Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 1 has officially started today, and as expected, this means a vast number of overhauls have now come with it. Not only has the iconic battle royale island received another facelift, but Epic Games has also added a new Battle Pass that contains the likes of Geralt of Rivia and Doom Slayer. And while all of these new additions are great in their own way, Fortnite players on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC are perhaps getting the biggest boost from Chapter 4’s release.
Videos by ComicBook.com
To coincide with the launch of Fortnite Chapter 4, Epic Games opted to push out a major graphical boost for the game on current-gen platforms. This means that the visuals seen across PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC should be far better than what was seen throughout Chapter 3 of Fortnite. In some ways, this isn’t that big of a shock given that Epic has previously informed players that it would be upgrading the graphics of Fortnite thanks to the newfound power that is seen with Unreal Engine 5.
All in all, the visuals of Fortnite should retain their same general aesthetic with this update, but lighting, shadows, performance, and textures have all been considerably improved. Epic specifically says that buildings, trees, and other various objects that are part of landscapes within Fortnite should look drastically better than before. While it might be strange to think of Fortnite as one of the best-looking games that’s available to play at the moment, this new improvement with Chapter 4 definitely makes this the case.
Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 1 is now live across all platforms that the game is available on. If you’d like to see more of the options that are now available for the PC version of Fortnite, though, you can find them listed below.
“DISPLAY” SECTION OF THE VIDEO SETTINGS
“Rendering Mode” Setting
Moved from the “Advanced Graphics” section to the “Display” section.
DirectX 12 is now the default rendering mode on PCs with certain higher-end GPUs.
The “Performance” rendering mode is no longer in beta and is now called “Performance – Lower Graphical Fidelity.”
“VSync” Setting
Moved from the “Advanced Graphics” section to the “Display” section.
“GRAPHICS” SECTION OF THE VIDEO SETTINGS
“Motion Blur” Setting
Moved from the “Advanced Graphics” section to the “Graphics” section.
Is now off by default.
“Auto-Set Quality” in the “Graphics Quality section” will never turn this setting on, but it may turn it off on a lower-spec PC
“GRAPHICS QUALITY” SECTION OF THE VIDEO SETTINGS
“Temporal Super Resolution” Setting
This settings has the following options:
Recommended (default): Selects the 3D resolution based on what works best for your display resolution.
Performance: Prioritizes frame rate over final image quality by rendering at a lower resolution.
Balanced: Balances the image quality versus performance.
Quality: Prioritizes final image quality over performance by rendering at a higher resolution.
Native: Allows you to render frames at the native display resolution at the expense of performance.
Custom: Allows you to customize the 3D resolution on a slider.
“Nanite Virtualized Geometry” Setting
Only available if the rendering mode is set to DirectX 12.
If “Nanite Virtualized Geometry” is turned on, Nanite will be enabled.
Note: When Nanite is enabled, the “Shadows” setting is renamed to “Virtual Shadows.”
Defaults to on when the “Quality Presets” setting is set to High or Epic.
Please note that this setting cannot be changed mid-match.
“Global Illumination” Setting
Enables Lumen Global Illumination when set to High or Epic.
When Nanite is disabled, this setting has two options: Only Off, and Ambient Occlusion. (Ambient Occlusion = Lower quality ambient lighting with darkened corners.)
When Nanite is enabled, two more options are added: Lumen High, and Lumen Epic.
Please note that this setting cannot be changed mid-match.
“Reflections” Setting
Enables Lumen Reflections when set to High or Epic.
When Nanite is disabled, this setting has two options: Only Off, and Screen Space. (Screen Space = Calculates reflections based only on what is currently shown on the screen.)
When Nanite is enabled, two more options are added: Lumen High, and Lumen Epic.
“Hardware Ray Tracing” Setting
“Hardware Ray Tracing” makes it so that Lumen Global Illumination and Lumen Reflections use hardware-accelerated ray tracing. (The “Hardware Ray Tracing” setting in the “Graphics Quality” section has replaced the “Ray Tracing” section.)
Is defaulted to off.
To turn “Hardware Ray Tracing” on:
Nanite must be enabled. (In other words, “Nanite Virtualized Geometry” is turned on.)
Either “Global Illumination” or “Reflections” must be set to Lumen High or Lumen Epic.
Turning this setting on or off requires a game restart to take effect.
“Auto-Set Quality”
Selecting “Auto-Set Quality” sets most Graphics Quality settings to either the Low, Medium, High, or Epic options, and also sets options for the “Global Illumination” and “Reflections” settings.
Sets the “Anti-Aliasing & Super Resolution” setting to either the TSR Low, TSR Medium, TSR High, or TSR Epic options, and the “Temporal Super Resolution” setting to Recommended.
