FPS dynamic shadows – Shadow Boost
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This plugin for Fallout 4 adds an ability to dynamically control shadow draw distance depending on desired user defined fps.
Many of you may have noticed that in some locations of Fallout 4 fps gets low even with a good hardware, like in the City, mostly it happens in the
areas with lots of objects. Since the game isn’t properly optimized, almost everything that it does with objects which it renders takes more time than
it actually should. One of the most time consuming operations in Fallout 4 is shadow rendering and because the game has only predefined shadow draw
distance, which applies everywhere in every location just the same, we have a choise either we set it to high value with having a good picture but
eventually facing fps drops in locations with lots of object or we lower the value to make fps more stable in general. And this is exactly the point
where this plugin comes handy!
Installation
1. Copy ShadowBoost.asi and ShadowBoost.ini to the game’s main folder, i.e. where Fallout4.exe is located.
2. In order to load asi plugins you need to have asi loader installed, so copy Fallout 4 asi loader (xinput1_3.dll) from this ditrib to the main game folder as well.
Tweaking
Settings in ShadowBoost.ini are pretty simple
fTargetFramerate – fps you need, shadow draw distance will be smootly adjusted until ingame fps meets this value. If you are playing with vsync or fps lock then you must set this value few fps lower (2 to 5) than your actual fps limit is, otherwise the boost may consider your locked fps as balanced by itself and stop increasing draw distance
fDistChangeSpeed – distance change speed, safe range is from 0.5 to 5.0, default = 1.0
fShadowDrawDistMin – min value of shadow draw distance, it will never be set lower than this value in the game, default = 2000.0
fShadowDrawDistMax – max value of shadow draw distance, it will never go above this value in the game, default = 15000.0
FAQ
Q: Does this plugin accesses game’s .ini files ?
A: No it’s not, the only ini file plugin uses is ShadowBoost.ini .
Supported game versions
1.1.29.0, 1.1.30.0, 1.2.33.0
You can see the comparison with original game in this vid, fDistChangeSpeed is 1.0 here
Notes
Uploading binaries of this patch on nexus is not allowed.
Bethesda forums topic for the plugin is here.
