Dead Space (2008)

Dead Space (2008)

452 ratings
Essential Fixes and Troubleshooting
By iriyap
How to fix all common issues with the PC port of Dead Space.
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High Framerate (Invisible Wall Glitch)
The game is meant to be played at 60 fps. Playing at a higher framerate is known to cause severe glitches such as the invisible wall issue that will halt your progress.

You can cap your framerate by simply choosing the 60Hz version of your resolution in the game's options. E.g. I have a 75Hz display and can choose between 1920 x 1080, 60Hz and 1920 x 1080, 75Hz. Choosing 60Hz will cap the framerate at 60 fps. If this option is not available to you for some reason then you can manually cap the framerate at 60 fps in your GPU control panel.
Mouse Input
The mouse input is terrible out of the box. Here's how can you can improve it:
  • Disable vsync in the game's options, then force vsync through your GPU control panel. The built-in version of vsync caps your mouse polling rate resulting in extreme mouse lag.
  • Install the raw mouse input patch[community.pcgamingwiki.com].
  • The mouse sensitivity setting in the game is too low, even when maxed out. Open File Explorer, copy and paste the following address string: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Electronic Arts\Dead Space\. Inside the folder will be a file named settings.txt. Open that file with Notepad and change Control.MouseSensitivity = 1.00000000 to Control.MouseSensitivity = 2.00000000 (or your desired value).
Anti-aliasing
The built-in anti-aliasing is bad and makes everything blurry. Download Nvidia Profile Inspector[github.com], run it, choose the Dead Space profile, then set the following options:
Antialiasing compatibility: 0x004010C0 (just copy and paste this)
Antialiasing - Behavior Flags: None
Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting
Antialiasing - Setting: 4x OR 8x Multisampling
Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling: 4x OR 8x Sparse Grid Supersampling

Make sure to click Apply changes before closing the app.
Field of View (FOV)
The game is intentionally using a very narrow FOV to create tension but this can be very disorienting for some players and might even cause nausea.

You can use Widescreen Fixer[github.com] to increase the game's FOV. Download the program, run it together with the game, find the Dead Space profile, set your preferred FOV bonus (I recommend 0.3), set a hotkey combination to enable it in-game (e.g. I use Alt+F1). Then just press the hotkey combination to enable or disable the FOV hack in-game.

It generally works very well, however the mouse cursor will be slightly off in the save/load menu.
61 Comments
dovi 2 May @ 11:54am 
Anti-aliasing works great on DS2 too.
Desano 24 Oct, 2024 @ 1:59am 
Add DXVK to this guide. It is useful
GothicGaige 25 Apr, 2024 @ 7:47pm 
graphics
AnrryTech 7 Mar, 2024 @ 8:35pm 
I can't open the game
StixsmasterHD4k 22 Sep, 2023 @ 5:09pm 
pretty much your entire guide is obsolete if 1 just installs dgvoodoo2
Killemall 29 Mar, 2023 @ 6:51pm 
I must have an uncommon problem with Dead Space 2008 and Dead Space 2 because neither can get past the loading screen at all. No matter what I do, and I've tried all the online solutions, five seconds after II "hit any key" it crashes.
Chester, lord of cinder 25 Feb, 2023 @ 6:12pm 
All the textures are invisible unless I stand in oddly specific spots
Timefor1776 13 Feb, 2023 @ 1:10am 
I get a black screen for 5 seconds after Nicole message and the lady’s hair becomes like 200 feet long after crash what is the issue I have 4090 r9
metalaxi 5 Feb, 2023 @ 12:03pm 
I was wondering why the game ran only with 30fps although I chose 60fps. Thanks to your tweaks it runs and looks very smooth now!
Sniderman 1 Feb, 2023 @ 3:57pm 
tldr - Sorry if it's already been addressed - is there any way to change the keybindings? I've had this game in my library for years but only played it for a few minutes because I can only play the way I've set my keyboard up since HL1 back in the day :)