Hello!

I did some Googling for this problem, and found a solution that almost works:

1) Make sure your game is on fullscreen, and not windowed

2)Turn off V-sync

3) Set frame limit to 60

4) Enjoy the screen tearing

I would also like to note that there isn't much difference between the low and high graphical settings. I tinkered with them, and I don't notice any major changes.

All of this sounds awful, but for this point, is that with chromatic aberration ON or OFF?

My original post was for chromatic aberration on. I just tried it with CA off, and I still get frame issues, although it's not as severe as before. I still see little difference between each increment between each setting. The biggest increase I think was the change in foliage increase from low to medium. I'll post screenshots for comparison. I should have done this in the first place, as I might have missed something. Chromatic aberration is off for these images:

Low: https://imgur.com/a/UBJ17W5
Medium: https://imgur.com/a/OGqxYQw
High: https://imgur.com/a/eDDUq2u
Very High: https://imgur.com/a/xPFJf78
Ultra: https://imgur.com/a/QmZSoT0

Do you see a big difference between indoors and outdoors? The shadows and AA tend to play a big role on performance as well.

No matter the resolution or quality preset, the stuttering issue is always present. It seems it has been since the original launch.

I turned shadows all the way down. I thought it worked at first, but I started getting some mild frame stuttering. I don't see the option for AA. I say this because chromatic aberration (the option to turn it on and off) appears and disappears at random, and based on this I can't tell if the game doesn't have AA, or if it's just tucked away somewhere.

AA has to be set in engine.ini or game.ini or what ever it's called. Same thing can be done with Chromatic Abberation if you want to set it individually.

This game needs more graphical settings in game. Can't say it runs well.

Did some ini testing.
I think motion blur is the biggest culprit. I have AA on default wich is 4 times and it's really needed, depth of field, chromatic abberation and motion blur is off.
When I removed the lines that disables motion blur, the game suddenly feels laggy and stuttery again.

This is what I've added to Engine.ini
It can be found in the following folder (<username>\AppData\Local\Indiana\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor)

[SystemSettings]
r.MaxAnisotropy=16
r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=4
r.PostProcessAAQuality=4
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.MotionBlur.Max=0
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.DefaultFeature.MotionBlur=0
r.SceneColorFringe.Max=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0

That worked. Thanks!

thank you , ELFswe !
:-)

I'd also like to add a tip that sometimes helps smooth out framerate stutters for me...

If you're running an Nvidia card and you're getting stutters, try disabling shader caching for the game (not your entire system) through the Nvidia control panel. It helped me smooth out Fallout 76 and Metro Exodus, both of which would stutter a lot and make it difficult to play.

It's not a guaranteed fix but that's usually my second attempted fix after playing around with the graphics settings. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it doesn't. Fortunately, the game seems to run fine for me, so I haven't had to worry about it, but maybe that'll help someone?

If you have an nVidia gpu you can fix studder without lowering settings. Go into the nVidia control panel and force vsync to "fast" then in game set vsync to on and see if it's fixed, if not then in game set vsync to off and test. It should be ok.

Also instead of lower settings try using a custom resolution that's close to native. For example I have a 4k display and to get my desired frame rate I made a custom resolution of 3200x1800.

I actually got cyberpunk to run at a locked 60 with max settings and RT on, DLSS balanced with res at 3209x1800 on a i7 5820k and a 2080ti ftw3 ultra.

I loaded up The Outer Wilds for the first time and experienced really bad stuttering on a high-end rig (e.g. 8GB RTX 3070, etc). Spent quite a bit of time troubleshooting it over the internet, and found a series of solutions that each provide incremental optimizations until the game was properly optimized. I now have it running on "Very High" settings with no stuttering at all. I'm placing all the settings I used here in the hope that this provides a similar solution for others. Enjoy the game!

Steps to Optimize "The Outer Worlds"

1. Close RGB keyboard lighting service. On my Lenovo, this was Corsair iCUE, but there are other programs. Find yours, and close the program. Then disable the program from running on startup. You loose the pretty lights, but this will have a net positive on a lot of your games, as well as VR. Finally, if you have built in RGB keyboard still running through motherboard, just make sure to use your hotkeys to turn it completely off.
2. Go to TheOuterWorlds.exe file (not shortcut) in your games library, open Properties, and under compatibility tab, check "disable fullscreen optimizations."
3. Start "The Outer Worlds", go to graphics settings, and cap framerate limit at or below your screen refresh. Do not set unlimited.
4. In graphics settings, disable V-sync. Close game.
5. Open Nvidia (or equivalent) control panel. Select "The Outer Wilds" for program-specific 3D settings. Ensure the preferred graphics processor is your dedicated GPU. Then select the following settings:
- Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance
- Texture filtering Anisotropic sample optimization: On
- Texture filtering Quality: High Performance
- Texture filtering Trilinear optomization: On
- Vertical Sync: On

Run "The Outer Wilds." Each of these settings provided a performance improvement for me, and collectively fully optimized the game.

Necroing to say this helped. It didn't solve, but alleviated a great deal.