Dawntrail Graphics Update - Eye Strain

[Kefzka]

I’m running:

Ryzen 5 3600
RTX 3060 (12 gb ddr6 vram)
32 gb ddr4 3200mhz

I have my settings currently set to high desktop. I can run at max but prefer the steadier frame rate of high. DLSS should not be engaging because I never go below 60 fps. However it is almost always running but seems to shut off during conversations with text bubbles. The blurring happens at a specific draw distance. Everything within a few ilms is sharp and clear. This distance is even shorter if I begin moving.

If I turn to FSR and fiddle with the settings I can alleviate the majority of the blur but the textures become way too sharp, shiny, and the light reflecting washes out a lot of the environment especially in the alpaca quest area when the sun is shining.

It all feels like it’s issues that are caused by older upscaling techniques.

[CidHeiral]

Hello! I experienced this issue as well, which was quite bizarre as someone with typically zero eye strain issues. After much fiddling with the settings I pinpointed exactly what the problem is, at least for me. Maybe it can help someone else too.

The main culprit is TSCMAA, the new anti-aliasing solution. TSCMAA blurs the screen to hide the jagged edges of the models and TSCMAA + Camera Jitter blurs it even more in the distance. When you are motionless I think it looks more or less fine, however the issue is that the second you move at all, the image is blurred twice as much.

Here are some screenshots of what I'm talking about. This is with TSCMAA + Camera Jitter and FSR 100. Right click -> Open image in new tab for the full view.

Here I am standing completely still. Take note of the trees on the left. They look fairly sharp, right?



This is what happens the nanosecond you start moving. The entire image gets blurrier for as long as you move and becomes sharp again as soon as you stop. This is especially noticeable on trees, grass, and other foliage, but you can also clearly see the difference on the little light posts and the background buildings, etc.




Here are some random people nearby while I'm not moving.



And here they are as soon as I take a step.




So the root cause of the eye strain, at least for me, was my eyes constantly trying to focus between the image being not blurry, blurry, not blurry, blurry, and so on every time I move an inch over the course of many hours. This would only be compounded by using DLSS which makes the image even blurrier.

So most importantly, what can we do to fix it? There are a few options, none of which are great.

1. Change your AA setting to FXAA or turn it off completely. This option has the obvious downside of harsh jaggies on everything.

2. Change your upscaling option to FSR and set the resolution to 99. FSR has built in image sharpening, but when set to 100 this is disabled. If you set it to 99 the sharpening kicks in and lessens the motion blur issue, but honestly not by a ton. For me it went from unbearable to somewhat tolerable. The downside to this solution is the image looks overly sharpened, at least to my eyes. Alternatively, you could try using the sharpening built into something else like the GeForce Experience app.

3. In many games it is possible to force DLSS to use a newer version and DLAA. That would involve altering the game files and would be against ToS, so I'm not going to elaborate further here.

Currently I'm using option #2, but I don't like how overly sharp everything looks and it only helps somewhat. I've never seen an AA solution in any other game have this weird on/off blur issue when moving any amount so hopefully it's something the devs can address, but who knows. I certainly hope so because this issue has made it very difficult to enjoy this expansion so far. At any rate, I hope what I've discovered can help someone in the meantime!


tl;dr: Your eyes might be strained because the image is constantly alternating between being blurry and not blurry any time you move. Change the Anti-aliasing to FXAA/OFF or set FSR to 99 resolution to enable image sharpening.

[Wind-Krysvein]

But so, just to be clear, you don't have all of this on PS4? (or other consoles?)

If so then yeah, that will make it harder to figure out I guess...

Indeed, the PS4 has practically none of those settings. It's almost comical how few options it has. I'd take a picture, if it didn't require me to log in and get a headache.

[zipkin]

I wanted to start off by saying I appreciate the folks who offered advice on ways to try easing the eye strain, it helped to have a better idea of where to begin with trying to tweak my settings. Unfortunately, even though adjusting things within the game and in my laptop's display seems to help a little bit with some elements, I STILL cannot play for more than 20ish minutes without pain. I do not have vision problems myself, I have never had eye strain issues with a game (even with some unwisely exorbitant screentime) before, and I wasn't having any in this one prior to the graphics update. Trying to heal through a low level dungeon in FFXIV this morning had me nearly in tears it hurt so much. I was admittedly unhappy with a lot of the visual/design changes shown in the Benchmark, but it never occurred to me that the update would LITERALLY hurt. I hope some adjustments will be offered to fix this for all of us suffering, an optional 'downgrade' to graphics that aren't painful to look at would be so much better than the current situation. I don't think I can play with the graphics as they are, and it seems like I'm not the only person stuck feeling that way.

[Kefzka]

I wanted to start off by saying I appreciate the folks who offered advice on ways to try easing the eye strain, it helped to have a better idea of where to begin with trying to tweak my settings. Unfortunately, even though adjusting things within the game and in my laptop's display seems to help a little bit with some elements, I STILL cannot play for more than 20ish minutes without pain. I do not have vision problems myself, I have never had eye strain issues with a game (even with some unwisely exorbitant screentime) before, and I wasn't having any in this one prior to the graphics update. Trying to heal through a low level dungeon in FFXIV this morning had me nearly in tears it hurt so much. I was admittedly unhappy with a lot of the visual/design changes shown in the Benchmark, but it never occurred to me that the update would LITERALLY hurt. I hope some adjustments will be offered to fix this for all of us suffering, an optional 'downgrade' to graphics that aren't painful to look at would be so much better than the current situation. I don't think I can play with the graphics as they are, and it seems like I'm not the only person stuck feeling that way.

That’s a super bummer. I hope for your sake that this is only a temporary issue. Personally I believe if they gave us more options for some of these graphic choices like Bloom, you would be in a much better position. It’s odd to lock us in to settings like bloom but let me toggle the grass interaction dynamic. I assume its going to be engine related design choices but I don’t develop games so wtf do I know lol.

[Nitelancer]

If they don't fix the issue with blurring, then I am quitting for good because the game will be unplayable for me.

[Anneliese_Lev]

So the root cause of the eye strain, at least for me, was my eyes constantly trying to focus between the image being not blurry, blurry, not blurry, blurry, and so on every time I move an inch over the course of many hours. This would only be compounded by using DLSS which makes the image even blurrier.

So most importantly, what can we do to fix it? There are a few options, none of which are great.

1. Change your AA setting to FXAA or turn it off completely. This option has the obvious downside of harsh jaggies on everything.

2. Change your upscaling option to FSR and set the resolution to 99. FSR has built in image sharpening, but when set to 100 this is disabled. If you set it to 99 the sharpening kicks in and lessens the motion blur issue, but honestly not by a ton. For me it went from unbearable to somewhat tolerable. The downside to this solution is the image looks overly sharpened, at least to my eyes. Alternatively, you could try using the sharpening built into something else like the GeForce Experience app.

3. In many games it is possible to force DLSS to use a newer version and DLAA. That would involve altering the game files and would be against ToS, so I'm not going to elaborate further here.

Currently I'm using option #2, but I don't like how overly sharp everything looks and it only helps somewhat. I've never seen an AA solution in any other game have this weird on/off blur issue when moving any amount so hopefully it's something the devs can address, but who knows. I certainly hope so because this issue has made it very difficult to enjoy this expansion so far. At any rate, I hope what I've discovered can help someone in the meantime!


tl;dr: Your eyes might be strained because the image is constantly alternating between being blurry and not blurry any time you move. Turn off AA or set FSR to 99 resolution to enable image sharpening.

I started noticing this problem a couple of months ago, when I started playing FF14 (Endwalker), and my own conclusion somewhat coincides with your own. But my main suspect was having a monitor that only goes at 60Hz. Even if I owned this monitor for many years, but I also know that CRT monitors were much better for my sight, since moving images were not blurry at all (it reached 85Hz)

(Well, I'm sure that sometimes I had eye strain very sparsely years ago with this monitor, so I always wanted to try something similar that could reach 85 or 100hz (my GPU can't go faster at high quality))

[Wind-Krysvein]

Unfortunately, even though adjusting things within the game and in my laptop's display seems to help a little bit with some elements, I STILL cannot play for more than 20ish minutes without pain. I do not have vision problems myself, I have never had eye strain issues with a game (even with some unwisely exorbitant screentime) before, and I wasn't having any in this one prior to the graphics update. Trying to heal through a low level dungeon in FFXIV this morning had me nearly in tears it hurt so much. I was admittedly unhappy with a lot of the visual/design changes shown in the Benchmark, but it never occurred to me that the update would LITERALLY hurt. I hope some adjustments will be offered to fix this for all of us suffering, an optional 'downgrade' to graphics that aren't painful to look at would be so much better than the current situation. I don't think I can play with the graphics as they are, and it seems like I'm not the only person stuck feeling that way.

You are not alone. From the moment I boot up the game, my eyes almost immediately start feeling tired and like someone threw a bunch of sand at them. In roughly 5-10 minutes, my forehead and temples start burning and, before I know it, there's dull pain behind the eyes. Considering I was able to play this game for ridiculous amounts of time each day without so much as getting teary-eyed, it's clear that there's something very wrong with this graphics update.

If they don't fix the issue with blurring, then I am quitting for good because the game will be unplayable for me.

Honestly? I have already kind of accepted that the devs probably won't do anything about this and that we simply have to move on from this game, but even so I refuse to go down without a fight. If there's even the slightest possibility that we can get through to them, we need to keep trying. Kinda corny, sure, but it's still friggen true.

[Toontown]

Honestly? I have already kind of accepted that the devs probably won't do anything about this and that we simply have to move on from this game, but even so I refuse to go down without a fight. If there's even the slightest possibility that we can get through to them, we need to keep trying.

them never fixing it is my biggest fear with the eye strain problem some of us are having. i wish i could say it's just because of certain eye conditions (i have strabismus for example, but that's what prism glasses are for... they aren't helping at all with this update, but i admit i already am prone to eye strain i guess) but many people who have never had any vision problems are having unbearable eye strain from the graphical update.
i hope that manually altering the graphics to some really specific setting to take away the blurring is enough but i don't think it will be for everyone, including myself. out of all the reasons i'd quit this game i didn't want it to be over something like this. i wonder if JP is having similar complaints of eye strain? if people are complaining on both sides maybe they'll do something about it?

[4clubbedace]

Indeed, the PS4 has practically none of those settings. It's almost comical how few options it has. I'd take a picture, if it didn't require me to log in and get a headache.

they would sooner cut ps4 support than allow a second texturing pack they have to balance light bounces aorund