What does SSAO mean?
Ava Robinson
Updated on June 04, 2026
Subsequently, one may also ask, should I use SSAO?
1: SSAO – Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
Graphically impressive games, especially newer ones, may suffer in quality with this option. However, if you do not emphasize that with your gaming, this is probably your best bet. In short: It works well, sacrificing graphical quality while still looking good on older PCs.
Subsequently, question is, what's better SSAO or HBAO? 4 Answers. H*AO offers better quality but with an increased performance hit. SSAO is less accurate but improves image quality with a much smaller performance penalty. If you're going to use H*AO, from what I understand you should select HDAO if you have an ATI card or HBAO if you have an nVIDIA card.
Also question is, does ambient occlusion affect FPS?
The typically frame rate hit you can expect when enabling Ambient Occlusion is between 5-10%. There are exceptions though, such as Apex Legends. Poor implementation at launch mean Ambient Occlusion could cause you to lose up to 20% of your FPS in Apex Legends.
Does SSAO hurt performance?
If you're someone that wants realistic graphics, then motion blur should be on there. SSAO looks great, but if its barly notiable in some games and impacts the FPS too much. It really improves the look of a game I think, especially in indoor areas where ambient lighting would be more crucial to the visuals.