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 setting in question down to the lowest while leaving all others at maximum.
Graphics Quality Presets
Along with a number of general modes, Final Fantasy XIV also comes with an auto-detect feature which is pretty accurate to what people's PCs can handle. 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 Maximum to Standard (laptop) preset results in a 30-45% increase in average frame rates, and has a moderate loss in overall in-game visual quality.
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.
Drag the bar to compare Quality on Standard and Maximum.
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
The biggest standalone performance change comes from the engine's ambient occlusion setting. When enabled, this 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 cobblestones in the foreground of the comparison image.
Performance Impact: ~15% between Off and HBAO+
Drag the bar to compare SSAO off and on HBAO+.
Shadow Quality
One of the outright best performance jumps outside of tweaking your resolution comes from shadow quality and displaying shadows on yourself and other NPCs. This encompasses a few sub-settings: Shadow Resolution (high, normal, low); Shadow Cascading (best, normal, off); Shadow Softening (strong, weak); and Use Low-Detail Models on Shadows (on/off).
Performance Impact: ~5-10% between Off and High
Drag the bar to compare Shadow Quality at Low and High.
Transparent Lighting Quality
This mainly adjusts the lighting quality from in-game spells, which can have a larger impact in big group activities.
Performance Impact: ~3-5% between Normal and High
Grass Quality
Although this is generally a smaller detail, the grass quality setting can have an obvious effect on the appearance of certain areas within the game.
Performance Impact: ~3-5% between Off and High
Drag the bar to compare Grass Quality Off and High.
Texture Filtering
With the general improvements to texture quality in the game, even on the lower settings this has a limited impact by itself. However it's benefit to improving frames if you drop it down in quality increases as your gameplay resolution increases. So worth keeping in mind for high resolution builds.
Performance Impact: ~3% between Bilinear and Anisotropic (x16)
Background Tessellation
This impacts the visuals of the in-game background. Depending on your other settings, this can have a larger impact but by itself isn't a huge performance drain.
Performance Impact: ~3% between Standard and High
Drag the bar to compare Background Tessellation on Low and High.
Real-time Reflections
This impacts reflections on water and other surfaces to both the general weather and in-game combat effects. Real-time reflections can have a varied impact depending on the part of the world you're in.
Performance Impact: ~2% between Off and Maximum
Glare
This provides a more natural lighting effect from in-game light. There are two settings at work for Glare: One is glare from the main light source (low or off) and the other is for how the light refracts and reflects off surfaces (standard or off). Individually, their impact isn't great, but combined they can have a slightly larger impact.
Performance Impact: ~1% for each option
Drag the bar to compare Glare set to Off and Normal/Standard.
Water Tessellation
This impacts the overall look to the water, specifically in its general flow and wave appearance. It's a feature specific to DirectX 11, but by itself doesn't have a huge performance impact.
Performance Impact: 2% between Standard and High
Drag the bar to compare Water Tessellation set to Standard and High.
Occlusion Culling, Wet Surface Effects and LOD on Distant Objects
Here you will find a few settings that by themselves aren't hugely impacting, but add on to other bigger settings elsewhere. They do still have impacts on graphics and loading times. These settings are: Enable Wet Surface Effects; Occlusion Culling (disables endering of objects when not visible; and LOD (using low-detail models on distant objects).
Performance Impact: Negligible ~1% for all of them combined. However, scenes can load a little faster.