¶ Introduction
This page features a collection of interesting tips and tricks based on posts made by members of the Special K community that do not fit anywhere else.
- The posts may have been edited or rephrased to follow a more consistent style and be more up-to-date.
- Some content in this page might not have been verified.
¶ Dualshock 4 quick setup guide
By AkiraJkr, based on their Discord message. Further edited with more details as of 15/03/2024.
- Install DS4Windows and do the following:
- Rename the .exe from
DS4WindowstoDS4Winnto avoid conflicts/detection with Steam and other software. - Stop the DS4Windows emulation before proceeding if it’s started.
- Navigate to Settings > Controller/Driver Setup.
- In its Quick Setup, install HidHide, restart your PC as prompted and then close Steam & DS4Windows.
- Open the
HidHide Configuration Clienthide your DualShock4, but make an exception for the renamed DS4Windows(DS4Winn.exe).
- Rename the .exe from
- In DS4Windows, set the:
- Deadzones for your analog sticks(according to your Personal Preference/needs).
- Switch the
Output ModetoPassthroughfor your Touchpad & Gyro. - Make the Lightbar blue for DS4 before switching it to
PassthroughOutput Mode. - Make the
DS4 Profileas default BEFORE making a duplicate X360 profile with a emulated Xbox 360 Controller. - Within the
X360 Profile, make the Lightbar green before switch it toPassthrough.
- Set a Special Action on PS + Touch to allow switching profiles between DS4 and X360 on the go, without ever opening DS4Windows again.
- Now Edit your
DS4 Profile, and in the Other tab, changeEmulated Controllerto DualShock 4.
You’re now free to use theDS4 Profileas your default, and switch to theX360 Profilefor any emergencies.
For Steam use:
- Go to
Steam>Settings>Controllerand disableEnable Steam Input for Playstationcontrollers. (Although, I recommend disabling it for them all, if your gamepad has native support to PC)
If you wish to use Steam Input, enable it in a per-game case since global controller support is(thankfully) off;
Just go to your game’s Properties > Controller and Enable Steam Input instead of using default.
In some games, you might have no option but to USE Steam Input, as they have ZERO native support for the controllers, and Steam Input might automatically be force-enabled.
(Some games only support Steam Input but have HIDDEN native support fallback, so even if Steam Input is force-enabled, try disabling it and see if your controller is supported.
e.g. Tomb Raider I-II-III Remastered)
- Don’t forget to blank/remove the deadzones in Steam Input or you might run into problems when you play games that require/you use Steam Input with.
- And also if you do not use Big Picture AT ALL, get rid of the Guide Button Chord, on both the DS4/X360 profiles, to remove the last of Steam Input’s headaches.
- Apply this custom controller config: steam://controllerconfig/443510/1655129954 (copy and paste into your browser’s address field)
| Profile | Rumble Support | Gyro | Lightbar custom color |
|---|---|---|---|
| DS4 Profile |  |
|
* |
| X360 Profile | |
 |
|
The Lightbar for the DS4 Profile will be blue like we’ve set before, until a game with proper DS4 support(or Steam Input) uses it.
¶ Sekiro FPS Unlock
Special K does not Unlock FPS in Sekiro properly anymore resulting in issues.
Use SekiroFpsUnlockDll instead
¶ G-Sync FPS limit
By Kaldaien, based on their their Discord message.
Special K calculates the G-Sync fps limit (or technically the fps limit that’s set by Nvidia reflex when using G-Sync + Vsync On) this way: Refresh - (Refresh * Refresh) / 3600.0.
¶ Make dgVoodoo use Flip Discard
Moved to dgVoodoo page
¶ Promoting DirectX 9 games to Flip Model via DXVK (Nvidia only)
¶ Special K’s Vulkan Bridge
Special K’s Vulkan Bridge makes adjustments in the game’s Special K config file and sets Nvidia’s “Vulkan/OpenGL present method” driver option to “Prefer layered on DXGI Swapchain” in the game’s driver profile. Special K also sets additional driver flags in the game’s driver profile to improve compatibility, performance, and stability.
Nvidia’s DXGI interop uses a D3D11 swapchain. The Vulkan game (or D3D9 game using DXVK) still uses the Vulkan API, but Nvidia’s DXGI interop is used for final presentation. Special K can then hook into Nvidia’s DXGI interop layer, which provides enhancements such as DXGI flip model presentation and HDR injection.
DO NOT Use DXVK+Special K’s Vulkan Bridge (or the manual method) in DirectX 11 games.
Steps to enable Special K’s Vulkan Bridge:
-
Download a DXVK archive from the releases page which contains the compilled DLL files.
-
Extract the correct
d3d9.dllfrom the archive depending on whether your game’s .exe is 32bit or 64bit (PCGamingWiki may have this information), and place the dll where the game’s primary.exefile is located. -
Upon launching the game with Special K, a prompt asking if you want to enable native DXVK support should appear; press the
Yesbutton.- a message saying “Special k’s Vulkan Bridge Will Be Enabled. A game restart is required” should appear; press the
OKbutton.
- a message saying “Special k’s Vulkan Bridge Will Be Enabled. A game restart is required” should appear; press the
-
On next launch, you should see the Special K startup banner in-game indicating that Special K is active.
- Press Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + ← Backspace to open the Special K control panel. Ideally, above Special K’s frametime graph, it would say
Vulkan. If it says D3D11.4 (despite being a D3D9 game using DXVK), then something may have prevented Special K from detecting the API correctly or Special K may have injected too late and some Special K override or feature may not be available.
- Press Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + ← Backspace to open the Special K control panel. Ideally, above Special K’s frametime graph, it would say
¶ Manual Method
By jooozek, based on their their Discord message. This was the method used before Special K’s Vulkan Bridge existed.
¶ Steps for making DXVK+SK+D3D9 games work with HDR and achieving in general DirectFlip/IndependentFlip optimizations and MPO access on Nvidia cards.
Might require drivers version >=526.98
-
The two nvidia driver settings in the guide might reset on every driver update.
-
As usual with Special K, don’t use fullscreen.
-
Download DXVK archive from the release page which contains the compilled dll files, as of now dxvk-2.0.tar.gz https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/
-
Extract the appropriate
d3d9.dllfrom archive, be it x32 for 32bit D3D9 games or x64 for 64bit D3D9 games to the place where the game exe file is located
- easiest way to tell is to launch a game, open Task Manager, find the process for the game, right click, Open File Location
-
Enable the the DXGI interop via NVCP
Prefer layered on DXGI Swapchain -
With Nvidia Profile Inspector change the value of
OGL_DX_PRESENT_DEBUGto0x000802A5located under section 8 - Extra
- this setting might be hidden until the Show uknown settings from NVIDIA predefined profiles under the magnifying glass in the top bar
- this flag includes disabling the driver level promotion to FSE possibly fixing fullscreen issues.
- For each DX9 game create a file named custom_SpecialK.ini in a game specific folder in the SpecialK installation folder, as an example
<path-to-SpecialK>\Profiles\<game-specific>\custom_SpecialK.iniand insert the following in it:
[API.Hook]
LastKnown=64
ddraw=false
d3d8=false
d3d9=false
d3d9ex=false
d3d11=true
OpenGL=false
[Window.System]
DontHookWndProc=true
custom_SpecialK.ini is an override, delete this file if you aren’t using this method anymore
- This may help if a game appears to be frozen
[Window.System]
RenderInBackground=true
- The sign of success is seeing Vulkan or D3D11.4 (ideally it should say Vulkan) as the API in the SpecialK control panel menu
DXVK test:
Create dxvk.conf and add to it dxvk.hud = full
¶ Latent Sync bias explanation
By Spodi, based on their their Discord message.
If the frametime is stable, latent sync pauses the rendering of the next frame, depending on the bias you set.
I can try to explain what I understood, but I don’t know if that is actually right.
Let’s say you set your limiter to 100 FPS and they are rock solid stable, that should be 10ms of total frametime from the start of the render to the actual presentation.
But the frame might actually always be finished after 3ms, which would be stable 333 FPS.
In such scenarios latent sync can delay the rendering of the next frame by a percentage of your total frametime you set the limiter at.
So e.g. 50% input bias at 10ms would be a delay by 5ms.
5ms + 3ms to render = 8ms.
Your frame is still ready in time.
So you can see the result of your action about 5ms sooner than normal.
Btw:
75% bias in this example would result in 7.5ms delay. 7.5ms + 3ms = 10.5ms bias. That would be too much and stutter/make things worse.
I hope this is the right math behind it and if it isn’t please correct me.
¶ VRR: Recommended settings
There are various variable refresh rate (VRR; G-Sync, FreeSync, VESA Adaptive-Sync) recommendations or tips shared online, many of them dated back to 2015ish and based on the limited variation of high refresh rate displays of that time. Many of these recommendations are either outdated or omit relevant warnings about critical side effects associated to them. So here is the general recommendation from the Special K team and community on how to configure VRR, with important context as to why:
-
Configure the display to use its highest refresh rate in either Windows (borderless/windowed mode) or the game itself (Fullscreen Exclusive mode).
Click for more information:
When using VRR the configured refresh rate for the display controls the ceiling of the VRR range, or in other words where VRR ends and V-Sync begins. This means that if you have configured Windows to use 120 Hz on a 144 Hz display, for example, then the actual usable VRR range will be much more narrow (minus ~24 FPS) as V-Sync and all of its penalties will kick in at ~120 FPS instead of ~144 FPS. -
Enable VRR (G-Sync/FreeSync) globally, but only for fullscreen mode, through the control panel of the display drivers (e.g. Nvidia Control Panel).
Click for more information:
This limits VRR to only engage in modern flip model capable games. Note that this enables it for both fullscreen games (FSE), borderless window games, and even regular window mode if MPOs are available.It also ensures that any DWM hacks that the display driver might have (i.e. G-Sync for “windowed mode”) is disabled and not used as those have a history of causing unexplained and hard-to-troubleshoot issues.
Note: Be sure to leave Special K’s flip model override enabled (the default) and/or enable Windows 11’s built-in windowed optimizations as they achieve the same. These optimizations ensure that VRR will be capable of engaging in pretty much any Direct3D 10 and 11 games regardless of display mode.
-
Enable the V-Sync toggle within the game so that no tearing will occur when VRR is active. Do not use any external or third-party overrides for this!
Click for more information:
This recommendation ensures the game runs in an expected and supported configuration.It is heavily discouraged to use third-party or global overrides when controlling the V-Sync behavior as many games ties other behaviors and changes to the in-game V-Sync toggle of the game. As such, using a third-party override (e.g. a global display driver override) puts the game in an unsupported state where unusual and unexpected issues might occur.
An example of this is the Unity Engine which has the V-Sync toggle double as a “built-in FPS limiter” toggle. When the in-game V-Sync toggle is enabled, Unity’s built-in FPS limiter is disabled and the game is allowed to render unrestricted up to refresh rate. When the in-game V-Sync toggle is disabled, Unity’s built-in FPS limiter gets enabled which often defaults to enforcing a 60 FPS cap.
Another example of one such issue is prolonged loading times within games as a result of different frame behaviors enforced upon the game due to the forced V-Sync override. In short: the game expects an uncapped frame rate and so paces the loading of resource accordingly, but then the frame rates are capped and results in longer loading times compared to having used the in-game V-Sync toggle.
The global V-Sync toggle also enforces the restriction upon other applications beyond games which might experience similarly side effects in unexpected ways.
-
If the game supports Nvidia Reflex, enable it as it might reduce input latency further, although this is not required for VRR to function properly.
-
Enable Special K’s FPS limiter and cap to the appropriate FPS according to the below table.
Click for more information:
This is to ensure that the frame rate of the game is kept out of the refresh rate window where VRR might disengage and V-Sync takes over, and mirrors the behavior of how Nvidia Reflex functions.Special K’s FPS limiter is highly recommended (That’s why you are here, right! Right?!), however RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS) is recommended for games where Special K is not an option.
Note: Do not rely on a global FPS limit set through the display drivers as, once again, this will introduce unexpected issues in other applications that does not expect an FPS limit to be enforced.
PSA: The extremely dated “3 FPS below” suggestion is not applicable to modern high refresh rate displays due to the V-Sync window growing larger the higher the refresh rate goes as a result of the tighter timings involved.
Refresh Rate Max Frame Rate 60 Hz 59 FPS 120 Hz 116 FPS 144 Hz 138 FPS 165 Hz 157 FPS 180 Hz 171 FPS 240 Hz 224 FPS 280 Hz 258 FPS 330 Hz 299 FPS 360 Hz 324 FPS 540 Hz 467 FPS 720 Hz 576 FPS Calculation:
The values were obtained using this formula: `Refresh - (Refresh * Refresh) / 3600.0`. -
Play the game!
¶ VRR toggle in the graphics settings of Windows
This toggle has historically been linked to enabling VRR support in earlier UWP games that otherwise does not make use of it, however in 2022 the Special K community realized it also impacted whether VRR remained engaged or not while an overlay were present above the game. This prompted a question in the official DirectX Discord server in early 2023 where a software engineer at Microsoft kindly provided the following detailed information about the toggle:
Hey. That toggle enables/disables Windows VRR for Games feature. This feature does two main things:
If a game is presenting on a VRR monitor with SyncInterval=1, then the OS promotes the SyncInterval to 0, so that the right levers in kernel and driver are activated for the game to leverage the benefits of VRR
If there is any passive content on top of the game (such as game bar), then it informs the compositor to lock its composition rate to the game’s presentation rate, so that the game continues to leverage VRR instead of dropping to a fixed rate composition mode
What you are seeing with gamebar overlay [ED: VRR remained synced to the game despite the presence of the gamebar overlay on top] is a result of #2.
The multi-mon weirdness when running VRR on primary is a known limitation of windows compositor for mixed refresh and mixed capabilities displays (i.e one display is running fixed rate content, and one is running VRR content). The compositor team is currently working on this problem to be shipped for a future OS release.
¶ HDR Remaster Database
The information has been moved to its own page.