SoulCalibur VI: Best Engine.ini for Unreal Engine 4 Performance

The 2026 standard for competitive SCVI involves moving away from in-game presets and forcing the D3D12 Shader Pipeline to stay “warm.” This prevents the micro-stuttering that occurs the first time you see a character’s specific visual effect in a match.

File Path

The configuration is found in the local AppData folder. Ensure the game is not running when you apply these changes.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\SoulcaliburVI\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini

Technical Note: To truly fix the “Slow-Mo” bug, you must pair these tweaks with the NVIDIA Control Panel (or AMD equivalent). Set Low Latency Mode to Ultra (or Anti-Lag+) and ensure V-Sync is set to Fast.

Optimized “Competitive Blade” Configuration Block

Search for or add the [SystemSettings] header at the bottom of the file. This configuration prioritizes the 60 FPS lock required for frame-data consistency.

Parameter	Recommended Value	Technical Purpose
r.CreateShadersOnLoad	1	The Stutter Fix. Forces effects to load during screens, not mid-fight.
r.DepthOfFieldQuality	0	Removes the blur during cinematic moves, increasing FPS and clarity.
r.PostProcessAAQuality	4	High-quality TAA that doesn’t “smear” during 8-way run movements.
r.RHICmdUseParallelAlgorithms	1	Allows the CPU to process draw calls across multiple cores.
r.FinishCurrentFrame	0	Eliminates the 1-frame buffer for the fastest possible input response.

[SystemSettings]
r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1
r.RHICmdUseParallelAlgorithms=1
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=4
r.TemporalAASharpness=1.0
r.BloomQuality=0
r.LightShafts=0
r.FinishCurrentFrame=0
r.OneFrameThreadLag=1

HowTo: Engineering the Ultimate SCVI Competitive Setup

Follow these GameEngineer.net steps to ensure your inputs are interpreted at the 2.5-frame minimum delay:

1. The “Post-Process” Match: In the in-game menu, your Post-Process Quality should be set to Low or Medium. Our Engine.ini tweaks override the bad filters, but keeping the base setting lower prevents the engine from trying to allocate VRAM for features we’ve disabled.
2. Fullscreen Only: Never play SCVI in “Windowed” or “Borderless” mode. Windows 10/11 adds a compositor layer that introduces approximately $16\text{–}30\text{ms}$ of input delay. Exclusive Fullscreen is mandatory for competitive play.
3. Shadow Resolution: Set Shadows to Medium. In SoulCalibur, “Ultra” shadows calculate complex soft-edges for character hair and capes, which can cause frame drops on stages like Astral Chaos.
4. The “Fast” V-Sync Hack: If you experience screen tearing but hate V-Sync lag, disable V-Sync in-game and use NVIDIA Fast Sync. This allows the game to render at 60 FPS while dropping the “late” frames, giving you the latency of V-Sync OFF with the visuals of V-Sync ON.
5. Read-Only Lock: After saving your Engine.ini, right-click the file and select Read-only. SoulCalibur VI is known to “clean” its config files upon startup if it detects settings it doesn’t recognize.

Technical Explanation: Parallel Algorithms and Draw Calls

In a 3D fighter like SoulCalibur VI, every piece of “Create-a-Soul” armor is an individual mesh. When a match starts, the CPU must issue Draw Calls ($D_c$) for every component. By enabling r.RHICmdUseParallelAlgorithms=1, we tell the Unreal Engine to split these calls across your CPU’s available threads rather than bottlenecking everything on Core 0.

This is especially critical in 2026 because many modern CPUs have high core counts but lower per-core clocks. Parallelization ensures that even with highly complex custom characters, the Render Thread never waits more than $16.6\text{ms}$ for the Game Thread, preventing the “stuck in molasses” feeling common in unoptimized PC setups.