Alan Wake 2: Best Ray Tracing Settings - Digital Foundry Optimised

Optimised RT settings, chosen for RTX 3080 and RTX 4070:

Direct Lighting: On
Ray Reconstruction: On
Indirect Lighting: Low (4070) or Off (3080)
Transparency: Low (4070) or Off (3080)
Frame Generation: On (4070)

For general optimised settings (in addition to the above or without RT altogether):

Post-Processing: Low
Texture Resolution: Medium or Higher
Texture Filtering: High
Volumetric Lighting: Low
Volumetric Spotlight Quality: Low
Global Illumination Quality: Medium
Shadow Resolution: Low (or High if you can afford it)
Shadow Filtering: Medium
SSAO: On
Global Reflections: Low (or High if you can afford it)
Screen-Space Reflections: Low (or High if you can afford it)
Fog Quality: Medium
Terrain Quality: Medium
Far Object Detail (LOD): Medium
Scattered Object Density: Medium

[wizzenberry]

remedy are something else, im playing on ps5 and i know its on low settings but god dayum its still beautiful. im so glad they left older tech in the dust so they could push more on the screen its magic

[TracyEvansProductions]

Great video, thanks! I'm more into playing games than fine-tuning them, so your optimized settings are a big help. Looking forward to more content like this.

[brendanlee]

Hey guys, first of all I literally watch all your videos even with multiple children and full time shift worker I appreciate all of your hard graft and love you channels. Which is why I say this... At Low transparency with Low Path tracing causes artifacting in the water at certain angles and distances which can be very distracting like SSR. Only fix is High Transparency setting or disabling path tracing.
I'm currently rocking a 4070ti with a 5900x on a X370 board with upto date drivers* 17.10.23* so could be an issue my end but useful to know. High transparency only affects my FPS anywhere from 1-4fps

[SurrealLeaf]

One thing I have to also remind amid all this, is that I still can't believe the game only cost 49.99 on PC instead of freaking 69.99. And it's not even short game. And it's graphically better than most.

[HellLordBR]

thank you for this! Saves a lot of time, gonna enjoy this beauty on my 4070ti.

[phantmdummy]

At first I was like "this channel is a good idea".

Now I'm like "damn I keep clicking thinking I'm getting a new video, and it's just a segment of the pod I already watched/listened to."

[sundaekick]

I have glitters everywhere with SSR on, its like someone had a party on the game. With transparency on, someone glued glitters on the glass.

[SDGRTX]

Playing Alan Wake 2 with all the Ray Tracing options on with HDR enabled on a QD-OLED tv/monitor. Really is the next step of gaming fidelity. Stunning picture

[HappyDude]

Wow that was clear to see. Thank you I want a new gpu because my 1080ti does not cut it anymore with these new titles on 4k but even with a 4090 you can not turn everything to the max with RT it will struggle to get 60 fps .... and thats a very expensive card ... thats not normal

[dadsteps]

I have a 4070ti and use the overdrive ray tracing settings on, everything maxed out including path tracing and at 1440p with frame gen am able to achieve around 90fps. Looks absolutely incredible

[kuruptzZz]

On my i7-13700 and RTX 4080 system, using frame gen I got this running absolutely silky smooth at 1440p with no upscaling needed, just DLAA which gets rid of the blurriness present in even DLSS Quality. Path tracing on high and ray reconstruction on. And the game seems to have some built-in input delay correction, because I barely feel any. I wouldn't recommend frame gen for every game, but here it is done very well

[GamingWithDrew]

The look on Alex's face in this thumbnail kills me for some reason. I can't stop laughing at it. I have no idea *why* though.

[uncleren]

My findings with a 5600x, 3080, 32gb @3200mhz cl14. The high fps shown here is definitely partly due to the CPU, as I don't get nearly as high fps with a 5600x. At 1440p Balanced with the optimized RT settings I average 40-45 fps in the forest sections. The alan wake sections perform much better at 60+ consistently. The only way to get ~60fps across the board is to disable path tracing, but actually I find the overall quality of objects to be better looking without path tracing. PT adds a weird smudged look to all objects. Overall I'd say its best to keep PT on while playing as Alan Wake since theres a lot more reflections in those sections and the performance is still good, and disable it for the Saga sections since theres little reflections and you get a big bump in fps.

[Dornpunzel]

Excuse me but where are the tables for optimized settings?
Like for shadows etc?

[GrandHighGamer]

Playing on a 3070 even with DLSS stuck down at performance at 1080p there's just way too many heavy scenes with Saga (particularly when under twilight lighting) that see settings plummet down to 31 fps. Alan's sections run fine though. Benchmarking this game really heavily depends on the scene, with the early game not really being the heaviest by far, despite the amount of foliage.

[bubmario]

These guides and my own tests are helping me enjoy a mid-40fps experience in Alan Wake 2 with most of the modern bells and whistles and it is incredibly good looking. Amazing stuff.

[Whirpoolman]

I have a 3080, and in no way im getting 112 fps on balanced. I was only able to finish the game with playable fps (near 60) in performance mode, and even then, i was getting a bit choppy in some areas

[mauropatriota]

There is a annoying issue when you open a map or go to the mental thing. I have a 5800x3d + 4080 and going well at 60 fps with fg + dlss balanced but after open a map or the other thing fps drops do 20, 30 fps. Until now remedy cannot fix this. What a shame

[harissonbond]

Post processing is greyed out for me at High which means I can't set it to low.
Indirect Lighting is also greyed out for me at Low which means I can't set it to off.
I followed everything else on the recommend settings on my 3089 10gb and only getting 41 fos ast the forest.
Any help?

[Cheatman]

Control has the same mouse issue with those weird FPS numbers