This section takes a close look at the graphical options in the game, and their effects on the game’s performance.
The ‘performance impact’ in each subsection below is the measured difference in average FPS between playing the game with the settings at their highest and turning only the specific setting down to the lowest, while leaving all others at maximum.
Graphics Quality Presets
The quality presets are ideal for those who don't want to touch individual settings, allowing you to change multiple settings at once.
From testing, going from the 'Highest' preset to 'Low' results in a 95-100% increase in average frame rates—in other words, you can double your framerate by turning all the settings to Low. In my opinion, this results in only a moderate loss of in-game visual quality. The size of the performance increase shows the level of optimization done by Bungie for the PC version, and it allows you a lot of control over the in-game experience.
Because the game fundamentally still needs a decent PC to run, in order to squeeze the best performance possible out of your own rig, we have found that tweaking the individual settings can result in a much nicer graphical experience overall, while potentially resulting in a lesser decrease in frame rate.
Performance Impact: Up to 100% between Low and Highest
Drag the bar to compare Graphics Quality Presets on Low and Highest.
Visually, the obvious changes are the weapon textures and nearby environmental textures. The overall lighting and shadow effects are greatly reduced on Low vs. Highest, too. Effects detail, however—such as the flames shown in the shot—still come across quite nicely. You will also see a drop in overall sharpness thanks to losing effects such as anti-aliasing.
Anti-Aliasing
Anti-aliasing has the greatest impact to frame rate in Destiny 2. Lowering the anti-aliasing can give the appearance of lines being more jagged, but the visual impact is lessened if you are playing at higher resolutions, i.e. 1440p or 4K.
You might be surprised to see how close the comparison screenshots look in 1080p considering the performance difference. Pay attention to the smoothness of the curved ends and the overall shape of the railings (especially the bent one on the left side), as well as the bent door at the back.
Performance Impact: Up to 80% between Low and Highest
Drag the bar to compare AA Off and MSAA.
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
When enabled, this setting adds small, soft shadows to crevices and nearby objects, giving them a more natural look and improving image quality. Yet that performance comes at a cost. Note the difference in shading on the stones in the foreground.
Performance Impact: Up to 8% between Off and 3D (On), depending on surrounding environment
Drag the bar to compare Scrren Space Ambient Occlusion set to Off and 3D (On)
Texture Anisotropy
This is one of the most difficult settings to see visually in the game as it only becomes obvious at a decent resolution on very small details. Generally speaking, you'll see it on text and other small 3D detailing.
Performance Impact: Up to 6% between Off and 16x
Texture Quality
You can see the effect of this setting in the environment on a few finer details in the comparison image. See the texts and the grates on the wall with the red markings on the right. The most obvious comes from the weapon texture and the detail on the left hand.
Performance Impact: Up to 10% between Low and Highest, depending on environment
Drag the bar to compare Texture Quality on Low and Highest.
Shadow Quality
This impacts shadows of both the player and NPCs in the game, as well as other major shadows. The Shadow Quality setting is surprisingly light on the performance impact.
Performance Impact: Up to 7% between Low and Highest
Drag the bar to compare Shadow Quality on Low and Highest.
Depth of Field
In Destiny 2, this only slightly impacts larger open spaces, with little to no visible difference otherwise.
Performance Impact: Up to 4% between Off and Highest
Detail Distance
I'm including the character, foliage, and environment detail distance settings all together here. By themselves, they have nearly no impact on the quality until you come to larger open spaces. Even then, it's hard to pick out differences. You can see some slight detail changes in the environment on distance objects, yet it's very subtle. Depending on your preference, you could probably set this to Low to improve your frame rate.
Performance Impact: Up to 6% between Low and High
Drag the bar to compare Detail Distance on Low and High.
Light Shafts
This is a standalone lighting tweak which slightly changes how light shafts interact with the world. Light shafts have a little bit more precise sources for reflections (see the top entrance in the comparison) and in how they light other objects. It's a nice, subtle lighting effect for very little performance cost, so leave on High if you can afford it!
Performance Impact: Up to 4% between Medium and High
Drag the bar to compare Light Shafts on Medium and High.