During some past update CACAO ambient occlusion was replaced with ground truth ambient occlusion (GTAO)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Bugs
1

Issue Type (Required):

Visual

Issue Description (Required):

In the render settings section of user_settings.config there are these lines:

render_settings = {
	ao_enabled = true

	async_xe_gtao = false

	cacao_enabled = false
	cacao_quality = 4

	gtao_denoiser = 1
	gtao_enabled = true
	gtao_quality = 3
}

Both lines for CACAO and GTAO exist. AO settings in game only change the GTAO lines. Manually editing the settings file has no visual effect and will just end up with it being reverted after opening and closing the game.

The async_xe_gtao line seems to be for a variation of it made by Intel, which I’ve never seen set to true. GitHub - GameTechDev/XeGTAO: An implementation of [Jimenez et al., 2016] Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion, MIT license

Looking through old posts, there used to be a cacao_downsampled = true/false line included which is no longer in the settings file. After some searching the most recent post I can find with a settings file uploaded that only has CACAO is this one Accidently barterd my favorite gun from December 2023 which means it could have changed any time from hotfix 29 or later.

CACAO was mentioned by name in the pre-release performance blog so if the game was designed with that in mind but it’s changed that could explain why AO has such a weird performance impact.

I doubt this was an intentional change as I can’t find any reference to it in patch notes.

Steps to Reproduce (Required):

  1. Start the game with or without a user settings file
  2. Turn on AO
  3. You are now using GTAO

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

No, I don’t use mods

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam