Should I turn off lens flare in games?

Dying Light 2 is an open-world survival game published and developed by Techland. The title has been out for a few days now, and the launch has been extremely successful for the developers. It has far surpassed the peak player count of the first entry, and comfortably over many PC titles of 2022. It’s clear that fans have been dying to play it, and the reception so far has been fairly positive. While there are some technical limitations, the game for the most part looks and runs fairly well on a variety of systems. If you want to disable the Dying Light 2 Chromatic Aberration effect, here is how you can do so with a mod.

While you are here, make sure to check out our other guides on Dying Light 2, when it comes to ultrawide, crashes at launch, or if you want to skip intro videos.

Disable the Dying Light 2 Chromatic Aberration effect

Chromatic Aberration is a visual effect that many PC titles have been using for some time now. It doesn’t always sit well with PC gamers though, and usually, there’s an option to turn it off in the in-game settings.

Sadly, this is not the case in Dying Light 2, which requires users to mod the title. Nexus Mods user shawnikaros has created a mod that lets you turn off various post-processing effects, including Chromatic Aberration.

Here are a few other effects this mod lets you disable

• Anamorphic lens flares
• Sharpness
• Lens Flare
• Dirty Lens
• Barrel Lens Distortion

This isn’t a traditional mod per se, but it edits data files, where Techland has kept various variables for these effects.

Installing the mod

Installing this is super simple, and you can do so by following the steps below.

• Head over to the following Nexus Mods page
• Now, under No Post Process Effects click on MANUAL DOWNLOAD. You will need a free account to download this.

• This will download a zip file containign various mod files
• Extract it using compression software like Winrar or 7zip
• Now, open the ph folder, followed by source folder
• Here, you will see a few files that correspond to the desired effect, as shown below

• Now, delete the files that correspond to the effect you don’t want disabled. Since we only want Chromatic Aberration to be disabled, we will only keep Data6.pak

• After this, copy the ph folder, and paste it in your Dying Light 2 installation folder (where the game is installed)

That is all you need to do, and the next time you launch Dying Light 2, chromatic aberration will be disabled. Again, if you want to disable other effects too, simply keep the pak files for the respective effects.

Comparison Screenshots

Here is a screenshot comparison provided by the mod author that shows Dying Light 2 with, and without these effects.

We hope that the developers add these options in-game in some future update, but we doubt that will happen.

If you want to disable Chromatic Aberration in other recent titles, make sure to follow our guides for Life is Strange Remastered, The Gunk, and Tales of Arise.

We hope this guide was helpful, and you were able to disable the Dying Light 2 Chromatic Aberration effect on PC. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below.

I want more lens flares AND bokeh. Until we stop seeing things on screens and start experiencing games as virtual reality, things should look like they're being seen through a camera.

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EatChildren said:

Hmm. I value clarity far too much to agree with this. Overuse of blur, post processing filters and overlays drives me mental. Case in point, Battlefield 3. The screen effecst were interesting, even impressive, to start with, but grew quickly tiring. I felt they were obscuring the rest of the game while adding little to the experience. Same goes for film grain, something I always turn off if given the option.

But, that being said, I feel these tricks are valuable, mostly when used sparingly and contextually. Rather than developers smear the screen in shit and very deliberately strive to make the entire game look as though it were being shot through a video camera (stylised games, like Kane & Lynch 2, the obvious exception), I'd rather developers keep the effects subtle and attached to specific scenarios and set pieces. Mass Effect's lens flairs are a good example of doing it right, and The Witcher 2 and Crysis 2 DX11 handle DOF, motion blur and other effects very well too. Crysis 2 has awful screen blurring AA, but the motion blur and DOF looks incredible.

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Gez said:

Bulletstorm did this pretty poorly IMO, especially at the start.

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georaldc said:

OP, better stay away from kane and lynch dog days. I remember that being a lens flare heart attack overload (think the whole game was trying to emulate the feeling of watching a a shaky video cam or something)

Why do games use lens flare?

Lens Flares simulate the effect of lights refracting inside camera lens. They are used to represent really bright lights or, more subtly, just to add a bit more atmosphere to your scene. The easiest way to setup a Lens Flare is just to assign the Flare property of the Light.

Does lens flare look good?

Lens flare is a phenomenon caused by light reflecting off the small, flat surfaces of camera lenses. It is often considered to be something bad because it can potentially make an image look less sharp or even washed out.

What does lens distortion do in games?

Lens Distortion can be used for simple effects like creating a fisheye lens for instant replay in skateboarding games or emulating different cinema lenses.

WHAT IS lens flare in graphics settings?

Lens flare can happen when a bright light source hits your camera's lens. This light can show up in the form of circles, rings, starbursts, or an allover haze in your photo.