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BEST RADICAL HEIGHTS SETTINGS

RADICAL HEIGHTS GUIDE FOR HIGH FPS & COMPETITIVE GAMING

UPDATED FOR PATCH #2. MAY 3RD. YOU HAVE TO DOWNLOAD A NEW ENGINE.INI!

Radical Heights is newly released and in a really early state. Things will change and this guide will get updated regularly.

Radical Heights is a new battle royale game which has like all recently released battle royale games, except Fortnite, big performance problems and lacks optimization everywhere.

Fortunately there is a mix of ingame settings, ini config commands and Windows & system optimizations that may up to triple your FPS and make the game quite play- & enjoyable.

3 STEPS FOR MORE FPS IN RADICAL HEIGHTS

  1. Follow the in-game settings guide
  2. Download the Radical Heights HIGH FPS Config
  3. Check some of the Windows & system optimization tips

Radical Heights Ingame Settings

Learn about the best ingame settings for max fps.

Best Radical Heights Resolution

There is no perfect resolution for Radical Heights and it all depends on your preferences and system. Fortunately Radical Heights has a quite clean look which makes even low resolutions like 800p or 720p usable without leasing unplayable much visibility. But still, the higher the resolution the better is the visibility, especially on long ranges, going to be.

Think about using a lower or 16:10 resolution

If your FPS are still too low and still play with a resolution like 1080p or even 1440p, you should think about lowering your resolution and switch to 900p or even 720p.

Another great way to get some additional performance without losing too much visibility is switching to a 16:10 resolution and playing with small black borders or a slightly stretched image (preference). Using 1680x1050 or 1440x900 costs you only 15% screen estate which also means 15% less pixel to render which can often make a difference between playable and unplayable. Depending on your playstyle you might not even notice the missing space on the sides.

HIGH FPS CHOICES: 1600x900 (16:9), 1440x900 (16:10), 1280x800 (16:10), 1280x720 (16:9)
BEST CHOICES: 1080P

CAUTION: The SCREEN SCALE PERCENTAGE setting will affect your final resolution.

WINDOW MODE

[ If you have a green or pink flickering screen with the fullscreen option, read here: Fix green or pink flickering in Radical Heights ]

HIGH FPS CHOICE: FULL SCREEN
BEST CHOICE: FULL SCREEN [maybe with windows 10 fullscreen optimization. read more in the windows & system optimization part]

DON’T USE BORDERLESS WINDOWED MODE [WINDOWED FULLSCREEN] IN RADICAL HEIGHTS

Borderless Windowed mode adds additional input lag and lowers your fps, especially on low to mid end systems.

The performance decrease is something you can’t really change, the input lag however is something that you can change, depending on your Windows version – I don’t recommended it. The input lag is caused by the Desktop Window Manager (DWM), which you can’t disable on Windows 10 without much effort. If you are still on Windows 7, you can look up a guide to do that. Or just use FULL SCREEN.

SCREEN SCALE PERCENTAGE

SCREEN SCALE PERCENTAGE in Radical Heights is a percentage value that determines the real resolution your game will be rendered in. You also might know it as Resolution Scale or Resolution Quality from other games.

If you set a value under 100%, the game will render in a lower resolution and upscale it to your set resolution, so that your UI stays sharp, but the game itself gets rendered in a lower resolution. If you set a value over 100%, the game is doing something called super-sampling, rendering the game on a higher resolution and downscales it to your set resolution. That results in a sharper game and is an alternative to anti-aliasing.

Examples:
If you’re playing on 1920x1080 and the SCREENSCALE PERCENTAGE to 120, your game will be rendered at 2304x1296 (1920*1,2(120%) * 1080*1,2(120%)). That will make your game look sharper and is an alternative to the anti-aliasing. You don’t really need that in Radical Heights though.

If you set the SCREEN SCALE PERCENTAGE to 70, it will render Radical Heights at 70% of it’s width and height and upscale it to your set resolution. If you play at 1920x1080 with a Resolution Quality of 70, the game would render at 1344*756 (1920*0,7(70%)*1080*0,7(70%)).

HIGH FPS CHOICE: 80-100
BEST CHOICE: 100

Performance Impact

Similar to your resolution it has heavy impact on your performance. The more pixel that need to get rendered, the less FPS you will experience.

FOV – What is the best FoV in Radical Heights?

Field of View, FOV, is the horizontal view you have in Radical Heights in degrees. You can set a value between 85 und 105 degrees. In the first place the FOV is personal preference. A FOV too low might not only make you nauseous, but also might make you miss important things. A FOV too high might make things far away hard to see, especially on lower resolutions. It also has a small performance impact which is not that high in Radical Heights right now. This might change in the future.

BEST CHOICE: 85-105
HIGH FPS CHOICE: 85-105

ANTI-ALIASING IN RADICAL HEIGHTS

Anti-Aliasing is a technique used to removed the so called staircase effect on edges. Radical Heights uses a anti-aliasing technique FXAA in different quality levels to combat those pixelated edges.

The performance impact on your average FPS is not too high, you usually experience higher drops on low and medium performing systems. That and the blur it creates is reason enough to disable it.

HIGH FPS CHOICE: LOW
BEST CHOICE: LOW

VISIBILITY IMPACT

FXAA introduces some blurriness, which you probably might not want in the game. In the end it is for many a personal preference though, so if you can’t stand pixelated edges at all, you’ll have to use it.

VSYNC

V-Sync synchronizes frames between your graphics card and monitor, similar to GSYNC or FreeSync. Only problem: Default VSYNC introduces additional input lag and costs performance. Two things you don’t want in any slightly competitive game.

HIGH FPS CHOICE: NO
BEST CHOICE: NO

TEXTURE QUALITY

The overall performance impact isn’t too high, as long as your GPU has enough VRAM.

HIGH FPS CHOICE: LOW
BEST CHOICE: LOW

TEXTURE MEMORY

Right now I’d go with AUTOMATIC or the size of your GPU’s VRAM.

VIEW DISTANCE QUALITY

The VIEW DISTANCE QUALITY setting on LOW does not give any visibility disadvantages. At the same time, there isn’t much performance increase noticable either. All of them are (nearly) the same right now. Go with LOW!

HIGH FPS CHOICE: LOW
BEST CHOICE: LOW

SHADOWS

Shadows in Radical Heights are forced to a medium level, even if you set them to LOW. Good thing: We can change that with the HIGH FPS Config for Radical Heights which you can find under these Ingame Settings here!

HIGH FPS CHOICE: LOW
BEST CHOICE: LOW

POST PROCESS QUALITY

Turn post-processing to low to disable most of the unnecessary and performance decreasing post processing effects.

HIGH FPS CHOICE: LOW
BEST CHOICE: LOW

FRAME RATE CAP

The frame rate cap limits your fps at the given value. As long as the game is as unoptimised as it is right now, limiting your frame rate usually makes no sense at all.

HIGH FPS CHOICE: NONE
BEST CHOICE: NONE

FRAME RATE SMOOTHING

Don’t use FRAME RATE SMOOTHING. Similar to VSYNC it adds additional input-lag and lowers your performance.

HIGH FPS CHOICE: OFF
BEST CHOICE: OFF

EFFECTS QUALITY

The EFFECTS QUALITY setting sets the quality of effects and surfaces. The lowest setting will give you the most FPS and might even give you a slight advantage around explosions and smoke grenades.

HIGH FPS CHOICE: LOW
BEST CHOICE: LOW

RADICAL HEIGHTS HIGH FPS CONFIG

UPDATED FOR PATCH #2. MAY 3RD. NEW ENGINE.INI FILE! Still working and you should still experience about 30-40% more FPS.

The biggest improvement FPS wise can be reached by editing an ini configuration file. But, it should not only give you an huge FPS improvement but also better visibility, by lightening up the game and removing unnecessary fog and post-processing effects.

How to use it:

  1. To use it you have to download our Engine.ini
  2. Overwrite the existing one you can find under \Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\RadicalHeights\Saved\Config\WindowsClient. You can also just paste the lines into the existing one which should be empty. [A faster way to get there is to press WINDOWS+R and paste “%LOCALAPPDATA%\RadicalHeights\Saved\Config\WindowsClient” in their, confirm with Enter. A explorer window in the right folder will open then.]
  3. After you either overwrote the file or added the lines, make the file read-only. You can do that by right-clicking it, choose Properties from the context menu and tick the Read-only option. Then Apply it and close the window.
  4. Finished! You’re ready to play and should experience up to double, even triple the FPS you had before and even more importantly, more stable FPS and frame times.

 

Radical Heights High FPS Config

Scalability.ini


;
; esports.exposed Engine.ini for Radical Heights for high FPS and better visibility
; =========================
;
; 1) Replace the already existing Engine.ini in \Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\RadicalHeights\Saved\Config\WindowsClient\.
; 2) MAKE IT READ-ONLY!!!
;
; Always check for updated versions of this config and the guide overall on
; https://esports.exposed/radicalheights/radicalheights-high-fps-competitive-settings/
;
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Core.System]
Paths=../../../Engine/Content
Paths=%GAMEDIR%Content
Paths=../../../Engine/Plugins/InputDevices/LogitechG/Content

[WindowsApplication.Accessibility]
StickyKeysHotkey=False
ToggleKeysHotkey=False
FilterKeysHotkey=False
StickyKeysConfirmation=False
ToggleKeysConfirmation=False
FilterKeysConfirmation=False


[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.PostProcessAAQuality=0
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.AmbientOcclusionMipLevelFactor=1.0
r.AmbientOcclusionMaxQuality=0
r.AmbientOcclusionLevels=0
r.AmbientOcclusionRadiusScale=1.0
r.HBAO.Enable=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.RenderTargetPoolMin=300
r.LensFlareQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.EyeAdaptationQuality=0
r.BloomQuality=0
r.FastBlurThreshold=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=0
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0
r.LightShaftQuality=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=0
r.Fog=0
r.TranslucencyLightingVolumeDim=24
r.RefractionQuality=0
r.SSR.Quality=0
r.SSS.Quality=0
r.SceneColorFormat=3
r.DetailMode=0
r.TranslucencyVolumeBlur=0
r.MaterialQualityLevel=0
r.EmitterSpawnRateScale=0.125
r.ParticleLightQuality=0
grass.DensityScale=0
foliage.DensityScale=0
r.Streaming.PoolSize=300
r.Streaming.MipBias=3
r.MaxAnisotropy=0
r.LightFunctionQuality=0
r.ShadowQuality=0
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=0
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=32
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.00
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=0.0
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=0
r.DistanceFieldShadowing=0
r.DistanceFieldAO=0
r.CapsuleShadows=0
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=0
r.ViewDistanceScale=1.0
b.LevelStreamingMaxLODLevel=3
b.LevelStreamingDistanceRatioForLOD=0.5
b.NetMoveEnableByDistance=15000
r.LightFunctionQuality=0

RADICAL HEIGHTS LAUNCH OPTIONS

There seem to be no launch options which would give you any performance boost.

  • No, -sm4 does not work.
  • No, -USEALLAVAILABLECORES does not work
  • No, -malloc=system does not work. It’s not even a Unreal Engine 4 launch option. (The engine Radical Heights uses.)
  • No, -high does not work.

BEST NVIDIA DRIVER SETTINGS FOR RADICAL HEIGHTS

The following Nvidia Control Panel settings can help to get a bit of a more stable and smoother gaming experience. I wouldn’t expect much FPS increase, it may fix some stuttering, lower your input lag and make your experience overall smoother.

 

Radical Heights NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL Settings:

  • Anistropic filtering: Off
  • Antialiasing – FXAA: Off
  • Antialiasing – Gamma correction: Off
  • Antialiasing – Mode: Off
  • Antialiasing – Setting: None
  • Antialiasing – Transparency: Off
  • Maximum pre-rendered frames: 1
  • Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance
  • Shader Cache: On
  • Texture filtering – Anistropic sample option: Off
  • Texture filtering – Negative LOD bias: Allow
  • Texture filtering – Quality: High performance
  • Texture filtering – Trilinear optimization: Off
  • Threaded optimization: On
  • Triple buffering: Off
  • Vertical sync: Off
Step by step nvidia driver settings optimization for Radical Heights

Open the NVIDIA Control Panel, for example by right-clicking your desktop and choosing the NVIDIA Control Panel application in the context menu.

Go into 3D Settings -> Manage 3D Settings.

Choose the Program Settings Tab and add Radical Heights by clicking on Add.