For the past three days, I've been benchmarking each graphics option in Art of Rally in order to evaluate the impact on visuals and performance. All options will be covered here, and at the end of the guide, I'll provide my recommended settings for three kinds of experiences: high-quality, mid-tier, and the bare minimum.

In the process of testing each setting, I noticed not all is as it appears to be. For example, each shadow distance setting has the opposite effect of what's intended. If you're planning on fine-tuning each setting, it's important that you read the notes for each setting rather than skim through the benchmark graphs.

You can find the full testing methodology below. I tested several courses and eventually settled on Lamppi as the most consistently demanding, though all of Finland is typically quite demanding, as is Kvannkjosen. Each weather setting was also tested, but only sunset came close to being as demanding as afternoon. I also briefly tested each camera and found that camera 1 was the most demanding, while each camera following it gained a degree of performance.

Version 1.1.0e of the Steam game is run on my personal Windows 10 system running a Core i9-9900K, GTX 1080 Ti, and 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 memory. The game runs at 3440x1440 with no framerate cap and v-sync off. Camera 1 was used at the default FOV of 40. Aside from the specific setting being tested, all settings are set to either "highest" or "on," while anti-aliasing is set to "TAA" and vegetation renderer is set to "indirect." Each benchmark pass consists of a full time attack run of Lamppi, Finland set to afternoon in the Fujin, and takes place from shortly after the countdown begins to just before the end of the stage. All passes last between 150 and 170 seconds and are performed with no significant crashes or respawns.

Each individual setting is compared to a base setup using the settings mentioned above. This base was tested over a dozen times to ensure consistency and determine margin of error. Each individual setting is tested over two passes and, if the results are not consistent, retested further. If the results remain inconsistent or odd, such as those of the shadow distance settings, further benchmarks are run on two other systems for confirmation, an i7-6700HQ/GTX 1070 laptop and an R5 3600/GTX 980 desktop.

That's it for the test setup and methodology - let's get into the benchmarks.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - This setting is by far the most vague, but appears to impact vegetation density, geometry detail/LODs, and possibly texture quality. Going down to high quality causes a small hit to vegetation density, with an equally small uplift in performance. At medium quality, there's still a fair amount of ground cover, while performance rises significantly. Low quality sees a decrease in overall detail and the world begins to look quite empty, but it also sees a large uprise in performance. Lowest quality is devoid of all vegetation and is missing a significant amount of detail. The highest setting is preferable here, but medium is a good option as well. Low is feasible for lower-end systems.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - TAA gets closest to the mark here, with few jaggies, good performance and very little flickering in motion. SMAA succeeds less in removing jaggies but still does better than no AA, albeit with a performance hit and some loss of detail. FXAA, on the other hand, encounters significant flickering issues, large loss of detail on distant objects, and heavy blur. TAA is the preferred option here, but if you have issues with it, no AA may prove a better option than FXAA or SMAA.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - This could be more accurately described as distant Ambient Occlusion. Changing this setting appears to have no impact on anything nearby, only on distant shadows. As a result, the impact to performance is within margin of error unless it's disabled entirely, which I don't recommend. Thus, this should be kept on the highest setting.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - I tried to find spots where turning bloom off has a clear visual impact, but didn't succeed. This setting does, however, have a small performance impact, so I'd recommend disabling it. If you enjoy bloom and notice a difference, you can leave it on without worrying too much.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - This does exactly what it says on the tin, at around a 6% performance cost. It should be disabled unless you happen to like the effect a lot.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - Yep, it's film grain. I wasn't able to spot it during gameplay at all, even after seeing it in these screenshots, so I'm recommending it be disabled. Again, if you're able to notice the effect and enjoy it, feel free to leave it on.

As this is a motion-based effect, I wasn't able to capture any apples-to-apples screenshots for comparison. However, in my experience, the effect sometimes generates a distracting trail behind the car, one which I initially mistook for a monitor ghosting artifact. This ended up outweighing any pluses the effect has, so unless the implementation improves, I have to recommend against enabling this option.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - Like AO, this appears to be a distance-based option, with the medium option removing some light from the sky. Interestingly, highest and high perform the same to within margin of error while looking identical, while medium and low look and perform alike as well. Only the none option has an appreciable increase in performance, but due to its massive impact on visuals, I recommend everyone set this option to medium.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - I was unable to notice any difference between the highest, high, and medium settings, meaning this is likely another distance-based setting with minimal performance impact. The low setting drastically reduces shadow quality, trading it for an 11% performance boost. If in doubt, leave this option at highest.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - As expected, this option decreases the draw distance for shadows. It doesn't even look half bad as the shadows sort of "fade in" rather than pop in, all the way down to the lowest setting. This would be great news for those seeking more performance, but the shadow distance setting appears to be bugged to where the lower option actually perform worse than the higher ones. (I confirmed this across all three test systems.) As a result, I can only recommend the highest option here, and lower-end systems have no choice but to turn shadows off entirely.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - This does exactly what you'd expect. As with shadow distance, a fade-in happens to prevent pop-in from being as noticeable, down to the low setting. High isn't much different to highest, though there is some pop-in. Medium is where things begin to fall away, with notably pared back draw distance, and nearby trees begin to disappear at low. At lowest, the fade-in disappears and you become a grass god, with vegetation only appearing if you're driving towards it. I recommend highest for this, and medium or low on low-spec systems.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - While this has practically no performance impact (everything except lowest is within margin of error), I've found the higher options have such thick crowds that they actually block the view of the road, something which has caused me to crash on hay bales more than once. Due to this, I'm recommending it be set to lowest or none, but you can choose whatever your preference is without having to worry about performance.

I was unable to find any differences between settings, be it in visuals or in performance, on any surface or weather type. Due to this, I'm recommending it stay on the highest setting.

The vegetation cutout lets you see through trees when they block the camera. It has a rather substantial 7% performance impact, but realistically, you'll either want to use it or you won't. I won't make a recommendation here, use your own personal preference.

Comparison image[i.imgur.com] - This is a new option introduced in a recent update. It does change the look of distant vegetation a bit, but not in a better or worse way. I'm hesitant to make any recommendations for this option as even on my test systems, there was large variance - the 1070 laptop saw no difference between either option. You'll need to test this for yourself and see which option runs better. Regardless, the data for my 1080 Ti system is provided below.

You'll find my recommendations for high-quality, mid-tier, and bare minimum settings below, along with performance figures for each.

This was a seriously long project with a lot of effort put in, but it feels like it's been worth it. Even if nobody whatsoever gleans any useful information from this, it still led to the discovery of a bug in the shadow distance setting which the developer will hopefully fix in a future update. That said, I hope those who view this will find it helpful. See y'all in the next post.

Also, new world record on Lamppi. Woohoo!

Originally posted to r/artofrally