Satisfactory — best graphics settings (2026)

Typical impact 0-5% · 4% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend Texture Quality at High (4% fps cost).

Controls the maximum mipmap resolution loaded for surface textures. Higher levels stream larger texture maps (2K/4K) from disk into VRAM via the texture streaming pool. The GPU samples these during fragment shading using the currently bound sampler state. The FPS cost is minimal when VRAM is sufficient because texture fetch latency is hidden by the cache hierarchy, but exceeding VRAM capacity triggers page-faulting and hitching as textures are swapped between system RAM and VRAM.

In Satisfactory: Satisfactory's alien biomes and industrial machinery use a mix of organic and metallic PBR textures. At Ultra, UE5 streams 4K surface maps for building interiors, machine casings, and terrain — consuming the bulk of your VRAM budget. In a mid-to-late factory, hundreds of unique machine materials are visible simultaneously. Dropping to High or Medium reclaims VRAM headroom and eliminates streaming hitches without noticeably changing factory legibility at typical play distances.

Typical impact 8-25% · 10% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend Shadow Quality at High (10% fps cost).

Controls shadow map resolution, filtering method, and cascade count for dynamic shadows. The engine renders the scene from each light source perspective into depth-only shadow map textures. Higher settings increase shadow map resolution (1024 to 4096 texels), add more cascaded shadow map splits for the directional light (improving near-field resolution), and enable softer PCF or PCSS filtering which requires more depth comparison samples per pixel during the lighting pass.

In Satisfactory: Satisfactory's factories cast complex cascaded shadows — every conveyor belt, constructor, and pipe junction contributes to the shadow map geometry pass. At Ultra, the engine renders high-resolution CSM cascades across the full factory, multiplying depth-pass draw calls proportionally to factory scale. Medium or Low reduces cascade resolution and the shadow-casting object budget, delivering a meaningful frame-time reduction in dense production areas where shadow map geometry easily triples the render cost.

Typical impact 3-15% · 8% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend Effect Quality at High (8% fps cost).

Controls the visual fidelity of gameplay effects including explosions, weapon impacts, ability VFX, and environmental interactions. Higher settings increase particle emitter counts per effect, use higher-resolution flipbook or mesh particles instead of simple sprites, enable GPU particle simulation via compute shaders, and add dynamic lighting from effects (each explosion spawning a temporary point light). The cost is highly variable — intense combat with multiple overlapping effects can produce 4-8x overdraw from layered transparent particles.

In Satisfactory: Industrial VFX — smoke stacks, smelter exhaust, particle sparks from miners, and fluid pipeline effects — are all governed here. In early game the impact is light, but a fully automated late-game factory can have dozens of simultaneous particle emitters active on screen. At Ultra, UE5 runs GPU-simulated particle systems with higher emitter counts and dynamic point lights attached to effect sources. Dropping to Medium or Low reduces emitter particle budgets and disables per-effect dynamic lighting, cutting overdraw in factory cores.

Typical impact 5-20% · 12% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend View Distance at High (12% fps cost).

Sets the maximum distance at which world geometry, props, and objects are rendered. The engine performs frustum culling and occlusion culling on all objects — increasing view distance dramatically increases the number of objects passing visibility tests, leading to more draw calls submitted to the GPU command processor. In UE5 titles, this also affects Nanite virtual geometry streaming range. The CPU cost of scene traversal and draw call submission often bottlenecks before the GPU at extreme view distances.

In Satisfactory: Late-game mega-factories with thousands of machines require high view distance to see your entire production line. Extremely CPU/GPU heavy at scale.

Typical impact 5-20% · 8% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend Foliage Quality at High (8% fps cost).

Controls density, LOD transitions, and rendering quality for non-grass vegetation — trees, bushes, ferns, and vines. Higher settings increase the number of foliage instances, delay the transition from full 3D meshes to billboard imposters, and use higher-poly foliage meshes. In UE5 games using Nanite foliage, this controls the mesh cluster granularity and streaming distance. The primary cost drivers are massive overdraw from layered alpha-tested foliage cards and the high draw call count from thousands of individually-placed foliage instances.

In Satisfactory: Early game areas have dense alien vegetation. Late game players often clear foliage for factories — this setting matters less as you progress.

Typical impact 2-15% · 4% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend Anti-Aliasing at TAA High (4% fps cost).

Smooths jagged edges (aliasing) on geometric boundaries. FXAA is a single-pass edge-detection blur — cheap but softens the image. TAA accumulates multiple frames using motion vectors, sampling sub-pixel jitter offsets to reconstruct smoother edges — moderate cost with potential ghosting. SMAA uses pattern-matching edge detection with a more intelligent blend. MSAA runs the rasterizer at 2x/4x the sample count, evaluating coverage for each triangle edge — expensive because it multiplies ROP work and render target memory, but produces sharp geometry edges without blur.

In Satisfactory: Satisfactory offers TAA and TAA High on top of Off. TAA accumulates sub-pixel jitter across frames using UE5's temporal AA implementation — useful for smoothing the fine geometric aliasing produced by conveyor belts and machine grating seen at oblique angles. TAA High increases the history sample weight and sharpening pass quality at modest extra cost. The Off mode eliminates temporal ghosting on fast-moving belts but leaves significant geometric shimmer. TAA is the recommended baseline; TAA High is worthwhile only if you have GPU headroom to spare.

Typical impact 3-10% · 6% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend Post-Process Quality at High (6% fps cost).

Controls the overall quality of the fullscreen post-processing effect stack including tone mapping, color grading (LUT application), bloom (bright-pass filter with multi-stage Gaussian blur), lens flare, auto-exposure (luminance histogram compute shader), and screen-space lens distortion. Higher settings run these effects at full resolution, use larger blur kernels for bloom, and enable additional effects. The total cost is the sum of multiple fullscreen passes — each reading and writing the entire framebuffer.

In Satisfactory: Controls Satisfactory's fullscreen post-process stack: tone mapping, auto-exposure adaptation as you move between bright alien surface and dark cave factories, bloom around industrial lights and molten material, and lens effects. At Ultra, bloom uses wider Gaussian kernels and the exposure histogram runs at full precision — visually significant when entering a brightly lit fuel generator hall from a dark corridor. Dropping to Medium halves bloom kernel passes and reduces LUT precision, recovering a small but consistent frame budget across all play scenarios.

Typical impact 3-12% · 5% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend Ambient Occlusion at Medium (5% fps cost).

Computes soft shadowing in crevices and where surfaces meet by estimating how much ambient light is occluded at each pixel. SSAO samples the depth buffer in a hemisphere around each pixel, testing for nearby occluders. HBAO+ uses ray-marching along the depth buffer horizon. GTAO uses a multi-directional horizon search with cosine-weighted integration for physically correct results. Each method runs as a fullscreen compute or pixel shader pass — higher quality modes increase sample count from 4 (SSAO) to 32+ (GTAO Ultra), directly scaling the per-pixel ALU cost.

In Satisfactory: AO in Satisfactory uses UE5's screen-space ambient occlusion to add contact shadowing between machine bases and floors, inside conveyor belt junctions, and around structural pillars. At High, the GTAO implementation runs a multi-directional horizon search per pixel — perceptibly improving the sense of depth and grounding in factory interiors. In large open factories, the AO pass runs at full resolution across the entire framebuffer. Medium or Low reduces sample count and is a reasonable trade in outdoor factory areas where the effect is less perceptually significant than in enclosed production rooms.

Typical impact 1-5% · 1% fps cost

In Satisfactory, we recommend Motion Blur at On (1% fps cost).

Applies directional blur to moving objects based on per-pixel motion vectors. The engine writes a motion vector buffer during the G-buffer pass — each pixel stores a 2D velocity derived from the difference between current and previous frame positions. The post-process shader samples the color buffer along each pixel's motion vector, averaging multiple taps to produce directional streaking. The cost is a single fullscreen pass with 8-16 dependent texture fetches per pixel. Many competitive players disable this for image clarity.

In Satisfactory: Satisfactory's motion blur applies per-pixel velocity-vector blur during high-speed ziplining, vehicle traversal, and jetpack flight. The effect is generated from UE5's motion vector buffer in a single post-process pass. Most players disable this for factory management sessions where clarity of small machine indicators and belt item visibility matters more than cinematic feel. The FPS cost is minimal either way, but Off is recommended for the visual precision needed to inspect production lines and debug belt routing.

Typical impact -30-80% · no measurable cost

In Satisfactory, the recommended preset leaves NVIDIA DLSS off — little visual loss for the frames it returns.

Deep Learning Super Sampling — NVIDIA's AI-based temporal upscaling that runs on dedicated Tensor Core hardware. The engine renders at a lower internal resolution and feeds the reduced-resolution frame, motion vectors, and depth buffer to a neural network that reconstructs a high-resolution output. DLSS 3+ adds optical flow-based frame generation on Ada/Blackwell architectures. The FPS gain comes from rendering fewer pixels — Quality mode renders ~67% of native pixels, Performance ~50%, Ultra Performance ~33%.

In Satisfactory: Satisfactory supports DLSS 2/3 on Turing and later NVIDIA GPUs. Since the game's factory geometry includes fine repeating structures — conveyor belts, pipe segments, and machine grating — DLSS Quality mode (rendering at ~67% native resolution) is the recommended balance: Tensor Core reconstruction handles the regular industrial geometry well with minimal ghosting. Performance mode (~50%) is viable for very late-game saves where frame budget is critically constrained. DLSS substantially outperforms FSR in temporal stability on moving belt items, making it the preferred upscaler on compatible hardware.

Typical impact -25-70% · no measurable cost

In Satisfactory, the recommended preset leaves AMD FSR off — little visual loss for the frames it returns.

FidelityFX Super Resolution — AMD's upscaling technology available on all GPUs. FSR 2.0+ uses temporal accumulation similar to TAA — it combines multiple jittered lower-resolution frames using motion vectors and a depth buffer to reconstruct a higher-resolution output via a multi-pass compute shader pipeline. The pipeline includes depth clip detection, motion vector dilation, luminance instability detection, and a reconstruction pass with Lanczos-based resampling. Unlike DLSS, FSR runs on standard compute units rather than dedicated AI hardware, working vendor-agnostically.

In Satisfactory: FSR 2 is available for non-NVIDIA hardware in Satisfactory, using temporal accumulation via compute shader reconstruction rather than dedicated AI hardware. Quality mode (~77% render resolution) maintains acceptable sharpness on factory machinery and alien terrain. Balanced mode (~67%) is a practical choice in late-game saves where the CPU/GPU overhead of thousands of machines already pressures frame time. FSR introduces more temporal instability than DLSS on fast-moving conveyor items and belt animations, but remains a strong option for AMD and Intel GPU users seeking meaningful upscaling gains.