Optimized Settings For South Of Midnight On PC

Compulsion Games' combat can be difficult, the player has many tools in their arsenal to make it easier, including the ability to adjust settings to improve performance.

But if you're not too familiar with how PC game settings work, South of Midnight's laundry list of graphical options can be daunting. While it's easy enough to slap on the lowest preset and head out into the ruins of Prospero, you'd be missing out if you did so unnecessarily: South of Midnight has a beautifully unique visual style, which you'll definitely want to see in the highest fidelity possible. Here's the result of my extensive graphical experimentation with South of Midnight, culminating in a list of the optimal settings for the best possible performance even on lower-end PCs.

Best Screen Preference Settings For South Of Midnight On PC

How To Calibrate Your Monitor

The first time you open South of Midnight on your PC, the game will automatically run a quick benchmark to determine the best settings available based on your hardware. I highly recommend allowing this process to complete and using the recommended settings as a starting point. I found they were able to strike a good balance for my PC almost immediately, with only a little tweaking required to alleviate screen tearing.

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You can adjust South of Midnight's graphical settings from the Graphics menu, which you can access at any time by pausing the game. Simply press Esc to open the menu, then scroll down and click on "Options," and finally select "Graphics." You'll see two categories in this submenu: Screen Preference and Graphics. We'll focus on the best settings for Screen Preference first.

After adjusting graphical (or any other) settings, don't forget to press A to apply your settings before exiting the menu. Otherwise, you'll have to start all over again when you open it back up.

If you're still having trouble, the table below includes a brief explanation of every single Screen Preference setting, as well as a recommendation for which option to select for the best performance possible. Note that your mileage may vary; each PC is different in of components and capabilities.

Setting	Recommended Option	Explanation
HDR	Off	HDR, or high dynamic range, allows your monitor to display a wider range of colors. This can create more vibrant visuals at the cost of GPU performance. Many monitors are simply not capable of displaying in HDR.
Image calibration	Gamma 2.2	This is the default brightness setting; you should barely be able to see the logo on both sides of the image. I found the default setting was fine, but you may want to slide up and down at your preference. This shouldn't affect performance.
Window mode	Fullscreen	Fullscreen display takes up your entire monitor, and may boost performance since your monitor will only need to display the game window.
Resolution	1920 x 1080	This is the default setting, and a common resolution for most non-4K monitors. If you're still having trouble with performance after adjusting all other settings, consider turning the resolution down to 1280 x 720.

If you're not sure whether your monitor is capable of 4K or HDR display, check your PC's settings. Navigate to System > Display > Advanced display to see your monitor's specs. Recommended resolution will be under "Desktop mode," and HDR capability will be listed under "Color Space."

Best Graphics Settings For South Of Midnight On PC

How To Achieve The Best Performance

The table below focuses on the Graphics section of South of Midnight's menu, comprising a step-by-step guide to the best option for each available setting. Ideally, these settings should strike a good balance between visual fidelity and smooth performance, allowing you to explore South of Midnight in all its glory.

Setting	Recommended Option	Explanation
Motion blur	Off	Motion blur creates a movement effect while turning the camera, but it's another process for your GPU to take on, and can reduce performance.
Upscaling	DLSS/TAAU	Upscaling can increase frame rates by artificially increasing the game's resolution. Note that DLSS is only available on certain Nvidia GPUs; if you have an ineligible graphics card, you may have to use TAAU.
→ Quality	Ultra performance	Ultra performance strikes the best balance between upscaling quality without detracting from performance.
V-sync	Off	V-sync alleviates screen tearing at the cost of a few frames per second. It should always be off, unless you're experiencing disruptive screen tearing.
Frame rate limiter	Off	Limits the maximum frame rate to either 30 or 60 fps. Turn this on if you're still having screen tearing issues and v-sync reduces performance by too much.
Shading quality	Medium	Affects the surface detail of objects; medium settings allow you to enjoy South of Midnight's unique visual style without too much impact on performance.
Anti-aliasing quality	Low	Smooths the edges of objects. Not too noticeable without it here.
View distance quality	Medium	Affects how much of the world in front of you is visible. Medium is recommended for a good balance.
Shadow quality	Low	Affects the clarity and smoothness of shadows. You won't miss this too much.
PostProcess quality	Medium	Changes how much detail is rendered in special effects. Medium allows for enough detail without too many frames being lost.
Texture quality	Medium	Alters how much detail is rendered on in-game surfaces. Medium looks good without putting too much strain on your GPU.
Effects quality	Medium	Changes the quality with which effects like Hazel's magic are rendered. Medium is the best balance between visuals and performance.
Foliage quality	Low	Affects the number and detail of leaves and blades of grass rendered in-game. There are lots of these, and you'll rarely look at them too closely, so setting this to low can greatly improve performance without too much of a noticeable difference.

The three images above compare the quality of South of Midnight when playing at the highest available, lowest available, and recommended settings as delineated here. As you can see, these recommended settings keep the game looking good without detracting too much from performance. That should allow you to cope with South of Midnight's demanding combat on any difficulty.

How To Reduce Stuttering In South Of Midnight On PC

An Aesthetic Choice, Though Not To Everyone's Liking

The stop motion effect setting in South of Midnight's menu.

If you're still having issues with stuttering in South of Midnight, it may be due to a deliberate effect that makes up part of the game's unique visual style. South of Midnight's animations take cues from stop motion, in which physical models, often made of clay or silicone, are manipulated and photographed frame by frame. Stop motion sometimes looks a little jumpier than hand-drawn or computer-generated styles because of the inapplicability of techniques like smear frames, which can help make fast movement look more fluid in traditional and CG animation.

Stop motion animation was perhaps most notably used in classic Rankin/Bass animated Christmas specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. More recently, it's appeared in films like The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and is associated with the characteristic styles of studios Laika and Aardman.

If you find this effect disruptive, however, you can turn it off in South of Midnight's gameplay settings. Simply look for the option called "Stop motion effect," and toggle it to off. That should make the characters and environment move more smoothly, like you're used to in the kind of computer animation that most video games employ.

And with that, you should have everything you need to tweak the graphical settings to your liking. Using these recommended calibrations, you should have no trouble getting South of Midnight to run well on almost any PC; do feel free to experiment, though, and adjust various options based on whatever your system can handle.