Remember why it will have issues....
- Returnal on PC receives numerous visual improvements over PS5.
- On PC, we get better textures, particles, post-processing effects, lighting and shadows.
- After testing the title with 16GB DDR4 (Housemarque recommends 32GB), the result is satisfactory. I would only recommend those 32GB of ram if we intend to play at maximum, 4K and Ray-Tracing.
- The PC version adds Ray-Tracing for some shadows and reflections. This option also adds extra puddles that are not present if we disable RT.
- On Steam Deck its performance is insufficient. With all settings on low, the framerate drops below 30fps during combat. I would not recommend playing it on this platform.
- Returnal is the game with more differences and visual improvements of all Playstation Studios games on PC with respect to PS5. A great title that no one should miss if you like Roguelite.
This is doing some abysmall numbers on steam, jesus. Barelly cracked 4000 players after almost 2 hours. It will end up the worst performing game commercially besides sackboy it seems. I wasnt expecting anything in particular, but surelly not 4000. All sony games on pc so far performed extremely modest, but we're now at the fourth game thats doing "bombed so hard that if it was an independent studio they'd have closed the doors". Besides all of them being so late after the initial release which has the biggest impact, im not seeing a particular pattern
I never expected this game would do very well, but to be fair, a lot of people are still at work...
Looks amazing with that FoV. I'd be tempted to play with borders even on my ultrawide for that.
In europe and asia its free time right now and peak numbers usually happen at this time, evening in europe. Not during US free hours. Its just surprising for me this is doing so incredibly poorly. Its still 4000 players after nearly 3 hours. I thought the style of this game would move more players, around Days Gone numbers maybe. Such a low number i think indicates a lack of interest in the title.
I like that aktivated ray tracing adds more puddles. I remember the filmmakers of Dune saiying that they added puddles to a scene to make the image more interesting. See the landing sequence of the giant egg-shaped spaceship at the beginning of Dune.
___
I hope Returnal sells well on PC.
I find it strange that children's games like Hogwarts Legacy are so popular with adults. Well, the differences in interest are very big. On the other hand I love such games as Callisto Protocol, Dead Space, Alien: Isolation, Cyberpunk 2077, Control etc.
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cheapchips
Veteran
Nooooooooo
Because PC gamers accept this shit and have done so for far too long.
I'm not saying it's the easiest platform in the world to develop for and there's technical challenges for sure... but I'm really sick and damn tired of release and then fix later (maybe)...
This is why I laugh at people who think I overreact about this stuff... It's not that I overreact for the hell of it... it's because the message doesn't seem to be received unless you literally sound like it's the end of the world.
We're paying full price for these games... we're being marketed products that "work"... and these constant stutters in games is not an acceptable product, and it's time we demand better, and I don't give a damn how long some QA testers need to repeatedly play the game over and over again generating all the shader/PSO data they need. Enough is enough.
The reality is that we get games designed for console UMAs, and nothing is done to tailor the game and how it works to take advantage of the PC platform. We have shit loads of RAM, VRAM, we have the fastest SSDs and bus speeds possible, we have the latest GPUs and CPUs with more cores and faster clocks than anything ever before... and yet the code isn't designed around it. Oh Unreal Engine... want to load that? Stutter. Want to unload that? Stutter.
I mean, ok, we're seeing more games do shader compilation processes at the start which is great, but now it's just another BS thing in the way..
What is Microsoft doing? Fix DX12 for crying out loud. Work on the damn thing and ATTEMPT to solve/improve some of this stuff for developers.
Engine developers... why streaming in data cause these hitches? Why isn't this being improved. CPU utilization... we're sitting on a bunch of useless cores which are ironically only good for compiling shaders ahead of time..
What are developers doing releasing games with very obvious stutter that is 100% verifiable by spending 1 minute playing them? Fix your damn QA process and don't release things till they are PROPER!
Optimization is just going down the drain. Developers utilizing DLSS and FSR/XeSS as crutches for shitty GPU optimization.. and to top that off now we have Frame Generation tech which will allow developers to market sky high framerates while CPU optimization is even further down the drain than it already is....
Fake visuals. Fake framerates. Next we'll be able to just fake play the game by allowing our personal AIs to "solve" their way through the game for us while we stream on Twitch begging for donations to buy the next PC hardware that will be even more bottlenecked..
*sigh*
I dont understand this shader compilation process at all. In consoles this is clearly not an issue. Something about it works. And they are weaker than high end PCs and architecturally similar so you would expect it to be a more straightforward port.
I m trying to understand how this process is such a common issue and handled differently on PCs. This wasnt such a problem the previous gen, was it? What changed?
Because it makes zero sense.
Returnal got a good treatment in every aspect and improved over the PS5. And yet here it is that stutter/frame pacing issue again. The effort was put to make it better. So why in the world that technical aspect ommited again, which impacts severely the experience?
All shaders on console are pre-generated and included with the game, there's no compiling shaders on console as it's just part of the complete package. This is possible because it's one set of hardware. Shaders are specific to the driver/hardware of the host device, and so on PC they have to be compiled either on 1st game start, or unfortunately more commonly, in real-time as you're playing and first encounter them in the game.
That's my layman's overview of the issue.
Aaron Elfassy
Newcomer
The reflections really stand out. But not always for the best. It looks like the reflected scene is missing a lighting pass. Spiderman exhibits the same issue. The reflected scene looks like a ps3 version of the proper game. The reflections look far too bright. When the reflections occupy most of the screen you're basically seeing shading and geometry that is generations behind. I'm not sure how you to feel about these effects being shoehorned into games with such a strong aesthetic.
Was this always the issue though?
How about similar to or part of the installation, there is a shader installation before you start the game, where it detects your hardware and pre installs based on those, so that doesnt happen during game?
The way you describe it, sounds like it is an almost unsovable common problem because of the nature of PCs
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