Stalker 2 has made me look back and realize that maybe it was a mistake to make Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 become an industry standard for the next decade.
But after that article I’ll give it another shot sooner than I was going to. I never thought that horrible performance could have been shaders loading in the background.
If that’s what was going on, then they really need to make that more obvious, or lock people in a sort of training area until it’s done and then start the actual game.
A couple weeks and it’ll probably be a lot better.
But initial thoughts before the article, I think the mistake was watching huge budget games designed from the ground up to be a showcase for the engine, and assuming that would be what any third party studio could crank out.
UE5 has amazing potential, but it still needs good code run on good hardware to get Selene’s result.
Everybody had unrealistic expectations, myself included.
My PC isn’t a slouch, but everybody who got early play has top of the line shit and there’s a large discrepancy in PC hardware these days.
Apparently it’s not shaders, but I had to check what resolution it was at thinking it was throwing 720 by default or something. With everything cranked to 4k and only the normal performance hogs off the highest settings it looked bad. 1080p with everything down still had stuttering tho.
I didn’t put much effort in and my experience was launch day.
So people should definitely try for themselves if they have it from Xbox for PC for free…
I just expected it to be amazing on boot when I shouldn’t have.
I ran it on default recommended settings (High, 3440x1440) and it’s smoother than any of the originals were, even after they had years of patches. I experience some mild stuttering when I approach a hub area with lots of NPCs but it’s not terrible. I can’t really complain. 3090 and 5800X3D.
Pretty fun for me so far. There’s some weirdness with dudes spawning too close and A-Life AI seems to be missing but I’m enjoying the zone so far after 15 hours or so.
Like I said, I went in expecting it to look like Senue’s 2 on boot. And there was just no reason for me to have done that.
I’ll give it a month or so and then mess with settings/drivers/etc and it’ll probably be fine. It’s just even when I tried turning stuff down I was having issues, but I haven’t put a lot of effort into getting it right.
Just because the engine is capable of crazy stuff, doesn’t mean every game will push it to its full potential, and that’s fine. That’s how engines last for a long time and that’s good for all of us in the long run.
They’re definitely not pushing the engine to its limits and it’s a shame. No Ray Reconstruction for example and no hardware ray tracing. I was wondering why shadows and reflections lacked clarity at first. This is apparently why.
It’s a weird one though because despite all the flaws I can’t stop playing the game. Maybe I just love STALKER that much. I also have a bunch of mods installed, granted.
5800x3d/6800xt/32gb all overclocked/undervolted playing on 1440p with dlsss and fsr Enabled. My settings are a combo of epic and high.
I didnt encounter gamebreaking bugs and hover around 130 fps with dips to 80 in heavy weather. No macros or micros.
The only complaints I have is the spawning system combined with weak enemy ai and my expectation that the factions would be fighting more with each other cause that is what I’ve seen and enjoyed in the modded stalker games before.
I really like the game how it is, looks amazing and the atmosphere is top notch.
Hugely disappointed in Stalker 2…
But after that article I’ll give it another shot sooner than I was going to. I never thought that horrible performance could have been shaders loading in the background.
If that’s what was going on, then they really need to make that more obvious, or lock people in a sort of training area until it’s done and then start the actual game.
A couple weeks and it’ll probably be a lot better.
But initial thoughts before the article, I think the mistake was watching huge budget games designed from the ground up to be a showcase for the engine, and assuming that would be what any third party studio could crank out.
UE5 has amazing potential, but it still needs good code run on good hardware to get Selene’s result.
Wasn’t this the game developed under siege for a while, then the studio fled to set up in another country?
That’s what I mean.
Everybody had unrealistic expectations, myself included.
My PC isn’t a slouch, but everybody who got early play has top of the line shit and there’s a large discrepancy in PC hardware these days.
Apparently it’s not shaders, but I had to check what resolution it was at thinking it was throwing 720 by default or something. With everything cranked to 4k and only the normal performance hogs off the highest settings it looked bad. 1080p with everything down still had stuttering tho.
I didn’t put much effort in and my experience was launch day.
So people should definitely try for themselves if they have it from Xbox for PC for free…
I just expected it to be amazing on boot when I shouldn’t have.
I ran it on default recommended settings (High, 3440x1440) and it’s smoother than any of the originals were, even after they had years of patches. I experience some mild stuttering when I approach a hub area with lots of NPCs but it’s not terrible. I can’t really complain. 3090 and 5800X3D.
Pretty fun for me so far. There’s some weirdness with dudes spawning too close and A-Life AI seems to be missing but I’m enjoying the zone so far after 15 hours or so.
Yeah. I’m 4070 super and 7800x3d
Like I said, I went in expecting it to look like Senue’s 2 on boot. And there was just no reason for me to have done that.
I’ll give it a month or so and then mess with settings/drivers/etc and it’ll probably be fine. It’s just even when I tried turning stuff down I was having issues, but I haven’t put a lot of effort into getting it right.
Just because the engine is capable of crazy stuff, doesn’t mean every game will push it to its full potential, and that’s fine. That’s how engines last for a long time and that’s good for all of us in the long run.
They’re definitely not pushing the engine to its limits and it’s a shame. No Ray Reconstruction for example and no hardware ray tracing. I was wondering why shadows and reflections lacked clarity at first. This is apparently why.
It’s a weird one though because despite all the flaws I can’t stop playing the game. Maybe I just love STALKER that much. I also have a bunch of mods installed, granted.
It’s an emergent simulation fps. Nothing like it.
The game does not suffer shader compilation stutters. Rather, it’s heavily CPU limited for whatever reason.
5800x3d/6800xt/32gb all overclocked/undervolted playing on 1440p with dlsss and fsr Enabled. My settings are a combo of epic and high.
I didnt encounter gamebreaking bugs and hover around 130 fps with dips to 80 in heavy weather. No macros or micros.
The only complaints I have is the spawning system combined with weak enemy ai and my expectation that the factions would be fighting more with each other cause that is what I’ve seen and enjoyed in the modded stalker games before.
I really like the game how it is, looks amazing and the atmosphere is top notch.