Before getting into a list of settings and toggles, I’ll just say what actually made the most significant change for me. Some reviewers noted that turning Depth of Field mode off entirely helped improve their fps, but it made no difference for me. I did toggle the Depth of Field quality to low, though, and got a pretty hefty boost from 13 fps to 30 fps without any noticeable change in the actual visual quality.
I also turned motion blur off and global illumination quality off had a small fps boost for my trouble. Motion blur adds very little to the experience, and while global illumination theoretically governs the general lighting quality, but I noticed barely any change between high, medium, and low settings. TL;DR, you’re not missing anything by dropping it to low.
A few other oddities worth noting involve the texture and visual quality options. You’d think high anti-aliasing might drop performance a little, but it didn’t. It smoothes out textures up close, so if you’re wanting to zoom in and follow your city at street level, try toggling it to high and see what happens.
The shadow, water, and terrain quality options have no noticeable effect, and neither did texture quality or level of detail. I turned both to high and still had a fairly stable 30-35 fps with random jumps to 50 fps or slightly higher for a bit.
