You’re flying high, the sky is a deep bruised orange, and then you notice it. The cockpit instruments look like they were smeared with Vaseline. For a game that basically lives or dies by its "vibe" and intense dogfighting, seeing a pixelated mess instead of a crisp HUD is a total buzzkill.
A lot of people jumping into Project Wingman native resolution issues are coming from two very different places: the PS5’s Frontline 59 update or the Wild West of PCVR. Both have their own quirks. Honestly, it’s kinda frustrating because the game is gorgeous when it actually works.
Basically, the game often defaults to a sub-native resolution to save your framerate. On consoles, this is baked in. On PC, it’s a slider that lies to you.
The PS5 and PSVR2 Blur Problem
When Project Wingman: Frontline 59 dropped, PSVR2 owners were hyped. Then they saw the clouds. The "shimmering" and general softness made it feel like the game was running at 720p and being stretched out.
The truth? It kinda is.
On the PS5, the game doesn't always hit the Project Wingman native resolution of the PSVR2 panels (which are 2000 x 2040 per eye). To keep the action at a steady 60fps or 90fps, the engine uses aggressive upscaling. One big culprit most people miss is the "Sharpness" setting. For some reason, it often defaults to 1.0.
Go into your video settings right now. Bump that Sharpness up to 3.0. It won't magically give you more pixels, but it cleans up the temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) mess that makes everything look so soft. It's a night and day difference for reading your altitude or target lock distance.
Fixing Project Wingman Native Resolution on PC
PC players have it "easier" because we can brute force the hardware, but the settings menu is a trap.
You’ll see a "Resolution Scale" slider. If you leave this at 100%, you might think you’re running at native. You aren't. Because of how Unreal Engine 4 handles VR barrel distortion, you actually need to supersample just to reach the perceived "native" clarity of your headset.
👉 See also: Uno in Casinos: Why Your Favorite Family Game Is Actually Hitting the Vegas Floor
The SteamVR Secret
If you're using a Quest 3 or a Valve Index, SteamVR might be trying to "help" by auto-adjusting your resolution. Stop it.
- Open SteamVR settings.
- Set "Resolution Scale" to Manual.
- Lock it at 100% (or higher if your GPU isn't screaming).
In the game itself, try to push the Resolution Scale to 120% or 130%. This compensates for the "softness" of the lens distortion. If your framerate tanks, don't drop the resolution first. Drop the "Clouds" setting to Low. Project Wingman's clouds are legendary for eating GPUs for breakfast.
The Engine.ini Hack for True Clarity
Sometimes the in-game menus just don't cut it. If you're still seeing that weird "ghosting" or "fringing" around your plane, you need to go into the guts of the game.
Navigate to:%LOCALAPPDATA%\ProjectWingman\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\
Open Engine.ini and add these lines under [ConsoleVariables]:
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=2r.ScreenPercentage=100
The "SceneColorFringe" is Chromatic Aberration. It’s that purple/green blur on the edges of objects. Turning it off makes the Project Wingman native resolution feel significantly sharper because you're seeing actual pixels, not "artistic" color bleeding.
Why 4K Doesn't Always Mean 4K
If you're playing on a flat screen (not VR), the resolution issues are usually tied to the "Full Screen" vs. "Windowed Borderless" bug. In Borderless mode, the game sometimes takes your Windows desktop scaling into account. If your Windows UI is set to 150%, the game might render at a weird sub-native scale even if the menu says 3840x2160.
Always stick to Full Screen for the best performance. It lets the game take direct control of the display.
Actionable Steps to Sharpen Your View
If you want the game to look like the trailers, stop fiddling and do this:
- For PS5/PSVR2 Users: Set Sharpness to 3.0 immediately. Turn off Motion Blur. If the clouds look like static, there’s no "fix"—that’s just the console optimization hitting its limit.
- For PCVR Users: Ignore the 100% scale. Aim for 120% in-game and use the
Engine.initweak to kill Chromatic Aberration. - For Everyone: Set Cloud Quality to "Standard" or "Low" before you touch the resolution. Higher resolution with lower clouds looks way better than 1080p with "Ultra" clouds.
The reality is that Sector D2 is a tiny team. They didn't build a perfect auto-scaling engine. You’ve gotta do a little manual labor to get that cockpit looking crisp, but once those HUD lines are sharp, the game feels completely different.
Now, go fix your config file and get back in the air.