Is there any reason console variables for tessellation weren't added to the whitelist? I was able to tweak them in the editor to prevent my graphics card from slitting its wrist every time I look at a brick wall, giving me a gain of about 10fps. Unfortunately, none will work in-game.

Anyone know how to force lower tessellated distance in-game? Possibly through the driver?

I asked this too but the thread died.

What are the tessellation cvars in sandbox bar the water ones? Got a list?

They definitely need to be unlocked IMO, the game is obviously capable of tessellation optimization just it's been intentionally locked on full.

The commands and their default values are as follows:

r_Tesselation=1
r_TesselationDebug=0
r_TesselationDensity=0
r_TesselationDistancePreTesselate=10
r_TesselationFactor=20
r_TesselationMaxDistance=100
r_TesselationMinDistance=0.5
r_TesselationPreTesselateOnGPU=0
r_TesselationTriangleSize=8
r_TesselationTriangleSizeMax=100
r_TesselationTriangleSizeMin=1
r_TessellationBorderFix=1
r_TessellationSeamsFix=1

I set the r_TesselationMaxDistance to 8 and got a 10fps gain while still being able to see some tesselation. It's not whitelisted so I have no way to do this in-game. This needs to be rectified promptly.