Overview
Want to see Borderlands 2 in way higher detail than a console can show you? Look no further.
Welcome
Want to play Borderlands 2 again (or for the first time) with the best visuals your PC can possibly give you? Look no further. I have compiled a massive series of visual quality increases by manually editing the Engine and Lightmass settings for the game.
Please note that you will need to view this guide in a full browser (not the Steam overlay browser) to be able to download the linked files.
v2 update – I highly recommend anyone using my original files to download the new settings I have posted. There are no changes to the visuals, but I have corrected a memory budget overrun that could occur in Dragon Keep which caused poor performance and loot to fall through the world.
Links
The modified settings can be downloaded here[drive.google.com] (google drive link). It is a ZIP archive containing two files: WillowEngine.ini and WillowLightmass.ini. These files need to go in the following folder:
My DocumentsMy GamesBorderlands 2WillowGameConfig
You may wish to make backup copies of the two files in case you want to revert later (but why would you?).
Additionally, I also highly recommend the use of an SMAA injector. I use this[mrhaandi.blogspot.com] one on the ULTRA preset.
FAQs
Q. What do these settings do beyond what I can set in the game menu?
A. A lot. In addition to a healthy chunk of supersampling and tesselation, LOD sizes for most visuals have been substantially increased (resulting in much more crisp textures and objects). I have also modified the lightmass settings to take full advantage of the capabilities of the Unreal 3 lighting engine; static and dynamic lighting are calculated using a MUCH more complex data set (resulting in a much prettier game).
Q. Why is FXAA disabled in these settings?
A. FXAA is a blunt routine. It was designed to provide a fast method to smooth out a relatively low-fidelity picture. I found in testing the new high-fidelity settings that FXAA actually interfered visibly with many of the more subtle visuals. I highly recommend an SMAA injector as a replacement; I have provided a link to the one I use above.
Q. Why is PhysX set to low?
A. This is purely for compatibility purposes for people with high end AMD GPUs. If you are running a Geforce, by all means turn it up to High.
Q. V-Sync is enabled in these settings. Why is that?
A. Since Borderlands 2 does not provide an easy way to cap its framerate at the monitor’s native refresh rate, I left V-Sync enabled by default for people who own an adaptive sync monitor (Freesync or G-SYNC). If you do not have an adaptive sync monitor, or if you have used another method to limit the game’s framerate, you may wish to disable V-Sync.
Q. Will these settings cause the game to run slowly?
A. No*. While this game is known to have occasional problems with stuttering, the settings I have altered place little to no additional load on the CPU; they are largely working the GPU harder. My rig is not a beast; I am running a Ryzen 5 2600X and a Geforce GTX 1660 Ti. Any modern CPU with a GTX 1060 or better should run a constant 50+ FPS (usually 100+) with these settings.
*Unless you have a low-end GPU.
Q. Why don’t the shadows look much better than default?
A. The Unreal 3 engine, when rendering in DirectX 9 mode, calculates dynamic shadows mostly using the CPU. Since the game is already heavily CPU-limited, I didn’t push them much beyond the default settings (although I did improve them a bit).