When it comes to playing Rainbow Six Siege, it pays to be able to see what you really need to see. You should be able to detect the smallest signs of movement or spot things that could give you information on the enemy or your objective. It’s also important to make sure that your game is optimized so that you get a smooth performance, especially when it comes to the graphics. This is why we’re taking a look at R6S Best Settings for Visibility and FPS.
R6S Best Settings for Visibility and FPS – The Rundown
Tweaking R6S’ settings can be a tedious task, so here’s a quick list of things that you should remember when optimizing your game’s visibility and FPS.
- As with any game, having a setup that meets or exceeds the game’s recommended system requirements is a must!
How are these settings going to affect your gameplay? To understand the answers, you need to understand the importance of FPS and visibility.
FPS – More Than Just Numbers
For many gamers, FPS or frames per second is just something that you need to get plenty of; the higher, the better. However, FPS has a huge impact on how you play. For starters, a high FPS allows you to spot small or fast movements that would otherwise have trouble seeing if the FPS is too low. Furthermore, having a high FPS reduces input lag, which adds a delay before your inputs are recognized by the game. A low input lag can be the difference between winning and losing firefights, especially in a game like Rainbow Six Siege.
The rule of thumb is that most settings can let you get more FPS at the cost of visual clarity. Fortunately, Rainbow Six Siege is a visually impressive game even when playing at medium or low settings. It’s also important to note that no matter how high your FPS can go, it can only display as many frames as your monitor’s refresh rate.
Visibility
Visibility refers to how much useful visual information that you can see when playing the game. You may think that it’s all about making things look good, but that’s not always the case. A better way to understand visibility is to ask yourself certain questions while playing:
- Is it easy to spot targets from certain distances?
- Can you see movement even through small viewing areas?
- How much does an object blend in or stand out in a particular view?
A high FPS plays an essential role in improving visibility, but certain settings that give you more frames can have a negative effect on it. For example, while minimizing details adds FPS, it might keep you from spotting targets from far away because they are not rendered well enough. R6S Best Settings for Visibility and FPS involves a careful balance between visual clarity and smooth frame rates.
Display Settings
Rainbow Six Siege has its visual options split between two sections: Display Settings and Graphics Settings. The first thing we’ll check out are the options under Display Settings.
Resolution – Resolution refers to how many pixels you can see at a given time. Graphics at higher resolution can display more detail and offer better visibility. Fortunately, you can safely set this option to match your monitor’s native resolution. You may also pick a lower resolution if you’re desperate for more FPS, but it’s usually considered a last resort.
Vsync – This option forces your computer to match its FPS to your monitor’s refresh rate. For example, if you’re using a 120Hz monitor, you will only go as high as 120 FPS. This removes “screen tearing” which helps improve visibility, but it limits your FPS and also creates input lag. You also have to remember that Vsync can cause performance drops if your normal FPS is lower than the monitor’s frequency.
FOV – Also known as “Field of View”, this setting allows you to adjust how much you can see when playing. Lower FOV values improve focused visibility (near your crosshair) by presenting bigger targets. On the other hand, higher FOV values improve your peripheral vision although targets will appear smaller. Common settings are 60 (focused), 75 (balanced), and 90 (wide view), although we suggest making adjustments based on your personal preferences.
There are other options under display settings, but we believe that those ones are better left in their default settings.
Graphics Settings
Let’s move to the second section of the options menu: the Graphics Settings. This part has more things for us to tweak, so let’s check out how each option can affect FPS and visibility.
Texture Quality – This option dictates the size of the textures that the game uses. Higher texture means better fidelity. This option can be set to high with barely any effect on your FPS. However, this setting is very dependent on your GPU’s VRAM. If you have a 2GB card or less, keep this option set to medium or low.
Texture Filtering – This option helps smooth out jagged lines often seen in slanted or curved surfaces. The higher the setting is, the less blurry things will look like when viewed from a distance. In most cases, you can set this option to Anisotropic 16X without any noticeable hit on your FPS.
LOD – Short for “Level of Detail”, this setting is quite a misnomer. Instead of adding or removing details on an object, it actually sets the distance required before the game starts scaling the object down. You need to set this option as high as possible so you can still clearly see targets that are farther away from you. While high LOD settings tend to bring down FPS by a significant margin, we still suggest going with at least medium so you don’t lose out on visibility.
Shading Quality – This one sets how pretty or detailed the lighting and particles will look like. This doesn’t add much to visibility, but it doesn’t affect FPS that much. It’s safe to keep this option set to high.
Shadow Quality – Tweaking this option lets you specify how detailed or crisp shadows will look in the game. This is especially important when it comes to visibility since a shadow can indicate the presence of an enemy. Be warned that higher settings tend to take up more resources, potentially dropping your FPS by a wide margin. We recommend at least setting it to medium for a balance between FPS and visibility. You also have to remember that while you can see enemies hiding in dark spots easier with shadows off, it also their shadow making them less visible when they’re on the move.
Reflection Quality – Maps in Rainbow Six Siege have plenty of wet or shiny surfaces, and this setting controls how pretty (or bland) those reflections will look. Based on our experience, setting it to Low doesn’t really make it that different compared to High, but it does help you get more FPS out of the game.
Ambient Occlusion – This option affects the quality of shading on objects, making those more (or less) realistic. We recommend keeping it off unless you really want some eye candy because it also has a big effect on your FPS.
Lens Effects – Adds bloom and lens flare to the game. If turned on, this option adds particles to explosions and even has the benefit of making certain gadgets more visible. The option doesn’t affect FPS that much, but the extra particles could hamper your visibility so it’s better to have it turned off. However, it does add the benefit of making it easier to spot certain gadgets such as Valkyrie’s Black Eye cameras and other CCTVs that may be looking at you.
Zoom-in Depth of field – This option blurs out the gun when aiming down the sights. While this is supposed to make the game more realistic, it’s just distracting and should never be turned on.
Anti-Aliasing – This option is designed to cut down the “jagged” look that often shows up on diagonal or curved lines. Although getting rid of this option can be a good thing, it comes with a couple of drawbacks. While this has many possible settings, we’ll narrow it down to “Off”, and “T-AA”. Having the feature off increases FPS at the cost of some jagged lines. T-AA helps smooth out these jagged lines, although it also tends to make objects look blurry over the distance. Because we’re looking for R6S best settings for visibility and FPS, we recommend leaving it off as many pros do.
R6S Best Settings for Visibility and FPS – Conclusion
That wraps up our article on R6S best settings for visibility and FPS! We hope this has helped you optimize your game’s settings to help you become competitive. If you want to know more about how to improve your gaming skills, check out our step-by-step guide by clicking here!
