While the clouds in Ark: Survival Ascended look absolutely stunning, players have realized turning them off will grant a sizable FPS increase. But it’s not exactly obvious how to turn them off. I’ll show you exactly how to do that below.
It’s rather hard to notice, but the graphical technologies used to create clouds in the game are also present in the forests and even water, meaning you’ll be rendering clouds all the time, forcing your system to its limits. As I play Ark: Survival Ascended on a rather outdated PC, I naturally became familiar with all the methods to increase my frames in the game and turning off clouds and fog is one of the most effective ways.
Ark: Survival Ascended: How to turn clouds off with Ark cloud command
Turning off clouds in ASA is as simple as opening the console with “~” and entering “r.VolumetricCloud 0”. This will remove all clouds from the sky and will come with a nice performance increase.
As you can see in the image above, ASA still looks great without clouds, though you are certainly sacrificing some looks for performance.
You can enable the clouds again by entering “r.VolumetricCloud 1” in the command console.
Turning off clouds instantly gives me a consistent 5-10 FPS boost, which can make a large difference if you are struggling to run Ark: Survival Ascended.
How to turn fog off in Ark: Survival Ascended with the Ark fog command
You can also remove fog in ASA, which can give you a nice FPS bump after removing the clouds. To do this:
- Enter “r.VolumetricFog 0” into the game’s console to remove fog.
Removing the fog from your game further increases your performance, as there will be fewer particles to render.
Between clouds and fog, turning off clouds is definitely going to provide a more significant performance increase than turning off fog.
Even with both fog and clouds removed, Ark: Survival Ascended still looks pretty darn good. If you’re in a pinch, this technique may add just enough performance to make the game playable, which is a big deal!
After applying both of these fixes to my game got me from a consistent 30 FPS to a consistent 40. I’m fine with sacrificing that performance to keep the beautiful clouds, but some players aren’t even reaching 30 FPS, so that might not be the best option for you.
Now that you know how to turn off clouds in Ark: Survival Ascended, try it out and see if it helps you at all. While there are also mods that allow you to tinker with finer graphical settings, I personally prefer using commands for a more hands-on approach.
In cases where you still need more frames, you can apply the best graphics settings for Ark: Survival Ascended: Improve FPS and performance. Optimizing your settings is likely to grant you a few more additional frames.
Overall, ASA is a resource-hungry game, and if you’re struggling to maintain 30+ frames after turning off clouds/fog and lowering your in-game settings, then it might be time to consider investing in one of the best CPU and GPU combos for gaming PCs.
