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SammiLucia StoneyDays and Lazorr

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sammilucia

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About this mod

Ultra+ is a series of mods designed for all PCs, fixing bugs and performance, with the best possible visuals.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Changelogs
Only download Ultra+ mods from Nexus or Ultra Place Discord. We do not upload anywhere else.

Support and Supporting

Join The Ultra Place Discord For the fastest support and releases. See you there!


If you'd like to support our efforts please endorse, share or support us on Patreon.


About Ultra+

Ultra+ is a series of mods designed for all PCs, fixing bugs and performance, with the best possible visuals.


v12

Alpha support for the new patch. We will be working to improve the visual issues introduced by the recent patch, but overall the game should look good!

Introducing v11

Hogwarts Legacy has never looked so good! The mod works better than ever from potato to epic PCs.

  • Updated to fully support the new Ultra+ Mod Manager (UMM)
          ◦  Ultra+ Mod Manager installs, upgrades, and helps you easily manage Ultra+ mods for several games
          ◦  It shows you Ultra+'s current settings, keyboard shortcuts, and lets you configure the games live
          ◦  Notifies you of shortcuts pressed in-game (requires adjusting Windows Notifications to allow UMM to display
             over top of games)
  • Dynamic time and location-based Ray Traced Skylight
          ◦  Ray Traced Skylight is now tuned by hand, by player location and time of day
          ◦  Previously we had to compromise on RT Skylight, reducing its overall brightness due to a few locations with wrong
             (extremely bright) lighting
          ◦  v11 overhauls lighting by seamlessly adjusting the lighting as you play to provide a significant improvement in
             quality (close to path tracing in some locations if you have all ray tracing enabled)
  • v11 dynamically disables or adjusts features in specific locations to enhance visual fidelity and address vanilla bugs
          ◦  Location based performance optimizations when using Ray Traced Skylight
          ◦  Disables ray traced shadows in Depulso Rooms 1 & 2 and Hall of Herodiana due to wrong lighting (vanilla bug)
  • Ray Traced Skylight is now several percent faster in all locations
  • Provides more dynamic Ray Traced Water behavior to both enhance RT Water when it is needed, and to turn off RT Water when
    it's not needed (note that some locations indoors with water features may be getting turned off in this version)
          ◦  For example saves ~13 real FPS in Central Hall on a 4090 with RT Water enabled. Saves ~10 real FPS in Transfiguration
             Coutryard
          ◦  Should be more performant everywhere RT Water is not needed
  • Significantly increases RT Water quality in certain situations
          ◦  Aggressive water and ray tracing distance settings in locations marked as having water features (lakes primarily)
          ◦  Aggressive water and ray tracing distance settings when the player is on a mount and flying
          ◦  Aggressive water and raytracing distance settings when the player is above a certain height and outdoors
  • RT Skylight fades skylight brightness between sunrise and sunset
          ◦  And properly ray traced landscapes are now possible at night due to brighter RT Skylight
  • Tuned Ray Reconstruction to fix noise issues
  • Significantly improved streaming from the engine
          ◦  Fixed hitching due to occlusion culling
          ◦  Fixed hitching of Merlin trials and animations
          ◦  Ultra+ now scales all streaming performance based on Texture Quality. This wasn't possible before because Unreal
             Engine ignores many important settings in the in-game graphics menu. Full scaling is now handled automatically by
             Ultra+ Extensions, so Low to Epic should all play smoother than ever
  • Improved performance in Hogsmeade
  • Slow or non-loading ground textures in v10.5 is resolved
  • Enable DLAA with Frame Gen
          ◦  Press the '=' key to toggle DLAA on or off in game while keeping frame generation enabled (it's not possible to enable
              both via the in-game graphics menu)
          ◦  DLAA provides a drastic image quality improvement and it is recommended when you might not need all of your
              frames and just want to look at pretty graphics
          ◦  Or toggle it for Photo Mode!
          ◦  To use this mode, choose your DLSS quality level like normal, enable frame generation, and then you can freely toggle
              between your selected DLSS quality and DLAA with by pressing '='
  • Completely fixes Ultra Fog
          ◦  Fixes the fog-covered map while using Ultra Fog
          ◦  Ultra Fog redoes the weather-based fog and wind to add more realism, and is made to compliment Ultra+
  • Improved realism of shadows when using RTAO/RTGI with RT Skylight
  • Added support for all DLSS presets (A, C, E, F, and G)
Bugfixes

  • Depth of field is automatically disabled when using RT skylight due to incompatibility (noise) especially during cutscenes
  • Fixed RT Water setting being reversed in UltraPlusConfig.ini / Ultra+ Mod Manager
  • Fixed flickering reflections in some locations
  • Fixed black or flickering shadows in some locations
  • Fixed lights not casting light onto their surroundings in some locations
  • Fixed wrong hair self-shadows under certain lights with RT shadows enabled (vanilla bug)
  • Mostly fixed black squares due to incorrect ray traced shadows in some locations (vanilla bug)
Recommended Configuration

  • RT Skylight is currently best when used with Ray Reconstruction. We are working on tuning RT Skylight without RR however this is still a work in progress
  • Please use RTGI or RTAO when using RT Skylight
Known Issues

  • Possible crash when fast traveling from the map. Please let us know if this happens to you.

Thank you to everyone in the Discord for your feedback! Thank you to Darkstar for helping to diagnose the black RT shadow bug!


What it Does

Fixes all performance problems:

  • *New Tunes game streaming based on your hardware (Low/Medium/High/Ultra) for the smoothest possible experience
  • Improves raytracing performance, transfiguration courtyard, etc. by reducing ray traced overdraw on vegetation
  • Improves performance in general with no visual quality loss by tuning Unreal Engine
  • Fixes most hitches/stutters
  • Fixes slow texture loading
  • Completely disables Chroma SDK plugin in the engine (replacing the DLL is not necessary)
  • Makes the game playable even on low-end PCs
  • Fully supports AMD and NVidia
Significantly improves visuals:

  • Enables cut-scene visuals for the whole game with no performance cost
  • Choose your favourite Lighting Presets (does not use ReShade, all changes are in-engine)
  • Choose your favourite ambient occlusion: SSAO/RTAO (vanilla), or SSGI, GTAO, or RTGI
  • Enables ray traced global illumination
  • Enables ray traced water
  • Enables ray traced skylight which brings the game very close to full path tracing
  • Fixes many problems with vanilla ray traced shadows
  • Fixes low quality NPC meshes
  • Choose your favourite DLSS preset
  • Enables Ray Reconstruction (if you're using DLSS)
  • Enables much higher quality reflections (both ray traced and raster)
  • You can change everything live, in-game
  • Fixes reflections noise
  • Fixes the raised black floor for both SDR and HDR
  • Improves light shaft quality
  • Fixes blurry textures by sharpening textures directly (not screen sharpening)
  • Enables high quality TAA
  • Improves sky and clouds above cut-scene quality
  • Increases particle FX (bugs, butterflies, dust, etc.)
  • Enables ray tracing for particles FX (spells, rain, butterflies, etc. at High and Epic)
  • Enables the in-game console (access by pressing the tilde key '~')
  • Hand-tunes the entire game to look amazing

How Does it Look?

v10 alpha using VanillaTweaked Lighting Preset — Needs updating for v11



Kind Words

"Just wanted to say, out of all the mods and tweaks I've been doing to get RTX and Ray Tracing features to work with decent performance in this game, this one actually did it."
— TheJuggler17
"You are legitimately a godsend, thank you so much. This is the ONLY fix that works for me and solves all of my technical issues with this game, not to mention that it makes the game look so much better without a huge performance hit"
— ChristianLangano
"Thank you again for all the effort you're putting into this clearly essential mod for many users."
— Korzun


Installing or Upgrading

If you're upgrading from a previous version, we've made installation a lot easier!

Ultra+ Mod Manager Installation and Configuration
UMM provides a way to easily install, update, and configure Ultra+ mods.

Important!
  If coming from versions prior to 11.0, delete old Ultra+ paks in Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\PaksAlso delete any lighting and/or skylight paks.  (Ultra Fog is okay to keep)
  • Download and install Ultra+ Mod Manager (UMM)
  • Run the application, and select Hogwarts Legacy, and click Initialize.
  • Navigate to where you installed Hogwarts Legacy and select the indicated .exe, then click Open, then click Save
    - Select "HogwartsLegacy.exe" in "\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Binaries\Win64"
  • You may get an error at this point about the file "nvgx_dlssd.dll" is missing.  This is normal; nvgx_dlssd.dll is required to use Ray Reconstruction (Note: Nvidia users only).  Click Ok.  If you do not plan to use Ray Reconstruction, you can ignore this message.  If you do wish to use Ray Reconstruction, follow these steps:  Click Open Folder, and copy nvngx_dlssd.dll from here to Engine\Plugins\Runtime\Nvidia\DLSS\Binaries\ThirdParty\Win64
  • Now that UMM is configured for Hogwarts Legacy, to install or update Ultra+, click Install Ultra+ Update, select the zip file you downloaded, and click Open.  Confirm installation and UMM will handle installation (or updating).
Note:  Steps 1-4 only need to be performed the first time; after which you can simply select your game and select Load Config.


Now, you can configure mod settings in the Settings tab; this can be done while the game is running as well; simply press F12 in-game to load your new settings.  Launch the game either via the Launch Game button in UMM or your usual means.

Once started, calibrate your black point in-game > Graphics Settings > two thirds down > Image Calibration. This makes the mod darker or lighter.
Important: Choose your texture quality based on your GPU memory. Go to Graphics Settings > Texture Quality, and choose:
  • 4GB vram —> Choose Low
  • 6GB vram —> Choose Medium
  • 8-10GB vram —> use High
  • 12GB+ vram —> use Ultra
(Note: Texture Quality doesn't make a big difference to how Ultra+ looks. You can play even with 4GB vram!)

Recommended Configuration
RT Skylight is currently best when used with ray reconstruction - we have not tuned the parameters without RR but it is on the list.
Feel free to give it a try and provide feedback.
Please use RTGI or RTAO when using RT Skylight
Example settings:
LightingMode=rtgi
RTSkyLight=on
RayReconstruction=on (Nvidia users only)


Manual Installation
:

  • Delete old Ultra+ paks in Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\Paks
  • Also delete any lighting and/or skylight paks
  • (Ultra Fog is okay to keep)
  • Copy everything in the downloaded zip into your Hogwarts Legacy folder
  • Nvidia users only: to use Ray Reconstruction, copy nvngx_dlssd.dll from here into Hogwarts Legacy\Engine\Plugins\Runtime\Nvidia\DLSS\Binaries\ThirdParty\Win64
  • Start the game. Once started, calibrate your black point in-game > Graphics Settings > two thirds down > Image Calibration. This makes the mod darker or lighter
  • Important: Choose your texture quality based on your GPU memory. Go to Graphics Settings > Texture Quality, and choose:
         • 4GB vram —> Choose Low
         • 6GB vram —> Choose Medium
         • 8-10GB vram —> use High
         • 12GB+ vram —> use Ultra

    (Note: Texture Quality doesn't make a big difference to how Ultra+ looks. You can play even with 4GB vram!)

  • You can also control Ultra+ using function keys by editing Phoenix\Binaries\Win64\UltraPlusConfig.ini. There are detailed instructions how to enable function keys inside UltraPlusConfig.ini

Recommended Configuration
RT Skylight is currently best when used with ray reconstruction - we have not tuned the parameters without RR but it is on the list.
Feel free to give it a try and provide feedback.
Please use RTGI or RTAO when using RT Skylight
Example settings:
LightingMode=rtgi
RTSkyLight=on
RayReconstruction=on (Nvidia users only)

If you need any help please see the Troubleshooting sticky Post, or join the Discord. Remember to endorse if you like it, this helps others find the mod.


Controlling Ultra+


You control Ultra+ two ways:
  • Via the existing in-game Graphics menu. Everything has been tweaked to maximise performance vs. quality for any menu option you choose
  • By editing Phoenix\Binaries\Win64\UltraPlusConfig.ini

Inside UltraPlusConfig.ini, you can enable function keys to control the game live while playing.

Here is everything the in-game graphics settings in the pak version do:

Function Keys
  • F12: Reload UltraPlusConfig.ini
    Additionally inside Phoenix\Binaries\Win64\UltraPlusConfig.ini you can edit the below settings, or enable the in-game keyboard shortcuts by changing EnableKeybinds to 'on':
  • F3: Cycle between several Lighting Presets (VanillaTweakedRealismFantasyHary'sFairytaleDarkmoor, Vanilla)
  • F4: Cycle between SSGIRTGIRTAOGTAO (ground truth ambient occlusion), SSAO (screen space ambient occlusion)
  • F6: Cycle through DLSS presets A, C, E
  • F7: Toggle fog off/on
  • F8: Toggle ray traced skylight on/off
  • F9: Toggle ray traced water on/off
  • F10: Toggle Ray Reconstruction on/off
  • 0 (zero number key): Cycle ray traced reflection shininess from "physicallybased", "medium", and "high"

Graphics Settings > Page 1
  • (Recommended) Motion blur can be enabled/disabled as normal, however it's no longer a visual effect — it's altered to smooth the frames (just like a real camera does). When it's enabled you shouldn't notice, except the game looks smoother.
  • Lens flare is enabled or disabled depending on the Lighting Preset (F3)
  • Film grain is force-disabled except for Darkmoor, Vanilla, and VanillaTweaked Lighting Presets

Graphics Settings > Page 2 > Raytracing
  • Ultra+ now forces RTGI regardless of whether Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion is on or off in the graphics menu (depending on what Lighting Preset you're using). RTGI costs the same as SSGI or RTAO for this game
  • All other settings work as normal

Note: Sometimes the game says ray tracing is enabled when it's not. If you have unexpectedly high FPS, un-select all raytracing, and re-select it. The game will tell you to restart, and ray tracing should be enabled.

Raytracing
High performance impact — 3080/4070/7700xt and above should be fine with Ultra
  • Ultra        Detailed RT reflections (much improved from vanilla)
                    Highest quality RTAO, RTGI, and RT shadows
                    Ray traced particle FX (spells, etc.)
  • High        Same as Ultra but no ray traced particle FX
  • Med        Performance RT reflections (much improved from vanilla)
  • Low         Performance RT reflections
                    RT shadows only around the player (50 metres)

Note: Change ray traced water and ray traced skylight by editing UltraPlusConfig.ini

View Distance
High impact — For 3080/3090/4070/4080/7800xt we recommend High
Affects vegetation, grass, and building draw distances
  • Ultra       2.5x view distance, however FPS cost is much more reasonable with v10 due to faster methods
  • High       1.3 to 2x view-distance
  • Med        1.0x (vanilla) view distance
  • Low        0.7x performance view distance, with extra optimisations in v10

Effects
Medium Impact
Increases or reduces the quality of:
  • Screen space reflection quality (water and reflective/shiny surfaces)
  • Particle effects quality (including fire and spells)
  • Fog resolution is increased or reduced (it's not super noticeable)

Foliage
High impact — For 3080/3090/4070/4080/7800xt we recommend High
Controls density and stop distance of grass and foliage (which is also affected by View Distance)
  • Ultra       Similar to cut-scenes but faster, with a much farther draw distance
  • High       Similar to Vanilla Ultra but with performance improvements
  • Med        Performant fog
  • Low        No fog

Sky
Low impact
Affects sky and clouds, but also lighting cast onto ground
  • Ultra       Same as cut-scene, gorgeous clouds and light thrown onto ground (1.0x internal resolution)
  • High       Similar to cut-scene with (0.8x) performance-focused improvements
  • Med        Fast version of Ultra+ sky (0.7x)
  • Low        Performance (0.5x). Interestingly this is about "High" in Vanilla!

Texture Quality
Choose the correct one
  • Ultra        12GB+ GPUs
  • High        8-10GB GPUs
  • Med         6GB GPUs
  • Low         4GB GPUs

Post-processing
Low impact
  • Ultra       No compromises post-processing
  • High       Few compromise, mostly not visible
  • Med        Some visible compromises
  • Low        Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope

Anti-aliasing
Low impact
  • Ultra       TAA Gen5, 16 samples, PostProcessAAQuality 6
  • High        TAA Gen5, 16 samples, PostProcessAAQuality 5
  • Med        TAA Gen4, 8 samples, PostProcessAAQuality 5
  • Low         TAA Gen4, 8 samples, PostProcessAAQuality 4

Other Ultra+ Games


All Ultra+ Games
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
Silent Hill 2 (2024 remake)
Days Gone
Hogwarts Legacy
Robocop: Rogue City
Cyberpunk 2077
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order
Ghostrunner II

Engine.ini Edits

Some commands you can add to %LocalAppData%\Hogwarts Legacy\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini.

At the bottom type[SystemSettings] then add the commands underneath:

Fix Micro-stutters
This comes with a performance cost, however if you're sensitive to microstutters it helps (however I would recommend setting a max FPS cap in your GPU control panel before trying this):
r.FinishCurrentFrame=1

Sharper or Softer Image
If you want a sharper image, try changing the default r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0.5. Values of 0.5 to 1.2 work well, e.g:
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=1.0

User Interface (UI) Size
To make the UI smaller, add the following just above [SystemSettings], where '0.85' is your desired percentage of the UI size. 0.70 to 0.95 work well.
[/Script/Engine.UserInterfaceSettings]
ApplicationScale=0.85


Compatibility

Ultra+ is compatible all mods, however it is not compatible with:

  • The Empress version of Hogwarts Legacy. Try version 9.0 of Ultra+. We cannot support Empress
  • Ascendio — not compatible
  • Cinematic Ultra — not compatible
  • Stuttering and Low Performance Fix (SLPF) mod — Ultra+ completely disables the Chroma SDK Unreal Engine plugin. However there is no harm in installing this.

Uninstalling

  • Delete the Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Paks\~UltraPlus*.pak file
  • In Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Binaries\Win64, delete:
        dwmapi.dll
        ue4ss (folder)
  • That's it! Nothing is left over

Recommended Mods

Other recommended mods for fixing and improving things. Thank you to the wonderful modders out there! 💕

Contributors

I would like to thank the many great people who have and continue to help test Ultra+. This game is huge and far too much for just one person to test, so this mod wouldn't be possible without your invaluable feedback.

I'd like to give special thanks to (I know I'm going to miss some people 😬)
  • yakuzadeso (author of Cinematic Ultra)
  • VelvetThundR
  • Amandila
  • Darkstar
  • stoneydays
  • SentinelBunny - for fixing incorrectly resolved RT shadows in problem area inside castle (due to mesh backface culling)
  • sthrandom2
  • DerUngrund
  • pol1t1cs
  • Jullian Le Fay, for reminding me how game engines work and for arguing with me ❤️
  • JoriDiculous
  • xxynsfr
  • Otis_Inf - the creator of Universal Unreal Engine Unlocker, without which Ultra+ would have been FAR more difficult
  • OptimusBull
  • Nightw0lf2400
  • mindgam3s
  • DarthBlackcat
  • LFyfe
  • VandestG
  • Phade
  • Narknon for UE4SS fixes and all his work in Hogwarts modding ❤️
  • Swatgod Sohma
  • cosmicvivacity
  • akuma35
  • waniki239
  • Sparco
  • VH-XXIII
  • Digital Dreams
  • solarpower

There are many more, in 3000+ Posts I know I've missed some (I'm sorry), but I appreciate everyone one of you! Ultra+ simply wouldn't have gotten to this stage without you taking the time to post! 😊


Changelog

See Changelog near the top of the mod description for the latest changes.