How to improve FPS in South of Midnight (PC)
South of Midnight is Compulsion Games' (the studio behind We Happy Few) action-platformer set in the deep South of the United States, where Hazel, a young 'Weaver,' journeys through swamps, flooded towns, and folklore-steeped forests to mend the broken threads of reality using her Weaving powers. Its technical trademark is the art direction: characters and environments animated with a 'digital stop-motion' style that mimics the choppy look of classic frame-by-frame animation, built on Unreal Engine 5 with Lumen for global illumination and Nanite for swamp vegetation and geometry. Being a linear action-platforming experience without a massive open world, the game doesn't demand the hardware of a competitive shooter, but it inherits the same Achilles' heel as other recent Unreal Engine 5 titles: shader-compilation stutter and frametime drops in the sections with the most vegetation, water, and folklore magic effects on screen at once.
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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 +43% free FPS.
Motion Blur
Motion blur adds a per-frame post-processing cost and, in a platformer with jumps and fast movement powered by the Weave, tends to blur the readability of mid-air platforms.
Shadow Quality
Unreal Engine 5's dynamic shadows are among the settings that cost the most GPU in the engine, and in the game's dense swamps and forests they're constantly recalculated over Nanite vegetation geometry and moving foliage.
Global Illumination (Lumen)
Lumen recalculates indirect lighting in real time to give that warm, contrasty deep-South-sunset look that defines the game's aesthetic, making it one of the highest GPU costs in all of Unreal Engine 5.
Foliage/Vegetation Density
The swamps, reed beds, and forests of the deep South are densely populated with Nanite-rendered vegetation, something that directly impacts framerate in the leafiest zones of the journey.
Particle/Magic Effects Quality
Hazel's Weave powers and the folklore creatures generate magic particle effects that pile up in combat and in sequences with a higher density of enemies.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Texture Quality
Thanks to the digital stop-motion aesthetic, the game's textures prioritize a painterly style over photographic realism, so High already delivers a crisp image without demanding Ultra's VRAM cost.
Anti-Aliasing (TSR)
TSR, Unreal Engine 5's native temporal antialiasing, is especially important in a game with the stop-motion's choppy look, since it helps smooth out the engine's characteristic noise without breaking the intended visual effect.
Post-Processing/Color Grading
Groups the bloom, vignetting, and heavy color grading that give the game its Southern-folktale visual identity; at its highest level its cost doesn't offset the extra aesthetic improvement.
Water/Reflections Quality
The flooded swamps and drowned towns of the deep South are a central visual element of the game, and rendering real-time water reflections is one of the most expensive effects in those zones.
View Distance
Being a linear platforming adventure without a massive open world to explore, draw distance is rarely appreciated beyond Medium in the game's forest and swamp stretches.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS 3
+32% FPSBeing built on Unreal Engine 5, it's reasonable to expect South of Midnight to integrate DLSS via NVIDIA's native plugin, especially useful at 1440p/4K to absorb the cost of Lumen and the dense swamp vegetation.
AMD FSR 3
+25% FPSFSR works on any GPU regardless of manufacturer and is the recommended alternative for those without recent NVIDIA hardware, with good image quality in Quality mode.
Intel XeSS
+22% FPSIf the game includes Intel's upscaling plugin, common in many recent Unreal Engine 5 titles, XeSS is a viable option on Arc GPUs and also compatible with NVIDIA and AMD hardware.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Use DLSS in Quality or Balanced mode at 1440p/4K to offset the cost of Lumen and the dense swamp vegetation without dropping native resolution too much.
- •Keep Game Ready drivers updated; recent Unreal Engine 5 titles usually receive Lumen- and Nanite-specific optimizations shortly after launch.
- •If you notice occasional hitches when entering new zones, check that the game has finished precompiling shaders before playing in earnest; the first launch tends to be the least stable.
AMD
- •Enable FSR in Quality mode if Lumen penalizes your framerate too much on Radeon GPUs, which tend to perform somewhat worse than equivalent RTX cards under software global-illumination loads.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS, since Unreal Engine 5 games with lots of Nanite geometry usually benefit measurably from this technology.
- •If your GPU is RDNA 2 or older, consider lowering Global Illumination to Medium instead of High, since these cards perform somewhat worse than more recent series under this specific workload.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an SSD, preferably NVMe; streaming vegetation and swamp textures depends on read speed to avoid visual popping when entering new zones.
- •Let the game compile shaders without interruption the first time you open it, if it offers a precompilation step; skipping it is usually the most common cause of stuttering in the first few hours.
- •Close third-party overlays (Discord, capture software) if you notice micro-stutters in the sections with the most vegetation and magic particle effects on screen at once.
5. Known game issues
Shader compilation stuttering
As with most recent Unreal Engine 5 games, it's common to notice occasional hitches when entering new zones of the journey, especially in the first few hours of play and after updates, while the engine compiles shaders on the fly.
FPS drops in swamp zones with heavy vegetation and water
Sections with the highest density of foliage, reflective water, and ambient fog, very present in the game's deep-South atmosphere, can generate GPU load spikes that translate into occasional framerate drops even on rigs that have headroom the rest of the journey.
High VRAM usage with Texture Quality on Ultra
Some players with 6GB of VRAM or less report streaming hitches when combining Texture Quality at its highest level with the densest swamp and forest zones of the game.
6. Frequently asked questions
What setting gives the most FPS with the least visual loss in South of Midnight?▾
Does South of Midnight have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
Why does the game stutter right when entering a new zone?▾
Do I need a powerful GPU to play South of Midnight well?▾
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Calculate FPS for South of Midnight →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →