There's a reason why Minecraft is the best selling game of all times: it runs on your mothers laid off work laptop.
If you want to have many players and sell many games, this is the type of pc to aim for.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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I think it's reasonable to ask developers to ensure the game is decently playable on Steam Deck
Well a couple of issues. One is size and complexity, pretty low issue since games are already massive and where size is an issue (console physical media) they don't need to be included.
A bigger one is what does it say about the product? People are already using low settings disingenuously to say X game is ugly and not up to par, a potato setting would just exacerbate this and from an art standpoint do the developer really want to stand behind such a gimped product?
Then we have the problem of lowering details not really being able to solve the problem. A long draw distance can make it still really rough on older components due to memory constraints or ability to juggle X amount of objects. Sure a draw distance slider isn't uncommon but if the game uses said distance like say enemies spotting you from far away you can't lower draw distance such that it impacts game play. Physics and other demanding aspects might also make lowering settings hard or make for a big gameplay impact.
And finally why isn't FSR acceptable to make the game playable? It seems the perfect solution.
And finally why isn’t FSR acceptable to make the game playable? It seems the perfect solution.
"Perfect" is a bit of stretch. I've tried running games with FSR on my GTX 1080 and it looks like absolute ass. By lowering graphics settings I was able to run at a much higher resolution/framerate while looking leaps and bounds better.
I realize that newer GPUs will give better results with FSR, but if I'm getting a newer GPU then presumably it would have better native performance anyway.
I'll certainly give it another go when I upgrade to an Ada/RDNA3 GPU, but until then it's just a marketing gimmick to me.
Did you try fsr 1 or 2? The difference is quite noticeable for me, still not enough to justify ever using it on a 1080p monitor tho. Maybe fsr3
It’s really quite fair that FSR and DLSS don’t look great at 1080p since they weren’t designed for that use case at all. Ideally it’s meant to upscale to 4K where the base resolution is at minimum ~1080p where’s there’s enough pixels to get a good output. When trying to upscale to 720p or 1080p the base resolution goes down to the 300ps (maybe even lower) which just isn’t enough that least with todays models.
So for me I don’t see FSR or DLSS being a solution at all the hardware question for longevity. To me it just allows a weaker GPU to look nicer on a 4K screen (theoretically) not to increase FPS as a main feature.
Maybe GPUs could get cinema upscalers? I don’t know how they work or feasibility other than for a while 4K Bluerays we’re just the 2K footage but ran through these upscalers.
It’s really quite fair that FSR and DLSS don’t look great at 1080p since they weren’t designed for that use case at all. Ideally it’s meant to upscale to 4K where the base resolution is at minimum ~1080p where’s there’s enough pixels to get a good output. When trying to upscale to 720p or 1080p the base resolution goes down to the 300ps (maybe even lower) which just isn’t enough that least with todays models.
So for me I don’t see FSR or DLSS being a solution at all the hardware question for longevity. To me it just allows a weaker GPU to look nicer on a 4K screen (theoretically) not to increase FPS as a main feature.
Maybe GPUs could get cinema upscalers? I don’t know how they work or feasibility other than for a while 4K Bluerays we’re just the 2K footage but ran through these upscalers.
Wouldn't a potato setting also look like absolute ass? I mean few games are very pretty at 1080p Low which OP thinks isnt going low enough to accommodate old hardware. In those situations FSR can be used to make it run at 60 FPS with 1080p output but yes it will for sure not be a pretty experience, but it will run and won't destroy gameplay mechanics.
Now I do believe that the absolute best would be if developers got better at building their games and graphics engines to be resource efficient or "optimized" as the gaming community likes to call it. But that's quite an ask in reality as most studios don't build their own engine and those that do generally aren't building them with resource efficiency in mind, they're focused on what kind of games they want to build with them. Id Software really stands out but they're engine making wizards almost more so than game developers and really pride themselves with making good looking games that can be run well by just about anything. Doom Eternal runs and looks ridiculously well on the Steam Deck (in regards to what little juice that machine has) as an example.
I'm being awfully apologetic of developers here, but I really don't think the issue is that you can't run the games on older hardware, because FSR has mostly solved that imo.
The specific example I experimented with the most was Firmament at 3440x1440, targeting 100fps.
Using FSR at the recommended settings, it was a blotchy, blurry mess. Text was barely readable. Turning down shadows and basically everything except antialiasing I got native 3440x1440 at a pretty solid 100fps.
It's a real shame that the default settings in that game have FSR enabled, because I'm sure a lot of players just go with the defaults and think the game looks like shit, when actually it's very beautiful with correct settings, even on relatively modest hardware.
A bigger one is what does it say about the product? People are already using low settings disingenuously to say X game is ugly and not up to par, a potato setting would just exacerbate this and from an art standpoint do the developer really want to stand behind such a gimped product?
To clarify, I'm not saying that games should design for the lowest level of hardware, but they should make it easier for people with lower tier hardware to adjust the game to run better. Some people might use it disingenuously, but I really think people will see right through that if the potato setting became common enough.
You made another point about lower details not being enough. In cases where it isn't possible to improve performance without sacrificing gameplay, I think developers should put gameplay before making the game playable with older hardware. Its not about demanding all games be playable on a mid-range machine from 2010, its about asking developers to make an honest effort where possible.
As for FSR, I don't think its a full solution since it still uses the same model and texture quality as the lowest setting (if not higher), which could mean higher VRAM use than needed. I'd rather see FSR paired with downscaled textures and simplified models.
Another thing to consider is that developers consciously make design choices to adapt to the hardware available at the time, and these are not things you can just turn on and off with settings. For example maybe there's a zone transition that slows the game down on older hardware and in the past they would have added a subtle loading area like a tunnel but that's not needed anymore for their current target hardware. Should they completely change the game to be a bit smoother on 5+ year old hardware? You can get a ton of compatibility with changing settings, but to get the same level of optimization as games made at the time the old hardware was the target hardware would oftentimes mean significantly changing the game itself.
I want it to look like a n64 game, that'd be kinda sick
I've been playing the RTX mod for Half-Life 1 recently. If its fun to see old games with new techniques on them, what about new games made to look old? I'd love to see someone make a tool that does the opposite of RTX remix - downscale all the textures and simplify the models, remove a ton of shaders and such. Probably never gonna happen, but it's a cool idea.
It's not common, but you'll see people do the opposite of hd remakes. They're called demakes. The Bloodborne demake is especially cool https://b0tster.itch.io/bbpsx
I really like the ps1/n64 old school aesthetic personally lol.
Hmm. Never heard of a demake outside the context of an underpowered console or handheld, like 360 games being published for the Wii.
I'm a little confused by your timeline. I agree, 5 year old hardware should definitely support 1080p60, but the 1070 is 7 years old now. Since the 1070 could support that when it came out and those are static targets I think we should expect the 1070 to support 1080p60 forever for games similar to games that were coming out at the time, but it's a bit unfair to compare starfield to portal 2 and cs:go when those games are in constrained and controlled environments while starfield is vast and open, and environments definitely take a GPU toll, so you will lose some performance to that compared to those games. I haven't played starfield yet so I don't know the details, but given the scope I know of it, it doesn't sound unreasonable for it to miss the 1080p60 mark a bit given the difference in game environment.
Yeah, I'm all for picking up indie games on itch.io, and they usually aren't demanding enough to require a dedicated graphics card, integrated graphics usually runs fine.
This video (https://youtu.be/4_WIhy4jbr8?si=m9TlvuLm0uyyIwmF) shows how silly it is that these games are so demanding. We should be close to complete the transition to 1440p or 4k gaming, but some of the new games ask too much to play at higher resolution than 1080p.
Also, the most recent API, DX12 and Vulkan don't necessarily improve performance vs DX11 and Unreal Engine 5 seems demanding to run (https://youtu.be/mtsxlKPMthI?si=lUVVDyZs_iG_8_z3).
Atari 2600 /s
You said you want to play games on a 5 year old hardware. Fair enough! But then you mention GTX 1070 which is a 6 year old product. I mean it's definitely out of date even by YOUR standards. Don't expect anything to run on it.
This is not true. Until a couple of months ago, I ran a 10 year old rig with a gtx960. It could handle Elden Ring to name one without problems.
What exactly is not true?
To not expect anything to run on that setup. The gtx1070 was a phenomenal card back in the day and I'm sure it can handle a lot of newer games still.
Did you read the post? Did you read my comment?