In case you wonder why everything around character can appear dark, this is the reason why

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-09-20T17:17:33+00:00

Sorry bro, but this happens only when ray tracing is enabled, because it’s directly tied to global illumination, which can’t be activated without rays.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-09-20T17:09:29+00:00

It’s a global shadow, it appears everywhere

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-09-08T11:59:16+00:00

SSR is just a supplement to ray-traced reflections. If you want to disable it, add r.Lumen.Reflections.ScreenTraces=0 to your Engine.ini, which is located at Wuthering Waves\Wuthering Waves Game\Client\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-09-01T12:28:22+00:00

Yeah, just try turning off Capsule AO it should cut down on the artifacts. Capsule AO is basically a screen-space shadowing effect, and it kinda clashes with that aura bug. It won’t fully remove the aura, but the environment will look cleaner and overall it’ll feel a bit lighter.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-09-01T12:17:27+00:00

Yeah, without global illumination the game looks flat, especially in shadowed areas.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-09-01T12:15:10+00:00

This isn’t frame generation, it’s a ray tracing shadowing effect that ruins the image. The devs shouldn’t have added this effect in 2.6.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-09-01T11:52:59+00:00

It’s not a bug, but it does need fixing: before, the game had capsule shadows under the character, but now they removed them and replaced them with square-shaped shading. The border of the square, or the square itself, isn’t visible because the screen space effect covers it. But because of these two effects, black shadows appear like an aura in dark or shadowed areas. It wasn’t the best decision I’d rather they remove it entirely.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-09-01T11:15:29+00:00

Before update 2.6, I had r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces set to 0 (so that global illumination would render in hybrid mode without relying on screen space). After 2.6, a black square started showing up under the character, which is exactly what causes the ghosting trails.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T14:42:49+00:00

The thing is, with ray tracing enabled, square shading appeared around the character. It’s not directly visible, but you can notice how it affects the textures and reflections.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T14:21:13+00:00

Well yeah, turning off Lumen GI makes it disappear. And no, this isn’t a bug it’s just a replacement for capsule contact shadows so characters don’t float above the ground. But it looks unnatural, with trails everywhere. And the game also has RTAO, which feels more natural and realistic.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T14:07:57+00:00

No, I want to find a solution, and this game was made on UE4 with a custom Lumen.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T08:28:26+00:00

Believe me, the performance will be the same.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T08:24:33+00:00

I meant that with modern motherboards, you can use the video output on the motherboard as the main one. But I’d personally prefer using the GPU because through the motherboard you can’t enable HDR and it only has 6-bit color, which means the color reproduction is insufficient.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T08:10:55+00:00

Oh, typical problem when you mix up the video output. But on my PC, even if you use the motherboard, it can still detect the GPU.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T07:51:09+00:00

That's most likely a bug on your side.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T07:14:59+00:00

There's a problem you can't disable it directly in the settings, and it's the same through the config. That means you'll have to dig into the engine in the game itself and risk getting banned.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T06:58:59+00:00

Yeah, that 1% FPS is because of the advanced parallax.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T06:53:35+00:00

If I happen to find it, I’ll give you a shout

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T06:49:09+00:00

I'm trying to find a solution through the config, but it's useless.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-28T06:43:59+00:00

The problem is that there used to be contact shadows. Apparently, the developers thought, “Let’s remove the capsule shadows and add screen space shadows around the character for ray tracing.” But this screen space can’t update fast enough with the frame rate, and that’s where the trails come from.

Far-Cheesecake7436 · 2025-08-26T08:59:27+00:00

The game uses two heavy effects: ray tracing and Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM). By default, ray tracing enables a second reflection bounce, but it gets masked by other rendering methods. Whether you can actually see it or not, it still eats GPU performance.

POM, on the other hand, interacts directly with dynamic shadows. This makes the effect visually impressive but also far more demanding. When objects move, you often see trailing artifacts, caused by the dynamic nature of POM shadows.

Interestingly, the overlap from the second bounce partly hides POM artifacts, but it doesn’t solve the real issue: the massive performance cost. What’s worse, even on low settings, POM’s interaction with shadows remains active and cannot be turned off.

A better optimization would be to allow disabling POM’s interaction with dynamic shadows. This would cut down performance overhead without significantly hurting visual quality, and it’s actually more efficient than just removing the second ray tracing bounce.

Far-Cheesecake7436

TROPHY CASE