15.Grass Quality

This is simply the quality of the grass on the terrain in Rust. This can range from how much grass you see to how complex the texture is. The setting has minimal effect on FPS, but you should keep this setting on 0 anyway because changes in the grass quality will hardly be noticeable.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• GRASS QUALITY can be found on the GRAPHICS tab, near the bottom of the list.

14. Max Tree Meshes

This factor influences how complex tree textures can be. The importance of this setting is overlooked because it affects how trees look, and trees make up a lot of Rust’s surface area. For that reason, you should keep this setting above 50, as it has a minimal impact on FPS, but setting it to 0 will make trees look really ugly.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• On the GRAPHICS tab, at the very bottom section of the list, you will find MAX TREE MESHES.

13.Particle Quality

Affects the quality of particles in rust. Particles are things like explosions, sparks, smoke, etc. Particles are rarely noticed in Rust because they last such a short time. Consider explosions for an example. They rarely happen, and when they do you don’t really compliment how the explosion looks because you have other priorities like checking for enemy players I will however say that you should keep this above 50 because if you put it really low, there will be too much of a contrast between a bad looking particle and the rest of the game. The setting has a minimal impact on performance.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Quality can be found near the bottom of the list on the Graphics tab.

12.Terrain Quality

Terrain Quality is how appealing the terrain textures in Rust look. This can include things such as the complexity of the terrain and how defined the terrain looks. A setting with little impact, but it should be kept above 50 or you will see very noticeable plain terrain, which will make playing a little unpleasant.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• On the GRAPHICS tab, at the very bottom section of the list, you will find Terrain Quality.

11.Tree Quality

How defined and complex the texture for a tree in Rust is. At the start of the game you will be staring at trees quite a bit, and you want to have something nice to stare at. At minimal cost to FPS, the slider should be set to 50 to ensure the trees look reasonably pretty.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• TREE QUALITY can be found on the GRAPHICS tab, near the bottom of the list.

10.Object Quality

Object quality will range from gun quality to the quality of your furnaces. It is a general setting so to speak, changing it will affect a lot of items in the game. This setting has a bigger impact on performance than the settings mentioned above, but not by much. I would recommend keeping this setting above ‘40’ in order to keep your game looking decent.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• On the GRAPHICS tab, at the very bottom section of the list, you will find OBJECT QUALITY.

9.Water Quality & Reflections

These 2 settings control how appealing the water looks in Rust. The reflections will resemble objects they are reflecting much more clearly if set on a higher setting. Rendering good looking water and reflection is not important for a game like Rust. The settings will draw extra power from your graphics cards and if you ask me the water quality and reflections look perfectly fine if they are both set to 0, which is what I would recommend.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Head over to the Graphics tab, and under Graphics Quality, you will see Water Quality and Water Reflections.

8.Shadow Quality & Cascades

These 2 settings are there to make the quality of shadows in the game better or worse. Shadows can appear on anything in Rust, dropped items, trees, bases, characters, players etc. Rendering shadows impacts FPS. The computer will work harder rendering in shadows that look good. What defines a good shadow is how closely the shadow resembles the object. If you have this on a low setting like 0 the shadow will look pixelated and if it is on 6 it will be rounder and have a more defined edge. For shadows I recommend you turn shadow quality to 0 and for shadow cascades no cascades.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Head over to the Graphics tab, and under Graphics Quality, you will see Shadow Quality and Shadow Cascades.

7.FPS Limit

This is a setting that will limit the FPS you are getting. Leave it on 60 and you will only get 60fps. This means that your fps will be capped and will not go above that value regardless of the graphics card that you are using. Monitors come with frame rate, it is essentially the fps limit of your monitor. Most monitors come with 60 frame rate, however others can have 144 or higher. If you have a monitor with a frame rate higher than 60, make sure that in Rust this setting is set to the frame rate of your monitor, this way you will make sure that your game is able to render past 60fps.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Head over to the SCREEN tab, and under VSYNC, you will see FPS LIMIT.

6.VSync

VSync is a setting that tries to reduce the amount of screen tearing you get when you play. Screen tearing is a visual ‘tear’ that occurs when the game switches frames. This can become annoying at times but does not impact gameplay in any way. The setting will reduce your FPS when turned to ON. For the best FPS I recommend turning this setting OFF. The results when turning it ON are not that significant, as the setting does not do a good job at stopping the screen tearing.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Head over to the SCREEN tab, and under MODE you will see VSYNC.

5.Parallax Mapping

This setting will give textures like buildings and terrain the illusion of geometry and depth. For example, instead of a 2d texture of a stone wall, you will begin to see some of the stone sticking out and giving the illusion that the wall has depth. This does not extend the geometry of the texture in any way, it is just a texture illusion. The setting has a high impact on performance. It is not worth adding a layer of detail that is hard to notice for a significant drop in the FPS. For this reason I would recommend you turn this setting down to 1.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Head over to the GRAPHICS tab; towards the bottom of the list, you will find PARALLAX MAPPING.

4.Anisotropic Filtering

“Makes textures sharper when viewed at an angle or distance” is the description given on Rust for this setting. As the description suggests, it’s how sharp or blurry your games look when looking at edges of objects. This setting has a large performance impact of FPS, so I would recommend turning this all the way down to 1. The setting will not affect combat in any way.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Head over to the Graphics tab and you will find "Anisotropic Filtering" towards the end of the list.

3.Screen Mode

The screen mode refers to how the game screen is contained on your monitor. There are 3 modes to this and I will explain them all. Exclusive is where your game is in full screen mode, the size of the window cannot be adjusted. Windowed is where the game is contained within a window, just like when you open a browser. You can resize the window, minimize and close. Borderless is where the game seems full screen, it cannot be resized or closed but you can switch between applications easier. For the best FPS you want to set the setting on Exclusive. This lets the computer know that all of the resources can be assigned to the game, improving FPS. Having the screen mode set of windowed or exclusive will make it easier to do other things when playing Rust, like watch a YouTube video while you want on top of Dome for the crates to respawn but you will notice a drop in FPS.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Head over to the SCREEN tab, and MODE will be under RESOLUTION.

2.Graphics Quality

This setting lets you change the quality of your game; it ranges from 1 to 6, with 1 being the worst quality. The quality of your game refers to how good your game looks. This includes everything from the terrain to the buildings and even the character models. This setting will impact the FPS of your game significantly. This is because your computer, and specifically the graphics card, will work harder to render higher-quality assets for your game. For the absolute best FPS, leave this setting on 1. If you are already getting a high FPS, you can afford to increase the slider to 4. In my opinion, you should never go to 0 because it makes the game look horrible, and you should never go past 4 because the changes are not very noticeable while still impacting FPS.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Head over to the Graphics tab; the first option will be Graphics Quality.

1.Screen Resolution

Screen resolution is the number of pixels that your monitor can display on the screen (both horizontally and vertically). The most common resolution is 1920 x 1080, also known as 1080p. Every monitor comes with a preset resolution but can be set to run at a lower resolution; for example, you might go from 1080p to 720p. When you lower resolution, you also lower quality; it is exactly the same thing that happens on YouTube when you lower the quality. The resolution setting will have the biggest impact on your FPS, and I recommend playing RUST with a resolution of 1080p. This will drastically increase your FPS while maintaining decent quality. If you are already playing at 1080p resolution and want to further boost your FPS, you can use other methods on this list. However, the last resort will be lowering the resolution below 1080p. The quality drop will make it harder to see players from a distance and overall provide something unpleasant to look at.

How to apply the setting:

• While in the game, you can go to the options screen by pressing ESC.
• Navigate to the SCREEN tab, and the first option should be Resolution.

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