Turn off SSAO for HUGE FPS gain

[FengZ]

Since there are so many complains about fps, here's a quick way to almost double your fps.

I have a powerful machine (i960, 3-way 480 GTX SLI, etc). Bulletstorm, everything on high, runs at about 50fps @ 2560x1600. This is ok, but it feels sluggish and choppy.

But if you edit the stormengine.ini (search for the bulletstorm editor on google), you can turn off SSAO and turn on bloom. You won't notice much of a visual difference, but gain a lot of fps and smoothness in return.

My fps went from mid 50s to 90 average and the game runs soooo smooth. FPS never drops below 80.

Might not be a solution for everyone, but it's something. SSAO usually is a huge FPS hog.

ps. If you want the fps to go above 62, you need to set SmoothFPS to False (also found in StormEngine.ini).

[schism84]

Where's the SSAO command line? I spent lots of time messing with the engine ini but I'm not sure I saw it.

[FengZ]

I'm at work at this moment so I don't have access to the exact line. But look for something that says:

"ambient occlusion" and set it to false. Right below should be "bloom" which is defaulted to false. Set that to True.

[schism84]

Ah ok. I just added bloom but left the occlusion for the nice bloomy effects. I'll try switching off occlusion to see how it effects visuals and performance as I have pretty low specs.

Btw, I guess you have already, but you should definitely switch off the background level streaming and increase the texture streaming pool to at least 320. It doesn't do anything to average FPS but it makes the game run a bit more ... like a PC game should run. I know it's fixing the occasional random stutter for a lot of people. Your rig might be powerful to fix it on its own though.

[FengZ]

Yeah, i haven't notice the texture streaming problem at all. I remember having this issue with Singularity and The Last Remnant, but that was with my old PC with GTX 285s. But I'll change it anyways now that you've mentioned it. :)

[Impeh]

Can this program be used to fix the bizarre feature of increased sensitivity whilst aiming down the sights? And if so, what setting and in which file do I need to alter?