Phaethon keeps its settings in four places: the launcher's own settings.json, the files the runtime writes per game plus one shared file, the in-game Graphics Options and Sound Options screens, and a handful of runtime command-line flags. The remastered preset is one switch: the launcher's Remastered checkbox starts the game with --preset remastered, and the runtime then boots on the remastered settings, kept in their own file, pc-settings-remastered.gc, beside the retail pc-settings.gc, so a remastered boot never reads or writes the retail one. Without the flag, or with --preset retail, the game boots retail. Where a preset's file holds no row, that preset's defaults stand, and the options screen shows and edits every row under both presets. The toggles below are individual rows, each its own field, each off (retail) by default.

Where settings live and how a player reaches them

• The launcher holds a preset field (RetailFaithful or Remastered) per game, shown on the Game page's Play tab as a "Remastered" checkbox with the hint "The game boots on its remastered preset, with its own settings file beside the retail-faithful one." Checked, Play passes --preset remastered to gk ahead of the -- separator; unchecked, it passes no preset, and the game boots retail. Settings saved under the old name Enhanced load as Remastered, and the next save writes the new name (The launcher). The Game page's Display, Audio, Controls and Game tabs follow the checkbox: checked, they edit pc-settings-remastered.gc; unchecked, pc-settings.gc; each tab's heading names the preset and its file. Mode and Display, on the Display tab, are kept in display.json, which both presets share. The launcher never creates the remastered file: the game writes it from the remastered preset's defaults on its first remastered run, and until then the tabs say so and offer nothing to edit.
• Launcher state (that checkbox, Debug mode, extra launch arguments, texture pack choices) lives in settings.json under %APPDATA%\PhaethonLauncher.
• In game, the PC options rows write straight into *pc-settings*, a pc-settings-jakx object; each setter commits an actual change to pc-settings.gc (pc-settings-remastered.gc under the remastered preset) under %APPDATA%\Phaethon\jakx\settings\ (goal_src/jakx/pc/pckernel-impl.gc, common/util/FileUtil.cpp).
• A shared window.json one level above the per-game folders holds the debug window's own chrome (hide key, capture chords); a per-game debug.json beside pc-settings.gc holds the debug window's saved "Custom" preset block, covered on Debug window guide.
• At boot, the flags that matter for play are -g <game>, --windowed, --renderer opengl|vulkan|default, --preset retail|remastered, --proj-path, --config-path, --local-path and --pictures-path; every --replay-* flag is for the offline frame-oracle tool, not for a normal run (runtime/main.cpp).

Frame cap and vsync

Frame Rate cycles target-fps through 30, 60, 75, 120 and 144. 60 is retail parity and the reset-gfx default; 30 halves the render rate while the simulation stays at the same speed; 75, 120 and 144 carry an "EXPERIMENTAL" label in the menu text, since only 30 and 60 have been verified end to end. There is no Uncapped option anywhere in the row or the C++ frame limiter. VSync is a separate on/off row; picking a rate above the display's refresh clears it automatically.

Aspect ratio and HUD anchoring

Aspect Ratio offers 4x3 (retail, the default), 16x9 (a letterboxed 16:9 picture inside whatever window shape the player has) and Auto (no letterbox at all, filling the window). A separate HUD Edges row, Retail/Balanced, nudges the right-edge HUD items so their margin from the window edge matches the left edge's; Retail, the default, leaves that code path bit-identical to the PS2 build.

Temporal upscalers and the cutscene upscaler

DLSS Quality, Balanced, Performance and Ultra Performance, DLAA, and FSR Quality, Native AA, Balanced, Performance and Ultra Performance all exist as a TemporalMode (runtime/graphics/renderer/Temporal.h); DLSS and DLAA need NVIDIA's NGX, FSR runs on any GPU. None of this has an in-game menu row, a launcher control, or a normal-boot command-line flag yet. The only way to change it today is the Debug window's Temporal tab or its Presets tab, both gated on a -debug boot. The cutscene upscaler is the same story: fmv_upscale has no GOAL field and no play-time flag, only a debug-window lever; the Enhanced preset there only turns it on when its own startup self-benchmark says the pass keeps up on the machine it is running on (runtime/debug_window/DebugPresets.cpp). Off, the movie plays as retail did; on, a compute pass runs a small convolutional network, a 2x port of 2xNomosUni_compact_multijpg_ldl, over every frame, taking a faster cooperative-matrix path on a Vulkan device that supports it and a plain compute pass otherwise (runtime/graphics/renderer/FmvUpscaler.h).

Texture packs

Packs install from the zips the OpenGOAL community already ships, a metadata.json beside texture_replacements/<tpage>/<texture>.png, into <install>\texture-packs\<game>\<id> through the launcher's Addons page. Switching a pack on or off there lays every pack that is on into custom_assets\<game>\texture_replacements, in the player's own layering order, later packs winning where two overlap, and then rebuilds the game in full from its extracted disc, since the decompiler bakes replacements in at extract time; switching every pack off rebuilds it with the disc's own textures. The switches are held while the game runs and until its disc is imported.

Everything else behind a toggle

Every remaining enhanced feature is its own pc-settings-jakx row, off (or retail) by default:

Row	Values
Antialiasing	Off, MSAA 2x/4x/8x, then FXAA or SMAA
Sound Output Mode	Auto, Mono, Stereo, 5.1, 7.1
Actor Shadows	Retail, Shadow Map
Shadow Quality	Low, Medium, High
Shadow Softness	Off, Soft (default once shadows are on), Softer
Shadow Fade in Dark	On by default once Actor Shadows is on
Particle Lighting	Off (default), On
Ambient Occlusion	Off, Low, High
Bloom	Off, Low, High
Motion Blur	Off (retail's own zoom blur), Low, High
Scene FX	Off, On (heat haze, sun shafts, depth of field)
Weather	Off, Random, On, Storm
Film Look	Off, Film, Film+Grade
Destruction FX	Off, On
Ground Ruts	Off, On

Two fields default to retail's own value rather than to zero: tail light flicker scale and brake boost both start at 1.0, which is what leaves the vehicle glow sites unchanged. Turning any row on changes what the PS2 build drew; every tree comment beside these fields states the same rule, that a row left off leaves its shader or effect site bit-identical to retail.

Phaethon is a hard fork of OpenGOAL's jak-project. Naughty Dog made the games; you need your own copy of each. built from the wiki · 12 Nov 2026