Games using Unreal Engine 4 can be tweaked in many ways to better your experience in-game or while shooting. This guide covers the basics of what you can do, with or without UUU and the console.

Console Commands

Some examples of common Unreal Engine console commands:

Commands are not case-sensitive!

Commands that have ?? upper limits listed technically have none.
r.ScreenPercentage is render scale based on your current resolution in %; values above 200 should not be necessary.
r.ViewDistanceScale is a multiplier based on draw distance values set by developers. Unless the default maximum draw distance is very low, a value above 2 should not be necessary.

Commands unrelated to screenshotting are not included.

Chaining commands

The console supports copy-pasting and commands can be chained with |.
For example, if you wanted the game to:

1. Pause
2. Enable the debug camera
3. Set FoV to 50

all at the same time, you would just need to paste pause | toggledebugcamera | fov 50 into the console.

Scalability Groups

Some commands above start with the prefix sg. - these are scalability groups. Scalability groups come in levels that correspond to Low / Medium / High / Epic, as you'd find in a graphics settings menu. In-game settings usually display Level 0 (Low quality) up to Level 3 (Epic quality). You can force it up to Level 4 (Cinematic quality) through the console, at the obvious cost of performance.

Games may occasionally include a Level 5 Scalability Group, you can go to that for maximum settings.
Or you can continue to read to learn how to make your own Super Cinematic scalability group.

Setting custom scalability levels

As scalability groups are simply groups of render settings, you can make "custom profiles" by modifying them. This has many uses, from turning off certain post-processing effects completely, to changing Epic settings to include Cinematic-quality effects, and many more, all without the need of the console.

You will need access to your game's Scalability.ini, typically found through the path ~\AppData\Local\[GAME]\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Scalability.ini.

The file may be empty; that's fine. We'll be modifying it for our own use anyway.

Scalability groups correspond to their command names, without the sg. prefix. Each scalability group is denoted by a @ and their level, so the command sg.PostProcessQuality 3 would look like [PostProcessQuality@3] in your file. The square brackets are important!

Here are a few examples of how the file can be modified:

[PostProcessQuality@3]
r.BloomQuality=0
r.MotionBlurQuality=0

[ShadowQuality@3]
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=8196
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=16
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.01

[TextureQuality@3]
r.Streaming.MipBias=2.5
r.MaxAnisotropy=0
r.Streaming.PoolSize=200

Scalability levels and groups have to be separated with an empty line!
With 5 scalability levels per group, you can have 5 different presets for Post-Processing, Shadows, Textures and Effects.

Once you're done, it's recommended to set the file to Read-only to prevent the game from changing it. You can do that by right-clicking on the file, enter Properties, tick Read-only under Attributes, and apply.

Engine Renderer Settings

Modifying Engine.ini allows you to set render settings by default so that the console isn't needed to change them all the time. It can also be an alternative in the event where modifying Scalability.ini has no effects.
Similar to scalability groups, modifying this file can be used to push the game's graphical limits or optimise it further.

This file can be typically found through the path ~\AppData\Local\[GAME]\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini.

The file needs to be started with [/script/engine.renderersettings]. All commands that follow typically have the r. prefix, as they relate to rendering properties.

Here's an example of how the file could look like:

[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.ScreenPercentage=150
r.ViewDistanceScale=2

This forces the game to always render at 150% native resolution, with draw distance doubled from its native settings. You can also add the same r. commands from the scalability groups to enforce them by default.

All UE4 console commands and variables

To know more about which commands are available and which variables you can set through the console you can use the list of all Unreal Engine 4.27 commands. For Unreal Engine 5 commands, please use the list of all Unreal Engine 5.1 commands.

This search engine allows you to search on both description and command/variable so it's easy to find the command or variable you're after. The engine gives the variables of the latest public UE4 build, so it might be the game you're using the UUU with is of an earlier version and doesn't support the variable.

Similar to Scalability.ini, it is recommended to change this file to Read-only once you're done.

Examples

The following examples are ready to use. You can just copy / paste the contents of each tab into the console using ctrl-C / ctrl-V and hit enter.

There are some per-scene tweaks recommended, especially for screenshots. These are listed below

Fixing issues

Shadow striping with low fov

You can sometimes run into shadow striping with low FoV. To fix this, you have to set the Depth Bias for the light that causes this. This can be a pointlight, directional light or spotlight. The commands to try are:

• r.Shadow.PointLightDepthBias
• r.Shadow.CSMDepthBias
• r.Shadow.PerObjectDirectionalDepthBias
• r.Shadow.SpotLightDepthBias

Usually, a value of around 0.15 should fix it.