Cvars and Hotkeys

All of the Look and Optimization Cvars for Unreal Engine's Volumetrics; Unreal Engine's Hotkeys

Scalability

The following cvars are from the High scalability settings. Some of the default values may be different depending on which scalability setting you have it set to.

Visuals and Performance

One thing that isn't a cvar, but has an impact on looks/performance is the Volumetric Fog View Distance setting on the Exponential Height Fog Actor. The lower the number, the more dense the fog is, and it saves a little on performance. The higher the number, the less dense the fog, and the performance can be impacted. The impact varies from machine to machine.

Console Variables (Cvars)

To enter in a cvar, hit the ~ key on your keyboard.

  1. r.VolumetricFog.GridPixelSize — default : 16
    • What it is — XY size of a cell in the voxel grid, in pixels.
    • What it does — The smaller the number, the better the resolution of the volumetrics on the lights, but has a negative impact on performance. The bigger the number, the volumetrics won't look as good, but helps improve performance.
    • Performance Imapct — Medium
  2. r.VolumetricFog.GridSizeZ — default : 64
    • What it is — How many Volumetric Fog cells to use in z (I assume it means how many cells in the z-direction).
    • What it does — The higher the number, the more dense the volumetrics will be, but has a significant impact on performance. The lower the number, the less dense the volumetrics will be, but helps improve performance.
    • Performance Impact — High
      • Caution — Going below 8 can have a huge impact on your PC, depending on your hardware.
  3. r.VolumetricFog.LightSoftFading — default : 0
    • What it is — Enabled when >0, controls the soft fading of spot and rect light edges in order to make them appear smoother, resulting in less flickering. A value of 1 is a good starting point and it means that fading will be applied over the size of 1 froxel on the screen.
    • What it does — Normally set to 0, this setting does what is says, it adds a slight feathering fade to the edges of spotlights and rectlights. This may be necessary to adjust if you notice jagged edges on your rect/spotlights. You should be able to notice a difference at 1 or 2, but you can go much higher if needed. Note: It will dim your volumetrics. Has minimal or no impact on performance.
    • Performance Impact — Low or None

Hotkeys

  1. While having an element or actor selected in the Outliner, hitting F navigates to it in the level.
  2. While having an element or actor selected in the Outliner, hitting Ctrl+B navigates to it in the Content Browser.