NASCAR 25 Graphics Guide

This guide will walk you through the NASCAR 25 graphics settings and provides recommended changes to improve the performance and graphics of NASCAR 25 on PC.

Table of Contents

Introduction

NASCAR 25 uses the default Unreal Engine graphics settings instead of graphics options made specifically for the game. This causes some of the in-game settings to not work as intended or not work at all. Nevertheless, there are options you should change to get better performance with little downsides to the visual quality.

Because NASCAR 25 is built on Unreal Engine 5.5, we can reference information straight out of the documentation provided by Epic linked here to understand exactly what each setting is supposed to do.

Although the in-game settings have a lot to be desired, a major advantage of NASCAR 25 using the Unreal Engine is that we have full access to the engine.ini file. This file allows us to to tweak and customize a lot of settings that can drastically improve the visual quality. As you will see, most of the visual improvements are going to be made in the engine.ini file.

Before we get into the engine.ini, let's go through the available in-game graphics settings and see how each setting performs. I will also provide recommendations for each setting.

Testing

Testing was completed using PresentMon, running 3 tests for each setting, lasting 1 minute each at Daytona Night in the 7th Gen cup car. Daytona Night was used due to it being the most graphically demanding track in the game.

All tests were performed at 4k resolution until I tested the game at 1440p, 1080p, and 720p. The bar graphs used below represents the average results of the 3 test runs. For the bar graphs results below, within 1.5% is considered within the margin of error. 

A link to all of the data compiled from testing can be found here.

The specs of the PC used for testing:

CPU: AMD 5800X3D

GPU: RTX 4080 with 16GB of VRAM

RAM: 32 GB DDR4

SSD: NVME

In Game Settings and Recommendations

Testing Baseline = Every Setting Set to Highest

The baseline for the bar graph below is based on NASCAR 25 running with every graphics setting set to highest at 4k resolution. This resulted in an average FPS of 44.8 and an average VRAM usage of 12GB. Additional testing confirmed that the recommended settings provided below running at lower resolutions will correlate to similar performance increases as they are shown here running at 4k resolution. For the bar graph results below, within 1.5% is considered within the margin of error. 

The NASCAR 25 in game settings can be found in the options tab, settings, display tab and set the preset to custom.

Turning Off the Mirror

One of the easiest ways to increase FPS in NASCAR 25 is to simply turn off the mirror when you are not using it. Turning off the mirror increases the FPS from baseline by 7.83% (from 44.8FPS to 48.3FPS).

It is recommended that if you are struggling to hit a decent frame rate after using the recommended settings below, this is an option way to increase your FPS. Otherwise keep it on when you need it.

• Without Mirror: 48.3FPS Average 7.83% increase over highest setting

Dynamic Resolution

Dynamic Resolution is a default Unreal Engine graphics setting that does not work in NASCAR 25. Even when it was forced on in the engine.ini file, it would not function.

It is recommended to leave dynamic resolution off as it doesn't seem to work in NASCAR 25. (Although if it works for you, let me know in the comments).

Distance

Distance is a setting that does not seem to work in the game or it does not change the FPS or the VRAM usage. As shown in the graph below, the settings from low to very high are within error of 1.5%.

It is recommended to set distance to highest as there is no FPS change for each setting.

Anti Aliasing

Anti Aliasing smooths out the jagged edges of a curved object resulting in a better overall visual quality. Anti Aliasing set to low increased the FPS by 16.45% (52.2FPS) and lowed the VRAM usage to 10.5GB at the cost of picture quality.

It is recommended to set Anti Aliasing to high as it is a good balance between FPS and quality. Setting this to low or medium can greatly improve the performance at the costs of quality if you are struggling to hit a good frame-rate or if you need to lower the VRAM usage.

However, if you have a powerful PC, I would recommend setting this to highest for the best quality.

• Low: 52.2 FPS Average

• Medium: 50.4 FPS Average

• High: 48 FPS Average

• Very High: 45 FPS Average

Post Processing

Post Processing changes the motion blur quality (only at Charlotte Night unless you enable the setting in the engine.ini file), ambient occlusion, and depth of field. All of these fields can be individually modified in the engine.ini file.

You can see more information on each setting from the Epic developer website here.

It is recommended to set the post processing to very high as lower settings do not reduce the overall performance enough to justify the lower quality.

• Low: 47.3 FPS Average

• Medium: 47.1 FPS Average

• High: 47.2 FPS Average

• Very High: 47.4 FPS Average

Shadows

Shadows changes the resolution and the quality of the shadows in the game. Although the low setting drastically reduced the quality of the shadows, it did not make a big enough change in the performance to continue testing the high and very high settings. Below shows an average FPS increase of 1.6% on low and 1.97% on medium which would be considered within error of each other. Both lower settings did not reduce the VRAM usage from the baseline of 12GB.

It is recommended to set the shadows to highest as lower settings do not reduce the overall performance enough to justify the lower quality shadows.

Global Illumination

Global Illumination is a setting that does not seem to work in the game or it does not change the FPS or the VRAM usage. The FPS average in testing was within error of baseline and there was no change in VRAM usage from baseline.

It is recommended to set global illumination to highest as there is no FPS change for each setting.

Texture

Textures did not make much of a change in FPS but it did lower the VRAM usage with the low and medium setting lowering the VRAM usage to 10.2GB.

It is recommended to set texture to highest as there is little to no FPS change for each setting. If you are out of VRAM, setting this to medium will free some space at a cost to the texture quality.

Effects

Effects adjusts the quality of translucency lighting volume, refraction quality, SSR,  and the scene color format. All of these fields can be modified in the engine.ini file.

More information is provided on each setting from the Epic developer website here.

This setting makes a big difference in FPS but no change in VRAM usage. 

It is recommended to set the effects to high as it is a good balance between FPS and quality.

• Low: 52.7 FPS Average

• Medium: 52.2 FPS Average

• High: 51.3 FPS Average

• Very High: 49.2 FPS Average

Shading

Shading was yet another setting that didn't make any change to the performance so it is possible this setting is not working. The FPS average in testing was within error of baseline and there was no change in VRAM usage from baseline.

It is recommended to set shading to highest as there is no FPS change for each setting.

Recommended Settings

All together, using the recommended settings increased the frame-rate by 38.42% and the game is now running at an average of 62 FPS at 4k resolution. The VRAM usage has also lowered to 10GB.

Game Resolution

Lowering the games resolution is a great way to increase FPS and decrease VRAM usage without having to lower the in-game settings below the recommendations. Although the game is running at a lower resolution, it provides a tremendous increase to performance that can help those on older or lower spec PCs.

The graphs below show the performance gains from the game set to 4k, 1440p, 1080p, and 720p including the increase in FPS from using the recommended settings. Once the resolution was set from 1080p to 720p, the game became CPU limited which prevented any further FPS gains.

Changing the resolution in NASCAR 25 only works when using fullscreen mode. Below in the guide under engine.ini will be steps to lower your resolution while running NASCAR 25 in a borderless window.

If you are using borderless window, please confirm you are running at your monitor's full resolution by:

• Select your resolution in the menu, selecting fullscreen mode and save.

• Close the game.

• Reopen NASCAR 25 and then change the settings from fullscreen back to borderless window.

• If these steps are not taken, the game might be running at a lower resolution. 

4k Highest (Baseline): 44.8 FPS Average

4k Recommended: 62.0 FPS Average

1440p Highest: 70.5 FPS Average

1440p Recommended: 88.0 FPS Average

1080p Highest: 90.4 FPS Average

1080p Recommended: 98.1 FPS Average

720p Highest: 96.1 FPS Average

720p Recommended: 98.5 FPS Average

GameUserSettings.ini

The game settings for NASCAR 25 are located here:

C:\Users\"YourUsername"\AppData\Local\Maverick\Saved\Config\Windows

(Little easter egg, the project name of the game was Maverick which is why the game folder is named Maverick)

• First, highlight the engine.ini and GameUserSettings.ini and copy and paste (ctrl+c and ctrl+v) to make backup copies of these files just in case you need to go back to them.

• Right click and open the GameUserSettings.ini file with Notepad.

• Under the "ScalabilityGroups" is the same graphic settings you have in the game. The settings Low to Highest in the game correlate to 0 to 4 in the .ini file.

•  Along with the normal in game settings are additional settings that are hidden (reflections, foliage, and landscape). Unfortunately, other than reflections which changes the reflection quality at no performance gain, the other hidden settings either do not work or do not make any performance gain. I would recommend setting reflections, foliage, and landscape to 4 just in case they do improve the graphics although I did not see a change.

• Making changes to the scalability groups in the GameUserSettings.ini can sometimes cause them to disappear if they are set to the game default but the changes will still apply to the game. It is recommended to make changes in the game menu instead of the GameUserSettings.ini.

• Scroll down until you find FrameRateLimit=0.000000. This is where you can limit the max FPS for the game. I recommend setting this to the max refresh rate of your monitor or the max framerate the game runs when you are on track. The game tries to max out the CPU/GPU processing just by sitting in the game menu. So, setting the frame-rate limit will limit the amount of processing the menu will use.

• Save and close.

Engine.ini Renderer Settings and Recommendations

The engine.ini is the main file that allows you to fully customize the game's renderer to manually improve the games graphics line by line. The recommend variables below only scratch the surface of what can be fully done in the engine.ini file but they are the main settings found to improve the game's graphics. If you want to go hog wild and add additional variables, you can find them here.

The settings listed below can be copied and pasted into your engine.ini file located here:

C:\Users\"YourUsername"\AppData\Local\Maverick\Saved\Config\Windows

• First, download my engine.ini renderer text file which will make it easier to simply copy and paste the variables into your engine.ini. This includes the recommended renderer settings.

  • Download link: Download

• Next, open the text file and copy and paste the renderer variables into your engine.ini like what is shown below.

• Save the file.

Below is an explanation of what each variable does in the game and info on why specific variables are recommended. All of these settings are changeable so don't be afraid to mess around with the settings to find out what works best for you.

r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable

Virtual Shadow Maps greatly improves the shadows in the game at great cost to performance. You can learn more about VSM here. It is recommended to not use VSM unless you have a very powerful PC as it will dramatically decrease the games performance. However, if anyone can find a way to reduce the performance hit of VSM, please post in the comments below.

If you want to use VSM, change r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable and r.Shadow.Virtual.ForceOnlyVirtualShadowMaps to 1 and delete the line associated with CSM settings (r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=8192).

r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution

Cascaded Shadow Maps greatly improves performance at the cost of lower quality distant shadows compared to VSM. The variable associated with CSM is r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution which allows us to increase or decrease the shadow resolution. The default is 2048 and it is recommended to set this to max which is 8192.

r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold

Shadow radius threshold allows us to increase the distance you can see shadows which reduces shadows popping in and out at a distance. The default is .2 and it is recommended to set this as low as possible which is 0.01.

r.TextureStreaming

Texture Streaming allows you to enable or disable texture streaming. This is what causes a split second of low resolution textures on a car when scrolling through drivers in the game menu. It is recommended to set this to 0 as it fixes/removes the split second low resolution texture on a car when scrolling through drivers in the game menu.

r.MipMapLODBias

MipMap LOD Bias allows us to sharpen or blur the textures rendered at a distance. Setting this to -15 can sharpen the textures but causes grain and flickering while setting this to 15 causes the distant textures to be blurry. If you play at 4k resolutions, it is recommended to set this to -2 or -1 but you will have some texture flickering. For lower resolutions, set this to -1 or 0. This is a setting you can really play around with to get the best results. You will notice it most on the double yellow lines at superspeedways or the grass and logos on the front stretch.

r.ViewDistanceScale

View Distance Scale simply increases or decreases the distance you can see objects. It is recommended to set this to 5 but it can be set as low as 0 and as high as 10. 

r.SkeletalMeshLODBias

Skeletal Mesh LOD Bias sets the level of detail of an object at a distance. This setting reduces the amount of object popping seen on the interior and exterior of cars at a distance. It is really noticeable on the xFinity rear windows and interiors. It is recommended to set this to -2. 0 is default and the range goes from -15 (high quality) to 15 (high performance).

r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale

Static Mesh LOD Distance Scale sets the level of detail of the texture on an object. This setting reduces the amount of texture popping on a cars scheme at a distance. This is really noticeable on the xFinity Ford Mustang's tail lights. It is recommended to set this to 0.02 but you can go as low as 0.01. 1 is the default.

r.TemporalAA.HistoryScreenPercentage

Temporal AA History Screen Percentage is a setting that is trying to fix an issue with TAA smearing or creating a tail to an object that is in motion. This can be noticeable on car shadows. It is recommended to set this to 200 and the default is 100.

r.ScreenPercentage

Screen Percentage is the percentage of the resolution you want the game to run at. This setting is really useful to lower the game's resolution while using a borderless window or upscaling the resolution. An example would be if your default resolution is 3840x2160 (4k) and you want to lower it to 1080p, changing this setting to 50 will reduce it by 50% which is 1080p. It is recommended to keep this setting at 100 but if you need to lower your resolution, I would recommend trying 75 or 50.

r.BloomQuality

Bloom Quality simply increases or decreases the bloom quality in the game. Since there is no way to change the quality or remove bloom in the game settings, I added it to the engine.ini. It is recommended to keep this at the unreal engine default which is 5. If you want to remove bloom, change this to 0.

r.DepthOfFieldQuality

Depth Of Field Quality allows you to increase the quality of depth of field or remove it entirely. This is the blurry effect you get in the car menu before entering the track. It is recommended to set this to 0 as I personally think it looks bad and it looks better with this setting off. However you can increase the quality to 3 at the cost of performance.

r.LensFlareQuality

Lens Flare Quality allows you to increase the quality of the lens flare or remove it entirely. I believe NASCAR 25 has this set to low (1) by default so it is recommended to set this to 3 or higher to improve the lens flare quality or you can turn lens flare off by changing this to 0.

Motion Blur

Motion blur in NASCAR 25 is broken and the only track with motion blur is Charlotte at night. r.MotionBlurQuality allows you to disable motion blur entirely or you can enable it and experience it at every track.

It is recommended to set r.MotionBlurQuality to 0 if you want motion blur off. Otherwise, it is recommended to set this to 3.

r.MotionBlur.Amount allows you to control the amount of motion blur in the game. If you have motion blur enabled, it is recommended to set this to 0.1 as it is a good subtle amount but I recommend playing around with setting if you are looking to capture good screenshots. The default setting is 0.39.

Performance with recommended engine.ini settings.

The graph below shows the performance loss using the recommended engine.ini settings compared to the recommended in game settings. The graph also shows the massive performance hit when using VSM for shadows which almost lowers the performance down to having all of the settings set to highest. If you are really struggling to gain FPS, the best way to fix it would be to lower the resolution/r.ScreenPercentage to 75 or lower.

Conclusion

If you run into any issues or problems, comment below so the community can help you! Also, comments will allow me to correct any mistakes in the future by updating the guide! Click the button below to go back to the NASCAR 25 guides.

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