Mass Effect Trilogy - Coalesced and INI Settings

This article assumes that you have read and understood the Coalesced Tools article.

A Coalesced Editor can be needed to edit ME3's settings. You will find recommendations in the afore-mentioned Coalesced Tools article.

Introduction[]

This article lists some of the most important graphical settings, that can be found in Mass Effect 1-2-3's settings files. Also included are recommended values for best visual quality. It seeks to serve as a general resource, not just an INI preset. Thus, you will find all the sources at the bottom of the article, where more detailed descriptions of each parameter are available, as well as links to further documentation.

Editing these files can have a great impact on the graphics of the game, especially regarding shadows and lighting. Further modifications can be made through NVIDIA's and AMD's configuration utilities, for instance concerning anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, and much more^[1]^[2]. NVIDIA has uploaded comparison screenshots on their Mass Effect 3 Tweak Guide.

As a final note, this time regarding performance, you can downscale MaxShadowResolution from 4096 to 2048 without losing much graphical quality, and gain a significant FPS boost (for all 3 games). You can also disable Depth Of Field and Motion Blur, if you don't like these effects.

Mass Effect 1[]

ME1's settings files can be found in ..\[Documents]\Bioware\Mass Effect\Config. In case you need to rollback a change, vanilla INIs are located in ..\[ME1]\Engine\Config\.

Note : Editing [Engine.Engine], [Texture Streaming], [Editor.EditorEngine] has no impact on the game^[3].

BIOEngine.ini

    [Engine.GameEngine]
     bEnableBranchingPCFShadows=True
     bSmoothFrameRate=True
     bUseBackgroundLevelStreaming=True
     bUsePostProcessEffects=True
     DepthBias=0.006000
     MaxShadowResolution=4096
     MaxSmoothedFrameRate=62
     MinShadowResolution=64
     MinSmoothedFrameRate=22
     ModShadowFadeDistanceExponent=0.000000
     ShadowFilterQualityBias=4
     ShadowFilterRadius=3.50000
     
     [SystemSettings]
     DetailMode=5
     MaxAnisotropy=16
     ParticleLODBias=-1
     SkeletalMeshLODBias=-1
     Trilinear=True
     
     [TextureLODSettings]
     // Only necessary for MEUITM (the non TPF version)
     TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Diff=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)
     TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Norm=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)
     TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Spec=(MinLODSize=256,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)
     
     [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice]
     BIOVertexShaderVersion=vs_3_0

BIOGame.ini

    [BIOC_Base.BioPawnBehavior]
     m_bAllowPhysicsOnDeadBodies=TRUE
     
     [BIOC_Base.BioPawn]
     m_fCorpseCleanupFirstAttemptTime=60.0
     m_fCorpseCleanupAttemptRetryTime=30.0

Mass Effect 2[]

ME2's settings are in the GamerSettings.ini file, located in ..\[Documents]\Bioware\Mass Effect 2\BIOGame\Config\.

Note : Editing AllowD3D11, [AppCompat] has no impact on the game^[4]. Editing TextureGroups also has no useful impact on the game when installing textures with ME3Explorer ^[5].

GamerSettings.ini

    [SystemSettings]   
    MaxShadowResolution=4096
   MinShadowResolution=64
   ShadowFilterQualityBias=2
   ShadowFilterRadius=5
   MaxAnisotropy=16
   Trilinear=False
   MotionBlur=True
   DepthOfField=True
   Bloom=True
   QualityBloom=True
   ParticleLODBias=2
    
    [Engine.GameEngine]
    bEnableBranchingPCFShadows=True

Mass Effect 3[]

ME3's settings are in the Coalesced.bin file located in ..\[ME3]\BIOGame\CookedPCConsole\. Alternatively, you can edit the GamerSettings.ini file, which can be found in ..\[Documents]\Bioware\Mass Effect 3\BIOGame\Config\. Both are mostly equivalent, and if a setting is present in both files, the GamerSettings.ini will take precedence.

Note : Editing TextureGroups has no useful impact on the game when installing textures with ME3Explorer ^[6].

Coalesced.bin or GamerSettings.ini

   [systemsettings]
   MaxShadowResolution=4096
   MinShadowResolution=64
   ShadowFilterQualityBias=2
   ShadowFilterRadius=5
   bEnableBranchingPCFShadows=True
   MaxAnisotropy=16
   Trilinear=False
   MotionBlur=True
   DepthOfField=True
   Bloom=True
   QualityBloom=True
   ParticleLODBias=2

References[]

AMD and NVIDIA configuration utilities

Mass Effect 1

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 3

[1] ttp://me3explorer.freeforums.org/post25106.html#p25106

[2] ttp://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_7.html

[3] ttp://www.tweakguides.com/ME_7.html

[4] ttp://www.overclock.net/t/1025905/mass-effect-2-tweaking-o

[5] ttp://me3explorer.freeforums.org/post24095.html#p24095

[6] ttp://me3explorer.freeforums.org/post24095.html#p24095

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