Features / Graphics

Skull Island, drawn natively.

The game is drawn by its own renderer, the way the Xbox 360 drew it, at the resolution you choose. On top you can add soft bounced light, deeper shading, sharper shadows and water reflections, each one your choice.

The renderer

A renderer made for the game.

The renderer draws the game with Vulkan or DirectX 12 on your graphics card, at any resolution up to 8K.

Vulkan is the default and runs on every graphics card the game supports. DirectX 12 is there too, and AMD FSR 4 needs it. If one doesn't start, the game uses the other and tells you. Settings › Graphics › Advanced › Graphics API switches between them.

The graphics are prepared once on the first start, so play stays smooth.

Original or Remastered

Two looks, one click apart.

Original is the game as the Xbox 360 showed it: 720p at 30 FPS, the console's anti-aliasing, its 69° field of view, motion blur and fog. Remastered opens up every graphics setting and plays at 60 FPS, with strong ambient occlusion, bounced light set for your PC and the best upscaler for your graphics card.

Presets from Low to Ultra, plus one for the Steam Deck, set the main graphics options in one go, and Use recommended for my PC picks one for you. Shadows, water reflections, light shafts and the frame rate stay your own choice.

Global illumination

Light that bounces.

Global illumination lets light bounce. Sunlit rock tints the shadow beside it, and the green of the jungle falls on the people in it. It only adds light, and you see it most in bright outdoor scenes.

It is on by default and follows the preset, at Low, Medium or High, reaching about 3, 5 or 8 metres. The Original look keeps it off.

Ambient occlusion

Shade where things meet.

Ambient occlusion darkens the places light has trouble reaching: corners, creases, the ground under rocks and grass, and the space around people. It gives the jungle, the ruins and the caves their depth. Water, smoke, fire, Kong's fur and the sky are never darkened.

The shading is soft and rounded on characters, Kong and rocks, at Light, Medium or Strong. Remastered uses Strong.

Shadows and reflections

Optional effects, your call.

Three more effects are off by default, so you decide what your PC spends its time on. Turn them on in Settings › Graphics; the first setup shows each one side by side.

ShadowsSharper shadows from trees, rocks, people and Kong. High draws them at twice the detail with soft edges; Ultra softens them the farther they fall.
Water reflectionsRocks, trees and the ship on screen mirror in the sea, rivers and swamps, with a small ripple and soft edges.
Light shaftsSoft shafts of sunlight through the fog. They only show where the game has fog and a sun shadow, so many scenes look the same with them on or off.

HDR

Bright highlights, set by Windows.

HDR follows Windows: it is on when Windows HDR is on for the screen the game is on, and off when it is not. Settings › Display › HDR has Follow Windows (the default), On and Off.

By default, peak brightness comes from the Windows HDR Calibration app and paper white from the SDR content brightness in Windows; Manual gives you the sliders. Open Windows HDR Calibration starts the app, or its Microsoft Store page when it isn't installed. Highlights brighten smoothly up to a 1000-nit cap, so skies, fire, sparks and light shafts keep their detail.

Upscalers

DLSS, FSR and XeSS.

The game can draw fewer pixels and rebuild a sharp picture from several frames, which also smooths jagged edges. Only the upscalers your graphics card can run are listed, and the best one is chosen for you, at Quality:

NVIDIA DLSS, its newest model, on GeForce RTX cards: the steadiest, sharpest picture.
AMD FSR 4 on Radeon RX 9000 cards with DirectX 12, and FSR 3.1 on almost any card.
Intel XeSS, best on Intel Arc and running on other cards too.
FSR 1 and NIS: light scaling and sharpening on any graphics card.

Upscaler mode picks how many pixels the game draws: Native AA (DLAA with DLSS) draws every pixel and only smooths edges, then Quality, Balanced, Performance and Ultra Performance. There is no frame generation: every frame you see is drawn by the game. DLSS, FSR 3.1, FSR 4 and XeSS are Windows only; on Linux, FSR 1 and NIS are there.

Your screen

Your screen, your settings.

Up to 8KAny resolution up to 7680 × 4320: Windowed, Borderless, or Fullscreen at the resolution and refresh rate you pick.
VSyncOn or off, on Vulkan and DirectX 12. Off gives the lowest input delay, best with a G-Sync or FreeSync screen.
Brightness and gammaBrightness raises or lowers the darkest parts of the picture, gamma the middle tones, also from the pause menu. The defaults, 0 and 1.00, leave the picture as the game draws it.
Field of viewFrom the original 69° up to 110°. Jack's gun keeps its size, the menus keep their look, and cutscenes widen by the same amount.
Blur and fogMotion blur, screen blur and distance fog can each be switched off. Fog off clears the haze over far scenery.
Texture filteringUp to 16x, the sharpest on paths and decks stretching away from you, and it costs very little on today's graphics cards.

Ultrawide Experimental

Wider, if you like.

Ultrawide is built in: on a 21:9 or 32:9 screen or window the game fills the whole width and shows more on the left and right, with nothing stretched. The HUD, subtitles, menus, pause and photo mode stay in their places in the middle. Window size and Resolution also list 21:9 and 32:9 sizes, so you can try it on a 16:9 screen, with black bars above and below.

It is experimental and may not work as intended: menus and some effects are not adapted yet.

The F8 panel

The F8 graphics panel.

Press F8 while you play to change any graphics setting live, including the upscaler, with finer controls than Settings has. Hold F7 to compare with your saved settings, and F6 saves a screenshot with the settings beside it. Changes are only kept if you save them.