Graphics Settings Guide (September 2025)

With the September 2025 Graphics Update, the performance and visual impact of the various graphics settings has changed dramatically. In general, many settings that were previously very demanding due to our CPU-bottlenecked engine, are now a lot more viable thanks to the CPU efficiency improvements (Reflections, Mirror, Shadows, Visible Cars, Track Detail). In this post there will be some recommendations and explanation about the settings going forward!

First off, here are the main settings to focus on for balancing visuals/performance:

• Anti-Aliasing
• Car Reflection Quality
• Rear View Mirror Quality
• Shadows
• Visible Cars

Anti-Aliasing (MSAA/SSAA):
Not much has changed here, MSAA is a very effective, but also expensive method of reducing geometry-based aliasing. For Nvidia GPUs, we have an extra 8xSSAA option that is even more expensive, but also even better looking. It improves the visuals quite a lot, because SSAA catches a lot of aliasing that MSAA cannot clean up, so give it a try if you have the GPU headroom! Note that SSAA is not available in DXVK.
(1440p, quality setting = high, left = 8xMSAA, right = 8xSSAA):


FXAA:
FXAA has gotten a terrible name over the years for being extremely blurry and just overall ruining image quality. However, it turns out there are a bunch of internal settings within FXAA, that can make it look quite good! We have updated those settings to use the highest quality and minimal amount of blurring. Now FXAA is a very nice, cheap alternative/addition to MSAA. I would absolutely recommend turning it on with 0-4xMSAA.
(1440p, quality setting = high, left = FXAA off, right = FXAA on):
MSAA off

2xMSAA

4xMSAA


Car Reflection Quality:
Quite a bit has changed here, the addition of full refresh rate reflections on high/ultra being the most notable. The low setting remains a super-efficient option for anyone looking for some performance. It still gives high quality sky-reflections, but it removes any reflections of track objects. We made sure that the overall light balance of the cars remains consistent even without these track object reflections, but it will lack the dynamic effect that the higher settings give you. Medium adds these dynamic track object reflections, but with a 40% refresh rate (so 24fps when the game is running at 60fps). High increases this refresh rate to 100%. Ultra adds some additional track objects that are ignored on medium/high. I would generally recommend sticking to Low for performance, or High for visual quality, as the visual difference with Ultra is minimal and it increases the cost quite a bit.

Rear View Mirror Quality:
The mirror has received some nice upgrades as well. The low setting renders at 50% refresh rate, with limited detail and render distance, making it a good option to save some performance. Medium now renders at 100% refresh rate, with much higher detail and render distance. High increases the render distance even further, for the maximum quality possible, though I would stick to Medium for the best balance between quality and performance.

Shadows:
The CPU cost between shadows off and shadows on low is now many times smaller than before. This should allow almost anyone to run with shadows on now, which is one of the biggest visual differences you can make in the game. The rest of the settings remain unchanged, with the higher settings increasing resolution and shadow softness, which only affects GPU performance. Low uses 1024x1024 shadow maps with no soft shadows. Medium is 2048x2048 shadow maps with limited soft shadows. High also uses 2048x2048 shadow maps with high-quality soft shadows. Ultra increases the resolution to 4096x4096 shadow maps with even higher quality soft shadows. Our shadows are specifically designed to prevent as many of the typical rendering issues that come with shadows (Aliasing, shimmering, ugly transitions between high/low res shadow maps and distance pop-in). Low and Medium are good performance options, while High and Ultra are great options to increase the visual quality and stability of the image.

Visible Cars:
Previously, reducing the number of visible cars was an important way to keep the performance in check. This was mostly because of the very high CPU cost of rendering the cars, which is now massively reduced! I think almost any CPU from the past 10-15 years should be able to render 100 visible cars with decent performance now. Though I would still recommend setting it to reasonable values for lower end hardware to keep the performance more consistent. You likely don’t have to limit it as much as before though, and can stick to values where the popping in and out of cars is not distracting (around 20)

Motion Blur Quality:
Motion blur is typically unwanted in gaming, but in racing games it does have a proper function. It can reduce the distracting nature of sharp textures passing by, keeping your focus on the road ahead! This setting only has a slight GPU cost, so I would advise to use Ultra. I would only turn it down or off on very low-end systems, as lower settings reduce the amount of samples that are used to blur, which can reduce the visual smoothness.

Particle Detail:
This setting controls the quality of the smoke, dust and sparks in the game. Low disables sparks entirely. The performance impact of this setting is very minimal, unless there are a large amount of particle effects active at the same time. Though this doesn’t happen that often in any normal racing conditions, so it is most likely not a setting you have to lower.

Bloom:
Our new bloom system plays a big role in the more coherent and immersive look of the game. It enhances the perceived brightness of the sky and sun reflections. It only comes at a small GPU cost, so I would say it is worth turning on even on low-end systems. The visual improvement is easily worth this cost, and I would suggest turning other settings down first if more performance is required.

Depth of Field:
Our Depth of Field effect is only ever used on spectating cameras, never in driving cameras. So you can safely turn this on so you can enjoy the cinematic effect in replays. It won’t affect the visuals or performance during normal driving at all.

Sharpening:
I would typically advise against adding extra sharpening to the game, as this will typically make the visuals more noisy. However, if you prefer a sharpened look, the setting is still here for you!

Auto-Exposure Intensity:
As our lighting is a lot more dynamic and bright in some cases, auto-exposure helps keep the lighting balanced and consistent by automatically adjusting the exposure of the image. The auto-exposure was very expensive to use before this update, but it is effectively free in terms of performance now! So I would highly recommend using it, a value around 100% makes it a subtle dynamic addition to the lighting, without being distracting. You can increase or decrease the value to make the visual effect to suit your preferences, it will not affect performance.

Track Level of Detail:
With the CPU efficiency improvements, this setting should be much less impactful than before in terms of performance. I would recommend to keep it on high for almost everyone, as it does control a lot of the details on tracks.

Track/Car Texture Quality:
You should only ever need to reduce the texture quality if you are severely limited in GPU memory. Otherwise, always keep this setting on High for the best visual quality at virtually no cost. Our GPU memory usage is very modest and has even gotten better with this update through more optimal texture compression!

Car Shadows:
As explained for the normal shadows, the difference between having shadows on or off is now much smaller because of the CPU efficiency improvements. So I would definitely recommend turning car shadows on, and adjusting the shadow quality setting to dial in performance (the overall shadow quality also affects the quality of the car shadows).

Opponent Cockpits:
This setting determines if the cockpit models are loaded for all cars in the session or not. It does not affect the visuals or performance when viewing from your own car, but it does allow you to go into the cockpit view of other cars. So this setting is only important for spectating and replays, but it also will not affect performance for most systems, unless you are very low on GPU memory.

 

It is possible, but the problem is that increasing draw distance decreases effective resolution of the shadows, as the same resolution is spread over a bigger area. And we are already pushing the shadow maps really hard at 3 4096x4096 shadow maps.

 

Interesting! Fortunately, our own SSAA implementation is a lot more efficient, because we can toggle it on/off when needed in the rendering pipeline. For example, for all the cockpit surface area we disable SSAA, since it's not needed that close up. This is a massive performance gain, because the cockpit often covers 80-90% of the screen!

 

It is probably something we can consider, now that the CPU cost of doing these shadowmap renders is like 10% of what it used to be

 

We already have 3 track shadow maps and 3 car shadow maps, so one more can't hurt right? The advantage of the track shadow maps is that they are static objects, so we don't need to update them every frame. That means it wouldn't even be that big of a performance hit on the CPU side, it would probably increase the GPU cost a bit, but then we also wouldn't need soft shadows on a 4th distant shadow map. I think it might be viable, having fully pop-in free shadows would be amazing!