GTA 5 SuperHQ Graphics Settings (2021)

							GTA 5 SUPERHQ (SUPERIOR HIGH QUALITY) GRAPHICS SETTINGS
							=======================================================



Created: 14 Sept 2021

Last Updated: 20 Sept 2021
- Added the year to this paste's title
- Fixed some typos and improved descriptions (settings unchanged)
- Added a note on manually flushing shader cache
- Added a link to the Trevor's Choice video

Copyright: Public Domain; can be shared or altered without explicit permission.



GTA SuperHQ Gameplay Videos:

GTA 5 - Trevor's Choice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWYp2pxgTA

Introducing GTA 5 SuperHQ Graphics Settings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9YUWFRxnEU


GTA5 SuperHQ Photo Gallery:
https://imgur.com/a/CwOjOSH



INTRODUCTION

GTA 5 "SuperHQ" is a free, quick, easy and no-risk method of altering the graphics in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto 5 to greatly improve the appearance of GTA 5, as well as improving its overall efficiency.

It's not a mod, does not require any computer expertise or fiddling around with dozens of third party utilities/altered game files, etc. It's simple to implement and very easy to undo. Importantly, it will not put you at risk of being flagged as a cheat in GTA Online or harming your installation of GTA V.

It's a basic one-two-three process that needs to be done only once and remains in effect until you undo the changes. Nothing needs to run in the background.

If you don't like it, the simplest method of undoing these changes is to delete your modified settings.xml file and either:

(i) Replace it with the backup settings.xml you took before making the changes;
or
(ii) Delete settings.xml without replacing it, restart the game, and it will create a new one - but this will revert all of your settings to defaults.

It's equally as easy to undo the changes in the Nvidia Control Panel by opening the NVCP, going to the GTA 5 game profile and clicking the Restore button at the top right to restore the game profile to its default settings.


INSTRUCTIONS

ONE - BACKUP

Since this method requires changing a GTA V configuration file which holds your settings, I strongly recommend making a backup copy of it and storing it in a safe place. The file you need to backup first before altering is called settings.xml and for GTA V it's typically found under the C:\Users\[username]\Documents\Rockstar Games\GTA V\ directory. Right-click on it, select Copy, and then right-click > Paste it into one of your personal directories for safekeeping.


TWO - NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL SETTINGS

Some of the key SuperHQ graphics changes require accessing and altering the GTA 5 Game Profile found in the Nvidia Control Panel, which is available for free to all Nvidia GPU owners as part of the official Nvidia GeForce Driver Package. Download and install the latest version of the drivers for your GPU here:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/

More details on how to find, install, access and configure the Nvidia Control Panel for your GPU can be found here:
https://tweakguides.pcgamingwiki.com/NVFORCE_5.html


1. Launch the Nvidia Control Panel.

2. Under Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings, find (or add) a profile for GTA5.exe, typically found under your C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto V\ directory, and make the following changes:

Image Sharpening: Select On, set Sharpen to 0.02 and Ignore Film Grain to 1.00
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Antialiasing - FXAA: On
Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA): On
Texture Filtering - Anisotropic Sample Optimization: Off
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Allow


They're also shown here, highlighted in red:
https://ibb.co/7SQVbhq


A more detailed explanation of these settings is in the Nvidia Guide linked further above, but in short, even though some of the changes I've made above may seem confusing, contradictory, or even undesirable, they're all necessary in combination to simultaneously reduce the jagged & shimmery nature of the GTA 5 game world (FXAA On, Negative LOD Bias Allow) while also enhancing fine detail (Sharpen 0.02, MFAA, Anisotropic Filtering x16, Anisotropic Sample Optimization Off) and countering harsh oversharpening (Film Grain 1.00), in the most efficient (i.e. lowest FPS impact) way possible.

Note also that where I've adjusted settings that are also available in the game (i.e, Anisotropic Filtering & FXAA), this has been done because extensive testing has shown that the NVCP/Nvidia driver-level implementation of that feature is better than the one incorporated into the game engine. Therefore, we will need to disable the in-game version of these settings because turning them on in both places doesn't double the effect, it usually just results in greater potential for conflicts/glitches.

3. Click Apply, then close the Nvidia Control Panel. Neither the Nvidia Control Panel, nor the Nvidia Display Container Service, need to be running for these changes to come into effect each time you launch GTA 5.


THREE - GAME-SPECIFIC SETTINGS CHANGES

Lastly, we need to change the standard GTA V graphics options typically found under the Settings > Graphics & Settings > Advanced Graphics menus when in the game.

This can be done in two ways: You can either edit the game configuration file which holds the in-game settings using a text editor like Windows Notepad or Notepad++ prior to launching the game - this is the most foolproof method, and the one I strongly recommend, as long as your system can handle the graphics load:

1. Find your GTA 5 settings.xml file, typically under the C:\Users\[username]\Documents\Rockstar Games\GTA V\ directory.

2. Before making any changes, make a copy of settings.xml as per the BACKUP section.

3. Open the original settings.xml file with any text editor, and copy and paste the text below over the existing text found between the <graphics> </graphics> tags:

    <Tessellation value="3" />
    <LodScale value="1.000000" />
    <PedLodBias value="0.200000" />
    <VehicleLodBias value="0.000000" />
    <ShadowQuality value="3" />
    <ReflectionQuality value="3" />
    <ReflectionMSAA value="8" />
    <SSAO value="2" />
    <AnisotropicFiltering value="0" />
    <MSAA value="2" />
    <MSAAFragments value="0" />
    <MSAAQuality value="0" />
    <SamplingMode value="0" />
    <TextureQuality value="2" />
    <ParticleQuality value="2" />
    <WaterQuality value="2" />
    <GrassQuality value="3" />
    <ShaderQuality value="2" />
    <Shadow_SoftShadows value="3" />
    <UltraShadows_Enabled value="true" />
    <Shadow_ParticleShadows value="true" />
    <Shadow_Distance value="2.000000" />
    <Shadow_LongShadows value="true" />
    <Shadow_SplitZStart value="1.000000" />
    <Shadow_SplitZEnd value="0.999900" />
    <Shadow_aircraftExpWeight value="0.990000" />
    <Shadow_DisableScreenSizeCheck value="false" />
    <Reflection_MipBlur value="true" />
    <FXAA_Enabled value="false" />
    <TXAA_Enabled value="true" />
    <Lighting_FogVolumes value="true" />
    <Shader_SSA value="true" />
    <DX_Version value="2" />
    <CityDensity value="1.000000" />
    <PedVarietyMultiplier value="1.000000" />
    <VehicleVarietyMultiplier value="1.000000" />
    <PostFX value="3" />
    <DoF value="true" />
    <HdStreamingInFlight value="true" />
    <MaxLodScale value="1.000000" />
    <MotionBlurStrength value="0.000000" />


4. Save and close settings.xml.

5. Right-click on settings.xml and under Properties, tick 'read only'. This is to prevent the game from changing the settings, which does happen often.

OR

You can implement and experiment with the settings while in the game. While this option may appear to give you better performance or increase certain aspects of image quality at first glance, I can vouch after many long  hours of experimentation that it is fraught with problems. Many visual and/or performance changes are subtle, or don't show up in certain locations/times of day/weather, some are buggy or behave counterintuitively, again, often depending on the context in which they're used. Lastly, some require a full engine restart (i.e, restarting  GTA V from scratch) to fully realise their effect. This makes it a very confusing & tedious way of finding the best settings. I've done the hard work for you; unless you're running an ultra-weak GPU, the SuperHQ settings should be optimal.

But if you still want to do it this way:

1. Don't alter or write-protect settings.xml; launch GTA 5 as normal.

2. When in the game, press ESC to bring up the main menu, and go to Settings > Graphics and Settings > Advanced Graphics, and modify all of the following settings, pressing SPACE as often as required to save the changes. Also, make sure to reboot straight away each time you are prompted to do so, because major graphics changes must be implemented during engine re-initialisation, otherwise any other graphics changes will not be implemented properly.

GRAPHICS

Ignore Suggested Limits: On
DirectX Version: 11
FXAA: Off (remember, this needs to be implemented via NVCP)
MSAA: X2
NVIDIA TXAA: On

Population Density: Slider to maximum (far right)
Population Variety: Slider to maximum (far right)
Distance Scaling: Slider to maximum (far right)

Texture Quality: Very High
Shader Quality: Very High
Shadow Quality: Very High
Reflection Quality: Ultra
Reflection MSAA: 8x (can be lowered to 0 with minimal visual impact if extra FPS is needed)
Water Quality: Very High
Particles Quality: Very High
Grass Quality: Ultra
Soft Shadows: Softest
Post FX: Ultra
In-Game Depth Of Field Effects: On
Anisotropic Filtering: Off (remember, this needs to be implemented via NVCP)
Ambient Occlusion: High
Tessellation: Very High


ADVANCED GRAPHICS

Long Shadows: On
High Resolution Shadows: On
High Detail Streaming While Flying: On
Extended Distance Scaling: Slider to maximum (far right)
Extended Shadows Distance: Slider to maximum (far right)
Frame Scaling Mode: Off


NOTES:

*** One of the major reasons why we can max out virtually all of these settings is because, unlike most people, we're not just blindly jacking up the Frame Scaling Mode, which is basically Supersampling - an old, highly inefficient, brute force method of reducing jaggedness by increasing the resolution the GPU renders the image internally (e.g. to 4K or even 8K - which puts a HUGE load on the GPU) then scaling it back down to your native resolution, giving a much smoother image at a massive performance cost.

For comparison, if I run the settings above but set Frame Scaling to 1.5 for example, I reduce my average FPS by 50% or more. At 4K Supersampling, my FPS is around 30 and feels laggy as hell. By turning it off and instead relying on cheap methods of smoothing out the image like shaders and general post-processing tricks, I get almost four times that as my average FPS!

*** Shadow glitches and minor jaggedness are inevitable no matter what settings we used. I've tried everything, and nothing - even supersampling - can completely remove the tiny jagged edges some shadows and object edges retain as a result. It's due to the way GTA 5 renders shadows. In the pre-ray tracing era, shadows were commonly rendered using Shadow Maps with different "Levels of Detail" (LoD) to render at varying distances. The LoD changes as you move towards/away from shadows usually result in numerous quality glitches. For more details see:
https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugems/part-ii-lighting-and-shadows/chapter-12-omnidirectional-shadow-mapping

*** Ifyou've followed these instructions and the game doesn't look like the screenshots provided, you should manually flush your shader cache - i.e, delete the contents of the C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\NVIDIA\DXCache folder, then reboot.




And that's it! Having saved the changes to your settings.xml via any of the methods above, you should make it read-only, then re-launch the game as normal. You should now see similar results to the screenshots I've taken here:

https://imgur.com/a/CwOjOSH

Note: If at any time you re-enter the Graphics Settings menus, the game may tell you that changes you've made need to be reapplied. Click Yes; it's just a known glitch with the game. As long as you've made settings.xml read-only, the SuperHQ settings are being implemented correctly and you don't need to readjust settings.

Hopefully, you like the changes to the game's graphics and it runs well for you!


Cheers,
Koroush Ghazi




-----------------------------------------------------

MY GTA BENCHMARK RESULTS
as at 16 Sept 2021


For comparative purposes, below are the results of the in-game benchmark I did using the current GTA 5 Build 2372, Nvidia GeForce driver 471.96 and these settings on an i7 9700K / RTX 3070 (Gigabyte VISION OC) / 32GB RAM Z390-based system:

Frames Per Second (Higher is better) Min, Max, Avg
Pass 0, 30.912186, 143.507034, 91.082291
Pass 1, 16.008940, 137.653824, 71.994209
Pass 2, 14.719324, 141.466721, 96.493256
Pass 3, 16.897116, 143.268524, 117.569771
Pass 4, 22.575453, 150.897842, 89.824852

Time in milliseconds(ms). (Lower is better). Min, Max, Avg
Pass 0, 6.968299, 32.349701, 10.979083
Pass 1, 7.264600, 62.465099, 13.890006
Pass 2, 7.068800, 67.937904, 10.363419
Pass 3, 6.979900, 59.181698, 8.505588
Pass 4, 6.627000, 44.295898, 11.132776

Frames under 16ms (for 60fps):
Pass 0: 830/845 frames (98.22%)
Pass 1: 585/660 frames (88.64%)
Pass 2: 866/874 frames (99.08%)
Pass 3: 1047/1058 frames (98.96%)
Pass 4: 9802/10009 frames (97.93%)

Frames under 33ms (for 30fps):
Pass 0: 845/845 frames (100.00%)
Pass 1: 651/660 frames (98.64%)
Pass 2: 869/874 frames (99.43%)
Pass 3: 1050/1058 frames (99.24%)
Pass 4: 10001/10009 frames (99.92%)

Percentiles in ms for pass 0
50%,	10.00
75%,	11.00
80%,	11.00
85%,	11.00
90%,	12.00
91%,	12.00
92%,	12.00
93%,	12.00
94%,	12.00
95%,	12.00
96%,	12.00
97%,	13.00
98%,	13.00
99%,	24.00

Percentiles in ms for pass 1
50%,	13.00
75%,	14.00
80%,	14.00
85%,	15.00
90%,	16.00
91%,	17.00
92%,	17.00
93%,	17.00
94%,	17.00
95%,	18.00
96%,	18.00
97%,	18.00
98%,	19.00
99%,	40.00

Percentiles in ms for pass 2
50%,	10.00
75%,	12.00
80%,	12.00
85%,	12.00
90%,	12.00
91%,	12.00
92%,	12.00
93%,	12.00
94%,	12.00
95%,	12.00
96%,	13.00
97%,	13.00
98%,	13.00
99%,	14.00

Percentiles in ms for pass 3
50%,	8.00
75%,	8.00
80%,	10.00
85%,	10.00
90%,	10.00
91%,	10.00
92%,	10.00
93%,	10.00
94%,	10.00
95%,	11.00
96%,	11.00
97%,	11.00
98%,	12.00
99%,	14.00

Percentiles in ms for pass 4
50%,	11.00
75%,	13.00
80%,	13.00
85%,	13.00
90%,	14.00
91%,	14.00
92%,	14.00
93%,	14.00
94%,	14.00
95%,	14.00
96%,	14.00
97%,	15.00
98%,	16.00
99%,	16.00

=== SYSTEM ===
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200)
DX Feature Level: 11.0
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.6GHz
32768MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, 8433MB, Driver Version 471.96
Graphics Card Vendor Id 0x10de with Device ID 0x2484

=== SETTINGS ===
Display: 2560x1440 (FullScreen) @ 144Hz VSync OFF
Tessellation: 3
LodScale: 1.000000
PedLodBias: 0.200000
VehicleLodBias: 0.000000
ShadowQuality: 3
ReflectionQuality: 3
ReflectionMSAA: 8
SSAO: 2
AnisotropicFiltering: 0
MSAA: 2
MSAAFragments: 0
MSAAQuality: 0
SamplingMode: 0
TextureQuality: 2
ParticleQuality: 2
WaterQuality: 2
GrassQuality: 3
ShaderQuality: 2
Shadow_SoftShadows: 3
UltraShadows_Enabled: true
Shadow_ParticleShadows: true
Shadow_Distance: 2.000000
Shadow_LongShadows: true
Shadow_SplitZStart: 1.000000
Shadow_SplitZEnd: 0.999900
Shadow_aircraftExpWeight: 0.990000
Shadow_DisableScreenSizeCheck: false
Reflection_MipBlur: true
FXAA_Enabled: false
TXAA_Enabled: true
Lighting_FogVolumes: true
Shader_SSA: true
DX_Version: 2
CityDensity: 1.000000
PedVarietyMultiplier: 1.000000
VehicleVarietyMultiplier: 1.000000
PostFX: 3
DoF: true
HdStreamingInFlight: true
MaxLodScale: 1.000000
MotionBlurStrength: 0.000000

// END