NVIDIA Profile Inspector guide

NVIDIA Profile Inspector[github.com] is a tool allowing to modify game profiles inside NVIDIA driver database. It's like global or per-application settings in NVIDIA Control Panel, but with more settings available. It allows changing/applying some video settings even though they are not available in the game itself, such as: G-Sync, V-Sync, max pre-rendered frames, NVIDIA ultra low latency / reflex, anti-aliasing, texture filtering, ambient occlusion and more. What exactly can be done depends on the game and used graphics API.

Most common use cases I encountered are:

• Forcing Ambient Occlusion[en.wikipedia.org], which in this game adds shadows in corners between objects 3D objects
  
• Tweaking Anti-Aliasing, adding Transparency Anti-Aliasing. The former makes edges of objects smoother, but doesn't work with transparent textures, like grass / foliage, fences, ropes and such. The latter has separate settings to solve that problem specifically
  
• Adjusting Texture Filtering[en.wikipedia.org] and Texture Filtering LOD Bias. Texture filtering makes textures smoother at some range / thresholds, so distant objects aren't too sharp, causing flickering. Adjusting LOD Bias for this changes range at which textures start to fade out

Sample differences (captured with 64 bit client and DirectX9):

• Ambient Occlusion (no AO vs subtle AO (Left4Dead2) vs intense AO (Aion)):
  
  • Ben Chenner[imgsli.com]
    
  • Cessair[imgsli.com]
    
  • Dullahan (1)[imgsli.com]
    
  • Dullahan (2)[imgsli.com]
    
  • Ortel Castle[imgsli.com]
    
  
  
• Anti-aliasing (OFF vs x4 vs x8 - Multisampling for AA, Supersampling for transparency AA):
  
  • Ben Chenner[imgsli.com]
    

0. Have NVIDIA (GeForce) graphics card. For AMD Radeon, there are RadeonMod and RadeonPro tools, which unfortunately are unmaintained - use at your own risk
1. Download the package[github.com] (nvidiaProfileInspector.zip)
2. Extract anywhere you like
3. Run the exe
4. Find Vindictus on the list. If there's none - click on ☀ to create new profile and then add vindictus.exe and vindictus_x64.exe to the newly created profile
5. Adjust settings as you see fit. When editing a setting, small NVIDIA logo can appear on the right side - clicking it resets the setting to default
6. When you are done, click ️✅ Apply changes
7. Start the game

You can remove downloaded files at any time. Doing clean install of the drivers will set everything to default.

• ⚙️ Ambient Occlusion - Compability
  
  • 0x0000000 (Dragon Age 2): no AO (default)
    
  • 0x00000014 (Left 4 Dead 2): subtle AO, mostly stable, caused horizontal dark lines in town above 1080p for me
    
  • 0x00000018 (Aion): strong AO
• ⚙️ Ambient Occlusion - Usage: Enabled to enable AO
  
• ⚙️ Ambient Occlusion - Setting: Quality

• ⚙️ Antialiasing - MFAA Enabled: On - I recall reading that this optimises MSAA
  
• ⚙️ Antialiasing - Transparency Multisampling: Enabled?
  
• ⚙️ Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling: Subjective - set what you see fit on your resolution and screen size
  
• ⚙️ Antialiasing (MSAA) - Mode: Override any application setting to replace whatever the game does
  
• ⚙️ Antialiasing (MSAA) - Setting: Subjective - set what you see fit on your resolution and screen size

DirectX 9: I suggest to have no AA in the game.
DirectX 11: Any AA in the game is required to work through profile.
I have 27" 1440p monitor, so x4 AA on DX9 is enough. On DX11 I use just x2 due to different behavior, causing some kind of global blur.
There are multiple AA methods available - read up how they differ in visuals and performance - Suggested article[gaming.stackexchange.com].

• ⚙️ Anisotropic Filtering - Mode: User defined / off
  
• ⚙️ Anisotropic Filtering - Setting: x4 or more - this requires this type of filtering to be enabled in game too, I don't know if there's any benefit of doing it like so
  
• ⚙️ Texture Filtering - Driver Controlled LOD Bias: On (should be by default)
  
• ⚙️ Texture Filtering - LOD Bias (DX): I found value -2.2500 to be optimum value in increasing sharpness range before it becomes disturbing.
  
• ⚙️ Texture Filtering - Negative LOD bias: Allow (should be by default)

I think this can be considered safe, but as always - do it on your own risk.