Subnautica: How to Increase Draw Distance

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Vanillas’ draw distance is quite poor and I didn’t find an appropriate guide to how to fix it in the “Top Rated All Time” section, so, after a little googling research, here is a quick way to make your character see at a greater distance.

WARNING

It won’t fix all of the pop-ups and it will decrease your framerate.

 

So what should I do?

First of all, install this mod[www.nexusmods.com] in order to slightly reduce the framerate drop caused by further config changes.

How to install Performance Booster mod:
  1. On Nexus mod page, download BepInEx from Requirements.
  2. Extract archives content into the root Subnautica folder (go to the Steam Library → RMB on Subnautica → Manage → Browse local files).
  3. Run and quit the game — it will create some required folders.
  4. Download the mod and put its content (plugins folder) into .\Subnautica\BepInEx\ folder, replace files if needed

That’s it, you can later tweak the mod settings (they will appear in the game menu) if you want to, but be sure to set the original in-game settings to the High preset!.

Next step — locate clipmaps-high.json file at .\Subnautica\Subnautica_Data\StreamingAssets\SNUnmanagedData\ folder and make a backup of it. Then replace its content with this:

{
  "chunkMeshRes": 16,
  "numSlices": 16,
  "maxWorkspaces": 16,
  "maxMeshQueue": 20,
  "maxThreads": 16,
  "vertexBucketStride": 300,
  "triangleBucketStride": 175,
  "levels": [
    {
      "chunksPerSide": 12,
      "chunksVertically": 12,
      "colliders": true,
      "downsamples": 0,
      "maxBlockTypes": 32,
      "grass": true,
      "entities": true,
      "debug": false,
      "castShadows": true,
      "highPriority": true,
      "visual": {
        "useLowMesh": false,
        "simplify": {
          "maxError": 0.01,
          "antiSliverWeight": 0.0005
        }
      },
      "grassSettings": {
        "reduction": 0,
        "maxVerts": 10000,
        "maxTris": 10000
      }
    },
    {
      "chunksPerSide": 14,
      "chunksVertically": 14,
      "colliders": false,
      "downsamples": 0,
      "maxBlockTypes": 8,
      "grass": true,
      "entities": true,
      "debug": false,
      "castShadows": true,
      "highPriority": false,
      "fadeMeshes": false,
      "visual": {
        "useLowMesh": true,
        "simplify": {
          "maxError": 0.1,
          "antiSliverWeight": 0.0005
        }
      },
      "grassSettings": {
        "reduction": 0.5,
        "maxVerts": 10000,
        "maxTris": 10000
      }
    },
    {
      "chunksPerSide": 16,
      "chunksVertically": 16,
      "colliders": false,
      "downsamples": 1,
      "maxBlockTypes": 2,
      "meshOverlap": 1,
      "grass": false,
      "entities": true,
      "debug": false,
      "castShadows": false,
      "highPriority": false,
      "visual": {
        "useLowMesh": true,
        "simplify": {
          "maxError": 1,
          "antiSliverWeight": 0.0005
        }
      },
      "grassSettings": {
        "reduction": 0.5,
        "maxVerts": 10000,
        "maxTris": 10000
      }
    },
    {
      "chunksPerSide": 18,
      "chunksVertically": 18,
      "colliders": false,
      "downsamples": 2,
      "ignoreMeshes": false,
      "meshOverlap": 0,
      "maxBlockTypes": 1,
      "grass": false,
      "entities": true,
      "debug": false,
      "castShadows": false,
      "highPriority": false,
      "fadeMeshes": true,
      "visual": {
        "useLowMesh": true,
        "simplify": {
          "maxError": 1,
          "antiSliverWeight": 0.0005
        }
      },
      "grassSettings": {
        "reduction": 0.5,
        "maxVerts": 10000,
        "maxTris": 10000
      }
    },
    {
      "chunksPerSide": 20,
      "chunksVertically": 20,
      "colliders": false,
      "downsamples": 4,
      "ignoreMeshes": true,
      "maxBlockTypes": 1,
      "grass": false,
      "entities": false,
      "debug": false,
      "castShadows": false,
      "highPriority": false,
      "fadeMeshes": false,
      "visual": {
        "useLowMesh": true,
        "simplify": {
          "maxError": 10,
          "antiSliverWeight": 0.0005
        }
      },
      "grassSettings": {
        "reduction": 0.5,
        "maxVerts": 10000,
        "maxTris": 10000
      }
    }
  ]
}
Next.. No, wait, that’s all!

Fin

Simple but effective. If you want a better performance, try lowering chunksPerSide and chunksVertically params for each “level” in .json file and altering mod settings (keep the in-game preset at high!).

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