Post your graphics settings!

[FleetAdmiralButter]

Hi all,

I've spent some time tweaking the graphics settings in my game and think I've settled on a pretty good configuration (for my setup at least) - the game looks similar enough to a copy running on my Windows desktop while performing very well.

I've listed all my tweaks for reference. Some settings aren't available on a Mac licence so skip over the ones that don't show up.

The list assumes you've started off with a base preset of Standard (Laptop) or Standard (Mac) and targets 60FPS at 2560x1440 on an M1 Pro. If you're on a more powerful system (M1 Max?) it might be worth bumping up texture filtering, real-time reflections, and shadow resolution.

I tested this across several areas (ARR, Stormblood and Shadowbringers) and performance is similar in all three expansions. The only write-off so far is the Aetheryte around Limsa Lominsa (running around 40FPS) - no amount of tweaking was able fix that.

Here are screenshots before and after. Note the differences between the faraway building in the top right, the trees/grass in the middle of the image (and the shadows cast by them) as well as the tiles on the ground where my character is standing.

UI Resolution Value: High (4K) Notes: Much sharper UI elements, no FPS penalty.

Texture Detail Texture Filtering: Anisotropic Anisotropic Filtering: x8 Notes: Massive improvement in texture quality for 2-3FPS. You can go up to x16 for another 1-2FPS but the visual difference is negligible.

Use low-detail models on distant objects. (LOD) Value: Off (Unchecked) Notes: Massive improvement in shadows/textures on faraway terrain with little FPS loss.

Edge Smoothing Value: FXAA Notes: Leave Off if you don't like FXAA or are injecting AA using GShade already.

Shadows Value: Display for all categories

Shadow Softening Value: Strong

Shadow Cascading Value: Best

Grass Quality Value: High Notes: Little FPS loss for big improvement in terrain quality.

Parallax Occlusion Value: High Notes: Improves textures on the ground. Substantial FPS hit (5-6FPS) so leave on normal if you're experiencing bad performance.

Tessellation Value: Normal (no change) Notes: Including this as a warning - do not set this to High. This does not play nice with MoltenVK and will tank performance in areas with lots of foliage with no graphical improvements to show for it.

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion Value: Light Notes: Improves lighting in indoor/shadowy areas. Disable if your FPS gets too low.

Real-time Reflections Value: Standard Notes: Improves lighting on shiny surfaces. Disable if your FPS gets too low.

Movement Physics Value: Full for all options

Use low-detail models on shadows Value: Off (Unchecked) Notes: Nice eyecandy but does cause a 3-4FPS hit in very crowded areas (e.g Limsa Lominsa Aetheryte). Leave on if on a weaker GPU.

[RussellAnas]

This is a great post. Just wanted to share that the Aetheryte around Limsa and Gridania is always much lower FPS than other hub areas (like Eulmore etc.). Might be due to no. of players, but there's something else going on too here. On my 3070, I average around 80 FPS while other hubs easily give me 120-150. So would suggest people not to judge avg. fps by what they see in Limsa or Gridania.

[ScarlettHoefler]

Thanks for the tessellation setting tip! It makes a huge difference even on the M1 Max.

On my M1 Max 64GB, I was able to use the Maximum preset at 1920x1200, then set Tesselation to Normal and 4K UI Resolution (and Screen Space Ambient Occlusion to Off to fix rendering issues).

With Tesselation on High, it wasn't really keeping up, but turning it back to Normal sent me up to ~80-90fps outside my FC estate. In Limsa, I averaged around 45-55fps. Running around the Aleport waypoint gave high 60s/low 70s. Flying around Il Mheg started at the 70s but quickly went up to the 90s and stayed there.

TBD on duties/group content, but initial results are very good. 😁

[RussellAnas]

@ScarlettHoefler can you post your graphics settings? Maybe a screenshot if you don't mind? I have my M1 Max 16" coming this week and want to use some guidance from people who've already set it up on what are the best settings.

I'll hook up my MBP to a 1080p 240 hz monitor, so resolution will be similar to yours. My priority would be staying above 75 FPS (excluding Limsa).

Anyone else as well who has a M1 Max chip, would love to get to know your experience!

[seathasky]

Not so much in game settings but a comparison between Default launcher and updated CX21 dxvk/mvk @ max in game settings:

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/qz2yzz/ff14_default_mac_client_vs_cx21_dxvk_192_mvk_116/

[quangxdu]

Hello, M1 Max 14 inch, 32 GB ram here. windowed full size, roughly 16:9 window. No discernable difference between full screen and windowed.

moltenVK 1.1.4, DXVK 1.9.2

25-45 in limsa lominsa on "maximum" settings Tesselation medium.

averaging 60 in the shirogane housing district

60-90 in Churning Mists fighting random adds.

[seathasky]

Hello, M1 Max 14 inch, 32 GB ram here. windowed full size, roughly 16:9 window. No discernable difference between full screen and windowed.

moltenVK 1.1.4, DXVK 1.9.2

25-45 in limsa lominsa on "maximum" settings Tesselation medium.

averaging 60 in the shirogane housing district

60-90 in Churning Mists fighting random adds.

I'd recommend turning tesselation off, as it's currently broken. It will only suck up your fps and you will barely notice the difference visually otherwise.

[marzent]

This totally an unrelated side note but if MoltenVK 1.1.6 is still broken for M1 feel free to open an issue at MoltenVK about it and describe your Problem, so it can get some attention.

These newer versions have major performance improvements for all gpus and changes that should make it run even "better" on apple gpus.

I would do it myself but I don’t have an M1 device and can’t create any logs for it…

[FleetAdmiralButter]

Hey @marzent, I've been planning on filing an issue there since I've got the crash logs on me but I don't know the first thing about graphics programming. Would you be able to give me some pointers on how to word up the issue, and if MoltenVK even support this use case?

[seathasky]

Not to reply for @marzent, but i'm available to help. It's fairly easy, if you follow this guide:

https://www.codeweavers.com/support/wiki/mac/faq/maccmdprompt

After you have shell open, type "wine and drag the ffxivboot64.exe after

Example: wine "C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\boot\ffxivboot64.exe"

this will open default launcher and also output everything in shell for you including any mvk errors.

(make sure you press enter after putting your password in instead of clicking launch, as the default launcher is buggy in cx)

[FleetAdmiralButter]

Success! Just managed to get a patched build of MoltenVK 1.1.6 running in CrossOver on M1 Pro:

In addition to MVK 1.1.6, this bottle has DXVK 1.9.2 installed, as well as the DXVK async patch.

I managed the narrow down the "Black Screen" error to the following two commits on the MoltenVK mainline branch: https://github.com/Gcenx/MoltenVK/commit/8c7db31cd72937a273e070521060ffee9b6a880b https://github.com/Gcenx/MoltenVK/commit/8e6731fd8e73443852a700e22431c224b37e2021

Will mention this when I create the issue in the MoltenVK repository.

Compiling 1.1.6 with these commits removed let the game start. I've been playing around with it for a few minutes - effects, menus, and other graphics elements seem to be working okay. Bit too soon to tell if there's a performance difference moving up from 1.1.4.

I've uploaded a precompiled binary here in case anyone wants to give it a try: https://github.com/FleetAdmiralButter/MoltenVK/releases/tag/v1.1.6

[marzent]

Awesome you got it to work! Let us know how performance is and I'll update the install script to add your version as an option if there are no issues for you

[quangxdu]

The MoltenVK 1.1.6 binary provided pulls me up to 75 FPS average from the Shirogane FPS above (up from average 60)

[seathasky]

Awesome work @FleetAdmiralButter! This is great, me and marzent don't have m1's yet, so stuff like this is very useful.

[seathasky]

I've uploaded a precompiled binary here in case anyone wants to give it a try: https://github.com/FleetAdmiralButter/MoltenVK/releases/tag/v1.1.6

I added your compile to public testing and updated news. Thank you for finding the issue

[FleetAdmiralButter]

Hey @quangxdu,

Thanks for helping me test this out. Was the 75FPS vs 60FPS comparing fresh starts of the game? I've noticed that there's a bit of performance loss after an hour or so after playing that a restart clears up (though this is completely anecdotal and might just stem from more players coming on).

Might be worth moving discussion of MVK 1.1.6 to #16 to keep this thread on point.

[marzent]

@seenasa best to discuss MVK issues inside inside the MVK issue ;)

Might be worth moving discussion of MVK 1.1.6 to #16 to keep this thread on point.

[seenasa]

@marzent Oops, my bad! Sorry about that I'll delete my irrelevant comments here

[FleetAdmiralButter]

If anyone's interested, setting "Character and Object Quantity" To Normal/Low/Minimum significantly improves framerate in hubs like Limsa. Of course, this comes at the cost of heavy pop-in as you're walking around (and minions in extremely crowded areas are no longer rendered!)

[stea1e]

M1 Mac Mini 16GB Vulkan: 1.1.198 Resolution: 2560x1440p, borderless windowed Graphics Settings: Standard (Mac) FPS: 25-30 in Goblet, outside FC house

[seathasky]

M1 Mac Mini 16GB Vulkan: 1.1.198 Resolution: 2560x1440p, borderless windowed Graphics Settings: Standard (Mac) FPS: 25-30 in Goblet, outside FC house

Sounds about right. Unfortunately you are both CPU and GPU bound here ;(

[FleetAdmiralButter]

Moving issue to https://github.com/marzent/XIV-on-Mac/issues/18 as this repository is now deprecated.