Fear Tuning Guide
This section contains descriptions of all FEAR's in-game settings, which can be assigned by clicking the options item in the main game menu screen. Each of the main options sub-sections are covered below, and the performance and visual impacts noted. However the precise performance impact of each setting depends on your particular system hardware. For some good articles which benchmark the actual difference between these settings on various hardware, see the: Gamespot FEAR Performance and Bit-Tech FEAR articles.
The following is a full list of sections and settings covered and can be used to go directly to that section or setting.
Display; Resolution, VSync, Force Restart, Gamma, Sound; Sound Effects, Speech, Music, Enable HW Mixing, Enable EAX 2.0, Enable EAX Advanced HD, Performance; Advanced Computer Options; Single Player Physics, Multiplayer Physics, Max Hardware Sounds, Particle Bouncing, Shell Casings, World Detail, Corpse Detail, Advanced Video Card Options; Effects Details, Model Decals, Water Resolution, Reflections and Displays, Volumetric Light, Volumetric Light Density, FSAA, Light Detail, Enable Shadows, Shadow Detail, Soft Shadows, Texture Filtering, Texture Resolution, Pixel Doubling, DX8 Shaders, Screen Resolution, Shaders, Controls; Game; SlowMo Effects, Weapons; Advanced Tuning; Config Files; Settings.cfg; FEAR Advanced Config Application.
Resolution: Resolution has a significant impact on FEAR's performance. FEAR is limited to 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions such as 1600x1200, 1280x960, 1024x768, 800x600 or 640x480 if selected here. Note that the actual resolutions available to you depend on your video card and monitor capabilities. The lack of popular resolutions like 1280x1024 is because the developers only officially support proper 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions. Fortunately you can set a custom resolution like 1280x1024 by editing the .cfg files - see Settings.cfg under the Advanced Tuning section of this guide.
VSync: Vertical Synchronization (VSync) is the synchronization of your monitor and graphics card's abilities to draw a certain number of frames per second (or FPS) on the screen. This is referred to as the Refresh Rate, and is measured in frequency per second (Hz). Different monitors can achieve different refresh rates at various resolutions. For example a monitor which can provide 85Hz refresh rate at 1280x1024 means the screen is redrawing itself 85 times per second at this resolution. If Vertical Sync is enabled, your maximum FPS cannot exceed your monitor's refresh rate at your chosen resolution, and more importantly your overall FPS will be reduced. For this reason it is strongly recommended that you set VSync to off. The only down side is that if VSync is disabled, you may notice some image 'tearing'. This causes no damage to your monitor, but if really annoys you enable Vsync.
Force Restart: This option was added from a FEAR patch. When set to On, it clears and restarts the graphics rendering engine in between level/map loads. This can increase loading times, but in return there is less chance of graphical glitches and greater likelihood of smoother and improved performance. It is recommended that most people enable this option to begin with, and only disable it if you experience problems or can't stand the increase in load times.
Gamma: Gamma is the overall brightness of the screen. Since FEAR is a relatively dark game, it is important that you don't have too low or too high a gamma, otherwise your image quality will suffer. This setting has no impact on performance, so use the small black box with text inside it below this setting to adjust your gamma correctly. The 'clearly visible' text should, as the name suggests be clearly visible. The 'slightly visible' text should be just legible, while the 'barely visible' text at the very top should be almost totally invisible.
Sound Effects, Speech, Music: These sliders determine the volume of the various audio elements of the game. Adjust to suit your taste. If you want to completely disable sound or music to improve performance, see under FEAR Config Tool in the Advanced Tweaking section. That is, setting a slider to the far left here does not remove that element from memory and hence there is no performance difference at the various slider levels.
Enable HW Mixing: If set to On, FEAR will use your sound hardware. This provides better performance and audio quality, however depending on whether your sound card is compatible with FEAR (See Readme.txt file), you may experience audio glitches with Hardware support enabled. Generally speaking most Audigy sound card owners should enable HW Mixing, those with onboard sound should disable it.
Enable EAX 2.0: If you own a sound card which supports EAX (Environmental Audio), you can enable this option for a reduction in performance but an increase in audio quality. Once again this can lead to hardware glitches, but before disabling EAX first make sure to go into your sound card's EAX Control Panel and click the 'All Effects Off' button, or untick the 'Enable Audio Effects' option. Also untick 'Enable CMSS 3D' under 'CMSS 3D Effects' if necessary, as this can cause 3D sound effects to come from the wrong locations in FEAR.
Enable EAX Advanced HD: Selecting On for this option enables Advanced HD on Creative sound cards, mainly the Audigy and X-Fi series. This provides even better audio quality and 3D positioning of sounds with a slight performance drop, but firstly make sure you've downloaded the latest sound drivers for your card. Once again if you have any audio glitches disable Advanced HD first, then also disable EAX if the trouble continues.
You can allow FEAR to automatically detect optimal settings here by clicking the 'Auto Detect' option, however it is strongly recommended that you take the time to manually adjust each of the settings below as they have a significant impact on the game's performance. Understanding them and being able to fine tune them will result in both better visuals and better performance than any auto detection method. Make sure that if you're going to use a custom resolution, that you set it first before changing these settings (See Advanced Tuning section), so you can really judge your final performance at your desired resolution.
There are two main sub-sections here, the first relates to settings which are more CPU-dependant, while the second is for settings which rely almost solely on your graphics card's capabilities.
Single Player Physics: This setting determines the level of detail given to advanced Havok physics effects in the game, and the frequency with which the physics engine updates object states. While the game physics can't be turned off completely, lower settings here will improve performance especially for those with slower CPUs. However lower settings also disable some of the interactivity with various objects in the game, like being able to push over bookshelves etc.
Multiplayer Physics: Similar to the setting above, however this allows you to alter the more limited physics settings for multiplayer. Lowering this can help improve performance when online, but remember that everyone is still seeing the same basic information on their screen.
Max Hardware Sounds: This setting determines how many channels of sound are used when HW Mixing is enabled. The higher the setting the more channels used, which improves sound positioning from multiple sources, but reduces performance. Minimum is 32 channels, Medium is 64, and Maximum is 96.
Particle Bouncing: This setting determines the level of special particle effects, such as embers or sparks flying around after an explosion or from fault electrical equipment. The higher the setting, the richer these effects but the lower your performance.
Shell Casings: If set to On, shell casings from expended bullets are ejected from all weapons. This adds to realism but reduces performance slightly particularly in heavy combat scenes.
World Detail: Determines the level of detail and number of objects displayed in the game. The higher the level, the more realistic objects will be and the more objects will be displayed - but your performance will be slower. Some of the non-important items such as those found on desks disappear. For instance only the stapler disappears when going from Maximum to Medium. At Minimum however the ledger and stapler are both gone. In other scenes you may notice details like the frosting on glass is removed, etc.
Corpse Detail: Determines the level of detail of corpses and how quickly they are removed. Obviously in situations where there are multiple corpses, such as heavy combat scenes, reducing this setting will noticeably improve performance.
Effects Details Determines the level of detail for a range of special effects. Lower levels reduce such visual effects in return for performance improvements. The main change occurs between Maximum and Medium, i.e. the heat haze effect you get around fire is only visible at the Maximum setting - it disappears at Medium or below.
Model Decals: Determines the number of decals (marks) made on characters in the game, for example when they are shot. Lower levels decrease realism in return for performance increases especially during heavy combat scenes.
Water Resolution: Controls the level of detail given to water in the game. Higher levels improve the realistic appearance of water at the cost of some performance in such areas.
Reflections and Displays: Controls the number and quality of displays in the game, as well as reflective surfaces such as water. Lowering this setting removes some of the less significant displays as well as reducing image quality on the displays and removing reflections, but provides greater performance in such areas.
Volumetric Lights: If enabled this setting allows volumetric light effects - namely effects which light up the air in an area, such as a diffused glow around a character or object. While very realistic, these effects can reduce performance significantly in such areas on older graphics cards.
Volumetric Light Density: If Volumetric Lights are enabled, this setting controls the level of richness or density these effects have. The lower the setting, the less rich the glow and volume of such effects which can be a good compromise between performance and image quality, rather than turning off volumetric lights altogether.
FSAA: FSAA stands for Full Screen Antialiasing, a method of smoothing jagged lines on the screen. The higher the sample rate (i.e. 2x or 4x) the smoother jagged lines will appear in the game. In FEAR, the developers recommend the use of lower resolutions combined with some FSAA if you want to achieve better image quality, as opposed to higher resolutions with lower or no FSAA. However if you have an older video card or want more performance simply disable FSAA altogether as it can affect performance dramatically.
Light Detail: Controls the level of detail as well as the actual number of lights in the game. The higher the setting, the more detailed and more numerous light sources will be at the cost of performance. There is a noticeable difference between Minimum and Medium - the number of lights (and hence shadows cast) is less at Minimum - in particular the light behind grills only appears at Medium. The difference between Medium and Maximum is not noticeable.
Enable Shadows: If set to On, characters and objects will cast shadows. This greatly improves realism, however it also noticeably reduces performance - particularly depending on your Shadow Detail level and the number of light sources visible in certain areas.
Shadow Detail: Determines the types of objects which cast shadows (if Enable Shadows is on). The higher the detail level, the more objects will cast detailed shadows at the cost of a noticeable drop in performance in areas with multiple light sources and/or with your flashlight on. Going from Maximum to Medium there is no noticeable difference. However from Medium to Minimum, things like gun barrel shadow is removed, the character's shadow and other things like buckets and boxes also lose their shadows.
Soft Shadows: If enabled, Soft Shadows adds a bit of a haze to the edge of cast shadows to create a more realistic shadow appearance. Unfortunately this method also brings with it a massive performance hit (at times halving FPS), and it is strongly recommended that all users disable Soft Shadows for optimal performance with little to no noticeable image quality loss. Note that enabling Soft Shadows along with FSAA is not recommended, and can result in graphical glitches. Further note that on ATI graphics cards enabling Soft Shadows along with Pixel Doubling results in a black screen - this is a known driver bug.
Texture Filtering: This setting determines the appearance of textures in FEAR - textures are the images covering every 3D object in the game. The higher the texture filtering method (i.e. Trilinear, 2x Anisotropic Filtering, 4x AF etc.) the sharper textures will appear as they fade into the distance at the cost of some performance. It is recommended that if you wish to use texture filtering in FEAR, that you set your Anisotropic Filtering setting in your graphics card's control panel to 'Application Preference' and use the setting here.
Texture Resolution: This setting determines the resolution of the 2D images used for textures. The higher the resolution, the better textures will look, but the more video memory they will use. For those with lower amounts of Video RAM I recommend lowering this setting to Medium or below, otherwise you will experience consistently more in-game pauses and longer loading times. This setting can have a dramatic impact on smooth gameplay on lower-end systems, so don't select Maximum unless you have a high-end graphics card at the very least. Note that from Minimum to Maximum the level of texture detail on walls in particular becomes clearer and appears more 3-dimensional. This effect is much more apparent while moving around in the game, and the difference is most noticeable between Minimum and Medium.
Pixel Doubling: Contrary to what this setting sounds like, it doesn't double the resolution of the screen - in fact it halves it. Essentially this takes a single pixel (the smallest element on a screen) and expands it to fill twice the space. This means that at 640x480 the resolution is actually performing the same as if it was running at 320x240, but it expands to fill the 640x480 area of the screen. The result is better performance, but obviously much poorer image quality than the original resolution - the graphics start to look very blocky. Unless you really need the performance boost, leave this option set to Off.
DX8 Shaders: On graphics cards which support DirectX9.0, setting DX8 Shaders to On improves performance by forcing the use of DirectX8.0 shaders rather than the better-looking DX9.0 shaders. The performance improvement is particularly noticeable on older/slower DX9.0 graphics cards. In general the image quality loss is not significant, so if you're struggling for performance set this option to On, but if you want the absolute best graphics quality leave it Off.
Screen Resolution: Same as the Resolution setting under the Display options, however there is one major difference - this displays the current resolution, including unsupported resolutions. This is a good way of checking to see if a resolution you've set in the Settings.cfg file has been successfully implemented (See Advanced Tuning for full instructions). However if you have set a custom resolution, don't click on this setting as it will force your resolution back to one of the standard resolutions.
Shaders: This setting determines the level of detail for shader effects. Just as with the DX8 Shaders setting above, the higher the level of shader detail, the slower the performance for older/slower graphics cards, but the better the quality of special effects in the game. Shader differences are not necessarily very noticeable, but can be seen in effects like heat hazes, water reflections, lighting etc.
This section is fairly straightforward - make sure you assign keys/buttons to all the important game functions. Of note, the Invert Mouse option if set to On means that pushing your mouse forward will tilt your character's view down, pulling it back tilts the view up; the Mouse Smoothing option attempts to smooth out jerkiness in mouse movements, and is best reduced as it can cause mouse lag at higher levels.
These options should be set to taste as they have no performance impact with the exception of the SlowMo Effects setting below. Of note, you may want to reduce Head Bob to improve aim.
SlowMo Effects: When Slow Motion mode is enabled in the game, you get various blurring, bullet travel/impact shader effects. Disabling these by setting this option to Off can reduce the 'realism' of SlowMo, but noticeably improves any lag during Slow Motion mode for those with older/slower graphics cards.
None of the settings in this section impact on performance so set to taste.
The next section covers the various known advanced tips and tweaks you can undertake to improve FEAR's performance and customize the game further.
FEAR has three major .cfg (config) files. These are the Default.archcfg and autoexec.cfg files under the \Program Files\Sierra\FEAR directory, and the most important one of all for our purposes: the Settings.cfg file under the \Documents and Settings\All Users\[Shared] Documents\Monolith Productions\FEAR directory. You can edit these files using a text editor like Windows Notepad, however back them up before making any changes just to be safe.
"ScreenWidth" "1280"
"ScreenHeight" "1024"
FEAR does not support certain resolutions from within the game. Fortunately you can assign a custom resolution by editing these lines in the Settings.cfg file. However before setting a custom resolution, first go into the Options menu in FEAR and set the Display options you want (aside from resolution). Next, close the game and Edit the lines above - change the ScreenWidth to the pixel width of the custom resolution you desire, and the same for ScreenHeight. Upon restarting the game your custom resolution will be applied. However don't go back into the Display settings screen in the in-game options as this will reset your resolution to one of the default resolutions. To check your new resolution go to Performance>Advanced Video Options and check the 'Screen Resolution' setting which should display the new resolution. You can now adjust and test the remainder of your settings.
If your resolution is accidentally reset, re-edit this file, or make it Read Only once you applied all the tweaks you want. Also, if you find this method doesn't work for you, you may have to create a new Profile and/or delete your other profiles for it to work.
"BitDepth" "32"
By changing the Bit depth to 24 or even 16, you may be able to improve the graphical performance. Lower bit depths can result in more color banding (noticeable gradations). Note you will have to make the Settings.cfg file Read Only for this setting to stick, and it may have no impact on your system.
"HardwareCursor" "1.000000"
If you're having problems using your mouse in the in-game menus or in the game, set this to 0.
"VSyncOnFlip" "0.000000"
This option simply controls whether VSync is On or Off. Recommended is Off (0.000000), however ideally you should set this using the in-game option.
"RestartRenderBetweenMaps" "1.000000"
This option controls whether the Force Restart is enabled or not. You should alter this setting using the in-game settings as normal.
FEAR Advanced Config Application
To run the FEAR Advanced Config Application, go to your \Program Files\Sierra\FEAR directory and run the Config.exe file. Upon starting this tool up, on the main page you can see it simply allows a choice of resolution, renderer and display adapter. The Resolution setting is useful if you are having problems getting into the game from using a non-standard resolution - reset it here to a standard one by highlighting it and clicking the Save button. The Renderer and Display options have only one choice by default.
Under the Options tab of the tool, you'll find additional options which are explained in more detail in your FEAR Readme.txt file. For the most part these options are for troubleshooting purposes:
Disable Music: For a slight boost in available memory and performance, click this option to remove all FEAR music.
Disable Joysticks: Tick this option to disable all joysticks and gamepads. This may resolve any problems you are having with keyboard and mouse controls in the game.
Disable Movies: Not applicable
Disable Sound Filters: Sound Filtering effects will be disabled if ticked, meaning EAX reverberation effects. This can help reduce audio glitches such as crackling on cards with EAX 2.0 support, but will reduce audio special effects.
Disable Hardware Sound: Once again used to isolate whether your sound card is a problem by forcing Software Sound support only in FEAR. This can improve performance as well but reduces audio quality noticeably.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank whichever websites I originally plagiarised the majority of this guide from, it was so long ago when I saved this as a word document that I now haven't got a clue. Otherwise I could have saved myself a lot of time in rewriting this as a webpage and simply put in a link.
[EDIT]
Thanks to Hunny-Bunny for finding me the original link, this is just one of a series of excellent guides covering many games including UT3 from the guys over at Tweakguides.