Graphics settings

This article is about the settings interface. For the general topic, see Graphics.

The settings interface for Graphics

Graphics settings are a set of options that allow customisation of the display of RuneScape.

NXT and Mobile client

NXT Setup

On the NXT client, there are five graphics presets: "min", "low", "mid", "high" and "ultra", each increasing in graphical fidelity. Advanced settings can be individually customised; doing so turns on the "custom" option.

Preset Table

Setting	Preset
	Min	Low	Mid	High	Ultra
Brightness	Does not change
Remove Roofs	Does not change
Draw Distance	Low		Medium	High	Ultra
Shadow Quality	N/A	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
VSync	Does not change
Anti-Aliasing Mode	Off		FXAA	MSAA
Anti-Aliasing Quality	N/A		Low	Medium	High
Water detail	Low		Medium	High	Ultra
Lighting Detail	Low		Medium	High	Ultra
Ambient Occlusion	Off				HBAO
Bloom	Off		Low	Medium	High
Textures	Off	Compressed
Anisotropic Filtering	Off		x2	x4	x8
Volumetric Lighting	N/A	Off			High
Foreground FPS	Does not change
Background FPS	Does not change
Interface Scaling	Does not change
Game Render Scaling	Does not change
Flickering Effects	Does not change
Shadows	Off	On
Custom Cursors	Does not change
Loading Screens	Does not change
Ground Decoration	Off	On
Terrain Blending	On
Depth of Field	N/A			On
Smooth Camera Fade	Off		On
Tree Canopy Fade	Off		On
Mouse-over Entity Highlights	Does not change

Auto Setup

Auto setup selects the best settings for a balance between visuals and performance based on the computer's hardware. Auto setup runs when starting the client for the first time and can be run again at any time by selecting the "re-run auto setup" button.

Mobile Setup

On the mobile client, there are two presets: "power save" and "balanced". The balanced preset functions the same as auto setup, selecting the optimal settings for the phone's hardware. Manually adjusting individual settings will automatically switch on the "custom" toggle. Most settings excluding Game Brightness, Remove Roof and Flickering Effects are hidden unless "advanced options" is toggled on.

Brightness

Brightness controls the level of overall lighting and shade. On the NXT client it is adjusted with a slider.

On the mobile client this setting is called Game Brightness which has the following settings:

• Darkest
• Dark
• Bright
• Brightest

• 

  Lumbridge Castle on the lowest (left) and highest (right) brightness settings

Remove Roofs

Remove Roofs controls when roofs are hiden.

• None - Never hides roofs.
• Always - Always hides roofs regardless of location or camera.
• Selectively - Only hides roofs that lie between the camera and the player.
• All - Hides all roofs when any roof lies between the camera and the player.

• 

  A building with its roof.

• 

  A building without its roof.

Draw Distance

Draw Distance determines the distance objects and fog will render from the player.

• Low - Called Near on mobile.
• Medium - Not on mobile.
• High - Called Far on mobile.
• Ultra - Not on mobile.

• 

  View of White Wolf Mountain on low draw distance. Note the fog.

• 

  View of the mountain on ultra draw distance. The entire peak can be seen.

VSync

VSync (vertical synchronisation) eliminates screen tearing by synchronising the frame rate with the monitor's refresh rate. This setting bypasses Foreground and Background FPS.

This setting is not present on mobile.

• Adaptive - VSync is only enabled when the frame rate is greater than or equal to the monitor's refresh rate. This is the recommended option.
• Off
• On - VSync is always enabled.
• Half - Synchronises frame rate to half the monitor's refresh rate. Recommended for older laptops.
• Quarter - Synchronises frame rate to quarter the monitor's refresh rate. Recommended for non-gaming laptops.

• 

  Frame rate viewed on the developer console with off, on/adaptive, half and quarter VSync settings, respectively, on a monitor with a refresh rate of 60Hz.

Shadow Quality

Shadow Quality controls the detail and render distance of object and scenery shadows. This option requires shadows to be turned on.

• Low
• Medium
• High
• Ultra

• 

  A forest of trees on "low" shadow quality. Note that the shadows do not render as far.

• 

  A forest of trees on "ultra" shadow quality. The shadows are sharper and render further away.

Anti-Aliasing Mode

Anti-aliasingis used to remove aliasing (pixelated edges) when rendering objects. This option must not be set to off to adjust Anti-Aliasing Quality.

• Off
• FXAA - Fast approximate anti-aliasing, lower quality but better performance.
• MSAA - Multisample anti-aliasing, better quality but lower performance. Does not allow for anti-aliasing of objects with bloom.
• FXAA+MSAA - Combines both techniques, slightly blurrier but allows for anti-aliasing of objects with bloom.

• 

  Part of a citadel with no anti-aliasing.

• 

  Part of a citadel with "FXAA" anti-aliasing on "ultra".

• 

  Part of a citadel with "MSAA" anti-aliasing on "ultra". Note that the bloomed section of the obelisk is still aliased.

• 

  Part of a citadel with "FXAA+MSAA" anti-aliasing on "ultra". This technique causes the image to be slightly blurry.

Anti-Aliasing Quality

Anti-Aliasing Quality controls the level of detail of anti-aliasing. This option requires that Anti-Aliasing Mode is not set to off.

This setting is not present on mobile.

• Low
• Medium
• High
• Ultra

Water detail

The Water detail setting controls how detailed water is rendered.

• Low
• Medium - Adds a refraction effect.
• High - Adds reflections.
• Ultra - Adds a caustic effect. Not on mobile.

• 

  The River Elid on the "low" water setting

• 

  The river on the "medium" water setting adds a refraction effect

• 

  The river on the "ultra" water setting adds reflections

• 

  The river on the "ultra" water setting adds a caustic effect

Lighting Detail

Lighting Detail controls ambient lighting. There is no option to turn lighting "off".

• Low
• Medium - Not on mobile.
• High
• Ultra - Not on mobile.

• 

  The light from the lantern does not show on the wall on "low" lighting detail.

• 

  The light shows properly on "ultra" lighting detail.

Ambient Occlusion

Ambient Occlusion controls shading of smaller and more intricate models with a greater specificity in detail. It can only be enabled on supported hardware.

• Off
• SSAO - Screen space ambient occlusion, less accurate but better performance.
• HBAO - Horizon based ambient occlusion, more accurate but lower performance.

• 

  The steps in the Tower of Voices with no ambient occlusion.

• 

  The steps with "SSAO" ambient occlusion.

• 

  The steps with "HBAO" ambient occlusion.

Bloom

Bloom is a lighting effect that controls additional brightness and impact of glowing effects.

This setting is not present on mobile.

• Low
• Medium
• High

• 

  The Lava Flow Mine on the "low" bloom setting.

• 

  The mine on the "high" bloom setting.

Textures

Controls the quality of textures. Enabling textures forces terrain blending on.

On mobile, this option is a toggle.

• Off
• Compressed

• 

  The Rusty Anchor with textures "off".

• 

  The pub with textures "on".

Anisotropic Filtering

Anisotropic Filtering improves the appearance of textures, particularly terrain, when viewed from extreme angles and distances.

• Off
• x2
• x4
• x8 - Not on mobile.
• x16 - Not on mobile.

• 

  The Tuai Leit pier with anisotropic filtering "off".

• 

  The pier with anisotropic filtering on the "x16" setting.

Volumetric Lighting

Volumetric Lighting adds additional lighting effects such as crepuscular rays. This option requires shadows to be turned on.

• Off - Not on mobile.
• Low
• Medium - Not on mobile.
• High
• Ultra - Not on mobile.

• 

  Menaphos watchtowers with volumetric lighting "off".

• 

  The watchtowers with volumetric lighting on "ultra".

Foreground and Background FPS

Foreground FPS and Background FPS controls the maximum frames per second that can be rendered when the game is the focused or unfocused window, respectively. These options can be set at intervals of five between 5 and 300 inclusive. Vsync bypasses this setting if it is set to a lower synchronisation rate.

On mobile, both of these are consolidated into a single setting called Frames Per Second and can be set to the following:

• 15
• 30
• 60

Flickering Effects

Flickering Effects are fullscreen flashes that provide dramatic ambience to an area. An example of such an area is the Killerwatt plane. This option can be toggled off or on.

It is recommended that players who are prone to epileptic seizures play with flickering effects turned off.

Shadows

The shadows setting controls whether or not shadows appear. This setting controls NPC, player and scenery shadows. This option can be toggled off or on. This setting must be turned on to adjust Shadow Quality and Volumetric Lighting.

Custom Cursors

Main article: Cursor

Turning this option on replaces the cursor with Custom Cursors when in game. This option can be toggled off or on.

This setting is not present on mobile.

Loading Screens

This setting controls whether or not loading Screens appear when the game world hasn't fully loaded in. This option can be toggled off or on.

This setting is not present on mobile and as such loading screens cannot be turned off.

• 

  The loading screen on NXT.

Ground Decoration

This setting controls whether or not ground decoration such as grass and rocks are shown. This option can be toggled off or on.

• 

  The ground with decoration turned off.

• 

  The ground with decoration on.

Terrain Blending

Terrain Blending determines whether or not textures on tiles can blend with other adjacent tiles for a more fluid appearance. Turning this option off forcibly disables textures.

• 

  A pathway with terrain blending turned off.

• 

  Terrain blending turned on (textures are "off").

Depth of Field

Depth of Field causes distant objects to be blurred. This option can be toggled off or on. Turning on this option requires draw distance to be set to high or ultra.

Smooth Camera Fade

Smooth Camera Fade causes objects that clip with the camera to be smoothed out. This option can be toggled off or on.

Tree Canopy Fade

Tree Canopy Fade determines how the tree canopies behave when the player character is hidden behind them. Turning the option on causes the canopies to fade out around the character. The more canopy there is between the canopy and the character, the greater the fading effect.

Mouse-over Entity Highlights

Mouse-over Entity Highlights causes interactable objects to have a glowing outline when they are hovered over or clicked. Interactable scenery has a cyan outline, monsters a red one, and non-attackable non-player characters a yellow one. Clicking the objects makes the outline to flash brighter, and even objects with no left-click options receive a grey flash (e.g. examine and player character operations). This option also causes the player character's silhouette to appear through the scenery when there is scenery between the camera and player character.

Screen Sizing

Screen Sizing affects the size of the game window.

This setting is not present on mobile.

• Windowed - Allows the game to take up the entirety of a resizable window.
• Fullscreen - Allows the game to take up the entirety of the monitor in a borderless, non-resizable window. Includes a dropdown to select the render resolution, the options of which are dependent on the monitor's resolution setting (examples for a 1920x1080 monitor are shown).
  • The monitor's resolution (e.g. 1920x1080)
  • 133.3% of the monitor's resolution width (e.g. 2560x1440)
  • 50% of the monitor's resolution width (e.g. 960x540)

Interface Scaling

Interface Scaling affects the sizes of interfaces within the game window. This is useful for higher resolution monitors where the default interface size may appear very small. The values range from 100% to 300%, in varying increments of 10%, 15%, and 35%.

Game Render Scaling

Game Render Scaling affects the quality of the graphics rendering that is done. The default is 100%, and a game render scaling value lower than 100% may improve performance at the cost of visual quality. Conversely, a value higher than 100% will provide smoother visuals at the cost of performance. The values range from 50% to 200%, in 10% increments.

Java client

Manual Setup

There are preset options called min, low, mid and high with increasing graphical fidelity for each of the changeable graphics settings. There is also the option for auto setup that tries to select optimal settings for your hardware. The following advanced settings can be manually customised and doing so changes the preset to "custom".

Preset Table

Setting	Preset
	Min	Low	Mid	High
Display Mode	Does not change
CPU usage	Maximum
Remove roofs	Always		Selectively
Idle animations	Few		Many
Scenery shadows	N/A		Static	Dynamic
Lighting detail	Low		High
Water detail	N/A		Low	High
Anti-aliasing	None
Particles	Low		Medium	High
Max screen size	Does not change
Brightness	Does not change
Ground decoration	Off		On
Flickering effects	Off		On
Character shadows	Off		On
Fog	Off		On
Custom cursors	Does not change
Ground blending	Off	On
Textures	Off		On
Skyboxes	Off		On
Bloom	Off

Display mode

Display mode chooses which API the client will use to render graphics:

• Direct-X
• OpenGL

CPU usage

CPU usage controls how much of your computer's resources the game can use. Despite the name, it appears that CPU usage refers to resources from the CPU and the graphics card.

• Very low
• Low
• Normal
• High
• Maximum

Remove roofs

This setting controls when roofs are removed.

• Always - Always removes roofs regardless of location or camera.
• Selectively - Only removes roofs that lie between the camera and the player.
• All - Removes all roofs when any roof lies between the camera and the player.

• 

  A building with its roof

• 

  A building without its roof

Idle animations

Idle animations are animations that play when characters are not performing an action. This setting controls how many players can have idle animations playing.

• Few
• Many
• All

Scenery shadows

Scenery shadows are shadows from non-character models. Scenery shadows require textures to be on.

• None - No piece of scenery will produce a shadow
• Static - Scenery will have shadows, but these shadows will be stationary
• Dynamic - Scenery will have shadows, and these shadows will change with the object

• 

  No scenery shadows

• 

  Static scenery shadows

• 

  Dynamic scenery shadows

Lighting detail

Lighting detail controls ambient lighting. There is no option to turn lighting "off".

• Low
• High

• 

  Low lighting detail

• 

  High lighting detail

Water detail

Water detail controls how realistic water appears. High water detail requires fog to be on. Proper display of high water detail also requires lighting detail to be high.

• Low
• High

• 

  Low water detail

• 

  High water detail

• 

  High water detail with lighting

Anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing is used to remove aliasing (pixelated edges) when rendering objects. The Java client uses Multisample anti-aliasing.

• None
• 2x
• 4x

• 

  No anti-aliasing

• 

  2x anti-aliasing

• 

  4x anti-aliasing

Particles

Particles are extra fuzzy or small effects that are created without polygons or textures. This setting determines how many objects are allowed to generate particles.

• 
• 

  A chimney's particle effects

Max screen size

Max screen size determines what resolution the game will be rendered for when using fixed mode. It has no effect on the other modes.

• Any - Changes the screen sizing mode to resizable
• 800x600 - Changes the screen sizing mode to fixed
• 1024x768 - Changes the screen sizing mode to fixed

Brightness

Brightness controls the level of overall lighting and shade. It is changed with a slider.

• 

  Min brightness (low lighting detail)

• 

  Max brightness

Ground decoration

This setting controls whether or not ground decoration such as grass and rocks are shown. This option can be switched either off or on.

• 

  Ground blending with no decoration

• 

  Ground blending with decoration

• 

  Ground blending and textures, but no decoration

• 

  Ground blending and textures, with decoration

Flickering effects

Flickering effects are fullscreen flashes that provide dramatic ambience to an area. An example of such an area is the Killerwatt plane. This option can be switched either off or on.

It is recommended that players who are prone to epileptic seizures play with flickering effects turned off.

Character shadows

Character shadows are shadows that appear under NPC and player models. This option can be switched either off or on.

• 

  A player's shadow

Fog

A fog appears at the edge of the render distance to obscure unloaded objects.

• 

  Fog off

• 

  Fog on

Custom cursors

Main article: Cursor

Custom cursors are mouseover cursors that are specific to certain actions. This option can be switched either off or on.

Ground blending

Ground blending determines whether or not textures on tiles can blend with other adjacent tiles for a more fluid appearance. This option can be switched either off or on. Turning this option off forcibly disables textures.

• 

  Ground blending off

• 

  Ground blending on

• 

  Ground blending on with textures

Textures

Textures are extra skins that are placed over models to give an appearance that polygons or other graphics cannot. Textures requires ground blending to be on.

• 

  Textureless ground

• 

  Textured ground

Skyboxes

Main article: Skyboxes and filters

Skyboxes are backgrounds added to the main backdrop, behind the overworld. Skyboxes paste an image over the blank canvas background that creates a fuller ambience for the setting. While not all areas have specific images to add as a skybox, this setting also controls blending and sky colour, to an extent. This option can be switched either off or on.

• 

  Morytania without a skybox

• 

  Morytania with a skybox

• 

  Nighttime skybox in a Player-owned house

Bloom

Bloom is a lighting graphics setting that controls additional brightness and impact of glowing effects. The effect was mentioned in the developer blog for RuneTek 5 as one of the additional graphical effects that will be possible in HD mode with the new engine. Bloom requires lighting detail to be high. This option can be switched either off or on.

• 

  Bloom lighting off

• 

  Bloom lighting on

Update history

The update history project is a work-in-progress – not all updates to this topic may be covered below. See here for how to help out!

• patch 12 October 2020 (Update):
  • Interface scaling added.
    • Added functionality to allow UI scaling
    • Added functionality to support boosting or reducing the games' render scale.
    • Note: There is a known issue at high scale percentages where the 3D game world is also scaling, and when scaling down, there is a brief but noticeable graphical error. We'll be working to iron out these problems and add more features over the next few months.

• patch 6 July 2020 (Update):
  • Fixed an issue which resulted in Entity Highlights being enabled on log-in, despite being disabled in the previous log-in.

• patch 6 April 2020 (Update):
  • Four new options have been added to the Graphics Settings:
    • Depth of Field - Smooths the world view for scenery in the distance.
    • Smooth Camera Fade - This is an existing feature where the camera clips into scenery it smooths the edges. This is a new option will disable it - especially useful for content creators!
    • Tree Canopy Fade - Makes tree canopies and certain other surfaces transparent if they would otherwise obscure your character.
    • Entity Highlighting - Adds colour coded highlights and a pulse upon interaction with NPCs, objects and locations within the game world.
      • To support the new Object Highlighting feature the mobile Activity Tracker has a new "Highlight" button. This button serves as a toggle to highlight objects in close proximity to your character.

• patch 17 February 2020 (Update):
  • The uncompressed textures setting has been re-enabled.

• patch 25 November 2019 (Update):
  • The uncompressed texture setting has been temporarily disabled.

• patch 29 April 2019 (Update):
  • Re-enabled MSAA on mobile after it was previously temporarily disabled.

• patch 26 November 2018 (Update):
  • Graphics options with dropdown boxes will now displaying correctly if the resolution dropdown is opened first.

• patch 4 June 2018 (Update):
  • The remove roofs graphics option will now include hiding the chandeliers within a slayer player-owned dungeon spawn area.

• patch 3 April 2018 (Update):
  • The Visualise option will now allow you to change your Skybox/Filter anywhere you like (except for Araxxor's cave).

• patch 16 October 2017 (Update):
  • Players can now define their maximum foreground and background FPS in the NXT client via the graphics settings interface.

• nxt 10 July 2017 (Update):
  • Fixed medium+ water and SSAO on compatibility mode.
  • Certain particle physics should now work correctly.

• nxt 5 June 2017 (Update):
  • A new graphical feature: Volumetric lighting have been added to the game. Make your way to Menaphos to check them out!
  • A new graphical feature: Caustic water effects have been added to the game. Turn water details to “Ultra” to enable.

• nxt 16 January 2017 (Update):
  • A spelling error on the NXT Graphics Setting tab has been fixed.

• patch 21 January 2014 (Update):
  • Some buildings in Varrock have been tweaked to make 'Remove Roof' work correctly.
  • Fixed an issue with bloom on the water in an area in Nomad's Requiem.

• patch 13 August 2013 (Update):
  • The "Low", "Med", and "High" buttons now highlight correctly in the graphical options for the HTML5 client.

• patch 10 September 2013 (Update):
  • The 'Remove Roof' setting will now consistently be remembered correctly.

• patch 12 March 2013 (Update):
  • The game will now remember your preferred resolution for full screen mode across sessions.

• patch 4 March 2013 (Update):
  • Two tiles in the Slayer Tower now work correctly with “remove roof” on.

• patch 24 October 2012 (Update):
  • Entering the station from the Another Slice of HAM quest with bloom on no longer causes the screen to go bright white.
  • Entering the final cutscene of the Path of Glouphrie quest no longer causes the screen to go white with bloom enabled.
  • The Kharidian Genie Cave should no longer cause a white screen if entered with bloom enabled.
  • A picture in Falador Salon now shows the image with bloom turned on.

• patch 30 April 2012 (Update):
  • The graphics options screen now fully displays in the lobby.

• patch 24 November 2010 (Update):
  • The custom graphics option screen has been simplified by removing three options that didn’t contribute anything meaningful: Visible levels, Texture Detail and Ground Textures.

• patch 16 February 2010 (Update):
  • The detail options menu no longer offers textures if ground blending is disabled in Standard Detail.