Cyberpunk 2077: All graphics options of the PC version in detail

CD Projekt Red gives Cyberpunk 2077 a whole range of setting options to optimize the look and frame rate. We'll tell you which ones they are.

Cyberpunk 2077 is arguably the most anticipated game of the year in many ways. As the heir to the successful Witcher series, it should be one of the best role-playing games ever. And visually it should also raise the bar significantly.

The system requirements for Cyberpunk 2077 in Full-HD has already announced CD Projekt Red to higher resolutions and the requirements for Raytracing there is as yet no information.

In order to keep the balance between frame rate and graphics quality on your graphics card, Cyberpunk 2077 generally offers some graphics options.

There are six different presets alone plus a slot for the mandatory user-defined settings. The other setting options:

Simple graphics settings

Here you can adjust the field of view according to your preferences. There are also simple on-off switches for film grain, chromatic aberration, depth of field and lens flares. There are three options for motion blur.

Field of view	freely selectable	Angle of view or image section that you can see.
Film grain	On or off	Adds a coarse grain to the image that is supposed to create a cinematic impression.
Chromatic aberration	On or off	Image errors that normally only occur with optical lenses. This creates a cinematic effect in games.
Depth of field	On or off	Not only close objects are shown in focus, but also further away. The depth of field generally refers to the extent of the in-focus area in an image.
Lens flares	On or off	Reflections of a light source in the lenses.
Motion blur	three stages	Blurring caused by movement in images, for example.

Advanced graphics settings

In addition to setting options for anisotropy, ambient obscuration, mirror quality and level of detail, the variety of options for shadows stands out. Here you can choose between three quality levels (low, medium, high) for local shadow mesh quality, local shadow quality, range and resolution of cascaded shadows. There are also two options for distant shadows.

You also have options for Volumetric Fog and Volumetric Cloud Quality. For the quality of the Screen Space Reflections you can choose from six levels, the highest is called Psycho.

Contact shadow	On or off	Improves the impression of depth. Shadows should be calculated or estimated more precisely than with other shadow algorithms.
Improved face lighting geometry	On or off	More precise lighting or shading of faces.
Anisotropy	four levels	With anisotropic filtering, the impression of sharpness is obtained from distant textures.
Local shadow mesh quality	three stages	Degree of detail of the lattice structure of local shadows.
Local shadow quality	four levels	General quality of shadows close to the viewer.
Cascaded Shadows - Range	three stages	Range setting for cascaded shadows. These should help to reduce perspective aliasing in shadows close to the viewer.
Cascaded shadows - dissolution	three stages	Resolution of the above shadows.
Distant shadows - resolution	two steps	Quality of distant shadows.
Volumetric fog - resolution	four levels	Dissolution of the vividly (three-dimensional) represented nebula.
Volumetric cloud quality	four levels	Quality of three-dimensional represented clouds.
Maximum dynamic decals	four levels	Representation of blood splatters or bullet holes, for example, that are only subsequently (dynamically) applied to textures.
Quality of the Screen Space Reflections	six levels	Reflections that are generated by objects within the cone of vision (screen content).
Volume scatter	three stages	Simulation of reflections from partially translucent bodies.
Ambient occlusion	four levels	Tries to simulate shading that is as realistic as possible, depending on the illuminance.
Color precision	two steps	Accuracy of the displayed colors according to the color space. (At the moment this is only a general definition and the setting in the game may differ.)
Mirror quality	three stages	Quality of reflections that are not represented by Screen Space Reflections.
Level of Detail (LOD)	three stages	Determines how high the level of detail of objects at different distances from the game character is

 

Ray tracing

Ray tracing can also be customized. In addition to the option of completely deactivating the real-time ray calculation, you can switch reflections and shadows on or off separately.

You can choose between four quality levels for the lighting (low, medium, high, psycho).

Ray tracing	On or off	Ray tracing is used to precisely calculate light rays and their interaction with objects in virtual space.
Ray tracing reflections	On or off	Correctly calculated reflections, even from objects that are not within the cone of vision.
Ray tracing and shadows	On or off	Shadows are calculated precisely, as is the so-called surrounding obstruction.
Ray tracing and lighting	four levels	Quality or accuracy of the diffuse lighting.

 

Dynamic resolution

Cyberpunk 2077 also offers support for Nvidia's AI upscaler DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). DLSS can be used with or without ray tracing. You can choose from a total of six modes - the spectrum ranges from ultra quality to ultra performance.

Instead of DLSS, you can also use dynamic resolution scaling, in which the game adapts the resolution to the load and thus ensures stable frame rates.

DLSS	six levels	AI-based technology that supplements missing image information. For this purpose, an AI algorithm is trained on extremely high-resolution images in order to then anticipate and re-insert image information that is not displayed at low resolutions when upscaling.
Dynamic scaling of the resolution	On or off	Adjusts the rendering resolution depending on the load in order to keep the frame rate at a stable level.

 

HDR

The setting options for HDR (High Dynamic Range) are also particularly interesting - provided you have a monitor that supports this technology.

HDR ensures visibly better contrasts and differences in brightness, which leads to a significantly better image quality, especially in a game with intensive lighting, such as Cyberpunk 2077. Basically you can choose an HDR mode (for example HDR10) in the video settings, which you can then refine in the HDR menu.

The maximum brightness can be set here, as can the basic brightness for the user interface. You can also determine the center of the curve of the so-called tone mapping (contrast range of an HDR image).

Maximum brightness	freely selectable	Defines the maximum output of the brightness (in nits, candela per m²).
Paper white	freely selectable	Defines the basic brightness of the user interface (in nits).
Tone mapping (middle)	several stages	Tone mapping makes it possible to convert the dynamic range of a 12-bit image, for example, so that it can be displayed on a 10-bit screen (general explanation).