my current preferred graphics setups hacks

[Mildew]

I wanted to generally sharpen up the graphics, while adding lots of DOF blur to far away geometry to better differentiate far from close. (Did not like the default DOF)

Have settled on adding these lines to Engine.ini

r.SceneColorFringe.Max=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=1

 

Compensated for turning off AA in the above by using DSR 2x in Nvidia graphics driver.  (I believe that his is technically equal to 2xSSAA )

 

Added DOF using Reshade shader "DepthHaze.fx" , with EffectStrength 0.355 ,  FogStart 0.838,  Fogfactor  0.347

Now things are sharp and clean in the foreground, and hazy in the background - just what i like

 

 

[Pilda]

Good but until you show as comparison screenshots we won't believe you.

[Phenomenum]

You forgot to force 16x Anisotropic Filter. Game uses only 8x.

[Pilda]

For turning on 16xx AF just add r.MaxAnisotropy=16

[Weathers]

I use DepthSharpenStaticDof.fx by OVNI (he made it for Kingdom Come over at Nexus) to get sharp foreground, blurry background. It basically has no performance impact.

A few tweaks not mentioned here:

Engine.ini

[SystemSettings]  
r.ViewDistanceScale=7   (defaults 0-4) This makes a decent difference visually but costs nothing in performance for me. eg. from your ship on the 1st planet you can see smoke stacks in the distance
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=2   (default, on very high atleast, 0.85) This makes shadows cast on the ground etc. further back at a 0-2 fps cost. eg. coming from the direction Edgewater the ridge behind your ship will cast a shadow from quite a bit further back, it's worth the cost imo, esp if you can get it back with the following:
r.AmbientOcclusionLevels=1   (default -1) This makes very little difference visually but gives 2 fps boost). 0 turns it off.

 

I used console commands (see https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Outer_Worlds#Re-enable_developer_console) to test the above in real time so no placebo or anything like that