Intro
Mass Effect 2 is a truly epic gaming experience that every PC gamer should embark upon at some point, however, in order to get the most out of the PC version of the game and your hardware, some additional tweaks may be required. I just wanted to put them all in one place to make it easier to read and access. Most of these steps are just from previous experience with games that use the Unreal Engine 3 along with some trial and error.
Here's an overview of the sections to help you navigate quickly:
- I. Skip the Intro Splash Movies
- II. UE3 INI Tweaking
- III. Forcing AA and SLI on Nvidia Hardware
- IV. nHancer Tips and Troubleshooting
- V. Comparative Pictures
I. Skip the Intro Splash Movies
Navigate to
%:\Mass Effect 2\BioGame\Movies and locate the two following:
- ME_EAsig_720p_v2_raw.bik
- BWLogo.bik
Rename the files to whatever you like, I simply changed .bik to .bak for both.
II. UE3 INI Tweaking
For those who are familiar with UE3 games, you're probably familiar with the previous system that would typically have a [gamename]Engine.ini file with numerous settings that could be changed located somewhere in %:\Users\%\Documents folder. ME2 still uses this system but exposes much fewer options in the
GamerSettings.ini located at
%:\Users\%\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 2\BIOGame\Config. This file serves as an override and will take precedence over the default settings found in DefaultEngine.ini, or in the case of ME2, Coalesced.ini. Instead of placing most of these override settings directly into the User\Documents file, they put them into Coalesced.ini and as the name implies, smushed them all together so its very difficult to navigate or make any sense of. No problem, just use the same settings you've grown accustomed to in the past from UE3 games to tweak the settings you want to and put them into your GamerSettings.ini file. You don't want to mess with Coalesced.ini or DefaultEngine.ini as the game may not launch if you alter these or may make your game unplayable if you mess with a setting you shouldn't have.
Here's a list of the ones I've changed and why:
- DepthOfField=False Not only does this take away the blurry foreground/background blurring, it also significantly decreases the dark shadows/lighting.
- UseVsync=False Some may prefer Vsync On, but this will allow you to turn off Vsync if only to verify performance/SLI scaling.
- bSmoothFrameRate=False Similar to turning off Vsync, the UE3 additionally uses frame rate smoothing which acts as an FPS cap (62 FPS)
- MinSmoothedFrameRate=22.000000
- MaxSmoothedFrameRate=200.000000 You also need to change this setting, as its set to a 62 FPS cap by default
How my GamerSettings.ini file looks, notice it doesn't really matter that everything is under [SystemSettings] header instead of [Engine.GameEngine] as its commented out anyways. You should be able to add other settings from other UE3 game engine.ini although it may not have any effect, or may even have negative effects. Just delete GamerSettings.ini if that happens and the launcher will create a new one.
I haven't really gotten around to messing with any other settings, in the past with UE3 games I've had to go in and mess with the sound settings to get EAX/7.1 to stick but no need this time around. Also no need to mess with the shadow resolution this time around as they're much better than ME1, but some people may want to try and tweak them to see if they can't improve performance or visuals.
III. Forcing AA and SLI on Nvidia hardware
A few ways to go about this, but UE3 is notorious for having compatibility issues with AA and/or SLI due to its use of deferred rendering. Both Nvidia and ATI have developed driver workarounds to be able to handle both AA and HDR under DX9, however, they need to specifically enable compatibility flags in their drivers or the settings in the NVCP or CCC will not know how to handle and apply AA/SLI for UE3 titles.
For Nvidia users there's numerous options to get AA and SLI working properly:
I personally prefer nHancer as it allows you to manually flag the proper compatibility bits for both AA and SLI even if the latest Nvidia or EVGA profiles aren't properly updated. This means you're never really at the mercy of any particular IHV or ISV to fix their driver or games, if you know the engine used and AA or SLI was supported before, there's a very good chance you'll be able to force AA or SLI with a few checkbox clicks.
You can force AA in ME2 with either of the following compatibility flags:
- 080100C5: Unreal Tournament 3
- 00000045: AA & HDR
You should be able to force SLI with
AFR-4W [0x02402005] The latest Nvidia SLI Patch has both of these flags in Mass Effect 2's game profile, so they shouldn't need to be changed manually after 196.34. If you use a driver prior to 196.3X you will still need to manually create and flag these bits if you want AA and SLI compatibility for Mass Effect 2.
IV. nHancer Tips and Troubleshooting
Setting up and navigating nHancer is pretty straightforward, its very similar to the NVCP, just laid out in a better format, imo. It simply exposes the settings and features already included in Nvidia's driver and NVapps.xml and co-exists with NVCP in a safe manner.
Typically, here's the steps I take when I get a new game that doesn't support AA natively, or doesn't seem to benefit from SLI:
- Step 1 - Check the default driver profile flags, if you know what engine the game uses and the flags look like generic flags or don't match the flags you're expecting, that's most likely why SLI or AA isn't working. Look up some similar games where you know for a fact SLI or AA is working and look to apply them for this game. In this case, I can just look at ME1 and see that the original ME2 flags weren't correct, so I used ME1 flags I know were working properly as a starting point.
- Step 2 - Set the proper compatibility flags you identified in Step 1. If you're not comfortable yet with the various game engines and don't want to try trial and error, just google your game title + AA or SLI + nhancer compatibility and you should get some hits with the proper flag identified.
- Step 3 - If you have all the flags set and AA or SLI still doesn't seem to be taking, make sure the game profile is pointing to the proper game.exe file. You can manually add additional .exe or launcher files as needed.
Once you've got the proper bits flagged, it should be very easy to make sure AA and SLI are working in-game.
For AA, just look at the jaggies on geometry edges, you should see noticeably decreased jaggies and edge shimmering when moving around even with 4xMSAA at the cost of 30-50% FPS. Enabling Transparency SuperSampling AA will help with foliage, hair, gratings, handrails etc, although performance can drop considerably depending on how many transparencies/billboards are in a scene. The most expensive form of AA and true full-scene anti-aliasing with SuperSampling AA will not only smooth edges on geometry, but also improve IQ on all finely-patterned textures, shaders, decals etc. as the game engine is simply rendering the scene at a higher resolution and then downsampling to your target resolution.
Besides the dramatic in-game IQ differences, you should be able to verify AA is working by using Precision's ability to monitor VRAM usage. The amount of VRAM will scale as you increase AA, for example at 1920x1200 with no AA ME2 uses ~300MB, 600MB with 4xMSAA, 700MB with 8xCSAA, and a whopping 900MB with 8xSQ (2x2 SSAA + 2xMSAA). Make sure you close out anything that uses VRAM when gaming....for example, preparing this write-up, I had 6x Photo Gallery Viewers open and even running 8xCSAA I noticed a big drop in FPS simply because VRAM usage had pushed into the 800MB range due to all the photos open.
For SLI, make sure you have Vsync disabled and FPS smoothing off, set max to something higher than 62, like 200. Also helps to enable SLI 3D Visualization from the NVCP, the more solid the green bar, the more efficiently the GPUs in SLI are being used. You can also use Precision's new features of GPU % monitoring to see how much of each GPU is being utilized.
V. Comparative Pictures
Depth of Field On - notice both Shephard and background characters are very dark to the point you can't see any detail on their bodies. Lighting overall is also much darker.
Depth of Field Off - much more detail visible, shadows aren't as dark.
Depth of Field On - background and foreground images are blurred as camera focus is on the speaker. More cinematic but overly dark.
Depth of Field Off - both background and foreground images are much better focused, less cinematic but more detail visible.
Might be a bug with Depth of Field and lighting effects, as Depth of Field shouldn't dramatically impact lighting so much.....may be worth keeping an eye on this in future patches as the dark shadows have been a noticeable complaint by many. Turning Depth of Field off solves this problem but at the expense of a more cinematic feel to cut-scenes.
No AA - Notice the jaggies just about everywhere, much more noticeable when playing as the entire scene will seem as if its "crawling".
4xMSAA - Jaggies on geometry (tables, weapons, individual solid colored pipes) significantly reduced. The group of pipes in the right background still noticeably jaggy due to shader aliasing. Textures with inlaid patterns also still show aliasing. Running around the normandy you'll still see these embedded patterns on walls shimmer as you walk by.
8xSQ - Remaining scene elements noticeably less aliased, that problematic group of pipes in the back right corner are noticeably less jaggy. Again, this will be much more noticeable in actual gameplay, however, 2x2 SSAA isn't playable at 1920x1200 with a single GTX 280, you'll most likely need SLI or GF100 to play at these settings.
I'll see if I can find some other areas that help illustrate the differences a bit better, I do remember quite a few landing missions that did a much better job of illustrating the differences with Transparency AA with foliage and/or floor gratings etc. I'll keep adding tweaks and tips, let me know if you have any issues you'd like to see addressed or if you have a suggestion for a good tweak. My personal favorites are AA and turning Depth of Field Off as they'll make your game look much better without sacrificing too much performance. Hope this helps you focus on this excellent game instead of fretting too much about getting enhancements or features working!
post edited by chizow - 2010/02/04 17:49:30