Fallout 4 Mod Makes The Textures Worse So The Game Runs Better

It’s no secret that Bethesda games at launch are, shall we say, not as optimised as they could be. We’re not talking ArmA 3 levels of FPS drops, or X: Rebirth-esque performance. But some patches are definitely in order.

Fortunately, there are modders out there who are trying to help. And that’s what the Texture Optimisation Project tries to do. The plan: make Fallout 4 run faster, by making the textures just a tiny bit, uh, worse.

According to the NexusMods description, the basic textures in Fallout 4 are massive. 2048×2048 for the ground, 1024×1024 for plants and so on, which is beyond what most rigs are capable of when you extend that fidelity over the entirety of the apocalyptic wasteland.

“Therefore what I have done and am doing is trying to fix that problem and retain the vanilla art style as best I can, while reducing the texture size, and using proper compression on textures that shouldn’t be in dxt5 format for the actual graphical return you get,” modder torcher wrote.

By utilising this method, the mod massively helps the framerate stuttering and performance on low-end computers.

To install, you’ll need to enable mods first by editing the Fallout4.ini file:

Go to DocumentsMy GamesFallout 4
In your Fallout 4.ini, edit the following line:
sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS
to
sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS, TEXTURES, MUSIC, SOUND, INTERFACE, MESHES, PROGRAMS, MATERIALS, LODSETTINGS, VIS, MISC, SCRIPTS, SHADERFX
In your Fallout4Prefs.ini, add the following line under [Launcher]:
bEnableFileSelection=1

And then you’ll need to install the Texture Optimisation Project mod through your preferred means. There are instructions on the mod page if you need how to do that (although automated solutions like Nexus Mod Manager exist too).

This might be a super helpful mod for people running the game on graphics cards with a low amount of VRAM, or those unhappy with Fallout 4’s performance on AMD cards. If you are looking to improve the game’s performance on either card, incidentally, turning off god rays should help a little. You can also use Bilago’s configuration tool, which will give you a lot more flexibility than the in-game options.


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