Battlefield 1 has 11 graphical settings that influence the game’s appearance and, by extension, affect how the game performs on your system. In addition, it includes a Resolution Scale setting that adjusts the game’s rendering resolution, which means you can render the game at a higher or lower resolution than your native resolution.
In this section, we’ll examine how each graphical setting affects the game’s visuals and performance.
Graphics Quality Presets
For those who don’t want to bother with individual graphical settings, the game offers presets that adjust each of the other settings at once.
In our testing, we found that going from the Ultra preset down to Low results in a 70-75% performance improvement. Of course, that also came at a significant cost to the game’s visual appeal.
In general, we’ve found that you’re better off adjusting the individual settings to cater your performance and visuals to your particular needs and tastes.
Drag the cursor to compare Graphical Presets on Low and on Ultra.
Resolution Scale
Resolution Scale downsamples or supersamples the rendering resolution of the game. In other words, if you have a 1080p monitor, you can still play the game at “4K resolution,” which will make the visuals look more smooth, with fewer pixelated “jaggies,” at a serious performance cost. Lowering the setting will make the game look more blurry, but will improve performance dramatically.
The Resolution Scale setting is on a spectrum from 0 to 100. For reasons unclear to us, the default setting for your native resolution is at 42. Turning the setting above 42 will increase the rendering resolution, while lowering it below 42 will decrease it. Because the setting has such a dramatic impact on the game’s performance, we recommend keeping it at 42.
Of course, if your hardware’s potential greatly surpasses your current performance, feel free to turn it up. On the other hand, if the game feels sluggish, it might be a good idea to turn lower this setting.
Performance impact: ~25% improvement lowering from 42 to 0. ~65% performance loss when increasing from 42 to 100.
Drag the cursor to compare Resolution Scale set to 42 and 100.
Texture Quality
This affects the appearance of the game’s textures, which cover the game’s characters and environment. Higher-quality textures eat up VRAM, which can affect performance on lower-end graphics cards.
Performance impact: ~2-3% between Low and Ultra.
Drag the cursor to compare Texture Quality on Low and on Ultra.
Texture Filtering
This setting relates to how the textures are applied to 3D models. Higher settings minimize the blurring and blocking of textures on models.
Performance impact: ~4-5% between Low and Ultra.
Drag the cursor to compare Texture Filtering on Low and on Ultra.
Lighting Quality
Don’t be fooled by the name: The lighting quality setting primarily affects the game’s shadows, as well as (probably?) other lighting effects. On Ultra, shadows look incredibly detailed and precise. On Low, they’re much less detailed, but still don’t look that bad.
Performance impact: ~8-10% between Low and Ultra.
Drag the cursor to compare Lighting Quality on Low and on Ultra.
Effects Quality
You guessed it: This setting governs the visual quality of effects in the game, such as explosions, fire, and... other explosions. Honestly, even the low quality explosions looked pretty good to us. We couldn’t tell a huge difference between the Low and Ultra setting, and the performance difference reflects that.
Performance impact: ~3-4% between Low and Ultra.
Drag the cursor to compare Effects Quality on Low and on Ultra.
Post Process Quality
This setting affects certain effects after their initial rendering, such as light blooms, depth of field, and color correction. Basically, turning this setting up makes the game look prettier at a moderate performance cost. If you can afford to turn it up, expect to express more “Ohhhs” and “Ahhhhhs” as your eyes are dazzled by pretty things.
Performance impact: ~10-12% between Low and Ultra.
Mesh Quality
This setting affects the model detail of objects far away from the player.
Performance impact: ~5-7% between Low and Ultra.
Drag the cursor to compare Mesh Quality on Low and on Ultra.
Terrain Quality
This setting influences the appearance of the ground. It is fair to assume that the effect of this setting could vary quite a bit depending on the map you’re playing.
Performance impact: ~8-10% between Low and Ultra. (Could be lesser or greater depending on the map.)
Drag the cursor to compare Terrain Quality on Low and on Ultra.
Undergrowth Quality
This setting influences the appearance of the brush and undergrowth on the terrain, including its shadows. It is very reasonable to assume this setting will have a great impact on maps that feature more terrain undergrowth.
Performance impact: ~4-5% between Low and Ultra. (Could be lesser or greater depending on the map.)
Drag the cursor to compare Undergrowth Quality on Low and on Ultra.
Antialiasing:
Antialiasing smooths out edges of geometric objects in the game, eliminating jaggedness.
Performance impact: ~10-12% between Off and TAA.
Drag the cursor to compare Antialiasing Off and on TAA.
Ambient Occlusion
This setting affects the shading of the game’s environment. Turning it up can add a lot of detail and depth to the game’s visuals, but at a fairly significant performance cost.
Performance impact: ~10-15% between Off and HBOA.
Drag the cursor to compare Ambient Occlusion Off and on HBAO.
