Crysis 3 console commands and config settings allow MAXIMUM TWEAKING

Sure, you could configure Crysis 3 using the in-game options menu, but real pros update their volumetric water shadows in real time. EA has sent Gamefront a full list of the console commands available for the GPU-bothering FPS. The commands can be modified during singleplayer sessions by accessing the console - either through the tilde key in the US, or the collection of largely pointless punctuation in the same spot on Brit-based keyboards. (It's the key above Tab, wherever you happen to live.)

Along with the commands are instructions on how to edit them. For the most part, you're better off editing the .cfg files in Crysis 3's root directory. But if you're looking for a quick change, each one will work in the console. For instance, you can remove all the visual clutter for screenshots by enabling the following:

r_colorgrading 0 (Removes the black and white color grading)

hud_hide 1 (Removes hud)

r_drawnearfov 2 (Toggles weapon visibility)

The full list is below. It's absolutely massive. As a reward for those who make it to the end, I've embedded a video of some sloths in a bucket. Alternatively, read our Crysis 3 review to find out if you'll want the game these commands command.

Game

Field of View

CVar: cl_fov

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

The vertical field of view in degrees.

This controls several individual FOV controls that you can tweak manually if you prefer:

cl_FOV – The main field of view

r_DrawNearFOV – the field of view for nearby objects (held weapon, etc)

pl_movement.power_sprint_targetFOV – The field of view while power sprinting

Default Value: 60

HUD Bobbing

CVar: cl_bobhud

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Controls the amount of bob hud which is applied.

Default is 1.0

HUD Canvas Adjustment

CVar: hud_canvas_width_adjustment

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Multiplayer only. Multiplies the width of the HUD's virtual canvas in cases where it may overlap monitor boundaries in multi-monitor setups. NOTE: before this multiplier is applied, the HUD clamps itself to a 16:9 res.

Default is 1.0

Hud Hide

CVar: hud_hide

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

If this cvar is true the HUD will be hidden from view completely.

Suitable for screenshots or very immersive play. NOTE: This feature is not fully supported, and this cvar value might need to be reset in game, e.g. on loading a save.

Default is off (hud visible)

Music Volume

CVar: s_MusicVolume

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Controls the volume of Music, in the range from 0.0 to 1.0.

Default is 1.0, full volume.

SFX Volume

CVar: s_SFXVolume

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Controls the volume of SFX, in the range from 0.0 to 1.0.

Default is 1.0, full volume.

Dialog Volume

CVar: s_DialogVolume

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Controls the volume of Dialog, in the range from 0.0 to 1.0.

Default is 1.0, full volume.

Max FPS Limit

CVar: sys_MaxFps

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Limits the frame rate to specified number.

A value of 0 means no limit.

Default is 0

Input

Toggle Crouch

CVar: cl_crouchToggle

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Makes the crouch key work as a toggle.

Default is on

Toggle Zoom

CVar: cl_zoomToggle

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Makes the zoom key work as a toggle.

Default is on

Mouse Smoothing

CVar: i_mouse_smooth

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Set mouse smoothing value, also if 0 (disabled) there will be a simple average between the old and the actual input.

(1.0 = very very smooth, 30 = almost instant)

Default is 0.0

Mouse Acceleration

CVar: i_mouse_accel

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Set mouse acceleration, 0.0 means no acceleration.

Default is 0.0

Mouse Acceleration Max

CVar: i_mouse_accel_max

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Set mouse max mouse delta when using acceleration.

Default is 100.0

Mouse Sensitivity

CVar: cl_sensitivity

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Sets mouse sensitivity.

Default is 30.0

Graphics Features

Particle Collisions

CVar: e_ParticlesObjectCollisions

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls what objects particles will collide with.

Default Value: Static (Low/Medium), Dynamic (High/Very High)

None: No particle collisions at all.

Static: Particles tagged for collisions will interact with static objects.

Dynamic: As with Static, but dynamic objects also.

Particle Motion Blur

CVar: e_ParticlesMotionBlur

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables motion blur effect on fast moving particles.

Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Force Soft Particles

CVar: e_ParticlesForceSoftParticles

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Forces all possible particles to use soft intersections with geometry – increases the cost but will all but eliminate hard edges on particles.

Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Tessellation

CVar: e_Tessellation

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables DX11 ALL tessellation.

Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

NOTE: Currently not tweakable in the latest build of the game.

Will be tweakable soon.

Water Ocean Tessellation

CVar: r_WaterTessellationHW

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables DX11 tessellation for the ocean water surface.

Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Pixel Accurate Displacement Maps

CVar: r_SilhouettePOM

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables the Pixel Accurate Displacement Mapping (VERY GPU intensive).

Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Real-time Global Illumination

CVar: e_GI

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables real-time Global Illumination.

Default Value: Off (Low), On (Medium/High/Very High)

Real-time Volumetric Cloud Shadows

CVar: r_FogShadows

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables Real-time Volumetric Cloud Shadows.

Default Value: Off (Low/Medium), On (High/Very High)

Volumetric Water Shadows

CVar: r_FogShadowsWater

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables the Real-time Volumetric Shadows underneath water.

Default Value: Off (Low), On (Medium/High/Very High)

Screen-space Reflections

CVar: r_SSReflections

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables the Screen-Space reflections effect on glossy or reflective materials.

Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Depth of Field

CVar: r_DepthOfField

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables the depth of field blur effect.

Default Value: OnNOTE: Currently not tweakable in the latest build of the game.

Will be tweakable soon.

Explosion Blur

CVar: g_radialBlur

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables the radial blur effect applied after an explosion.

Default Value: On

Color Grading

CVar: r_ColorGrading

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Enables or disables the artist controlled color grading post-processing effect.

Default Value: On

Graphics Tweaking

Sharpening

CVar: r_Sharpening

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls the level of the post-processing image sharpening filter.

Higher values give more sharpening, but too high values will create artifacts

A value of 0.0 is off

Default Value: 0.25

Chromatic Aberration

CVar: r_ChromaticAberration

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls the level of the post-processing chromatic aberration.

A value of 0.0 is off

Default Value: 1.5

Filmgrain

CVar: r_HDRGrainAmount

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls the level of film grain applied to the final image to help alleviate artifacts from lack of colour precision in 32-bit colour displays.

A value of 0.0 is off

Default Value: 0.0

Bloom amount

CVar: r_HDRBloomRatio

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls the level of bloom used to simulate over-bright areas of the screen

Default Value: 0.15

Bloom threshold

CVar: r_HDRBrightLevel

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls the brightness level threshold used to compute bloom

Default Value: 1.0

Ambient Occlusion Method

CVar: r_ssao

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Chooses the ambient occlusion method

Default Value: SSAO (Low/Medium/High), SSDO (Very High)

None: No ambient occlusion is used.

SSAO: Screen-space Ambient Occlusion.

SSDO: Screen-space Directional Occlusion.

Texture Pool Size (MB)

CVar: r_TexturesStreamPoolSize

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Sets the size of VRAM that is available in a pool for texture streaming.

Value is in Megabytes, and may be clamped based on the amount of video memory detected

Default Value: 192 (Low), 384 (Medium), 512 (High/Very High)

Shadow Timeslicing

CVar: e_GsmCache

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Saves GPU performance by updating distant shadows less often.

Default Value: On (Low) Off (Medium/High/Very High)

Shadow Casting Light Scale

CVar: e_ShadowsResScale

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls the resolution of shadow maps used for individual shadow casting lights.

Value is an arbitrary multiplier, so doubling this will double the resolution of each light

Default Value: 3.4 (Low/Medium/High), 40 (Very High)

Tessellated Shadow Cascades

CVar: e_ShadowsTessellateCascades

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Determines how many shadow cascades to apply tessellation for.

A setting of 0 disables tessellation in all shadows.

Default Value: 1

NOTE: Currently not tweakable in the latest build of the game.

Will be tweakable soon.

Shadow Pool Size

CVar: e_ShadowsPoolSize

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Sets the size of the shadow pool render target – increased size produces more resolution available for, and fewer artifacts in shadow casting lights (NOT including the sun). Value should be a power of 2 (128, 256, …)

If the pool is too small to fit the minimum size for the shadow casting lights, the GPU will thrash and performance will be severely impacted

Default Value: 2048 (Low/Medium/High), 4096 (Very High)

Sun Shadow Map Size

CVar: e_ShadowsMaxTexRes

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Sets the size of each sun shadow cascade – increased size produces more resolution available for sun shadows.

Default Value: 512 (Low), 1024 (Medium/High/Very High)

Global Illumination Timeslicing

CVar: e_GICache

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Sets the number of frames to cache GI results for before regenerating

A value of 0 disables all caching and regenerates GI every frame

Default Value: 7

Global Illumination Iterations

CVar: e_GIIterations

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Sets the number of iterations to perform when calculating Global Illumination

A higher number will reduce bleeding and lengthen the light propagation distance

Default Value: 10

Tessellation Distance Limit

CVar: e_TessellationMaxDistance

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Changes the distance in metres where tessellation will stop applying to objects

Default Value: 30

Tessellation Triangle Target Size

CVar: r_TessellationTriangleSize

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

The length of a triangle edge in pixels to aim for when tessellating.

Default Value: 8

Grass Instance Animation Distance

CVar: e_MergedMeshesInstanceDist

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Distance fudge-factor where interactive grass instances will stop animating.

Default Value: 4.5 (Low/Medium/High) 8.0 (Very High)

Grass Instance Max Distance

CVar: e_MergedMeshesViewDistRatio

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Multiplier controlling where chunks of interactive grass instances will disappear in the distance.

Default Value: 50

LOD distance ratio

CVar: e_LodRatio

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls how close objects drop to lower Levels Of Detail. A higher number means a longer distance before this drop happens.

Default Value: 4 (Low), 6 (Medium) 20 (High), 40 (Very High)

View distance ratio (General)

CVar: e_ViewDistRatio

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls how close objects will stop rendering in the distance.

Default Value: 25 (Low), 35 (Medium) 100 (High/Very High)

View distance ratio (Vegetation)

CVar: e_ViewDistRatioVegetation

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls how close vegetation will stop rendering in the distance.

Default Value: 21 (Low), 31 (Medium) 100 (High/Very High)

View distance ratio (Detail)

CVar: e_ViewDistRatioDetail

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls how close certain objects marked as 'detail' by artists will stop rendering in the distance.

Default Value: 19 (Low), 24 (Medium) 100 (High/Very High)

Miscellaneous

Skip Intro Movies

CVar: g_skipIntro

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Skips the introduction movies that play before the main menu at game boot.

Default Value: Off

Fullscreen window mode

CVar: r_FullscreenWindow

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

When enabled, selecting 'fullscreen' in the menus will use a window that fills the screen, allowing easy alt-tab.

Windowed mode will behave as normal.

Default Value: Off

Disallow Fullscreen Pre-emption

CVar: r_FullscreenPreemption

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

When enabled, Pop-ups such as instant message windows and other focus-stealing windows will not minimise the game.

Default Value: On

Force Output Monitor

CVar: r_overrideDXGIOutput

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Gives the number of display to use when creating the game window. 0 is the default/primary monitor and 1, 2, etc are displays after that. Allows you to create the window on a different monitor from your primary monitor (e.g. a TV or other external display)

Default Value: 0

Multi-GPU Support

CVar: r_MGPU

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Determines Multi-GPU support in engine.

Default Value: Autodetect

Disabled: No multi-GPU support.

Forced: Multi-GPU support is force-enabled.

Autodetect: CryEngine auto-detects whether or not to enable Multi-GPU support.

Hardware Gamma Level

CVar: r_Gamma

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Changes the hardware gamma level. Affects desktop as well.

Default Value: 1.0

Internal Occlusion Culling

CVar: e_CoverageBufferReproj

Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg

Controls the internal occlusion culling. You shouldn't need to modify this cvar, but if you encounter any popping with rapid moving, experiment with disabling this.

Default Value: On

Game Network Port

CVar: g_blaze_gamePort

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

The network port games connections will be made on.

Enable Blaze VOIP

CVar: net_blaze_voip_enable

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Toggles whether Blaze VOIP is enabled or not.

Default Value: On

Enable Blaze VOIP PTT

CVar: net_blaze_voip_enable_ptt

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Toggles whether Blaze VOIP Push-to-talk is enabled or not.

Default Value: On

Enable Blaze VOIP

CVar: net_blaze_voip_playback_volume

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg

Sets the Blaze VOIP playback volume, in the range 0.0 to 1.0.

Default Value: 1.0 Full volume

...Phew. Here's your reward.