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Overwatch's over-aggressive optimization -- set your FPS slider as high as you can to remove enemy "pop-in" (x-post /Overwatch)

Enemy "pop-in" is a phenomena where enemies aren't visible for a couple frames when you round a corner/wall.

When you're hiding behind a corner/wall, the game will de-render things behind that wall to save on system resources. This comes with the accidental issue of enemies being de-rendered, and they won't render until the game acknowledges LOS -- that there is no wall between you and the enemy.

A similar feature exists in CS:GO, as an anti-cheat method...

https://youtu.be/AP10XiDXaE8?t=1m8s

But in Overwatch, it's not used as an anti-cheat method. Pop-in happens completely as a by-product of over-aggressive optimization from Blizzard's end, to keep your framerates high. And sometimes, it's a bit slow, and sometimes it's not even a wall that causes it -- lag or a teammate crossing in front of you can cause this as well.

https://gfycat.com/SpiffyShrillAntarcticfurseal

After playing on a few friends' gaming laptops, I noticed that they don't have the issue (on their GTX 970M and laptop GTX 1070) -- yet my desktop, laptop, and my brother's desktop and laptop did (GTX 980, GTX 750M, GTX 1080, and Intel Iris graphics)

For a very long time, I've been trying to figure out ways to fix this, and I've even contacted Customer Support last year to see if it was known or fixable.

They told me to switch from Borderless Windowed mode to Fullscreen.

That lowered the number of frames where enemies weren't rendered, so the pop-in was less noticeable, but it didn't fix the issue entirely. Then a bug occurred with W10 Fall update that prevents fullscreen, so it started right back up again.

After compiling a list of issues for Widowmaker - https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20759350176#post-1 - I tested something involving framerates and discovered a fix.

https://youtu.be/HQvj_KIzRms

• Use 30 or 60/display-based FPS settings, and you get pop-in

• But if you set a custom FPS with the slider as high as you can go, the pop-in issue is gone

For players with toasters for laptops, this might not be good because you increase the chances of thermal throttling and absolutely tanking your FPS, but for anyone that's capable, set your FPS as high as it can go (even if your graphics card doesn't reach that setting). There might not be any observable benefit (people always argue that the human eye can't see above 60 fps, other say that the human eye can tell a difference), but this removes the pop-in issue entirely.

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