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Last active April 5, 2024 11:30
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Recommended Nvidia Profile Inspector settings for the Mass Effect Trilogy

Sources : brkbeatjunkie and Nvidia's guide

You'll need Nvidia Profile Inspector to enable these settings : http://www.techspot.com/downloads/5077-nvidia-inspector.html There should be a similar alternative for AMD, but I haven't researched it.

WORKING EXAMPLES

If you just want working values, follow the pictures below. The values are explained in more detail in the AA and AO sections. The values in the screenshots were tested for a stable 60 FPS on a GTX 1080, at 4K. Depending on your performance, you can try higher values of "Antialiasing - Setting" and "Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling".

ME1 : https://i.imgur.com/My9p7bb.png

ME2 : https://i.imgur.com/QW9fp1a.png For ME2, make sure to add the ME2Game.exe file to your Mass Effect 2 profile in Nvidia Profile Inspector. Otherwise the settings won't apply. If you don't know how to do that : https://i.imgur.com/TAWF7iD.png https://i.imgur.com/FLpWSfF.png

ME3 : https://i.imgur.com/9M4iKVF.png


ANTI ALIASING (AA)

AA reduces the "staircase" artifacts on lines. Like this : https://international.download.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/mass-effect-3-tweak-guide/Mass-Effect-3-Tweak-Guide-AntiAliasing-Comparison-AAOff-SGSSAA.html

Read this article to enable SGSSAA anti aliasing (works for ME1, ME2, ME3) : https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/mass-effect-3-tweak-guide#8 For other games, check this document : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ekUZsK2YXgd5XjjH1M7QkHIQgKO_i4bHCUdPeAd6OCo/pub?output=html There's a good explanation of the differences between AA techniques, too.

AMBIENT OCCLUSION (AO)

To force HBAO use this document to find the HBAO flag for the game you want to add AO to : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sq0vgFlerS-YT093TS2jEpx6xjZP7X1x1BcAs7EHXYY/edit#gid=0 Then follow this picture to add the flag in Nvidia inspector : https://imgur.com/a/E2J7DFM Lastly, disable AO in the game's settings so that only HBAO is running, not the default game's AO (ME2, ME3 only).

There are some glitches in-game when using AO in the Mass Effect games. I wouldn't recommend having it on all the time, but it can be useful for screenshots. Here are some screenshots showing what the glitches look like : https://imgur.com/a/wfcgMiy (thanks roivasff14)

@mirh
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mirh commented Feb 24, 2021

I'm afraid those AA bits still don't cut it (at least in ME1).
Even if they are better than the default with bugged lens flare, I found they still screw up lights.
This is the default "application-controlled" mode, while this is with msaa and it has a quite stupid blue tint cranked up to 11.
I have tried all the compatibility bits I could find on the net, to no avail.
Idk then if it couldn't just be the last nvidia drivers are bugged, or something with my gpu.

@mirh
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mirh commented Mar 2, 2021

Nope, definitively something with the game itself. It's the same with SSAA on my R9 290.
My uneducate guess is that lights being objects (or at least that's what I read around the 3D depth communities) may be a culprit.
Shepard at the center of the comm room is probably at just about the right distance to make any anomaly pop out.

Idk why sampling-based anti-aliasing would trigger this, but after extensive testing with LOD bias independently I can say it's not that.

For the moment, the only safe bet for quality improvement is VSR/DSR/GeDoSaTo.

@cdxemu
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cdxemu commented Jul 21, 2022

The ME1 screenshot shows a "Mass Effect 3" profile, while the ME3 screenshot shows a "Mass Effect" profile, which I found to be confusing. I think the settings are still correct as indicated, it's just that the selected profile (at the top) is wrong, possibly due to using edited screenshots.

(In the revision history, it appears that you swapped the images on May 27, 2021.)

@levicki
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levicki commented Apr 3, 2024

@mirh Link for ME2 screenshot is 404.

@mirh
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mirh commented Apr 5, 2024

None of my screens pertain ME2.
(ad regardless there isn't a single link in the entire web page that is broken)

@levicki
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levicki commented Apr 5, 2024

Interesting...

Yesterday this link https://i.imgur.com/QW9fp1a.png was giving 404 for me. Today it works.

Is it really necessary to disable gamma correction for AA?
If so, then what about the line gamma, should that be disabled too?

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