ARC Raiders Best PC Settings 2026: FPS and Visibility Optimization

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ARC Raiders is one of the most visually intense extraction shooters of 2026, and your PC settings will make or break your runs. Unlike looter-shooters where you can afford to play pretty, extraction games punish hesitation — spotting an ARC unit half a second before it spots you is the difference between a full extract and a death screen.

This guide gives you GPU-tier recommendations, a breakdown of every setting that affects enemy visibility, network tweaks for low-ping extraction play, and two ready-to-use profiles: competitive (max FPS) and quality (balanced visuals). ARC Raiders was built on Unreal Engine 5 with Lumen and Nanite active by default — turning those off responsibly is the first thing we’ll cover.

For a complete overview of ARC Raiders mechanics, check the ARC Raiders Beginner’s Guide. If you want general PC optimization beyond in-game settings, see our PC FPS Optimization Hub.

Competitive Quick-Reference Profile

Apply these settings immediately if you want maximum FPS with full enemy visibility. Explanations for each choice follow throughout the guide.

GPU Tier Settings

ARC Raiders has demanding UE5 assets but scales well once you cut Lumen and Nanite tessellation. Use the tier below that matches your GPU, then fine-tune with the visibility rules in the next section.

Note on Lumen

Lumen is ARC Raiders’ global illumination system. It produces stunning dynamic light bouncing from ARC energy weapons but costs 15-25 FPS on mid-range GPUs. Disable it via Graphics > Global Illumination > Screen Space (or Off). You lose some atmospheric depth but gain cleaner, more consistent lighting that actually helps enemy detection. The Screen Space fallback keeps ambient shadows from disappearing entirely.

Display Settings

Resolution and Upscaling

Run at your monitor’s native resolution and use DLSS (NVIDIA) or FSR 3 (AMD/Intel) to scale the internal render resolution. ARC Raiders supports all three major upscalers. DLSS Quality at 1440p renders at 960p internally but outputs a sharp 1440p image — typically indistinguishable from native at distance. If you are on a GPU without dedicated tensor cores (AMD or Intel), FSR 3 Quality is the correct choice.

Do not use Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) alone without upscaling on mid-range GPUs — it costs performance without providing the reconstruction quality of DLSS/FSR.

V-Sync

Turn V-Sync off. V-Sync introduces 1-2 frames of input latency and caps your FPS at your monitor’s refresh rate. Use NVIDIA Reflex (Low Latency Mode) instead if available — it reduces system latency without the frame-pacing trade-off. If you experience screen tearing with V-Sync off, enable G-Sync (NVIDIA) or FreeSync (AMD) in your monitor settings instead.

FOV

Set Field of View to 95. ARC Raiders’ default of 80 is claustrophobic for extraction play — you miss incoming threats from flanks and have a narrowed sense of space in tight industrial corridors. Going above 100 starts to introduce distortion and actually reduces perceived target size at range, which hurts precision shots on ARC units. 90-95 is the competitive sweet spot: broader awareness without fish-eye distortion.

Visibility-Critical Settings for Extraction Play

In a PvPvE extraction game, visibility is a gameplay mechanic, not just aesthetics. Every setting below has been evaluated for how it affects your ability to identify ARC units before they engage you.

Shadow Quality: Set to Low

This is counterintuitive but critical. High shadow quality produces complex, overlapping shadow geometry that ARC units blend into, especially the darker Crawler variants. Low shadow quality simplifies shadow rendering so enemy silhouettes stand out against the environment. The trade-off is obvious mid-range shadowing, but you will spot threats faster. Set Shadow Distance to Medium so distant ARC patrols are still shadowed enough to be visible against bright sky backgrounds.

Effects Quality: Set to Low

ARC energy bursts and environmental particle effects at Medium or High create visual noise that masks enemy movement. Low Effects reduces particle count significantly without affecting the core hit-feedback particles you need to confirm hits. This is especially important during multi-ARC engagements where stacking effect layers can fully obscure an enemy position.

Ambient Occlusion: Off

Ambient Occlusion darkens corners and contact edges between objects. While this creates depth visually, it also creates artificial darkening around ARC unit contact points with terrain, making ground-level threats harder to see. Turn it off. Screen Space Reflections can stay enabled as they do not meaningfully affect enemy visibility.

Motion Blur: Off (Always)

Motion blur smears frames during rapid camera movements, which is exactly when you are scanning for threats. There is no competitive scenario where motion blur helps. Disable it permanently.

Depth of Field and Bloom: Off

Depth of Field blurs out-of-focus elements. In an extraction shooter, your threat range spans 5m to 200m — everything should be sharp. Bloom (light bleed from emissive surfaces) blurs high-contrast ARC unit light sources, making them appear larger and less defined. Both off, always.

Film Grain and Chromatic Aberration: Off

Film Grain adds random pixel noise to simulate film camera. It reduces effective contrast and makes ARC units in dark environments harder to distinguish from background texture. Chromatic Aberration adds a colour fringe to screen edges. Neither provides any tactical benefit. Both off.

Network Settings for Low-Ping Extraction Play

Extraction shooters are unforgiving on high-latency connections because loot interactions, door states, and enemy positions are server-authoritative — what you see client-side is a prediction, and prediction errors cause ghost interactions and missed hits.

Region Selection

ARC Raiders selects regions automatically based on ping. Override this manually if you are near a regional boundary — connecting to a geographically closer server may have higher population and therefore lower effective queue-to-latency. Under Settings > Network > Server Region, test available regions and lock to the one returning under 40ms consistently.

Target <50ms

Extraction game interactions (looting, hatch opening, ARC staggers) have server-side confirmation windows of roughly 200ms. At 50ms ping you have comfortable margin. At 100ms+ you will experience stagger-denial on ARC units you visually stunned, and door interactions that reset. If your ping is above 80ms consistently, check for bandwidth saturation (pause background downloads), use a wired Ethernet connection instead of WiFi, and ensure QoS is enabled on your router to prioritize gaming traffic.

Packet Loss and Jitter

Ping alone does not capture connection stability. Use a tool like PingPlotter to check for packet loss above 1% or jitter above 15ms — both cause ARC Raiders to desync significantly even at low average ping. ISP-side packet loss is the most common cause of “rubberbanding” ARC enemies in extraction zones.

Known Launch Performance Issues

ARC Raiders launched with several documented performance problems. Apply the following before your first session:

• Shader compilation stutter: The game compiles shaders on first launch. Do not skip the pre-compilation step in the launcher — let it finish fully before entering a match. Skipping causes in-game stutter during first encounters.
• VRAM overallocation: On GPUs with 8 GB VRAM, Epic/High presets with Lumen enabled will exceed the VRAM budget, causing textures to stream from system RAM with visible pop-in. Use Medium preset as your ceiling if you have 8 GB or less.
• CPU bottleneck on older hardware: ARC Raiders’ AI simulation is CPU-heavy. On CPUs older than Ryzen 3600 / i7-9700K, enable Low Latency Mode in NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Software and set Max Pre-Rendered Frames to 1 to reduce CPU-side frame queuing.
• DX12 crashes: Some systems report crashes under DX12 mode. Switch to DX11 via launch options (-dx11) as a temporary fix if you experience repeated DX12-related crashes at session load.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best FOV for ARC Raiders?

95 is optimal for most players. It provides enough peripheral awareness for extraction scanning without the distortion or reduced target clarity that comes above 100.

Should I use DLSS or FSR in ARC Raiders?

Use DLSS if you have an NVIDIA RTX card — the tensor core acceleration produces cleaner reconstruction than FSR at equivalent modes. On AMD or Intel GPUs, FSR 3 Quality is the correct choice and performs well in ARC Raiders’ environmental detail density.

Why do ARC units seem harder to see at higher shadow settings?

High shadow quality creates detailed, overlapping shadow geometry that the darker ARC variant skins blend into. Setting shadows to Low forces enemies to be rendered against simplified, brighter backgrounds, making their silhouettes easier to read quickly.

Does motion blur affect performance in ARC Raiders?

Yes — disabling Motion Blur typically recovers 3-5 FPS on mid-range GPUs, and eliminates the visual smear that makes fast target-tracking harder. It is one of the first settings to disable regardless of your hardware tier.

Sources

1. Embark Studios. ARC Raiders — Official Store Page. Steam
2. Epic Games. Unreal Engine 5 Features: Lumen, Nanite, and Performance Scaling. Unreal Engine