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[GHG]

the real question is why not? I think i downloaded the electric dreams demo back in 2022. So devs releasing games at the tail end of 2024, wouldve had 2 years to build their games on UE5.2.

Because it requires a reworking of assets, and not all developers are willing (or able) to put in the work.

 

[DanielG165]

From what I see it's still far from what they showed in the pre-release

Fair enough. There have still be a lot of times for me so far where environments or interior spaces look near photorealistic, especially when the lighting hits right.

 

[od-chan]

Silent Hill 2 and Black Myth Wukong both look better and use UE5. The quality of the visuals depends far more on the dev than on the engine.

Yes, I agree. Thus I find it especially ridiculous how DF (and a large portion of the internet) try to find excuses for this shit game by saying "oh it just runs poorly but it looks so great!!".

 

[SlimySnake]

Series X performance in Quality mode has impressed me quite a bit, especially now knowing the resolution for it. 1440p upscaled to 4K, with this level of fidelity, utilizing lumen for the lighting system, at a locked 30 fps is pretty damn impressive for a $500 system. Played for an hour and a half last night, and not a single crash. I was honestly expecting MUCH bigger cuts and drawbacks on console with an open world UE5 game, but the SX kind of chews through this one.

This is exactly what Epic promised with UE5 back when the first PS5 UE5 demo came out. 1440p reconstructed to 4k using TSR. Its not surprising that they got an open world game to run at this resolution 4.5 years later.

I think robocop, black myth (on ps5) and silent hill 2 also run around the same resolutions in quality mode. The engine was simply never designed to run games at 60 fps as we saw with the matrix awakens demo on PC simply refusing to run at 60 fps. it took them years to fix performance but the devs decided not to use the latest builds of the engine. bizarre.

its a shame, but devs shouldve simply refused to release 60 fps versions of these games like ninja theory did with hellblade 2. Stand your ground and let people experience the best version of the game. performance mode runs at ps3 era resolutions with paired back settings. no wonder people think UE5 games look like shit. they are literally playing the shit versions of the game every time as we now know from sonys own numbers that show 75% of console users play on performance modes.

 

[mansoor1980]

 

[Mister Wolf]

So you tried to boast with some fancy word you don't even know meaning of?

You might want to read more of this thread.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Yes, I agree. Thus I find it especially ridiculous how DF (and a large portion of the internet) try to find excuses for this shit game by saying "oh it just runs poorly but it looks so great!!".

Or maybe folks just think it looks good to them and can look past a few things here and there. It’s not like there can only be two options, amazing or shit.

 

[od-chan]

Or maybe folks just think it looks good to them and can look past a few things here and there.

The word you're looking for is "copium".

 

[DanielG165]

Silent Hill 2 and Black Myth Wukong both look better and use UE5.

To be fair, I would imagine so, considering both of these games in question are significantly smaller in scale than Stalker 2. To my eye, however, the latter is very much in line with Wukong in environmental fidelity and lighting, both in interiors and exteriors. There’s a density and detail there that no other open world games currently have.

 

[Denton]

I mean

This game hammers CPU like there is no tomorrow xD

 

[GHG]

Yes, I agree. Thus I find it especially ridiculous how DF (and a large portion of the internet) try to find excuses for this shit game by saying "oh it just runs poorly but it looks so great!!".

Which is now evolving to "it runs poorly but it's using Lumen and Nanite!".

It's like people have suddenly forgotten that there are a ton of games out there that look equally as good when maxed out on modern hardware while running better. Just a shame they don't feature a bunch of "next gen" PR buzzwords so thet get forgotten about. To make matters worse, some of these games somehow end up looking worse than what's come before while featuring all these buzzwords, so go figure.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Series X Performance 864p reconstructed to 4K.
Performance in outdoors is almost always low 50's or high 40's

That's your cue to come and shit on this DenchDeckard . You were waiting for the results remember.

864p God damn! That's ps5 pro resolutions.

Xbox series consoles eat Pro's for breakfast

What a beast

/joke

 

[BigLee74]

If this is the best UE5 can look (with nanite and everything, and the game eating this much performance) then it's really not worth it. The game honestly looks barely better than, I don't know, RAGE or something. Sure, the enthusiast might disagree because the foliage is slightly more dense or something, but honestly, the game just doesn't look good. At least not in a way that would remotely justify these hardware requirements.

it's simple diminishing returns

So no, I disagree with DF. The game is both poorly developed and looks like shit.

I don’t think Stalker looks particularly great, but to compare it to RAGE, which didn’t even look good back when it came out…?

 

[Mr Moose]

I mean

This game hammers CPU like there is no tomorrow xD

I'm not even sure how they do it. It's worse than Starfield.

 

[od-chan]

I don’t think Stalker looks particularly great, but to compare it to RAGE, which didn’t even look good back when it came out…?

Comparing it to RAGE was facetious, yes. A a more apt comparison would probably be something like Metro Exodus.

 

[SmokSmog]

Something is very wrong both PS5 and Xbox Series X CPU performance when it comes to 3rd party games. It performance worse than 3600, which is equivalent to both Console CPU.

Not true, desktop Zen2 has 2x16MB L3, 16MB for each CCX, console Zen2 is a mobile version with only 1/4 the L3 ( 2x4MB), also connected to high latency GDDR6.
Each core in consoles has access to only 4MB L3.

 

[GHG]

I don’t think Stalker looks particularly great, but to compare it to RAGE, which didn’t even look good back when it came out…?

Rage 2 looked great, but I wouldn't say it looks better than this.

Games like Forza Horizon 5 and RDR2 maxed out still wipe the floor with most of what's coming out today (if we only want to consider open world titles), no lumen or nanite required and they run tremendously well on modern hardware without any stuttering issues.

It's like people forgot.

 

[LordOcidax]

864p God damn! That's ps5 pro resolutions.

Xbox series consoles eat Pro's for breakfast

What a beast

/joke

 

[Denton]

I don’t think Stalker looks particularly great, but to compare it to RAGE, which didn’t even look good back when it came out…?

Stalker does actually look great, eventhough I hope they add HW lumen and more shadowcasting light sources, but RAGE looked fantastic when it came out (as long as you did not inspect textures under a microscope)

Frankly it looks timeless

 

[SlimySnake]

I'm not even sure how they do it. It's worse than Starfield.

I think it's tied to the war. I did some research and the 0 fps drops are directly co-related to the time when a Russian tank was roaming the programmer's neighborhood causing him to forget to compile 2000 shaders.

There is no other explanation for this. Curiously enough, the 0 fps drops in Skyrim's PS3 version were incorrectly attributed to Bethesda's piss poor management of PS3's split ram memory pool. Most people forget that U.S was at war with both Iraq and Afghanistan in 2011, and we killed Osama Bin laden the day the PS3 engineer was supposed to stream data between the two rams.

We were bigots for blaming bethesda engineering. Shameful from gaf.

 

[Gaiff]

To be fair, I would imagine so, considering both of these games in question are significantly smaller in scale than Stalker 2. To my eye, however, the latter is very much in line with Wukong in environmental fidelity and lighting, both in interiors and exteriors. There’s a density and detail there that no other open world games currently have.

In very much disagree with the lighting part. STALKER has glaring lighting issues with leakage and bounces. BMW even in its software RT mode seldom sees such problems and when you toggle on ray tracing, it's essentially path-traced and the lighting is on a whole other level.

I also think Wukong's art direction blows STALKER 2 out of the water and if you look at NPCs and things like the armors and bosses in Wukong, the level of detail is far above whatever STALKER has to offer. You can't look at the NPCs in the STALKER 2 and the ones in Wukong and tell me that they're on the same level.

On the other hand, STALKER 2 likely doesn't suffer from the occasional muddy texture in Wukong.

 

[SlimySnake]

Stalker does actually look great, eventhough I hope they add HW lumen and more shadowcasting light sources, but RAGE looked fantastic when it came out (as long as you did not inspect textures under a microscope)

Frankly it looks timeless

Rage looked amazing when it came out but it had issues even back then. That tech did not always work. And i played it at 1080p 60 fps all maxed out.

 

[BigLee74]

Stalker does actually look great, eventhough I hope they add HW lumen and more shadowcasting light sources, but RAGE looked fantastic when it came out (as long as you did not inspect textures under a microscope)

Frankly it looks timeless

I loved RAGE. Great gameplay, and smooth as fuck. But my lasting memory WERE the textures, and you didn’t need to put them under a microscope.

I am also enjoying Stalker 2, and it is very atmospheric. The graphics aren’t bad, just not as good as I expected (XSX). Ive shifted to quality mode to see if its any better, but I’m currently in a night cycle (so can’t see shit anyway), and I’m really struggling with the horrendous input lag and dodgy controller support.

 

[Gaiff]

RAGE often had awful textures. Wasn't it then that Id introduced MegaTexture which flopped? My memory is a bit hazy about this.

 

[DanielG165]

but I’m currently in a night cycle (so can’t see shit anyway)

It’s actually pitch black without that flashlight, isn’t it?

 

[King Dazzar]

This was my XSX experience

 

[omegasc]

I wish they added CPU load graphs when talking about CPU limited games.

 

[Physiognomonics]

- Atmosphere, environmental artwork etc are the games greatest strengths
- UE 5.1 used, so vegetation is not using Nanite and not fully treated with Unreal's shadow maps
- Texturing across the game is high quality, hence the games massive install size (150GB~)
- Storms and weather effects highlight visual quality as well
- Cut-scenes and NPC's are synced properly to either localization

- A number of light sources do not cast shadows, something the original game did (eg muzzle flash causing shadows)
- Lumen light and reflections present but use a lot on SSR and can cause light break
- No Hardware Based Lumen at present, devs have said they will add post-release

- Xbox:
- Fidelity and vegetation lower than PC's Epic settings, but even Series S has a 'shocking' amount of vegetation on screen
- Shadow maps on Quality mode (SX) look similar to PC but Performance is lower quality with more jittering
- Lumen is lower quality in Performance mode and can have more light breaks compared to Quality mode or PC in its Epic settings
- Performance mode and Series S has lower quality translucent effects on windows etc, where SX in Quality and PC render it properly

- DRS on both console with Unreal's TSR
- Series S: 684p to 864p reconstructed to 1080p with TSR (single mode)
- Series X Performance: 864p to 1152p reconstructed with TSR to 4K
- Series X Quailty: Around 1440p with TSR to 4K at 30 FPS

- DF note that make sure to change sRGB on monitors (something I also pointed out in the OT) as the game looks very dark by default

- The day 0 patch fixes a lot of the initial problems in the review period, but still has some problems that need to be addressed by the developer.

- Shader comp at boot prevents shader stutters, but game still has some CPU / traversal related stutters. This issue was much more prominent before the day 0 patch.

- The game is super CPU limited.

- The CPU limitation extends to console. SX in Performance in outdoors is almost always low 50's or high 40's with sparse indoors hitting 60.

- Performance mode feels a lot better on a VRR display but is not recommended on fixed rate displays

- Cities with a lot of NPC's can cause dips to low 40's.

- DF note an issue where the game can freeze for a few seconds on Xbox when entering the first big settlement ((adam note: The freeze frame locks Alex talks about in the video, I did not encounter it in my run, there has been one more patch after the day 0 which likely fixed that too.))

- Quality mode is 'vastly preferable'. Only very rare drops to 29~28fps when a lot of NPC's are present.

How does it compare vs PC? What's the PC GPU equivalent to XSX here?

 

[GudOlRub]

Lmao, I usually find the Alex criticism in this forum to be quite silly and exaggerated, but in this case, if the game was not developed by Ukrainians he would absolutely blast it for having those absurd 6 second freezes, instead he just casually mentioned them like they aren't that big of a deal
And there's a lot of that UE5 foliage flicker that we can also find in SH2 that he somehow forgot to mention. The image quality in this game has quite a few issues that need some work and he didn't seem to mention them at all. I wonder why...

Anywho, I'm liking the game quite a lot, but my 5800x3d struggling to get past 40ish fps in some areas is really bumming me out. I hope they can optimize this stuff...

 

[GHG]

Stalker does actually look great, eventhough I hope they add HW lumen and more shadowcasting light sources, but RAGE looked fantastic when it came out (as long as you did not inspect textures under a microscope)

Frankly it looks timeless

The skyboxes in this game were incredible.

 

[DanielG165]

This was my XSX experience

What mode were you running in?

 

[King Dazzar]

What mode were you running in?

Both.

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

Not really much better looking than Metro. Looks downgraded aswell especially the character models.

 

[Rosoboy19]

its a shame, but devs shouldve simply refused to release 60 fps versions of these games like ninja theory did with hellblade 2. Stand your ground and let people experience the best version of the game.

If we have play it in 30fps on XSX to get decent performance they could have at least added some motion blur

 

[Spukc]

Game runs fine on a laptop with 2080 all medium setting dlss on balanced. At 1080p

Game runs fine on pc all on high with 3080 dlss balanced at 3440 x 1440

No matter what i change in settings towns have a dip. Not sure its my pc more like this game

 

[Three]

The problem is war changes for some depending on the manufacturer. It's a reference to a previous thread.

You were first in line to talk about "failed marketing" with Pro, remember? Now you're here defending advertising Stalker as 4k60fps because its XSX.

Also. I'll happily say it doesn't run well when we have hard evidence. Trying to shit on a game for saying 4k 60fps in its marketing when the pro is out here doing the same then running at 864p is pretty special to see.

If it runs like shit on the x I'll call it.

His hard evidence arrived, but he didn't show as I expected.

 

[Mister Wolf]

It’s actually pitch black without that flashlight, isn’t it?

The default gamma is too low. I have mine set to 75. The color space should also be changed to sRGB.

 

[GHG]

The problem is war changes for some depending on the manufacturer. It's a reference to a previous thread.





His hard evidence arrived, but he didn't show as I expected.

DenchDeckard attempting to respond for comment:

 

[Buggy Loop]

There's still nanite, just not for foliage.

As every UE5 games out as of now as far as I know, nanite foliage is 5.3 and there's no games out yet with it.

That's all good and well, but it's not much of a showcase then if there are still plenty of assets that are popping in when in the outside areas.

The whole point of Nanite was to comleletly eliminate pop in and LOD shifts.

Not a single game uses nanite foliage from UE 5.3.

 

[SlimySnake]

Lmao, I usually find the Alex criticism in this forum to be quite silly and exaggerated, but in this case, if the game was not developed by Ukrainians he would absolutely blast it for having those absurd 6 second freezes, instead he just casually mentioned them like they aren't that big of a deal
And there's a lot of that UE5 foliage flicker that we can also find in SH2 that he somehow forgot to mention. The image quality in this game has quite a few issues that need some work and he didn't seem to mention them at all. I wonder why...

Anywho, I'm liking the game quite a lot, but my 5800x3d struggling to get past 40ish fps in some areas is really bumming me out. I hope they can optimize this stuff...

He had a whole section on the game's shortcomings.

He just isnt as harsh because he has an eastern european bias.

 

[GHG]

Not a single game uses nanite foliage from UE 5.3.

Nanite foliage has been available since version 5.1 and there are games that have shipped with it.

 

[Fake]

Those low resolutions are out of control.

 

[mansoor1980]

fortnite has nanite foliage i think

 

[kevboard]

I fucking hate Unreal Engine... and especially Lumen...

 

[Buggy Loop]

Nanite foliage has been available since version 5.1 and there are games that have shipped with it.

It was broken in 5.1, almost not usable until 5.3. Terrible performances otherwise.



So which game had 5.1 nanite foliage? I mean outside of the Epic demo called Fortnite.

 

[GHG]

It was broken in 5.1, almost not usable until 5.3



So which game had 5.1 nanite foliage? I mean outside of the Epic demo called Fortnite.

Already posted an example in this thread, it's not the only one either.

 

[DenchDeckard]

DenchDeckard attempting to respond for comment:

That is shite!

 

[Buggy Loop]

Nanite foliage has been available since version 5.1 and there are games that have shipped with it.

I mean with the devs saying this :

"Julia Lichtblau: When we first switched over to Unreal [5], we turned Nanite on everything we could. I think 5.0 wasn't [compatible with] foliage, that came a bit later, but as soon as we were able to have Nanite foliage we turned it on. Then we started to pull back from that and [asked] "does this really need to be Nanite?" We were encountering some assets that [were problematic due to] their construction and the way that the UV shells were set up, so we had to rework some of those assets to make it workable with Nanite or change it up entirely and go back to the traditional method. We couldn't use [Nanite] for things that would move, like flags. We really threw everything into the Nanite bucket, to learn from it. Now we've been able to build a huge Confluence [corporate wiki] page on how Nanite should be handled going forward."

Doesn't scream they went full in nanite foliage, on the contrary. That's why devs have avoided nanite foliage even if it dates back to 5.1
Foliage that does not move is required.. what's the point? Oh but no pop-in.. I don't know. Is this really worth discussing?

Even Epic encountered a ton of problems and this works almost only for Fortnite in older UE versions because they had huge R&D to determine the performances by trial and error and what works what doesn't and their art style can fit into that very narrow verts count.

 

[GHG]

I mean with the devs saying this :

"Julia Lichtblau: When we first switched over to Unreal [5], we turned Nanite on everything we could. I think 5.0 wasn't [compatible with] foliage, that came a bit later, but as soon as we were able to have Nanite foliage we turned it on. Then we started to pull back from that and [asked] "does this really need to be Nanite?" We were encountering some assets that [were problematic due to] their construction and the way that the UV shells were set up, so we had to rework some of those assets to make it workable with Nanite or change it up entirely and go back to the traditional method. We couldn't use [Nanite] for things that would move, like flags. We really threw everything into the Nanite bucket, to learn from it. Now we've been able to build a huge Confluence [corporate wiki] page on how Nanite should be handled going forward."

Doesn't scream they went full in nanite foliage, on the contrary. That's why devs have avoided nanite foliage even if it dates back to 5.1
Foliage that does not move is required.. what's the point? Oh but no pop-in.. I don't know. Is this really worth discussing?

Even Epic encountered a ton of problems and this works almost only for Fortnite in older UE versions because they had huge R&D to determine the performances by trial and error and what works what doesn't and their art style can fit into that very narrow verts count.

They used nanite for foliage but not for everything. Unless you want to tell me flags are foliage?

Remnant 2 also uses nanite for foliage:

From what we can see, Remnant 2 uses Nanite for all of its objects, trees, and grass. And that’s something that we truly appreciate. Yes, the game’s graphics do not justify its ridiculously high GPU requirements.

Analysis - Game Dev - Remnant 2 is the first game using UE5’s Nanite to eliminate geometry pop-ins

Remnant 2 releases later today and it will be the second game powered by Unreal Engine 5 (the first one was Layers of Fear). And, surprisingly enough, it’s also the first game that is using UE5’s Nanite in order to eliminate distant geometry/object pop-ins. Below you can find a video in which...

www.neogaf.com

And Satisfactory:



Video specifically sharing that they use nanite for foliage in 5.1:



It's been entirely possible since 5.1, it just wasn't plug and play and required assets to be reworked in order to accommodate for it.

 

[ChoosableOne]

Series S: 684p to 864p reconstructed to 1080p with TSR (single mode)

I miss these resolutions.