How to improve FPS in Dying Light 2: Stay Human (PC)
Dying Light 2: Stay Human runs on Techland's C-Engine, an engine that combines high-speed parkour with a dynamic day/night cycle that completely changes GPU load: by day you have a dense open world in Villedor, at night waves of infected with active AI and more particles/lighting are added on screen. On top of that there's a ray tracing system (global illumination and reflections) that at launch (2022) was one of the most demanding in the catalog, capable of crushing the framerate even on high-end GPUs if enabled without judgment.
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Calculations based on our FPS model combined with the % gain of each setting (measured in public benchmarks).
1. Quick wins (no visual loss)
Start here. Each one adds a little, but together they give +62% free FPS.
Ray Tracing (Global Illumination and Reflections)
Dying Light 2's RT GI recalculates indirect lighting across all of Villedor in real time, including the day/night cycle. It's one of the most expensive things the engine does and on mid-range GPUs it can mean losing more than a third of the framerate.
Volumetric Fog
Volumetric fog is used a lot in Old Villedor and during dawn/dusk to sell the atmosphere, but its layered calculation is expensive. On Low you lose density but keep the nighttime ambiance.
Shadow Quality
The dynamic shadows of NPCs, infected, and urban foliage are constantly recalculated during parkour. Medium keeps ground shadow contact without Ultra's extreme resolution.
Motion Blur
With parkour speed, motion blur adds post-processing cost and for many players makes it harder to read jumps and grabs in first person.
Film Grain / Chromatic Aberration
Purely cosmetic post-processing effects that Techland enables by default to reinforce the game's "found footage" tone, but they add nothing to gameplay.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Global Illumination (without RT)
Even without ray tracing, the C-Engine's screen-space GI has several quality levels that affect how light bounces in interiors and metro tunnels, areas heavily featured in the main missions.
Texture Quality
Ultra can saturate VRAM on cards with 8GB or less, causing microstutter from streaming instead of a clean FPS drop, something noticeable when crossing quickly between Villedor's districts.
World Density
Controls how many NPCs, infected, and vegetation elements render simultaneously. It's especially sensitive at night, when infected density spikes.
Anti-Aliasing / Depth of Field
TAA is the engine's most efficient mode for smoothing the noise from dynamic lighting; Depth of Field adds extra post-processing cost with no real benefit in a fast-paced action game.
View Distance
Ultra forces urban geometry streaming at a greater distance, especially costly when climbing rooftops and the engine has to load all of Villedor at once. High keeps the recognizable skyline without that cost.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS
+40% FPSDying Light 2 included DLSS from launch (compatible with Frame Generation in later engine revisions on RTX 40 GPUs). It's the most recommended option on RTX because it combines well with Ray Tracing enabled.
AMD FSR 2
+32% FPSFSR 2.0 arrived via a post-launch update (it wasn't there day one) and works on any GPU, not just AMD. On Balanced or Quality it's a solid alternative for cards without DLSS.
Intel XeSS
+30% FPSAlso added in a post-launch update. On Intel Arc GPUs it uses the dedicated XMX cores; on non-Intel GPUs it falls back to DP4a mode, with lower quality but still useful.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable DLSS in Quality mode before lowering native resolution; the game's reconstructor keeps Villedor's texture detail very well.
- •On RTX 40-series with Frame Generation, keep Ray Tracing at Medium-High: it's the only tier where you can enjoy RT GI without sacrificing parkour smoothness.
- •Use NVIDIA Reflex (if available) to reduce input lag, important for not missing jumps and grabs at high speed.
AMD
- •With Ray Tracing enabled on RX 6000/7000 cards, expect a bigger performance drop than on an equivalent NVIDIA GPU.
- •Prioritize FSR 2 in Quality mode over raising graphics settings; the engine responds better to upscaling than to brute force at high resolutions.
- •Update to the latest Adrenalin drivers: Techland has released several RDNA2/RDNA3-specific compatibility patches since launch.
Sistema
- •Install the game on SSD (ideally NVMe): urban geometry streaming during high-speed parkour generates noticeable pop-in on mechanical drives.
- •Reserve at least 16GB of free RAM; the game has shown memory leaks in long sessions that can lead to stutter or unexpected crashes.
- •Close overlays and capture software in the background: shader compilation at startup and after changing settings already consumes a fair amount of CPU on its own.
5. Known game issues
Traversal stutter and shader compilation
Especially notorious in Old Villedor and when entering new zones for the first time: the game compiles shaders on the fly, generating micro-hitches during parkour until the cache stabilizes after the first hours of a session.
Estado: Partially improved in updates 1.5+ (2022), but not fully eliminated
Memory leaks in long sessions
Players have reported growing RAM/VRAM usage over runs lasting several hours straight, leading to progressive FPS drops or crashes. Restarting the game every few hours mitigates the issue.
FPS drops at nightfall
The day/night transition suddenly spikes infected spawns and their associated AI, causing a noticeable framerate drop right at the cycle change, more pronounced the higher the World Density setting.
6. Frequently asked questions
Is it worth enabling Ray Tracing in Dying Light 2?▾
Why does my FPS suddenly drop at nightfall?▾
DLSS, FSR, or XeSS: which should I pick if I have an NVIDIA GPU?▾
How much VRAM do I actually need to play without issues?▾
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Calculate FPS for Dying Light 2: Stay Human →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →