EDIT: I’ve done a little more research and you may want to skip this initial post and jump down to my comment below.
Since upgrading my project from 4.7.6 to 4.8.0 I’m having some trouble with particle emitters. They are only emitting about 1/4 the normal amount of particles. This happens in PIE, standalone game, etc. To reproduce:
*Create a first person shooter example project in 4.7.6
*Go to FirstPersonBp/Blueprints/ and open FirstPersonHud
*Add a EventBeginPlay event and link it with a Execute Console Command node with the command sg.EffectsQuality 1, compile/save
*Create a new particle emitter, open it and save it to apply the defaults
*Place the particle emitter in the level somewhere you can see it easily
*Start the game in PIE to apply the console command added to FirstPersonHud
*Observe that the particle emitter is emitting about 20 particles
*Close project and upgrade it to 4.8.0, open upgraded project
*Start game in PIE, observe that the particle emitter is emitting about 5 particles
I’ve found a partial workaround, but it is not adequate in my situation. The particle emitter still malfunctions on lower Engine Scalability Settings.
*Go to your unreal projects folder, open up the recently created 4.8.0 example shooter project folder and delete the saved folder(This is so you can change Engine Scalability Settings, using the sg.TextureQualitySettings seems to make Engine Scalabilty Settings permanently unchangeable.)
*Open 4.8.0 example shooter project in Unreal Editor, go back to FirstPersonBP/Blueprints and open FirstPersonHud
*Delete the EventBeginPlay and the console command
*Go to Settings, Change your Engine Scalability Settings to Epic
*Start game in PIE, observe that the particle emitter is emitting about 20 particles and seems to be fixed
*Go to Settings, Change your Engine Scalability Settings to Low
*Start game in PIE, observe that the particle emitter is malfunctioning again and only emitting about 5 particles