Silent Hill f Looks Incredible With Its Hidden “True Epic” Settings

Last week, Konami released its new Silent Hill game, Silent Hill f. Silent Hill f is powered by Unreal Engine 5. But unlike some other UE5 games, it doesn’t look mind-blowing. While testing it, I noticed the devs cut some corners with the graphics. And I was right. There are some hidden “True Epic” settings you can unlock that make the game look much better.

First of all, Silent Hill f does not let you turn on Hardware Lumen or the real Epic graphics settings from its in-game menu. To use them, you have to edit an INI file. And no, this isn’t a placebo effect. If you make these changes, you will really unlock its higher-quality graphics.

For instance, here is an image I immediately took from the game without these “True Epic” settings. You can clearly see how flat these plants look. They lack proper shadows and AO. Honestly, they look bad. Once you unlock the “True Epic” settings, though, these plants receive all the proper shadows. They no longer feel flat or bland, and they perfectly fit the environment.

From what I’ve seen, Hardware Lumen only affects the reflections. It does not bring any improvements to GI, shadows, and AO. So, if you are happy with the default reflections, you can skip this one. On the other hand, the higher quality values for all the other settings (like GI, shadows, and AO) make a huge difference.

Naturally, these hidden settings come at a performance cost. On my NVIDIA RTX 5090, I was no longer able to game with 60FPS at Native 4K. To get framerates over 60FPS at all times with these “True Epic” settings, I had to use DLSS Quality.

So, how can you unlock these hidden “True Epic” settings, you ask? Just create an Engine.ini file in your “AppData\Local\SHf\Saved\Config\Windows” folder, and copy-paste the following code. Once done, make sure to make this a “Read Only” file.

[SystemSettings]

r.Lumen.HardwareRayTracing=1 r.Lumen.Reflections.HardwareRayTracing=1 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.HardwareRayTracing=1 r.LumenScene.DirectLighting.HardwareRayTracing=1 r.ContactShadows.OverrideLengthInWS=1 r.ContactShadows.OverrideLength=25 r.ContactShadows.OverrideShadowCastingIntensity=1 r.ContactShadows.OverrideNonShadowCastingIntensity=1 r.SkylightIntensityMultiplier=0.65 r.ShadowQuality=5 r.Shadow.Virtual.ForceOnlyVirtualShadowMaps=0 r.Shadow.Virtual.ResolutionLodBiasLocal=-2.0 r.Shadow.Virtual.ResolutionLodBiasLocalMoving=-2.0 r.Shadow.Virtual.ResolutionLodBiasDirectional=-1.0 r.Shadow.Virtual.smrt.samplesperraylocal=2 r.Shadow.Virtual.smrt.samplesperrayhair=2 r.Shadow.Virtual.smrt.samplesperraydirectional=2 r.Shadow.Virtual.smrt.texelditherscalelocal=4 r.Shadow.Virtual.SMRT.TexelDitherScaleDirectional=6 r.Shadow.Virtual.ScreenRayLength=0.02 r.Shadow.InsetDownscaleFactor=0 r.Shadow.PerObjectDirectionalDepthBias=0.5 r.Shadow.PerObjectDirectionalSlopeDepthBias=3 r.Shadow.PerObjectSpotLightDepthBias=0.5 r.Shadow.PerObjectSpotLightSlopeDepthBias=3 r.Shadow.ShadowMaxSlopeScaleDepthBias=3 r.Shadow.SpotLightDepthBias=0.5 r.lumen.tracemeshsdfs=1 r.Lumen.TraceMeshSDFs.TraceDistance=240 r.Lumen.ScreenTracingSource=1 r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.SurfaceBias=8 r.LumenScene.DirectLighting.UpdateFactor=8 r.LumenScene.Radiosity.UpdateFactor=4 r.LumenScene.Radiosity.MaxRayIntensity=99 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.TraceMeshSDFs=0 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.DownsampleFactor=12 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.MaxRayIntensity=1 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.MaxRoughnessToEvaluateRoughSpecular=2 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.MaxRoughnessToEvaluateRoughSpecularForFoliage=1 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces.HZBTraversal.SkipHairHits=0 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces.HZBTraversal.SkipFoliageHits=0 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces.HZBTraversal.FullResDepth=1 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces.HZBTraversal.MaxIterations=30 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ScreenTraces.HZBTraversal.RelativeDepthThickness=0.2 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ShortRangeAO.ScreenSpace.SlopeCompareToleranceScale=4.0 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ShortRangeAO.ScreenSpace.FoliageOcclusionStrength=1.0 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ShortRangeAO.MaxMultibounceAlbedo=0.8 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ShortRangeAO.ApplyDuringIntegration=0 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.RadianceCache.ProbeResolution=64 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.RoughSpecularSamplingMode=1 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.DiffuseIntegralMethod=0 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.Temporal.MaxFramesAccumulated=4 r.Lumen.Reflections.RadianceCache=1 r.Lumen.Reflections.GGXSamplingBias=0.7 r.Lumen.Reflections.HierarchicalScreenTraces.MaxIterations=96 r.Lumen.Reflections.SmoothBias=0.76 r.Lumen.Reflections.MaxRoughnessToTrace=0.63 r.Lumen.Reflections.Temporal.MaxFramesAccumulated=0 r.Lumen.Reflections.DownsampleFactor=0 r.Lumen.Reflections.HiResSurface=1 r.Lumen.Reflections.SampleSceneColorAtHit=1 r.Lumen.Reflections.SpecularScale=0.8 r.Lumen.TranslucencyVolume.MaxRayIntensity=0.62 r.Lumen.TranslucencyReflections.FrontLayer.Enable=1 r.Lumen.TranslucencyReflections.FrontLayer.Allow=1 r.SSR.Quality=4 r.SSR.MaxRoughness=1 r.SSR.Stencil=1 r.VolumetricFog.GridPixelSize=7 r.VolumetricFog.GridSizeZ=192 r.VolumetricFog.UpsampleJitterMultiplier=0.55 r.VolumetricCloud.EnableLocalLightsSampling=1 r.VolumetricRenderTarget.Mode=3 r.SSS.Scale=3.5 r.SSS.SampleSet=2 r.SSS.Quality=1 r.SSS.HalfRes=0 r.SSS.Filter=1 r.Water.SingleLayerWater.SupportCloudShadow=1 r.ParallelShadowsNonWholeScene=1

Here are some screenshots I took with these True Epic settings. Just look at them. Silent Hill f looks amazing this way. My guess is that the devs hid these settings so players wouldn’t use them and then complain about bad performance. Sadly, many gamers today do exactly that. This feels just like the old Crysis days, when people complained about the game’s Max Settings being too demanding instead of enjoying how great it looked. And if you’re thinking, “But Crysis was different,” it really wasn’t. The backlash was so strong that Crytek had to rename the settings in Crysis Warhead.

In case you’re wondering, no. These Max Settings will not have any negative effect in the game’s atmosphere. In the video, it might look like the fog is reduced, but that’s not true (you can see this in my screenshots). The only downside is performance. Other than that, there’s nothing bad or wrong about using them.

Speaking of Silent Hill f, I also tried the DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Gen Mod. And, I strongly suggest avoiding it. Right now, this mod brings MAJOR stuttering issues to the game. For the time being, if you want to use Frame Gen, I suggest using OptiScaler, or enabling Smooth Motion/AFMF from your control panel.

Kudos to MxBenchmarkPC for sharing these settings!

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email