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Stuttering and FPS Drops Fix Guide

By P4RZ1V4L

A guide of configurations to achieve a consistent and playable framerate.

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P4RZ1V4L
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Category: Modding or Configuration

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

2 Dec, 2022 @ 7:28am

27 Jul, 2023 @ 10:32am

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Guide Index

Overview

Disclaimer

Main Fix

Graphical Settings

Comments

Disclaimer

This is a series of options that may increase stability and performance for the game, although this isn't a 100% perfect solution.

Do to the way shaders work for the game the more playtime the more stable the fps will get (Not higher but less likely to sudden drops).

The Callisto Protocol's twitter announced a "Day One Patch" that was released around 18 hours after the game released (Link to the Post). This guide was made to deal with performance and stability issues previous to that patch, but if you are still suffering from those problems feel free to try this solutions just in case.

Main Fix

⚠️ THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ⚠️

The game compiles shaders during runtime (A similar problem that Elden Ring suffered from at launch). You can fix this by doing the next thing:

Open the file located at "%localappdata%\CallistoProtocol\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini" and at the end of the file add the following text in a new line:

[/script/engine.renderersettings] niagara.CreateShadersOnLoad=1 r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1 r.Shaders.Optimize=1 [TextureStreaming] r.Shaders.Optimize=1 r.Shaders.FastMath=1 r.UseShaderCaching=1 r.UseShaderPredraw=1 r.UseAsyncShaderPrecompilation=1

This will compile the shaders during load, making the load screens a little bit longer but avoiding the stuttering present. Now this won't get you +60 FPS all the time but it will produce more consistent framerate and avoid those random fps drops (Still, the more gametime the more stable the shaders will get).

Alternative Untested Engine.ini

There is also this post (Link[forums.guru3d.com]) about a similar problem, this are the post recommended settings:

[/script/engine.renderersettings] niagara.CreateShadersOnLoad=1 r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1 D3D12.PSO.DiskCache=1 D3D12.PSO.DriverOptimizedDiskCache=1 r.HZBOcclusion=0 r.AllowOcclusionQueries=1 r.Shaders.Optimize=1 [TextureStreaming] r.Streaming.Boost=1 r.Streaming.FullyLoadUsedTextures=1 r.Streaming.HLODStrategy=2 r.bForceCPUAccessToGPUSkinVerts=True r.Streaming.FramesForFullUpdate=60 r.Streaming.DropMips=0 r.Streaming.LimitPoolSizeToVRAM=0 r.Streaming.MipBias=0 r.Streaming.UseAllMips=1 r.Streaming.UseMaterialData=1 r.Streaming.UseNewMetrics=1 r.Streaming.UsePerTextureBias=1 r.Shaders.Optimize=1 r.Shaders.FastMath=1 r.UseShaderCaching=1 r.UseShaderPredraw=1 r.UseAsyncShaderPrecompilation=1 r.TargetPrecompileFrameTime=13 r.PredrawBatchTime=13 r.AccelPredrawBatchTime=0 r.AccelTargetPrecompileFrameTime=0 r.Streaming.DefragDynamicBounds=1 s.AsyncLoadingThreadEnabled=True r.Streaming.PoolSize=0 [ConsoleVariables] AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdates=1 AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdates=1 AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdatesDuringGamethreadUpdates=1 AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdatesDuringGamethreadUpdates=1 AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdatesEditor=1 AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdatesEditor=1 s.AsyncLoadingThreadEnabled=True

This may help you, but some of this options probably will have no effects or negative visual effects as for example "r.HZBOcclusion=0" and "r.AllowOcclusionQueries=1" which may cause problems with shadows and reflections (The truth is that the more you play the game the more stable the framerate will get).

Steam Launch Properties

You may also add the following line under the Launch Options (By right clicking the game on Steam -> Selecting Properties -> Under the "General" tab.

-xgeshadercompile

ANOTHER IMPORTANT SETTINGS ARE EXPLAINED BELOW IN THE GRAPHICAL SETTINGS SECTION (THOSE UNDERLINED MAY BE MORE IMPORTANT)

Graphical Settings

General

V-Sync (Depends on your monitor but generally if you got a monitor with +100 refresh rate you want this off). Enable it if you are suffering from screen tearing.
Framerate Limit (Set it to something equal or above your refresh rate. Some users have said limiting the framerate helped with performance and stability)
DirectX There's been some players that saw improvements by switching to DirectX 11 (You need to restart the game to test this). I recommend checking this for yourself, older graphics card may have better performance in DirectX 11 (Enable the steam fps counter and check the performance with the "Run Benchmark" option in the graphics menu with the same settings in both 12 and 11 - Remember that the raytrace options under Lightning won't work on 11, so make sure to test DirectX 12 with this options disabled for an equal comparison).

Display

The most important thing here is Fullscreen or Fullscreen Borderless. Borderless will make it easier to Alt+Tab, the only thing i would check is the resolution (Which is only displayed in the Fullscreen option) by default the game recognized my monitor as a 4k in fullscreen instead of a 2k, so i had to change the resolution there and make sure i was getting the same performance on fullscreen and fullscreen borderless, so check just in case.

Lightning

You may tweak the values here for better performance but the most important thing is to have the Ray-Traced Options (Ray-Traced Shadows and Ray-Traced Reflections) disabled (This option is only available in DirectX 12). This is a huge performance tanker and considering the game looks great without it and is already hard enought to run it i believe it isn't worth it.
Shadows, Volumetrics and Particle Quality options do have an impact in performance so you may want to reduce them if you have low framerate (Physical Refractions and Screen Space Reflections less so).

Effects:

You may disable Depth of Field, Motion Blur and Film Grain for some almost none-existent performance difference (Depends on your hardware, some users have said disabling motion blur helped with performance and stability), it is more of a personal preference.
The Anti-Aliasing option it also depends on your taste: None and FXAA will make the game look sharper but the serrated edges of the objects will be more noticeable. TAA will make it more clean but also more blurry, this depends a lot of the resolution you are playing the game at.

Advanced:

One huge important setting is Upscaling. Enabling AMD FSR 2 gives a noticeable performance boost, depending of your resolution this could make the game blurry or not (This also depends of your DirectX version, it may look more blurry in 11). I would recommend to set "FRS2 Quality Mode" to "Performance" and if it is too blurry change it to either "Balanced" or "Quality"
The Mesh and Texture Quality options do have an impact in performance so you may want to reduce them if you have low framerate (Texture Filter less so).

Hope this was of help to you :D

35 Comments

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T-TaaN 16 Jan @ 7:51am

The game works mostly fine for me, but sometimes there's a huge framerate drop to something around 5-15 (while most of the time the game is above 60 fps) that lasts very long time. If I wait until the checkpoint (if I'm able to get to it with this framerate) and then exit the game and start it again, there's no more framerate drop in the same place. I hope your solution will fix this issue

UltraLYT 31 Dec, 2024 @ 10:22pm

Thanks for the main fix, it works!

Hiro 6 Oct, 2024 @ 8:13am

The main fix causes glitches in the main character's beard and his hair right above the forehead. Helps with fps drops though.

EmilED385 17 Jun, 2024 @ 8:45pm

Main fix made the game from "this is unplayable even with the best intentions" to "just has a small framedrop here and there, nothing much".

andreeeeeww 18 May, 2024 @ 9:19am

you literally deserve to have your name in the credits. huge thanks, this game wouldn't have been playable without these tweaks.

chucky515 10 May, 2024 @ 10:54am

obg

Unass 29 Apr, 2024 @ 6:09pm

this dosent exist in my stream any where? Open the file located at "%localappdata%\CallistoProtocol\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini"

is this for non steam?

DerekSoul 6 Mar, 2024 @ 5:53am

upgrade my pc to 4090+14700kf fix all drops fps and stuttering

[zShoCK] 20 May, 2023 @ 6:06am

Hey, engine.ini file fix worked like a charm! Ultra + Motion Blur = Off! Highly appreciate you putting this out there for everybody to see, you guys are the real heroes! ;)

Bigshrimp 22 Jan, 2023 @ 2:25pm

Just adding that small bit for the main fix into the engine.ini file helped tremendously. Thanks!

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