Nuclear Nightmare

Nuclear Nightmare

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Optimization in Nuclear Nightmare [EDITED] (US)
By non-Joe
!!(The translation might be inaccurate—blame ChatGPT for everything!)!!
Nuclear Nightmare is a beautiful but not very optimized game. In this guide, I'll show you how to reduce the load on your PC or boost your FPS. These methods won’t give you a massive performance boost, but they can be quite useful for weaker or noisy setups
   
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- Tip for Low-End PCs
- Demonstration
- Tip
- NVIDIA
- Fact
1. NVIDIA Control Panel
1. Right-click on the NVIDIA icon and open the Control Panel.

2. Go to "Manage 3D Settings."

3. Click "Add" and find the game.

4. It's recommended to set the options as shown in the screenshot (some settings may be missing)

!!!If needed, feel free to adjust the settings to your preference!!!
1.1 Tweaking Four Key NVIDIA Settings
"Power Management Mode" → Optimal Power
"Threaded Optimization" → On
"Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization" → On
"Image Scaling" → Enable and adjust to your preference. The higher the percentage, the more screen noise when idle, but it greatly improves performance.

"Image Scaling" → Off

"Image Scaling" → On (70%)

!!!Note: This noise is only visible when looking at the sky and standing still. It doesn’t affect anything else.)!!!

If all four settings are adjusted, the load will drop by 30–40%!

2. In-game Settings (Graphics, Tips)
Low Graphics (Brightness x1.5)

Medium Graphics (Brightness x1.5)

Almost Highest (Brightness x1.5)
1. Low-quality textures are only noticeable on generators and dashboards, so you can set them to "Low" or "Medium."

2. Resolution has a big impact on system performance. If you don’t mind a slight blur, you can play at 1440x900 or 1366x768
3. Fullscreen mode reduces system load significantly
2.2 Shadow and Rendering Settings
Shadow settings from "High" and above make the game look much better, but they also consume a lot of resources. If your PC is very weak, it's best to set them to "Low", which completely disables shadows

Shadows → Medium

Shadows → High

With High shadows, you can set rendering to Medium, as the heavy fog from shadows will make it hard to see far away. Just don’t set it to Low, or the snowmobile dashboard will look heavily distorted

3. Settings for Low/Mid-End PCs

1. Photorealistic settings don’t put much strain on the system, but if your PC is very weak, you can lower them

2. Post-processing on "Medium" adds a vignette effect (darkening around the edges of the screen)

3. Draw distance doesn’t affect performance much. Lower it only if you have a weak CPU or use high shadows


4. Lowering the resolution significantly reduces system load
3.3 DLSS/FSR/XeSS (if available)
1. These technologies are designed to improve performance without noticeably lowering visual quality. They render the game at a lower internal resolution and upscale it using smart algorithms
which can significantly increase your FPS, especially on lower or mid-end systems

2.Even if you’re not familiar with how it works, just enable it and see the difference. It’s one of the easiest and most effective ways to boost performance

3. DLSS, FSR, and XeSS each offer several quality/performance modes. Feel free to choose the one that suits your needs — I personally go with Balanced

4. I only use DLSS, since I have an NVIDIA GPU, so I can't really give advice on FSR or XeSS settings. But I still recommend enabling them