While I agree that there are games that - mostly for a lack of time in an industry that puts ever increasing pressure on developers - are having hardware requirements that are higher than they need to be, the whole picture is a bit more nuanced.
DLSS, FSR 4.1 and (to a lesser degree) Xess are good enough that you’re just wasting performance (and even, in some games, image quality) for no reason by not activating them. They are an inherent part of modern rendering pipelines, not mere crutches, a way out of the fact that every tiny improvement to visual fidelity comes with a huge cost to performance. If you have hardware that is still limited to older versions of FSR - which are kind of shitty - then I can understand your sentiment, but if you’re not, then I invite you to have a friend help you with a blind test, activating and deactivating current upscalers to find out for yourself if you can spot the difference. You might be surprised.
Also, if you had paid attention to what CDPR developers have published and presented so far, they have optimized UE significantly, dramatically improving performance, both by rewriting parts of the engine entirely (like the geometry streaming system) and throwing out others that they have no need for (like Blueprints). Expect The Witcher 4 to have hardware requirements that are appropriate for the visuals. Note that I’m not saying it will have low hardware requirements - there’s a difference. Given the target audience, the expectations and the game’s status as a halo game for both CDPR and UE, this game will push technology forward, which is not cheap.
That said, this game has been announced for the current console generation, which includes Xbox Series S, so it’ll still have to scale. Expect fallbacks (like possibly software ray-tracing, since UE supports this feature - I doubt it’ll allow you to disable RT entirely) and plenty of options to dial it back to run on reasonably modest hardware. It’s likely going to be too much for the Steam Deck, but still run on e.g. an RTX 2080, a first-gen RT-capable card with 8GB of VRAM from eight years ago (ebay price: ~200 bucks), which in my experience can handle the most demanding current RT-only games remarkably well.
Do not expect the upgraded version of Rocket League to have hardware requirements as low as the current version. That game officially only needs a GeForce 760, which is an upper entry level card from thirteen years ago that is limited to DirectX feature level 11 and has only 2 GB of VRAM. I honestly doubt that many players are still playing the game on hardware this old (and the developers have the numbers). What we can reasonably hope for, just like with The Witcher 4, is that the new version has hardware requirements that are appropriate for the visuals. I think it’s realistic to expect them to be similar to Fortnite, given the developer being part of Epic, scaling on a wide variety of systems. It’s still a F2P e-sports title after all, so it will have to remain accessible to a large number of players on hardware ranging from toaster to space ship.
I absolutely can tell when DLSS is on vs off. The swimming artifacts are blatantly obvious. I think it is a fantastic technology, I do not agree with the direction of AAA games making non native resolution rendering part of their performance benchmark. Seems to be an issue here and there broadly in AAA games but it seems to be the default for UE5 devs. Also here we have the first fuck you for simply assuming I’m too out of the loop rather than just having an informed, differing, opinion.
I brought attention to TW4 because I’ve seen the examples of optimisation cdpr are doing. Here is the second fuck you for simply assuming I’m out of the loop rather than having an informed opinion. If the Witcher 4 has hardware requirements that are appropriate for the visuals, then it will be the first blockbuster AAA in several years to do so, and I will celebrate their success and be glad to continue enjoying their art.
“I doubt it’ll allow you to disable RT entirely” is a huge problem. Rasterized lighting looks about 80-90% of the way there compared to full RT/PT with all the fancy pbr textures and all, but has a performance cost which is dwarfed in comparison. Offloading what could have been a dev’s handiwork onto the customer’s hardware willy nilly is part of the bigger problem. And we aren’t seeing cheaper games as a result of the corner cutting, despite the extra burden on consumers.
My experience doesn’t match yours wrt the 2080 being capable of handling current day rt only titles well, quite the opposite in the case of my friends with 2080s, but thats anecdotal from both sides so its moot.
I don’t expect RL to run as well on ue6 as it does currently. Obviously. That’s why I said it. If they do some big visual overhaul then we can’t compare apples to apples, sadly. But if it is just an engine swap without investing in PBR materials and stuff like that, then why would it be reasonable to expect UE6, a newer, hopefully more refined engine, to run worse than UE3?
Anyway. Despite your assumptions about me, we are both clearly informed on the topic(s) and have drawn differing conclusions. If you’re going to continue to engage with me with the same lack of good faith as your first reply, I’d kindly request that you simply do not. Have a good day.
To be clear, “here"s the Nth fuck you” was me referring to the fact that you insulted my intelligence. I was not saying fuck you to you, but pointing out that you had implicitly said it to me.
While I agree that there are games that - mostly for a lack of time in an industry that puts ever increasing pressure on developers - are having hardware requirements that are higher than they need to be, the whole picture is a bit more nuanced.
DLSS, FSR 4.1 and (to a lesser degree) Xess are good enough that you’re just wasting performance (and even, in some games, image quality) for no reason by not activating them. They are an inherent part of modern rendering pipelines, not mere crutches, a way out of the fact that every tiny improvement to visual fidelity comes with a huge cost to performance. If you have hardware that is still limited to older versions of FSR - which are kind of shitty - then I can understand your sentiment, but if you’re not, then I invite you to have a friend help you with a blind test, activating and deactivating current upscalers to find out for yourself if you can spot the difference. You might be surprised.
Also, if you had paid attention to what CDPR developers have published and presented so far, they have optimized UE significantly, dramatically improving performance, both by rewriting parts of the engine entirely (like the geometry streaming system) and throwing out others that they have no need for (like Blueprints). Expect The Witcher 4 to have hardware requirements that are appropriate for the visuals. Note that I’m not saying it will have low hardware requirements - there’s a difference. Given the target audience, the expectations and the game’s status as a halo game for both CDPR and UE, this game will push technology forward, which is not cheap.
That said, this game has been announced for the current console generation, which includes Xbox Series S, so it’ll still have to scale. Expect fallbacks (like possibly software ray-tracing, since UE supports this feature - I doubt it’ll allow you to disable RT entirely) and plenty of options to dial it back to run on reasonably modest hardware. It’s likely going to be too much for the Steam Deck, but still run on e.g. an RTX 2080, a first-gen RT-capable card with 8GB of VRAM from eight years ago (ebay price: ~200 bucks), which in my experience can handle the most demanding current RT-only games remarkably well.
Do not expect the upgraded version of Rocket League to have hardware requirements as low as the current version. That game officially only needs a GeForce 760, which is an upper entry level card from thirteen years ago that is limited to DirectX feature level 11 and has only 2 GB of VRAM. I honestly doubt that many players are still playing the game on hardware this old (and the developers have the numbers). What we can reasonably hope for, just like with The Witcher 4, is that the new version has hardware requirements that are appropriate for the visuals. I think it’s realistic to expect them to be similar to Fortnite, given the developer being part of Epic, scaling on a wide variety of systems. It’s still a F2P e-sports title after all, so it will have to remain accessible to a large number of players on hardware ranging from toaster to space ship.
I absolutely can tell when DLSS is on vs off. The swimming artifacts are blatantly obvious. I think it is a fantastic technology, I do not agree with the direction of AAA games making non native resolution rendering part of their performance benchmark. Seems to be an issue here and there broadly in AAA games but it seems to be the default for UE5 devs. Also here we have the first fuck you for simply assuming I’m too out of the loop rather than just having an informed, differing, opinion.
I brought attention to TW4 because I’ve seen the examples of optimisation cdpr are doing. Here is the second fuck you for simply assuming I’m out of the loop rather than having an informed opinion. If the Witcher 4 has hardware requirements that are appropriate for the visuals, then it will be the first blockbuster AAA in several years to do so, and I will celebrate their success and be glad to continue enjoying their art.
“I doubt it’ll allow you to disable RT entirely” is a huge problem. Rasterized lighting looks about 80-90% of the way there compared to full RT/PT with all the fancy pbr textures and all, but has a performance cost which is dwarfed in comparison. Offloading what could have been a dev’s handiwork onto the customer’s hardware willy nilly is part of the bigger problem. And we aren’t seeing cheaper games as a result of the corner cutting, despite the extra burden on consumers.
My experience doesn’t match yours wrt the 2080 being capable of handling current day rt only titles well, quite the opposite in the case of my friends with 2080s, but thats anecdotal from both sides so its moot.
I don’t expect RL to run as well on ue6 as it does currently. Obviously. That’s why I said it. If they do some big visual overhaul then we can’t compare apples to apples, sadly. But if it is just an engine swap without investing in PBR materials and stuff like that, then why would it be reasonable to expect UE6, a newer, hopefully more refined engine, to run worse than UE3?
Anyway. Despite your assumptions about me, we are both clearly informed on the topic(s) and have drawn differing conclusions. If you’re going to continue to engage with me with the same lack of good faith as your first reply, I’d kindly request that you simply do not. Have a good day.
And I kindly request you to not insult me.
To be clear, “here"s the Nth fuck you” was me referring to the fact that you insulted my intelligence. I was not saying fuck you to you, but pointing out that you had implicitly said it to me.