

But it's on by default, regardless of which preset you use, so I suggest turning it off if you don't like blur.

Motion Blur: The description of this setting in the game cheekily says, "Sets your side in forum flame wars!" Which is weird, because I don't know many people (if any) that like motion blur. Vegetation draw distance: Adjusts the draw distance for vegetation (which is apparently different from foliage). This is the only other setting that appears to have a substantial impact on performance, improving fps by up to 10 percent when set to minimum (and dropping it by 10 percent if you go beyond the ultra defaults). LOD distance: Controls the distance at which higher quality textures are used. Negligible impact, though increasing this beyond the ultra default setting can reduce performance by 10 percent. Objects distance: Adjusts object draw distance. Vegetation distance: Adjusts foliage draw distance. Volumetric effects detail: Controls quality of god rays (eg, from window lights). Water details: Adjusts tessellation quality and shader complexity for water. Negligible impact (though maybe it would matter more on cards with less VRAM). Textures: Controls the resolution of dynamic textures. Not surprisingly, shadows also have a noticeable impact on performance, and turning this down can improve framerates by up to 15 percent.

Shadows: Adjusts the softness and distance for shadow rendering. Lowering this can improve performance by up to 25 percent, though at the cost of some image quality. This is one of the few settings that has a clear impact on performance. Shaders quality: Adjusts the complexity of shaders. Postprocess quality: Modifies the quality of high dynamic range, motion blur, and depth of field effects. Physics: Sets the distance and precision of physics calculations. Particles: Affects maximum number and quality of visible particles. Lighting: Sets the quality of global illumination. Game effects: Used to adjust the level of weather effects. Negligible impact on performance (at least on my test system, which is admittedly high-end). Object quality: Controls culling of geometry for distant objects. These estimates of performance impact are for now just that: estimates. Note also that because I'm not running a complete benchmark sequence, and because of the particular location used for the testing, it's possible some of the settings that don't appear to do much can actually have a more substantial impact elsewhere in the game (eg, water detail near rivers and lakes). Click on the links in each image for fullsize comparisons. The above gallery shows the various advanced settings at minimum, with everything else using the ultra preset. 2560x1440 all non-critical settings at low/min
