Alan Wake 2 [XBSX|S, PC, PS5] 17th october 2023

[Scott_Arm]

@Silent_Buddha This strikes me as frankly a bad take. Games install fine and load fine. They payment processing works. It's bare bones if there's a game on the store that I want to play, I'm going to play it. Honestly don't understand why the store experience matters, unless the basic functionality just doesn't work like getting charged for a game and then not being able to install or launch it.

The worst store I've used is probably the xbox store, but I still use it if there are games I want. I've had tons of technical issues with it, but ultimately the games are what matter.

 

[pjbliverpool]

@Silent_Buddha This strikes me as frankly a bad take. Games install fine and load fine. They payment processing works. It's bare bones if there's a game on the store that I want to play, I'm going to play it. Honestly don't understand why the store experience matters, unless the basic functionality just doesn't work like getting charged for a game and then not being able to install or launch it.

The worst store I've used is probably the xbox store, but I still use it if there are games I want. I've had tons of technical issues with it, but ultimately the games are what matter.

Yes this is exactly the way I see it. I understand the preference for one store over another due to the additional features like @trinibwoy mentioned, but to actively avoid games that you would like to play just because they arent on your preferred store is an alien concept to me.

Heck you can launch EGS games directly from the Steam interface by adding them manually so there's just no reason at all to avoid games on that platform if its the only option them.

 

[Phantom88]

Maybe. Maybe not. Six months from now it's in Epic's best interest to capture revenue from the diehards that refused to buy it from their store.

That would be in their best interest, yes. But the reason Epic has a publishing arm where they act like Activison or EA and fund entire games is in the hope that they're attracting people to their store. These games will either be forever exclusive (or until the store dies), or as they told PC Gamer in an interview earlier this year, exclusives for a very, very long time. I'd treat any Epic published game as never coming to steam personally

 

[DavidGraham]

1440p FSR Quality in Alan Wake 2 is worse than DLSS Ultra Performance!

 

[orangpelupa]

Heck you can launch EGS games directly from the Steam interface by adding them manually so there's just no reason at all to avoid games on that platform if its the only option them.

And add

-EpicPortal

launch argument to skip the epic launcher (some games would error tho). Achievement and cloud save won't work, obviously.

 

[Bludd]

DX12 to Vulkan Mod Supposedly Boosts Alan Wake 2 FPS by 50% on GTX 1080 Ti

We couldn't get it to work, so your mileage may vary.

www.tomshardware.com

someone try this? seems finicky

 

[davis.anthony]

This game is something else!!!

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Nothing about brand loyalty for a lot of us. We gave it a try, hated the experience of using their store and launcher. Try to soldier through for half a year for the free games, still couldn't stand using the store. Uninstalled and not going back until they improve their storefront.

Why is choosing not to use a shitty storefront from a company that would rather spend money to buy consumers than to provide the consumers with a good storefront to use considered brand loyalty? I mean I don't shop at some grocery stores, car dealers, furniture stores, etc. for the exact same reasons.

Regards,
SB

I get that it's more than 'brand loyalty', there are distinct features that Steam offers (especially if you're a Linux user) - or rather, than loyalty was justifiably won by Valve through years of iteration on a product.

However, as much as I also avoid the Epic Store as much as possible, in the case of AW2 I think things are a little different - that being, AW2 would not have been made without Epic's funding. As well, especially considering it's a single player game, Epic's deficiencies as a platform really don't come into play that much here. Take a principled stance against storefront lock-in sure, but without that lock-in by Epic, this game likely wouldn't exist regardless.

And btw I don't use the Epic launcher either - I use the Heroic Launcher. Also makes it extremely easy to add Epic/GOG games to Steam with all the requisite artwork. It doesn't just put a nicer frontend for the Epic launcher, it replaces it - you can install/manage (even *move* your games to other drives, which the Epic launcher can't) and never see the Epic storefront unless you want to.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

1440p FSR Quality in Alan Wake 2 is worse than DLSS Ultra Performance!

Nah, I hate this thing DLSS does. It expands thin lines to make it more temporally stable, but it can ruin small features all the time. You look at in stuff like Cyberpunk and there's this swimmy effect where distant small glints and lights stuff don't even move with the camera right and it looks like you're watching a terribly compressed video. I'll take FSR's much closer to reference reconstruction over DLSS there.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Nah, I hate this thing DLSS does. It expands thin lines to make it more temporally stable, but it can ruin small features all the time. You look at in stuff like Cyberpunk and there's this swimmy effect where distant small glints and lights stuff don't even move with the camera right and it looks like you're watching a terribly compressed video. I'll take FSR's much closer to reference reconstruction over DLSS there.

Yeah, DLSS can do that sometimes where it basically 'thickens' thin lines and it's annoying, it can produce more specular aliasing as it's inadvertently up-sizing some edges that inevitably just result in more edge shimmer (which can happen in Spiderman with some effects). On the whole the artifacts are less than FSR (significantly so in many cases - as those videos show!), but this is one area where it's bothersome for me.

 

[Bludd]

new drivers from amd mentions aw2 getting radeon boost support, which is driver-level resolution reduction? so the game will have its resolution lowered again and then upscaled a second time?

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-23-11-1

 

[GhostofWar]

new drivers from amd mentions aw2 getting radeon boost support, which is driver-level resolution reduction? so the game will have its resolution lowered again and then upscaled a second time?

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-23-11-1

That's the one where it lowers resolution when turning. I've never understood the point of it, most people like the higher framerate while turning because it improves clarity so tracking a moving target is easier so your not shooting at a part of the object blur/trail. This just makes the image clarity worse when you need it most, may aswell just use a heavier motion blur.

 

[RobertR1]

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/17mq5h6

AW2 hotifx

 

[davis.anthony]

If you're not happy with the quality of DLSS or FSR then use them to get 'free' downsampling.

I do it all the time and quality is even better than just using DLSS or FSR.

 

[RobertR1]

If you're not happy with the quality of DLSS or FSR then use them to get 'free' downsampling.

I do it all the time and quality is even better than just using DLSS or FSR.

I use DLDSR then DLSS when i have GPU headroom. looks amazing.

 

[DavidGraham]

Nah, I hate this thing DLSS does

The foliage flickering all over the place even on Quality FSR is a much much more serious concern than a small screen element being extra stable (which is subjectively better anyway). How can DLSS Ultra Performance operating at 1/8 the resolution deliver better results than FSR Quality operating at 2/3 the resolution?

 

[troyan]

The foliage flickering all over the place even on Quality FSR is a much much more serious concern than a small screen element being extra stable (which is subjectively better anyway). How can DLSS Ultra Performance operating at 1/8 the resolution deliver better results than FSR Quality operating at 2/3 the resolution?

Because RayReconstruction is doing the heavy work. You can see it in this video:

This is 1440p with Quality upscaling, but the difference to ultra performance is very small.

 

[troyan]

Played the "Champions of Light" part and this was an excellent example why custom engines are necessary for gaming. Having an artefact free image with raytracing helped massively to enjoy this part. Wouldnt played it with just SSRs.

 

[davis.anthony]

Played the "Champions of Light" part and this was an excellent example why custom engines are necessary for gaming. Having an artefact free image with raytracing helped massively to enjoy this part. Wouldnt played it with just SSRs.

I've just done this section and half way through turned all RT completely and the immersion was no where near the same.

 

[Remij]

Can someone explain to me why, and this isn't just an issue with Alan Wake 2... but some games seem to have issues with video playback cutting back to real time. There's always some big god damn stutter.. Like it switches over to the real time renderer and has to chug for a sec before it's smooth. It's not shader related IMO.. In Alan Wake 2 it happens all the damn time when finishing a chapter or whatever. It's so god damn annoying. And Remedy is flying high off good reviews and no dedicated forums for people to bitch on so it's not likely that they're going to do anything to fix it either.

What is it with PC and issues with video playback and switching to real-time?