Video Display Options



 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.