor families.
A grand total of six new 9th Gen Intel CPUs have been announced, joining the already available Intel Core i5-9600K, Intel Core i7-9700K and Intel Core i9-9900K. Intel has said all of these new CPUs should be on store shelves by the end of January.
Each of the new CPUs aside from the i5-9500 delivers a mix of overclockable processors and CPUs with any integrated graphics. Those carrying the ‘K’ suffix are overclockable, those with the ‘F’ suffix don’t have integrated graphics, while those with ‘KF’ are both overclockable and don’t have integrated graphics.
A lot of the new CPUs are very similar to what’s gone before. The Intel Core i9-9900KF is almost identical to the current Intel Core i9-9900K, for example, aside from the onboard graphics have been disabled. Likewise, the Core i7-9700KF is functionally the same specs as the current Core i7-9700K. Intel hasn’t given any reasoning for this but the very marginally higher clock speeds suggest this helps to increase the yields and therefore the potential for higher binned parts.
In terms of performance, as Coffee Lake refreshes these are often like-for-like replacements to the previous 8th Gen Coffee Lake chips. They’re all based around what is essentially the same CPU architecture so don’t expect to be blown away by the changes, this just an opportunity to get something new on store shelves as we kick off 2019.
A lot of the pricing has yet to be finalised for Intel’s new 9th Gen parts but we’ll update you just as soon as we know.
The Fallout 76 servers have gone live a full day early, so if you’ve been waiting to play Bethesda’s next open-world RPG, now’s your chance. I’ve just finished giving it a couple of hours test run to find out how the performance in the launch version of Fallout 76 is.
Using the chart below you can find out just how demanding each graphics option is in Fallout 76. Along with this, we’ve given priority scores based on how important we believe it is to enable these graphics options for the optimum PC gaming experience with F76. This should come in quite handy as Fallout 76 requires a full game restart for each and every graphics options change, including the resolution. That’s not good enough, to be honest, but hopefully this Fallout 76 PC performance guide can ease the pain somewhat.
Fallout 76 System Requirements
For the benchmark results below we used a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, an Intel Core i7-5820K processor, and 16GB DDR4 memory. Unfortunately, Fallout 76 is currently capped at 63fps due to Bethesda tieing animations into the frame rate. As a result, the only resolution which could reliably force the frame rate down below 60 frames per second with a GTX 1060 in Fallout 76 was 4K. This means there’s not the granularity to the results we’d see from an uncapped frame rate.
Fallout 76 Graphics Options Performance Breakdown
The further right the bar goes, the more demanding the graphics option is.
Fallout 76 Graphics Settings
Texture Quality
Texture Quality affects the quality and resolution of textures in Fallout 76’s massive world. The higher the setting, the sharper the textures. This setting is primarily reliant on available GPU memory. 6GB VRAM is enough for High Texture Quality in Fallout 76. Considering dropping down to Medium or Low if you have a 2GB video card.
Performance Impact – 3/5
Priority – 2/5
Water Quality
You’ll never believe what this does. Yes! It affects the visual quality of the water in Fallout 76. There’s actually quite an abundance of water thanks to the snaking rivers, rusty toilet cisterns, and an obligatory shower scene. There’s not a huge impact to the frame rate in Fallout 76 if you turn this graphics setting up, so it does come recommended if H20 is your thing.
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 3/5
Lighting Quality
Let’s be honest, Fallout 76 isn’t exactly a graphical masterpiece. However, where it, ahem, shines, can be in the atmospheric lighting. The moody moonbeams cast down on an abandoned hotel, or the warm glow cascading in through a shattered window. Lighting Quality has a big effect on the frame rate but it should also be a top priority.
Performance Impact – 4/5
Priority – 4/5
Shadow Quality
Shadow Quality affects the resolution of shadows present in Fallout 76’s world. On Low the shadows can appear indistinct and blocky. Anyway at Medium or above looks passable enough though, so if you’re struggling for FPS then dropping this setting a few notches can be helpful.
Performance Impact – 4/5
Priority – 3/5
Shadow Distance
This graphics setting in Fallout 76 affects the distance at which shadows are rendered in. Usually there are lot of things obstructing long view distances so as long you aren’t seeing the shadows visibly pop-in in front of you, there shouldn’t be a problem. Somewhere around Medium is the optimal balance between visuals and performance hit.
Performance Impact – 3/5
Priority – 2/5
Actor Fade
Actor Fade is the distance at which both other player characters and enemies pop into view. This is definitely more important for enemies than it is player characters (which are marked on the map). There isn’t a massive performance hit for this setting so tweak the slider until you find somewhere comfortable.
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 3/5
Item Fade
Item Fade is the distance at which items littering the landscape pop into view. Again, not much of an FPS drop in Fallout 76, but it is at least useful to be able to spot potentially useful items from a moderate distance.
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 3/5
Object Fade
Object Fade refers to the non-equippable items that litter Fallout 76’s world, and at what distance they are drawn into view. There is a lot of tat lying about and the pop-in can be quite distracting with the slider down to minimum. Notch it up to about 50% though and any further gains are pretty negligible.
Performance Impact – 3/5
Priority – 2/5
Grass Fade
There’s a lot of grass in Fallout 76. And we mean A LOT. If you hate that wavy effect from foliage being drawn in at a greater level detail 20 feet in front of you, you’re going to want this graphics setting up as high as you can manage. Handily, turning up the Grass Fade effect also negates the impact of lowering other graphics settings – the grass obscures much of your view.
