PlanetSide 2 Tweak Guide v0.1

[Step 1]
Delete or rename your UserOptions file and start from scratch with your settings in the game. During this part of Beta, you should probably do this each time we announce a significant patch. Once you do this, launch the game.

[Step 2]
Set everything to medium, well everything except Render Quality – leave this at 100% for the moment. Once all settings are at medium, logout and EXIT, then restart the client. There are a couple of settings that might not get reset properly unless you exit, so please remember to actually EXIT, not just log out.

[Step 3]
Now that you’ve started up, pick a server and get into the warp-gate spawn location of a low-population server (location isn’t important right now, since network lag won’t be part of this tweaking).

[Step 4]
Set the game to full-screen, native resolution (the “normal” resolution for a single monitor) – you folks running massive monitor setups, please start with just one for now and progress from there after you complete these steps. Now press ALT+F to display your frame-rate in the BOTTOM LEFT of the screen (just underneath the mini-map display). Pick a location and something to look at and then note your fps number.

[Step 5]
Go into graphics settings, set render quality to 50% (just for now, this is a test). Now make sure you’re looking at roughly the same thing from roughly the same location – note your NEW fps number. Now there will be two sections, pick based on what happened with your fps number.

[Scenario A: Your fps number went up noticably]
Your graphics card is controlling your frame rate more than your CPU. You should try the next series of changes, in this order (and one at a time, if you’re patient – no need to turn something off if it doesn’t affect frame rate here )
1.Decrease resolution
2.Use a Render Quality other than 100% (try 85%)
3.Turn down shadows
4.Turn off options with checkboxes (no order here, cards all vary in the costs of these)
5.Turn down lighting quality
6.Turn down flora quality
7.Turn down model quality
8.Turn down particle quality and effects quality together.
9.Turn down texture quality

[Scenario B: Your fps number DID NOT go up much]
1.Lower the audio quality
2.Lower the Terrain quality
3.Lower the particle and effects quality (yes both of these)
Your GPU isn’t limiting you it should be possible to get better looking graphics. Reset to HIGH, and then go back to step 4 with the HIGH settings on everything.

If you're in Scenario B and nothing else works, there is one thing you can try inside the UserOptions config file (located in the games installation directory) - RenderDistance is set to -1 by default (which means the game data controls render distance) - you can try setting this to some specific values, say 1500, 1000, or 750 to see if it helps - you will need to completely exit the game before you edit the file. Setting this to too small a value can mean you will get shot by people you never saw.