Overview
Listing of all graphical settings, their function and the cost. So you know which setting you wanna enable/disable.
Introduction
Hello Everyone!
First of all this is my first guide. If you find any errors or I forgot to add something important, feel free to give feedback! I will try my best to keep this guide error free, will update it as the game gets patched and when the new Nvidia drivers are out.
So Watch_Dogs 2 is finally out and it turns out to be a good PC port with a wide variety of graphical settings to play with. Gonna list out each and every setting, its function with the average fps cost, picture comparisons and my thoughts on it as well. This guide is best viewed on a browser so that you can compare the pictures using multiple tabs.
Use the guide’s index to navigate directly to the section you are looking for!
Settings Part 1
Note: When set on lowest settings possible it consumes approx 1.6 GB VRAM @ 1080p.
It’s in the Display section. Increases the internal rendering resolution of the game irrespective of the resolution set. The game runs on the display resolution you applied and all the HUD elements, menu, etc. will be scaled accordingly but the in-game objects, scene, etc. will be rendered by the multiplier chosen. 1.00x means 1x times the resolution set, higher multiplier will decrease performance but high image quality and vice versa. You can’t increase the multiplier more than 1.00x on 4K, but decrease.
Ranges from: 0.25x – 1.50x
COST: When set to 1.50x on 1080p: about 15+ fps and depends on other settings.
Thoughts: Leave it on 1.00x, if you are struggling on 1080p, reduce this value and experiment over quality/performance. It’s a neat option, lets say you hate reducing the resolution because the HUD elements, etc will be scaled down and they look blurry. With this option you can enjoy all of them at your monitors native resolution.
It increases the overall graphical complexity of all the objects in the world. It’s like the Level of Detail (LoD) setting in other games. Unlike WD1 where LoD controlled all options such as Vegetation, Terrain, Physics, Geometry, etc.
Ranges from: Off – High – Very High – Ultra
COST: About 5~9 fps.
Thoughts: Set it on Medium or High. Try setting it on High or leave it on Ultra for those who are having latest cards such as Maxwell or Pascal cards, because of less performance cost.
Extending the Level of Detail even beyond the capabilities of the default setting. Only for high-end PCs. Performance varies depending on overall settings applied. Consumes about 100 MB of VRAM.
Note: Very demanding on CPU
Ranges from: 0% – 100%
COST: 10~12 fps with most of the other settings on ultra.
Thoughts: Leave it on 0%, very demanding on CPU. Strictly for high end PCs.
Increases the quality of terrain details of the world.
Ranges from: Low – High – Ultra
COST: 1~3 fps.
Thoughts: Set it to High. You wouldn’t find much of a difference when it’s on Ultra.
Level of Detail setting for foliage such as trees, bushes, grass, etc.
Ranges from: Low – High – Ultra
COST: About 2~4 fps. Maybe higher if there are lots of trees and depends on Shadows.
Thoughts: High is fine. Not much difference between High – Ultra and you can save a frame or 2.
Handles the quality of the textures applied in the game. Ultra option is available only if you downloaded the free Ultra Textures DLC pack.
Ranges from: Low – Medium – High – Ultra
Low: Loads basic textures 
Medium: Some standard quality of textures added to the world 
High: See the bag textures, while there is only a small change to most of the environment 
Ultra: For 4K resolution in compensation for the scaling. Can’t find much difference otherwise VRAM KILLER!The water textures also depend on the texture setting applied
Low: Muddy water foam 
Ultra: Crisp and sharp water foamVRAM: Medium: 350 MB; High: 850 MB; Ultra: 1850 MB (In addition to 1.6 GB)
Thoughts: Medium for 3 GB cards, High: 4 GB, Ultra: 6 GB+
Ultra is only for playing on 4K, won’t see much difference otherwise and is a waste of VRAM
Graphic cards with 2 GB or low VRAM must use Low textures to have stutter free experience!
Or also called as Anisotropic Filtering which makes the textures look sharp and clear when viewed at different angles.
Ranges from: Low – Medium – High – Ultra
COST: Negligible. It depends on the Texture resolution setting. Low = Off.
Low: Distant textures are blurry at steep angles 
Ultra: Sharp distant textures 
Driver Forced: Compared to the above two, normal textures are less brighterThoughts: Just leave it on Ultra. I force it via Nvidia driver control panel as it’s slightly better.
Controls the quality of shadows which are casted by the objects in-game. It has PCSS which is one of the Nvidia tech and HFTS is available only for Maxwell and Pascal cards.
Ranges from: Low – Medium – High – Very High – Ultra – PCSS – HFTS
Low (Blurry/inaccurate) 
Ultra (Hard and fake af) 
PCSS (Realistic soft shadows) 
HTFS (PCSS + Soft transitioning with respect to sun)COST: When set to Ultra/PCSS/HTFS it consumes about 1 GB of VRAM and 10~15 fps approx.
Thoughts: It looks just fine on Low. Anything higher just looks the same as Low with more VRAM consumption and less fps. And PCSS is just crap, doesn’t look great even at that cost of performance. It looked epic in GTA V with just 5~7 fps cost while only consuming some VRAM. Couldn’t test HFTS because mine’s a Kepler card, it’s just like PCSS but with smoother transition as you can see in the above gif. Even at higher shadow settings the shadows look more noisy and flicker when closely inspected.
The headlights of the vehicle you are driving and nearby vehicles create shadows at night time if the setting is enabled.
Ranges from: Off – Your Car – 2 Cars – 3 Cars – 4 Cars
Off 
2 CarsCOST: 1~3 fps
Thoughts: Off because it will only add too much load on your GPU creating additional shadows which again depends on your Shadows setting, so leave it disabled. But if you want realism then choose ‘Your Car’ or ‘2 Cars’ at the most.
Settings Part 2
Controls the reflection quality of the Water in the world. On Low, reflections are disabled. Note that the Water textures are controlled by Texture Resolution setting.
Ranges from: Low – High
COST: 1~3 fps
Low: Vast body of nothingness 
High: Added realismThoughts: Leave it on High because it adds more realism to the scene and isn’t that demanding. And I don’t know why but LoD of shadows seems to be depending on this setting as you can see from the above picture. Also note that the water splash textures made by the player look blurry even at High Water + Ultra Texture Resolution, it was same in WD1 as well.
Controls the addition of reflections on glass panes of buildings, windshields of cars, glass panels of stores, etc. On Low, only sky reflections will be rendered.
Ranges from: Low – High
COST: 2~3 fps depending on the number of such surfaces in the scene.
Thoughts: Leave it on High. When taking Super Resolution screenshots with Nvidia Ansel, reflections aren’t rendered in the final output picture. You have to manually increase to higher resolution if you want it.
Or SSR in short, simulates high quality reflections on wet and glossy surfaces. Increases the visual quality greatly of a dull scene. Ultra increases quality and the LoD.
Ranges from: Off – Medium – High – Very High – Ultra
COST: Depends on scene 2~6 fps
Off: No reflections except for fake static light reflections 
Low: 1/4th of max quality 
Medium: Half of max quality 
High: 3/4th of max quality 
Ultra: Full quality with maximum LoDThoughts: At least Medium for realism. Could be very demanding when it rains because more wet surfaces = more reflections. Don’t know why but these reflections flicker a lot and aren’t rendered properly in interiors for some reason and they tend to disappear when you slowly tilt the camera upwards and vice versa. Turn it off if really struggling for performance for a significant fps boost.
Enable or disable dynamic particles such as leaves, bullet decals and hits which are handled by CPU.
COST: Varies, maybe 0~4 fps depending on the scene.
Thoughts: Almost negligible most of the time so leave it enabled. Disable if you have old CPU for a good boost in intense scenarios such as shooting, explosions, crashes, etc.
When enabled, it adds huge volume of fog around the main bridges and also when it’s raining and in other occasions.
COST: Depends mainly on weather, performance is the worst when it rains (5~20 fps)
Realistic volumetric fog rolls under and over the bridgeThoughts: It absolutely looks amazing but very performance intensive, so turn it off ;-;
Called as DoF in short. Blurs out of focus scenes like a DSLR camera and also like a human eye!
For ex: Look at your palm and notice the background without focusing on them.
COST: Negligible
Perspective camera focused on the statueThoughts: It’s a personal preference, so you decide. The Depth of Field was awesome in WD1 because it featured sharp bokeh effects, shame it isn’t in this game though.
Adds blur when the camera is in motion.
You spin me right round~Thoughts: Again, it’s a personal preference. I leave it enabled because frame to frame transition is smooth and you won’t notice minute stutters if occurred, and even on low fps, any game can be played with this setting enabled. For eg: Borderlands, Skyrim, etc. which don’t have motion blur setting feels like 20 fps even when the frame rates are at 40~50. And games with this setting such as Crysis, Far Cry, Rise of the Tomb Raider, etc. can be played or “feels” smooth even at 25~30 fps. But it might be nauseating for some or some may just hate the blurring.
Enables High Dynamic Range rendering which adds certain subtle glow in scenes, can be easily noticed when going in/out from interiors, again just like a human eye or any kind of camera. When enabled, Sun glow can be noticed.
COST: Negligible
Thoughts: Enable it, game will look dull otherwise.
Simulates soft shading on certain surfaces and objects that are closer to each other.
Ranges from: Off – SSBC – HMSSAO – HBAO+
Off 
SSBC: 2 fps cost 
HMSSAO: 5 fps cost 
HBAO+: 4 fps costThoughts: SSBC for performance. HBAO+ for the best quality.
Increases the sampling level to reduce the step-like artifacts of the objects. Very performance intensive and high VRAM consumption.
Ranges from: Off – MSAA 2x, MSAA 4x,MSAA 8x, TXAA 2x, TXAA 4x, TXAA 8x
COST: 20+ fps
Thoughts: Don’t even think about it, Only for super high end systems. Leave it off.
Also called as TAA filter. You will gain approximately 8~10 fps for enabling this setting because it uses previous frame for current frame rendering thereby reducing a bit of VRAM in the process. Adds a a bit of blur and reduces shimmering of edges. When enabled the MSAA 2x is locked out and you won’t be able to use any other Multisample Anti-aliasing Techniques. Don’t enabled if you have SLI or Crossfire!
Thoughts: Enable it for performance boost, Off if you can’t stand the blurring or ghosting.
Post-Processing techniques applied after the frame is processed, further enhancing the quality.
Ranges from: Off – FXAA – SMAA – SMAA T2x
COST: Negligible for FXAA and SMAA. SMAA T2x: 6~8 fps
Thoughts: Put it on SMAA, the best anti-aliasing solution which doesn’t add blur like FXAA. SMAA T2x performs better than TXAA 2x and looks the same. Can’t enable TAA if SMAA T2x is on.
My Settings
Here are the settings I’m currently using:
- Window Mode: Fullscreen
- Resolution: 1920×1080
- Vsync: Off (Forcing via Nvidia control panel)
- Field of View: 84 deg
- Pixel Density: 1.00x
- Geometry: Ultra
- Extra Details: 0%
- Terrain: High
- Vegetation: High
- Texture Resolution: Low (Main culprit for lag while driving)
- Texture Filtering: Ultra
- Shadow: Low
- Headlight Shadows: 2 Cars
- Water: High
- Reflections: High
- Screen Space Reflections: Ultra
- Dynamic Particles: On
- San Francisco Fog: Off
- Depth of Field: On
- Motion Blur: On
- Bloom: On
- Ambient Occlusion: HBAO+
- Temporal Filtering: On
- Multisample Anti-Aliasing: MSAA 2x (Locked due to Temporal Filtering being enabled)
- Post-Processing Anti-Aliasing: SMAA
- Brightness: 55%
- Sharpness: 5%
Intel i5 760 2.8 GHz, Zotac GTX 760 2 GB reference Card, 8 GB DDR3 RAM 1333 MHz
FPS: 30~45 with minimal NO stutter (driving too!). Currently using Nvidia driver v388.31
Tips and Tweaks
- If you want zero stutter then put textures to LOW. Especially for 2 GB VRAM cards, nowadays even 2GB VRAM isnt nuff and hey they don’t look THAT bad 😉
- Unpark your CPU cores by following this link[www.coderbag.com]
- When you load the game successfully, rotate 360 degrees once to make your PC load all the objects in the vicinity, so that it doesn’t stutter much later on. This works for all other games as well.
- Disabling multiplayer may reduce stuttering.
- Restart your game periodically if you changed the graphical settings many times. They won’t take effect unless you restart, even the settings which don’t really require a restart.
- If you are experiencing too much stutter, then try rolling back to your previous Nvidia driver. The new latest driver works fine for me now. I’m currently using v388.31
To roll back: Device Manager -> Expand Display Adapters -> Right click -> Properties -> Driver Tab -> Roll Back Driver. It will take about 10~15 min depending on your system. OR you could just uninstall existing drivers and install the old driver. - A clean installation of the latest driver might help.
- Avoid Ultra/PCSS/HFTS Shadows for now, have to see if they get any better optimisation.
- When playing coop with a friend, make sure you put EVERYTHING on low except for some basic settings like motion blur (if you want), TAA, Bloom, etc., because it lags badly later on.
- If you use an Nvidia graphics card then download Nvidia Inspector from here[nvidia-inspector.en.lo4d.com]
In the profiles dialog box, search for Watch_Dogs 2 and set the settings as shown below.
Don’t forget to apply after making changes! - Navigate to DocumentsMy GamesWatch_Dogs 2 and open WD2_GamerProfile.xml.
Find and change the following options to these:
> DeferredFxQuality=”pc”
> MaxDriverBufferedFrames=”1″ (1~5, high values increases fps but increases input lag)
> OptimizedDepthOfField=”1″
> OptimizedMotionBlur=”0″
> Smoothness=”0″
> RenderRain=”1″
The above settings tend to revert back to original values if you change any of the settings in-game. You could prevent this by making the file “Read-only” but then again you cannot make any changes.
Bug List
List of all the Bugs i’ve found and some features that needs to be introduced/fixing.
- Horizontal look sensitivity of Quadcopter drone is very less, can be observed in low fps.
- First person view of RC and Quadcopter drone is wonky and movement is changed from third person view. Like instead of strafing, it moves the camera left/right while in first person view.
- Need Aiming sensitivity setting, the default setting is too low.
- Need a cooldown timer after invading a friend. Friends keep invading me -_-
- The dialogs of gang members that are looking for me can be heard as if they are behind me even though when I’m far away.
- CTRL ALT DELETE Launcher needs more wider splash damage & overall damage dealt directly.
- Sometimes screenshots taken in-game sometimes lack land/water/objects, etc.
- Mobile voice volume is too loud. (Alarm beeps, audio conversations, etc.)
- The level of Police aggression is too high.
- Nvidia Ansel free cam is limited to approx 5m around Marcus! Seriously??
- That heavy stutter while driving. (Set Textures on Low)
- Freezes frequently upon toggling NetHack mode. (Occurs if nearing/exceeding VRAM limit)
- The Walking/Driving status of the target is wrong most of the time in Invasion.
- Game crashes when I fire certain weapons, occurs even after latest patch.
- High flickering shadows, even at max setting. (Guess it’s designed that way :I)
- Broken, glitchy and shimmering Screen Space Reflections. (Designed that way)
- The Brightness option is glitched, it sets to OFF whenever I try to change it.
- Game freezes sometimes when I take a picture in-game using either mobile or drones.
(Occurs if nearing/exceeding VRAM limit) - In cutscenes, previous frame is rendered faintly on the sky in present frame.
- If TAA is enabled, pics taken at night via in-game will render a thick black band across the sky.
Here’s an example:
- Need Nvidia Ansel support ASAP!
Updates
List of Updates in chronological order:
- Party Mode bug fixes
- Coop fixes
- 4-player party mode
- Man Vs. Machine Co-op Event
- PvP Loot Trucks
- Improved Leaderboards
- Multiple Crash Fix
- Multiplayer is now fixed
- Multiplayer Tweaks and Balances
- Added Phone Backgrounds
- New Online Mode Showdown
- Online Races
- Loot Truck events and Paintball Gun
- Added new clothes
- Some graphical bugs fixed (incorrect fog, etc.)
- Improved explosive damage for this mode
- Lots of minor issues fixed such as reflections, textures, etc.
- Crashing and Unplayable multiplayer :/
- Fixed FPS drops ending with crash
- Human Conditions DLC preparation
- New Uplay Club rewards
- New Dances, emotes and clothing
- Wide range of world, HUD, menu and graphical fixes
- Fixed several bugs in side missions
- Some online exploit fixes
- Various Multiplayer balances
- Numerous game system fixes, shooting and AI
- SMAA T2x option
- Dynamic Particles option
- Camera Auto-centering setting
- Flickering, UI and text error fixes
- Fixed ScoutX App reset bug
- FPS Limit Slider Feature
- Fixed Character shadows in cutscenes
- RAM optimisations
- Screen Space Reflections optimisations
- Improved San Francisco Fog algorithm
- Pixel Density max value: 1.5x
- Music Volume Slider
- YourBoySerge gun nerfed
- Fixed minor issues with flickering
- Fixed various issues with UI and text
- Added Dualshock 4 controller support
- Can now replay missions.
- Enemy weapons can be crafted.
- Hacker level based on followers.
- Various bugs, fixes and rebalances for Online play.
- San Francisco Fog graphical setting fixes.
- Shooting mechanics improved.
- EasyAntiCheat Update
- Crash on launch are fixed
- Compatibility Improvements
- Fixed Disc error related to steam
- Stability Improvements while firing guns
- Added Mexican and Spanish Language
- Fixed Xbox Controller connectivity glitch
- Improved stability on AMD Crossfire Systems.
- General game crashes are fixed.
- Online experience is improved.
Conclusion
Phew, that’s all folks! Thanks for reading my guide! Hope this helps you in getting better fps and have an enjoyable experience with the game. Make sure to Rate up and Favorite if it helped you~! c:
