Support FAQ

If you're experiencing any kind of technical issue, please do this when posting in the Technical Support forum, it'll help us start looking into it straight away.

On Windows (Steam):

• Close The Witness
• In Library in the steam client, right click on The Witness and go to:
• Properties -> LOCAL FILES -> BROWSE LOCAL FILES...
• Go in into the "logs" folder and open log.txt

On Windows (Origin):

• Close The Witness
• In Explorer, browse to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\THE WITNESS"
• Go in into the "logs" folder and open log.txt

On Windows (Humble):

• Close The Witness
• In Explorer, browse to "C:\Program Files (x86)\The Witness"
• Go in into the "logs" folder and open log.txt

On Windows (Epic Games Store):

• Close The Witness
• In Explorer, browse to "C:\Program Files\Epic Games"
• Go in into the "logs" folder and open log.txt

On Mac:

• Close The Witness
• In Finder, Go -> Go to Folder...
• For the App Store version: ~/Library/Containers/com.thekla.the-witness/Data/Library/Application Support/The Witness
• For the Steam or other versions: ~/Library/Application Support/The Witness/logs
• Open log.txt

The first few lines of the file should look something like this (varies depending on platform & GPU vendor), paste the whole thing in a comment here.

Thanks!

This FAQ applies to the Windows version only!

Fullscreen Modes

There are some small changes in the latest update (Jan 8 2018) to make fullscreen play as nice as possible by default. Here I'll explain what the differences are, and how to tweak it if you want. When you select fullscreen in the launcher, the implementation you get depends on the version of Windows you have.

On any version of Windows 7, 8, or 10 before the recent Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, fullscreen mode will default to native fullscreen. It's been that way for a long time.

On the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and after, fullscreen mode will default to borderless windowed due to native fullscreen giving strange minimizing, alt-enter, and alt-tab behaviour on some systems.

If you don't know what version of Windows you're on, we write it out to the log file (here'show to find the log file). About 15 lines down, you'll see something like "OS: Windows 10, PlatformId 2, Version 10.0, Build 15063". The Fall Creator's update is Windows 10 build 16299.

There's a third option for fullscreen, "Flip Sequential", that was introduced with Windows 8 for Windows Store apps. We never set it by default, but you can force it on if you like (see below). It forces Vsync on and may have other issues - we haven't done any rigorous testing on it because native and borderless windowed cover most people's requirements.

Manually Forcing a Fullscreen Mode

You can manually force a fullscreen mode through the Local.variables file:

In Library in the steam client, right click on The Witness and go to:

Properties -> LOCAL FILES -> BROWSE LOCAL FILES...

Go in into the "data" folder and open Local.variables in a text editor.

You should see this section near the bottom:

:/display vsync true

Add this extra line underneath "vsync true" :

fullscreen_mode 0

The number after "fullscreen_mode" determines what you get:

• 0 is Native Fullscreen
• 1 is Borderless Windowed
• 2 is Flip Sequential
• ...anything else is invalid

If you request a mode not available on your version of Windows, it'll force something that is. You can check if it worked by looking in the log file just under the Windows version information. You'll see a line like "D3D11: fullscreen_mode: requested 0, got 0"

G-SYNC

The default G-SYNC setting is to be enabled for fullscreen only. Despite that, G-SYNC seems to work fine on borderless windowed in a lot of cases anyway.

However. if you have G-SYNC and it's not working for you (but working fine for other games), there are a couple of things to try:

1. Make sure you have V-Sync option turned off in The Witness launcher and/or pause menu settings.
2. It might be due to borderless windowed not playing nice with G-SYNC's fullscreen setting. You can change this in NVIDA Control Panel -> Display -> Setup G-SYNC -> enable G-SYNC for windowed and fullscreen mode.I've seen various postings online with reports of this setting causing low frame rates and/or mouse-lag artifacts with certain GPU driver versions and/or certain Windows 10 updates. We haven't been able to reproduce any of these issues but it's something to be aware of.If the setting causes problems for you, you could also make it apply only to The Witness by making a game-specific profile with a tool like Nvidia Profile Inspector[forums.geforce.com]

V-Sync Options

This is old information and I doubt many people will need to make this change, but I kept it here for completeness:

As of the 4/4/2016 update, we changed our default vsync implementation for Nvidia and AMD GPUs. In all our tests with latest drivers at the time this was much smoother, and plays nicer with adaptive sync methods to reduce microstutter. This did NOT affect Intel GPUs at all.

That said, if you find it was better for you before the update:

1. Make sure you have the latest drivers. Get them direct from Nvidia/AMD's websites.
2. If it's still no good, you can switch back to the old method:In Library in the steam client, right click on The Witness and go to:Properties -> LOCAL FILES -> BROWSE LOCAL FILES...Go in into the "data" folder and open Local.variables in a text editor.You should see this section near the bottom:

   :/display vsync true

   Add this extra line underneath "vsync true" :

   vsync_method 1

In addition to the above, there's a rare Nvidia-specific stuttering issue we've seen a couple of times, where stuttering occurs on a GPU that should easily run the game smoothly (the bug reports we've seen were a GTX 970, and we reproduced the same issue on a GTX 980 after installing new drivers)

...and here's a weird sounding fix for it:

1. Open NVIDIA Control Panel, go to Manage 3D Settings.
2. If you've made a specific Program Setting for The Witness, delete it.
3. then go to Global Settings and even if you've never changed them from the defaults hit Restore then Apply.

Doing this once fixed the stutter permanently for us.