Players are turning off Cyberpunk 2077's film grain to improve console visuals
Here's how to get Ridley of it.
If you're finding Cyberpunk 2077 a little blurry, it's not just you, as a lot of players are complaining about smudgy visuals. Thankfully this is something that can be easily changed, and players are now tinkering with the game's default graphics settings to solve the problem. Although don't go expecting this to solve all the texture pop-in and resolution problems on base consoles - you'll be waiting for a CDPR patch for that.
On reddit and Twitter, players complained that some of the settings automatically enabled in Cyberpunk 2077 - there to make the game feel more cinematic - are also making it look blurry. On my Xbox Series S I found the game had enabled motion blur, film grain, depth of field, lens flare and chromatic aberration (which blurs the edges of the screen like an old lens), which when combined can give the game a smudgy look.
To solve this, players are disabling a mixture (or sometimes all) of these settings. I tried this on Xbox Series S by disabling motion blur, film grain and chromatic aberration, considered the main offenders, and found it significantly improved the clarity of the visuals - particularly around the edges of the screen. It's like a little resolution bump, and if you want to go even further you can also remove depth of field, while PC players have found that changing the field of view can also help. Some people may prefer the old school Blade Runner look, but I quite like being able to see where I'm going.
Here's a quick video to show what the change looks like:
Obviously, this isn't going to improve many of the more serious problems on base Xbox One and PlayStation 4, so it's probably more significant for those on newer consoles or PC. Cyberpunk 2077's full next-gen version isn't set to release until 2021, so these tweaks can help tide us over until that performance upgrade arrives.