Star Wars Zero Company FPS Optimization & Full Breakdown Comparison

After spending some quality time with Star Wars Zero Company, this complete breakdown covers all of the different graphics options available to you, as well as their impact. You can get quite a bit more FPS out of this game while keeping it looking as good as possible.

With the default settings, this game is likely to struggle a heck of a lot. However, with some fine-tuning, especially upscaling, you can get things going relatively well.

Playing the game with the default settings, I found it to be rather sluggish, feeling around 20-ish FPS even though I was getting around 50 FPS or so. I can see this being less of an issue on controllers; however, it was noticeable on mouse and keyboard. If you’re running lower-powered hardware, you’ll likely need to get used to bad frame times and stutters.

Overall Quality

Even though upscaling is likely going to give you a much bigger boost in FPS, changing the overall graphics quality setting is required.

When changing between the different graphics presets, the thing that jumps out the most is the lighting. Going from Ultra to High removes a few lights, going from High to Medium removes even more, and Low looks a bit bright and washed out.

For a large boost in performance, I recommend Medium and nothing lower.

Now, we’ll move on to upscaling, where you’ll find most of your FPS improvements.

Upscaling (NativeAA)

Starting at the top, we have native anti-aliasing. In other words, this applies anti-aliasing on top of your native resolution. There are no options for native resolution without anti-aliasing, so this is the best that we have.

FXAA and TAA do the least on top of your native resolution, meaning they have the best performance. However, I would recommend using DLSS DLAA or FSR Native AA if you want a good native-resolution experience.

If you’re looking for performance improvements, then you should consider using upscaling. NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel all have their own technologies, which usually work better on their own hardware.

Pick what works best for you and is compatible. In my case, no matter what I’m using, I’d likely choose the Quality preset at 2K, or maybe Balanced. If you’re playing at 1080p, I wouldn’t recommend going much further below Quality.

Upscaling (FSR)

FSR is compatible with all graphics card manufacturers, so no matter what you’re using, you can use it. I’d recommend using Quality, if not Balanced, at 2K; otherwise, use Quality at 1080p.

Upscaling (DLSS)

DLSS is specific to NVIDIA graphics cards, and again, here I’ll be using Quality or Balanced at 2K. If you’re at 1080p, I’d stick to Quality.

Upscaling (XeSS)

Finally, XeSS is Intel’s technology, and we have far more options here for finer-grained control. The further towards the performance side you go, the more performance you’ll get. Again, I’d recommend Ultra Quality, Quality, or Balanced at 2K; otherwise, use Quality or maybe Ultra Quality at 1080p.

Reflections

Every metallic surface is reflective, and there are a lot of wet surfaces as well. Here, I tried to find the most reflective things, which happened to be glass. You can see a ton of highly detailed reflections at Ultra. When lowered to High or anything below that, they seem to become slightly blurrier representations rather than accurate reflections of the surrounding lighting.

I’d set this to Medium and forget about it. Otherwise, use Ultra if you want a slightly better-looking experience and you’re running top-of-the-range hardware. Everything else looks about the same.

Shadow Quality

Shadow quality has a small impact on the number and quality of shadows. For the most part, lowering this from Ultra to Low causes almost no visual change while providing a relatively big performance boost of around 10%. I’d recommend lowering this to Medium or even Low and forgetting about it.

Post Processing

Post-processing is an interesting one. Medium, High, and Ultra all look about the same, with varying levels of depth-of-field blur and motion blur, while Low completely gets rid of motion blur, depth of field, etc. This results in a much clearer but much less cinematic view. All of these screenshots were taken during cutscenes, as you won’t really have depth of field or motion blur outside of them, except for maybe explosions and things like that.

Performance-wise, there’s a small difference. However, if you need more or don’t like depth of field or motion blur, set this to Low.

Env Geometry Detail

Environment geometry detail is a toggle, and for the most part, there’s little, if any, difference between the two settings. There may be some extra detail on the cliff face in the distance, but throughout general gameplay, you’re not going to see much of a difference. With slightly less geometry being loaded in, you’d expect less stuttering while looking around, panning, etc. You’ll see a small boost in FPS, and I recommend leaving this off.

Hidden Object Detail

Hidden object detail is an interesting one. When you set this to Simplified, objects that hide your view, such as structures, buildings, overhangs, and bridges, vanish when you mouse over or aim underneath them. Sometimes, a couple of things are left behind, like flags, bits of the roof, etc. This might be a little bit annoying to deal with, so I’d recommend leaving this on Full unless you’re clawing for more FPS. In that case, set it to Simplified, as it might impact your gameplay.

Shading Quality

Shading quality results in a small, if not unnoticeable, difference in the quality of objects in the scene. There may be a couple of small changes in the distance, like the display on the table. For the most part, leave this on Ultra or set it all the way down to Low, as everything above Low seems to have about the same performance.

Effect Quality

Effect quality takes the longest of all settings for the game to become responsive again after a change. It’ll freeze up your game for a short while. For the most part, it seems to affect the amount of fog and particle emitters in the scene. There’s little, if any, performance difference. I’d recommend leaving this at whatever your quality preset uses, be it High, Ultra, or anything else, and forgetting about it.

Textures

Textures are usually a freebie, and here texture quality is no different. You’ll need to set this based on how much VRAM you have available. Assuming you’re able to crank this up, I’d recommend setting it all the way to Ultra for a better-looking game at almost no FPS cost.

View Distance

View distance is difficult to test, as most of the time you’ll be looking top-down, so it isn’t going to be much of an issue. When you’re able to look around in third-person view outside of combat, there’s not much rendered in the world around you. I saw no difference between the options, so leave it at whatever your preset uses.

Global Illumination

Finally, global illumination. You’d expect lighting to have the biggest impact on performance, but changing this option meant almost no change at all. Again, leave this alone.