Looking to get the most out of your next match? Let's look at every setting in Rainbow Six Siege to give you a competitive edge.
Please note that this is not a guide to fix Siege lag issues. Instead, this guide is directed at players who want to squeeze the last drop out of their settings. If you are hungry for a competitive edge, read on.
Audio Settings
Humans have always relied on sound for safety. From leaf rustling to the cracks of dry wood branches, our ancestors used surrounding ambient to determine the location of potential danger.
Fast forward to today's society. Sound is vital in any video game title, especially esports. Research conducted on sensory reaction time indicated that the human brain processes sound much faster than the eyes process visuals. Professional players utilize audible information, such as footsteps, ability cues, and gunshots to form game plans on the fly.
Let's go over the best audio settings to enhance your Rainbow Six Sieges gameplay.
Dynamic Range
Dynamic range is the contrast between the highest audio and the lowest audio.
There are three options under Dynamic Range.
Hi-fi: this option increases the sound of gunshots and decreases the sound of footsteps
TV: this option balances out the sound of gunshots and footsteps
Night Mode: this option decreases the sound of gunshots and increases the sound of footsteps
Choosing the best Dynamic Range will be up to your preference. Whether you like to hear gunshots or footsteps better, they are both helpful when you are trying to guess the locations of enemy players.
With that being said, TV is our preferred option because a balancing act of gun sound and footsteps is the most reliable way to pinpoint your enemies.
Push-to-Talk
📢 Public Announcement: please leave your mic on push-to-talk. Distractions created by someone entering the room or talking over the mic can cause people to mishear footsteps or gadgets deploying sound cues.
In an audio-focused game like Siege, every footstep needs to be heard clearly. Therefore, do yourself and us a favor and enable push-to-talk if your background noises tend to overlap the game's audio.
Display Settings
When it comes to Display Settings, most people skip this section because they think it's not important. In reality, this section can help players stabilize fps in the most optimal way that no other section can match.
Optimizing the graphics settings only enables low-end rigs to run Siege smoothly. Mid-range or high-end rigs cannot rely on graphics settings to optimize fps because they are not limited in terms of graphics power as well as processing speed.
What powerful rigs lack is a match between the settings and the output of the rig. If your PC is powerful, then Display Settings are there to utilize it to the fullest potential.
Fundamentally, optimized Display Settings make already smooth gameplay even more fluid. Having said that, I want us to move on to the first important customization. This is one of the most important customizations in the game.
Refresh Rate
Let's take you as an example. You are rocking a 144Hz gaming monitor. While 144Hz is no longer the most refresh rate monitors can display, it sets the standard for monitor manufacturers.
So what is Refresh Rate and why is it the standard? You can skip this part if you already know.
ℹ️ In simple terms, Refresh Rate is the amount of time your monitor needs to process one frame. The more frames you have, the smoother everything will be. Under the effect of a high Refresh Rate, the animations and movements of your character are less laggy to the eyes. However, Refresh Rate forces limitations on the FPS (Frame-per-Second).
Let's take my example to explain it better. I am gaming with a 75Hz monitor (yes, judge me). 75 Hz means my monitor can only process 75 frames for each second, which is below standard. My PC can confidently achieve +130 FPS with Rainbow Six, but the limitation is on the monitor, not my PC.
But what if I had a 144Hz gaming monitor? Then everything on my screen (gunshots, enemies' movements) would flow better to the eyes, which improves my performance but also helps to reduce strains.
Do you know what is worse? What if I forgot to turn on the setting to enable 144HZ? Then my new imaginary monitor performs just like the good old crappy but trusted 75HZ.
By default, the setting matches your monitor's. If you accidentally had it on a lower refresh rate, now is a good time to switch it back for more frames-per-second.
Aspect Ratio
The perfect Aspect Ratio is a controversial one. Most casuals play on the conventional 16:9, but there are those who swear by the extreme 4:3. Below is a comparison between both.
4:3 is the most popular ratio for competitive play. If you maintain the same field of view (or FOV) angle but change the aspect ratio to 4:3, you will receive a stretched view that makes your target larger and easier to hit. The cost of stretching your display is a portion of your peripheral side-view. Therefore, both aspect ratios have their benefit and downside.
It is up to you to decide which trade-off is worth it. Your targets become larger, but your vision also becomes limited. For someone who relies on a wide field of view like me, the 4:3 is restrictive and uncomfortable to play, but more power to you if you notice an advantage there.
Vsync
Short for vertical sync, VSync is the graphics technology that synchronizes video game's framerate to monitor refresh rate. This synchronization ensures seamless gaming in 3D games.
However, Vsync is old technology. Vsync will not match up equally with the performance of powerful GPUs. As a result, Vsync can potentially mess up your FPS. Newer monitors use G-sync and Freesync because these are better optimized for performance.
Smooth gameplay requires FPS that does not fluctuate. Therefore, we should rely on better technologies to deliver consistent gameplay, not Vsync.
Graphics Settings
Rainbow Six Siege is an esports title that favors fast reaction and pixel-perfect accuracy. To ensure those things happen without hiccups, professional players set the game up in a way that demands the least from their PCs.
Video settings deserve a separate post due to the complexity of their technical aspects.
✅ We broke down complicated terms into understandable and easy-to-follow steps in this lag fix guide. Check it out if you are looking to optimize Rainbow Six Siege on a low-end PC.
Level of Detail
Level of Detail refers to the rendering of long-distance graphics. Level of Detail is interesting because the best option depends on one crucial factor. Let's explain that factor with two scenarios.
Scenario 1: Let's say you are zooming in a long corridor with an ACOG. Essentially, the game stretches the image out to give a zoomed-in view.
Scenario 2: Let's say you are zooming with the same corridor with just an iron sight, which does not provide a lot of zooming.
Your rig works harder to display Scenario 2 than Scenario 1 because images load faster the more stretched-out they are.
Therefore, a high level of detail is not necessary when you run ACOG on most of your loadouts. However, shorter optics such as red dot or reflex will benefit from long-distance rendering to help you spot targets.
Texture Filtering
Texture Filtering utilizes technology to smooth out the rough curves around graphics. Low texture filtering makes character models and objects blurry when zoomed in, whereas high texture filtering will make everything in the game stand out better and easier to identify. This advantage is useful when you are peaking corners. The faster you identify your targets, the faster you take your shots. In Rainbow Six Siege, the faster player always wins. Therefore, texture filtering must be as high as your PC can achieve.
Shadow Quality
Shadow Quality is the option to enhance shadow or turn it off. Turning shadow off will free up a lot of GPU's memory (everything in the game has shadow). Seeing enemy players' shadows can be beneficial in certain situations, like in this short montage. Therefore, you should aim to have Shadow Quality not higher than Medium.
Motion Blur
Motion Blur is a hazy effect in video games that is similar to moving our eyes around quickly. Motion Blur makes everything blurred (hence the name) while rotated. Motion Blur may also cause motion sickness for some players. Therefore, it is only obvious that we turn this effect off.
However, there is no option to turn off Motion Blur inside the game. We need to dig deeper.
First, we need to locate the game data by following this directory:
[C:\Users\"Username"\Documents\My Games\Rainbow Six - Siege]
Then, locate a string of numbers and letters. If you have different accounts, there will be more than one string. Find the correct string, click on it, and you will see a "GameSettings.ini" file. Open that file, scroll down until you find this line under [CUSTOM_PRESET_SETTINGS]:
By default, motion blur's value is 1. If we need to disable it, the value must be 0. Don't forget to click save!
Nvidia Reflex
Nvidia Reflex is a technology developed by Nvidia for the use of the manufacturer's GPUs. Nvidia Reflex reduces the latency between your hardware (mouse, GPU, monitor) and eliminates technical latency. This technology allows your inputs to be faster received by the game and executed.
Nvidia Reflex is only available in Vulkan mode, along with a host of other optimization tools for low-end PCs.
Controls Settings
How can you play fighting games effectively if you don't know all the buttons and interactions of the attacks that lead to combos? The answer is that you can't without mastering the controls.
Like fighting games or MOBAs, Siege requires players to master the control of the mouse and keyboard.
Sensitivity
The best sensitivity setting depends on your personal preference. Even the best setting will not make you a better player if you are not used to it.
Here is what you should do instead:
Play a couple of matches and get a feel of your sensitivity
Notice every time you miss or hit your shots
Tweak the settings until you find a middle ground between accuracy and movement
Record your setting and familiarize yourself with the new setting
The key here is consistency. It is crucial to play with the new settings for a while. Your muscle memory has to relearn and adapt to the new settings, so tweaking them every time you die is not ideal. Instead, it would be best if you fine-tuned them in tiny increments (a few digits at a time).
There is a reason why every professional player's sensitivity is different. They have played thousands of matches until deciding on the settings that feel the most natural and comfortable. We cannot copy them, but we can do what they did through trial and error.
Check out Jpeasy's video on Rainbow Six Siege Sensitivity if you want to dive deeper into the nitty-gritty.
Conclusion
That is every competitive setting for Rainbow Six Siege that you should know.
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