Unreal Engine 5 Optimization - RTX Ray-Tracing and DLSS Pacing

**PLEASE READ THE FULL DESCRIPTION BELOW FOR DETAILED HARDWARE INFO, UPDATE PROTECTION INSTRUCTIONS, AND PERFORMANCE RULES.**

# RTX Ray-Tracing and DLSS Pacing Tweaks

⚠️ NO OTHER MODS REQUIRED. ⚠️

This is a pure vanilla engine configuration profile. It is 100% plug-and-play and does NOT require UE4SS, script loaders, or any third-party background programs to function.

⚠️ PERFORMANCE WARNING: HARDWARE RAY-TRACING ACTIVE. ⚠️

This configuration explicitly forces hardware-accelerated Unreal Engine 5 Lumen Ray-Tracing natively under the hood. If you are playing on an older budget card (under an RTX 3060 / 4060) or a non-RT graphics card, this WILL heavily tank your FPS.

*How to turn it off:* If your frame rate drops too low, open the Engine.ini file in Notepad and change these two values to **0**:

r.Lumen.Reflections.HardwareRayTracing=0

r.Lumen.Radiosity.HardwareRayTracing=0

⚠️ CPU THREAD WARNING: HIGH MULTIPLIER DEFAULT ACTIVE. ⚠️ 

The file defaults to r.XGEControllerWorkerCountMultiplier=2.0, which is optimized to max out performance on modern 8+ core processors. If you are running an older 4-core or 6-core CPU, this default setup can overwhelm your system and cause stuttering loops! 

*How to fix it:* Open the Engine.ini file in Notepad, find this line under your performance settings, and lower it to **1.5**:

r.XGEControllerWorkerCountMultiplier=1.5

🛡️ GAME UPDATE PROTECTION NOTICE: 🛡️

Checking "Read-only" locks this file permanently. It completely shields your custom configuration from being overwritten or wiped out when Steam downloads game patches or updates Subnautica 2, making this mod entirely update-safe.

*How to do it quickly:* Right-click your pasted Engine.ini file, select 'Properties' at the bottom, check the 'Read-only' box at the very bottom of the General tab, and hit Apply!

🌊 OPTIONAL: HOW TO REMOVE THE UNDERWATER MUDDY BLUE HAZE 🌊

If you specifically want to strip away the game's heavy, artificial blue underwater filters to achieve a raw, crystal-clear look where you can see straight through the ocean column, manually add these four lines to the very bottom of your Engine.ini file:

r.PostProcessing.DisableScreenPercentageForUnderwater=1

Strips the solid blue paint mask overlay right off your camera lens.

r.SceneColorFormat=4               

Unlocks a high-precision render target, killing pixelated underwater color banding.

r.PostProcessAAQuality=0                   

Deletes the thick post-processing blur that smudges your view in the deep.

r.TranslucencyLightingVolumeDim=64 

Stops light from washing out into a blue soup, letting flashlight beams pierce forward sharply.---

An advanced, hardware-level engine master configuration for Subnautica 2 that completely eliminates sudden surface frame drops and micro-stuttering bottlenecks when driving high-end DLSS upscaling pipelines.

This profile was built and fully verified on a premium next-gen **Lenovo Legion** laptop running a native **NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU** (Blackwell architecture) and an 8-core **AMD Ryzen 7 8745HX** processor. It is tailored specifically for setups running heavy upscaling combinations like **DLSS Ultra Performance paired with the new DLSS 4.5 6X Multi-Frame Generation mode** simultaneously. It is natively calibrated to provide incredible true-black oceanic contrast matrices on high-end OLED displays without relying on third-party ReShade overlays.

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### 💎 Key Performance & Visual Features:

***Target Pipeline Tuning:** Tailored specifically to handle the extreme CPU thread loads introduced by running **DLSS Ultra Performance + DLSS 4.5 6X Multi-Frame Generation mode** simultaneously.

***Flawless Thread Pacing Alignment:** Synchronizes the CPU's Garbage Collection timings with your fast DLSS stream, completely flattening out the common surface hitching loops at 200+ FPS.

***Uncapped VRAM Buffer Pool:** Elevates the game's default asset budget to a massive 6GB streaming pipeline, clearing out sudden visual texture pop-in across fast biome transitions.

***True Hardware-Level Ray Tracing:** Bypasses screen-space shortcuts by forcing native Unreal Engine 5 Lumen variables to shoot invisible light pathways, producing accurate water wave reflections and bioluminescent radiosity bounces off metallic surfaces.

***Native OLED Color Management:** Routes an uncompressed 10-bit color space directly to your display controller, producing blindingly bright solar scattering hits against the ink-black abyss of dark ocean trenches.

***Clean Surface Cam View Masking:** Destroys that thick, opaque post-processing blue sheet filter that covers your screen when floating at the top layer, opening up a clear view to peer straight down into the murky deep from your lifepod.

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### 🛠️ Step-by-Step Installation:

1. Download the pre-configured Engine.ini file from the files section.

2. Open your File Explorer and navigate straight into your game's active configuration directory:

%localappdata% Subnautica2 Saved Config Windows

3. Drag and drop the downloaded file directly inside, overwriting the default game configuration file.

4. Right-clicking the newly inserted Engine.ini, click Properties, check the box for Read-only, and click Apply.

*(Note: Setting the file to read-only is critical to block the game engine from accidentally scrubbing out your custom values on startup.)*

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### ⚙️ Full Raw Code Overview

Below is the full code to everything compiled inside your zip file download for verification:

== SystemSettings ==

r.TextureStreaming=1

r.Streaming.PoolSize=6144

r.Streaming.LimitPoolSizeToVRAM=0

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=3072

r.Shaders.Optimize=1

r.XGEShaderCompile=1

r.ShaderCompiler.JobPriority=1

s.AsyncLoadingTimeLimit=2.0

s.PriorityAsyncLoadingExtraTime=5.0

s.AsyncInvoluntaryTimeLimit=2.0

; === FRAME PERFORMANCE & THREAD PACING ===

r.DynamicRes.Enable=0

r.HZBOcclusion=1

bSmoothFrameRate=0

r.CombineLUTs=1

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=4096

r.XGEControllerWorkerCountMultiplier=2.0  ; CPU THREAD MULTIPLIER: Default is 2.0 (Perfect for 8+ Core CPUs). If you are on an older 4-Core or 6-Core CPU, lower this value to 1.5 to prevent CPU stuttering loops.

; === EXTREME VISUAL OVERHAUL EXTRA ADDITIONS ===

r.Tonemapper.Quality=5

r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=1.2

r.Lumen.Reflections.MaxRoughness=1.0

r.Lumen.Reflections.ScreenTraces=1

r.Lumen.Reflections.HardwareRayTracing=1

r.Lumen.ReflectionCardResolutionScale=4.0

r.Lumen.Radiosity.HardwareRayTracing=1

r.Shadow.DistanceScale=2.0

r.ViewDistanceScale=2.5

; === NATIVE HDR & CHROMATIC CLEANUP ADDITIONS ===

r.HDR.EnableHDROutput=1

r.HDR.Display.ColorGamut=2

r.HDR.Display.OutputDevice=5

r.HDR.UI.Luminance=300

r.Color.ColorSpace=1

r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0

r.MotionBlurQuality=0

r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0

; === REMOVE SURFACE CAM SHIELD ===

r.PostProcessing.DisableScreenPercentageForUnderwater=1

r.SceneColorFormat=4---

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🛠️ HOW TO SCALE THIS FOR STRONGER/OTHER GPUs (VRAM Customization)

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The configuration file defaults to an optimized 6GB budget with a 2GB system safety cushion, fully tailored for 8GB cards. If you have a different GPU tier, open the Engine.ini file in Notepad and adjust lines 3, 5, and 18 to match your exact VRAM specifications:

• For 2GB Legacy Hardware (GTX 1050 2GB, GTX 960 2GB, GTX 750 Ti):

r.Streaming.PoolSize=1024

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=512

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=1024*(Note: Expect aggressive texture downscaling—this is strictly to prevent out-of-memory crashes on potato rigs.)*

• For 4GB Budget Setup (RTX 3050 4GB, GTX 1650, GTX 1050 Ti | RX 5500 XT 4GB):

r.Streaming.PoolSize=3072

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=1024

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=2048• For 6GB Setup (RTX 4050 Laptop, RTX 3060 6GB, RTX 3050 6GB | RX 5600 XT):

r.Streaming.PoolSize=4608

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=2048

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=3072• For 8GB Baseline Cards (RTX 5060 Laptop, RTX 4060 / 4060 Laptop, RTX 4070 Laptop, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti | RX 7600, RX 6600 XT):

r.Streaming.PoolSize=6144

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=3072

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=4096*(Note: This is the default setting included in the file download.)*

• For 12GB Cards (RTX 5070 / 5070 Laptop, RTX 4070 Desktop, 4070 Super, 3060 12GB, 3080 12GB | RX 9070 GRE, 7700 XT, 6700 XT | Intel Arc B580):

r.Streaming.PoolSize=9216

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=4096

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=6144• For 16GB Cards (RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 4070 Ti Super, RTX 4080 / 4080 Super | RX 9070, 7800 XT, 7900 GRE):

r.Streaming.PoolSize=12288

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=6144

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=8192• For 24GB  (RTX 5090, RTX 4090 | RX 7900 XTX):

r.Streaming.PoolSize=18432

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=8192

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=12288• For 32GB (RTX 5090, Radeon AI Pro R9700):

r.Streaming.PoolSize=24576

r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed=12288

r.Streaming.GCPoolSize=16384*(Note: This pool is designed for heavy 4K path-tracing pipelines.)*