There is no doubt that Horizon
Forbidden West stands out as one of the most technically advanced
and visually stunning games on PS5. and now, the game has finally
landed on PC, courtesy of Nixxes. and I have to say, out of the recent Sony's PC ports, this might be the best one yet. the performance stability of
the game on PC is unbelievable. and it's been a long time since I've
seen a game with a smooth Frametime graph and no noticeable stuttering, even during moments of performance fluctua
tion. additionally, Nixxes has done a great job with the user interface and the Graphics Menu, which allows you to see the visual changes of the graphics settings in real-time. Furthermore, Nixxes has included all available upscalers here and a bench of
tweakable graphics settings. so today and as usual, we'll take
an in depth look at these setting, to examine the performance
and visual impact of each one. and to determine the optimal balance
between good performance and visuals. so, without
any further ado, let's get going. Now even though this is a great
port, it's still not perfect yet, there are some issues and some notes I should talk about before we start. the first one is related to Nvidia's Reflex. as you can see here the game runs
smoothly with almost perfect frametimes. now watch what happens when I enable Reflex now we can see that both the
performance and frametimes are worse, and I've seen many users online
having the exact same issue and going to On + Boost makes
things even worse as you can see here so for now I recommend keeping
an eye on the game's stability, if you're using Reflex or Frame generation and speaking of Frame Generation, the game supports DLSS frame generation which of course requires an RTX 40 series GPU. and I've tested this mod by
Nukem which as you might know, enables Frame Generation on RTX 20 and 30 series GPUs by swapping DLSS FG with FSR FG. and the results are not perfect, unlike many other games, this mod doesn't function cor
rectly with Horizon Forbidden West. and despite increasing the framerates, it still doesn't feel as smooth as
playing without Frame generation. and I think the reason behind this is the aforementioned issue with Nvidia's Reflex, as using Frame generation requires
this feature to be enabled. The game also supports Dynamic Resolution, which typically doesn't work well
in most PC games unlike consoles. but regardless, let's give it a test. here the game is running at the high 40s, if I enabled D
ynamic Resolution
with TAA to target 60 fps. the game exceeds the 60 fps target
with some drops here and there. however, we can also see that the resolution drop is noticeable and the image
quality doesn't look great. now let's try Dynamic
Resolution with DLAA instead. and as you can see now with DLAA. the image quality is much
better compared to Dynamic TAA despite the fact that the performance
is identical between the two options. but Dynamic resolution is not a magic bullet, as it has i
t's limit on how much it can decrease the resolution to achieve the target frame rates. for example here my performance is at the high 30s which is way behind the 60 fps target. and if enabled Dynamic Resolution, the resolution drop is still not
enough to achieve that 60 fps target. so that's why, if you're willing
to use Dynamic Resolution, first make sure that you're
base performance is close to 60. and I recommend avoiding TAA and use DLAA or the other upscaler instead, as they can handle
lower resolutions
better than the game's TAA. Let's move on to Image Quality. now as as mentioned at the beginning of the video, Nixxes has included all upscalers here. we have DLSS, FSR2.2 and XeSS. and for Native Resolution, we have TAA, DLAA. and even SMAA and the option to disable
AA completely for those who dislike TAA. and if we compare DLSS, FSR2 and XeSS(DP4a). we can see that when it
comes to temporal stability. XeSS looks much worse compared to FSR2 and it suffers from trailing and
ghosting artifacts on particles. and in some other scenes like here. the flickering with XeSS is on another level and it seems like something is wrong with
the DP4a implementation of XeSS in this game. let's get back to the previous scene and here we can see that DLSS and as usual
looks more stable compared to FSR2. but it suffers from smearing on small
and thin objects as you can see here. additionally all upscalers struggle
with Screen Space Reflections, but FSR and and specially XeSS
lo
ok much worse compared to DLSS. Now for native resolution, if we compared
DLAA with TAA we can see the expected result. with DLAA offering superior image quality. but similar to DLSS, it suffers from the same
smearing issue on small and thin objects. and performance wise for Anti Aliasing, going from Off to SMAA costs around
2%, to TAA 5% and to DLAA 8%. Let's move on to the Graphics section
starting with Texture Quality. and this setting doesn't only affect the resolution of textures for
m
ost objects in the game. but it also has an impact on Water Surface
as you can see there in the background. and from what I've seen, with
High Textures at 1440p with DLAA, the game runs fine most of the time. as the allocated Vram is
nowhere near the 8GB limit. however going to Very High
or using higher resolutions, can make the allocate Vram
gets closer to 8GB limit. which can force the game to start paging and
using textures from the much slower System Ram. and this can cause a lot of is
sues,
like performance drop and stuttering. That's why for 8GB GPUs, at native 1440p,
I recommend High Textures or lower options. Next we have Texture Filtering, which affect the quality of textures
when drawn at a sharp or oblique angles. and here similar to most games, this
setting has negligible performance impact. with around 3% and much better visual quality
when going from Trilinear to higher options. so keep it at 8x or 16x. Moving on to Shadow Quality, which of course
adjusts the q
uality and resolution of Shadow Maps. Now when indoors, we can see that this setting
also controls the amount of shadows being cast. with Low and Very Low casting no Shadows. Medium enabling most of the shadows and both High and Very High add more of this tree
shadow and enhance it's resolution. This setting also controls Hero Lighting on Aloy, which is a prominent light source
used to illuminate the character and here we can see here that Medium
and lower options disable this lighting. and
performance wise this is one of the most
demanding settings when using higher options. because here at this scene
going from Off to Very Low, Low and Medium costs around 2%,to
High and Very High around 13%. so here I recommend Medium Shadows. Next we have Screen Space Shadows. this one when enabled add contact
shadows for small details and objects that Cascaded Shadow maps
can't accurately capture. and it can add more depth to
a scene as you can see here. and performance wise enabling Scre
en
Space Shadows can costs around 3%. however in other scenes like here the performance gap between the two options
is larger with around 9%. so here 9% is too much for Screen Space Shadows. that's why I recommend keeping this one disabled. Ambient Occlusion is next. in Horizon Forbidden West and
unlike previous Nixxes PC Ports, only Screen Space Ambient
Occlusion or SSAO is included here. there is no HBAO or any other
form Of Ambient Occlusion. and enabling SSAO has a small cost, around 2%
. so here I recommend keeping SSAO enabled. Now for Reflections, Horizon
Forbidden West is relying on a mix of Screen Space Reflections
combined with a cubemap fallback. but the quality of these reflections is
not great even with higher resolutions. and this reflected on the performance side as
going from off to even High has negligible impact. so here I recommend keeping
Screen Space Reflections at High. Level of Detail controls the geometry complexity
and LOD of objects based on their di
stance. like here we can see that switching to higher options adds more geometry and
details to objects at a distance. and this setting doesn't only affect static meshes
and other objects but it also impacts NPCs LOD. and performance wise, this setting can vary
depending on the location or the scene. and how much geometry is close to the camera. for example here going from Very Low to Low costs around 2%,to Med 4%,High 9%
and to Very High around 22%. but here in this village with more
objec
ts and geometry close to the camera, High and Very High are more demanding. with High costing 27% and Very High a massive 40%. so for this one I recommend sticking
with Medium Level Of Detail. Moving on to Hair Quality. and from what I've seen, this setting only
affects Alloy's Hair as you can see here. and going for Higher Options adds more details
and improves the accuracy of hair rendering. and performance wise this setting
doesn't have a big impact. so here I recommend High Hair Quality.
Next we have Crowd Quality. this one is somewhat similar
to the Level Of Detail setting, but it works differently by only
toggling between two Models for NPCs. For instance, here you can see that using Low swaps the entire model of these
NPCs with Lower Quality Model. and simultaneously pause or lower
the rate of their animation. and here we can see that when using Low or Medium. the distance at which the game
switches between Lower Quality and Higher Quality model is close to the camera.
and performance wise even when CPU
Bound with a lot of NPCs on screen. we can see negligible performance
impact between the options. so here I recommend High Crowd Quality. Moving on to Terrain Quality. this one adjusts the level of bumpiness and adds more details visible both up close and
in the distance as you can see here. additionally using Low can cause Pop-in in
the terrain unlike Medium or higher options. and performance wise going from Low to Med costs
around 3% and to High and Very
High around 6% so here I recommend Medium
or High Terrain Quality. Next we have Water Quality. This one primarily controls the
quality of water simulation effects. like here we can see that using High, increases the fluidity and the rate
at which these ripples update at. additionally using Low or Medium disables the
waves at shores, unlike High as you can see here. and performance wise even here which
is an intensive scene for this setting. we can see no significant performance
impact whe
n going to High. and the same thing here at this shore. So for this one I recommend High Water Quality. Moving on to Clouds Quality. this one of course adjusts the quality
and resolution of Volumetric Clouds. like here we can see that
only the Very High option looks different compared to the other options. however in others scenes like here, we can see that both High and Very high add
these low level clouds around mountains. and performance wise we can see that going from low to high costs ar
ound 2% and
going to Very High around 6%. however, the Burning Shores DLC introduces a more
robust clouds system compared to the base game. and here in this DLC, we can see
that Clouds are more demanding when using higher option, with High
costing 6% and Very High a massive 23%. so for this one I recommend Medium Clouds. Translucency Quality is next. this setting adjusts the resolution and quality
of objects through which light can pass partially. like these particles here. and performance
wise at this scene, we can see negligible performance impact
when going from Default to High Res. so here I recommend keeping this one at High Res. however, if you're having frame drops
during intensive combat scenarios, make sure to use the Default option instead. Next we have Parallax Occlusion Mapping. typically this setting should give
more depth to flat textured surfaces but in Horizon Forbidden West, the
visual impact is not that noticeable as most surfaces already has a form of
Paral
lax Occlusion mapping applied to them. like here for example. however, this setting can still have a
visual impact on some other surfaces, like here where we can see a small fluctuation in
this surface when switching between Off and On. or more noticeably here on the sea foam. and performance wise this setting can be demanding
even in areas where it makes small difference like here with around 7% cost. or even here where there is no
noticeable visual impact with around 4%. That's why I recom
mend keeping this one disabled. Now before we wrap up this section of the video let's take a look at some additional
settings like Field Of View here at this scene we can see
around 4% performance cost when going from -25 to 0 and 5% when going to +25. next we have some Post Processing
settings starting with Depth Of Field. this effect is used heavily in
cutscenes as you can see here and the same thing during conversations like here, where we can see a performance impact only
when going to
the High and Very High options. this effect is also used during
gameplay when opening the weapon wheel, and here we can small performance
difference between the options. And lastly we have Motion Blur. which doesn't seem to have any
significant performance impact. And with all that being said, these are my
recommended settings for Horizon Forbidden West let's now quickly compare the performance
of Optimized Settings and Very High Preset using the High Textures at 1440p DLAA. and let's start
with this scene where there
is a lot of detailed geometry on screen, and here we can see around 42% between
Optimized Settings and Very High Preset. next we have this scene with
Water, Volumetrics and Vegetation, and here we can see around 45% performance
increase when using Optimized settings. let's move on to the next scene
where we can see slightly lower gain compared to the previous one with around 32%. and finally we have this scene from the DLC, where we can see around 34% when going
from
Very High Preset to Optimized Settings. So overall, we can see that the performance gain with these settings can
vary depending on the scene. and I don't recommend
lowering the settings further, especially Shadows and Level of Detail, as doing
so will compromise the visual quality of the game. if you need more performance take advantage of
upscaling or use the game's Dynamic Resolution. Additionally, as we discussed
earlier in the video, it's recommended to avoid using XeSS and Nvidi
a Reflex, as both features are currently broken. and with that we arrive at the end of this video,
Thank you so much for watching and for your time. if you enjoyed the video leave a
like, and if not leave a dislike. don't forget to subscribe and hit the
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