[ad_1]
The next update of No Man's Sky, recently released, dramatically improves the content and visuals and we had a lot of fun playing it in its new Xbox One X incarnation – but we have to say that the PC version still requires a lot of work. Performance does not seem to be what it should be, even on high-end GPUs, while basics like v-sync do not seem to work properly. On top of that, right from the start, the ease of use and the basic presentation create a real introduction to the game. For a title that has improved considerably since the launch, we sincerely hope that Hello Games will make a last effort to make life easier for PC users.
It starts with the first loading of the game, where No Man's Sky spends a lot of time pre-cache shaders. On a high-end Ryzen processor, this procedure takes more than three minutes, while other reports have seen waiting times of up to ten minutes depending on the processor in question. As first impressions go, it's pretty awful and really needs to be improved. Secondly, there is the joypad-oriented option selection system that still sees you holding a button or key to make a change. Then there is the remarkable lack of usability of No Man's Sky in terms of performance – adjusting the options inevitably leads to the need to completely restart the game. Even turning off v-sync requires a full charge of the game. . really?
And this brings us to the next major problem – the implementation of v-sync does not seem to be working as it should and there are profound performance implications as a result. With v-sync enabled on a Ryzen 7 1700X / GTX 1070 system, frame rate monitors report a resolution of 60 frames per second, but screen movement is disrupted by captured and stuttered sequences by our tools, the game seems to ricochet between 16ms and 33ms the images Disable v-sync seems to put the game in a windowed mode without border, where the frame rate may exceed 60fps, but there is no sign of tear. It's an improvement but it still does not work properly.
By switching to a consumer-oriented Core i5 8400 system coupled with GTX 1060, v-sync was working and the frame rate was correctly set, but performance was locked at 30fps or 60fps. Disabling v-sync works here, but the only way to get a v-synchronized experience to three softer buffers is to start the game in windowed mode. By switching to the AMD RX 580 alternative on the same i5 system, v-sync was not working at all, still ripping regardless of the setting. It is only by using the alternative of the GPU control panel that we will be able to get a good triple buffer experience. The general conclusion here is that one of the most basic parameters that define the performance, consistency and integrity of the image does not work properly, giving an even worse first impression to the version PC.
It's hard to make recommendations The results seem to vary depending on the hardware and options of the game. To illustrate this, running the game with Titan X Pascal saw v-sync not working at a 1080p resolution, but it seemed to work fine once we switched to 4K and restarted the game. It seems clear that there are a lot of things to be addressed to Hello Games here, but it might well be that the optimization GPU drivers also play a role. In our tests, the AMD RX 580 has an undeniable performance advantage over the GTX 1060. However, the Radeon experience is marred by a very intrusive stutter that has a severe impact on the game. GeForce is slower (and the settings do not recover as much performance as on AMD) but at least it's consistent.
Visually, No Man's Sky has been radically overhauled since we watched the PC version at launch, and we should give credit where it's due. Cumulative updates and the next revision increase system requirements (4K60 on GTX 1080 Ti class hardware is no longer possible) but the visual gain is worth it. The anti-aliasing temporal and motion blur per object look gorgeous in combination with the new third-person camera. The procedural generation quality and the pulling distance are at a different level compared to the launch code and while the volumetric clouds have resolution and color band problems, this is quite convincing when looking at the color. picture as a whole. the visual package as a whole – looking in a broader perspective, these extra details embellish the game's already grand style, and the overall package holds up well, though imperfections and inaccuracies tend to appear when looking closer. Overall, considering what is usually simulated and generated through procedural seeds, Hello Games has done a great job in making these strange extraterrestrial worlds – but ultimately the performance costs are significantly higher .
It should be emphasized that the overall extent of scalability at a fixed resolution is quite limited. With a GTX 1070, starting with the lowest quality level in 1080p, all parameters have been reduced to 26%. We have more detailed figures ahead, but because of the inherently dynamic nature of the game and the way the GPU's use adjusts drastically, even with a small camera fit, you should take our recommendations as a starting point push to improve performance. We have examined each main parameter and compared the same scene to each quality preset, but you can imagine that the shadows, for example, will see the performance load adjust significantly depending on the coverage. real shadow of the scene.
There are also some surprises here. For example, 1080p anisotropic filtering usually has a negligible impact on performance, but this is not the case here – the 16x AF full-on has a 4% performance cost on our system. test. On top of that, the quality of the actual texture also has an impact on the frame rate – about seven percent going from ultra to low. The actual use of VRAM ranges from 3GB to 4GB in 1080p, and this is an area where you can tweak the impact on visual quality slightly – the textures at the middle settings have the effect. look good.
Our comparisons of screenshots and video should give you an idea So far, you can reduce the parameters until the quality reduction starts to be felt and, Below we have set up a table of performance increases with a screenshot of our optimized settings. Our numbers come from running the game on an AMD Ryzen 1700X system coupled with a GTX 1070. What's fascinating here is that switching from ultra-high-end settings to our optimal settings does not make any difference. did that rise from 7 to 10% on Nvidia hardware, and this has reached an impressive 20 percent on the AMD Radeon RX 580. However, despite the overall improvement in performance, stuttering manifests itself still on the AMD card and really hurts the experience.
An interesting footnote is about tessellation – it was presented as a new option for the next update, but it is not part of the options and does not show up in the default game. However, diving into the game's .ini files allows you to activate it and the effect is well worth it. In our tests, it has achieved performance of about five percent, which is not a bad turnout for an effect with immediate visual feedback. Maybe the feature still needs more work, but we would certainly like to see it added to the options screen and a more precise setting of the settings would be welcome. Based on our tests, scalability across existing options only goes up to now and adjusting rendering resolution is the best way to dramatically improve performance – an internal resolution scalar that natively retains HUD rendering would also be a good option and should work well
But improving the PC version of No Man's Sky, that's really cleaning up the bugs – related to the GPU driver or whatever – and definitely fixing the v-sync as an urgent priority. . How the game came out without the basic options working properly is a bit of a mystery. It is also possible to make the settings easier to manipulate – holding down the button to change a setting slows down the process and having to fully reload the game to change simple and singular settings makes it extremely difficult to quickly test the parameters and to change the settings. presets adjustment. is best for your equipment. There is a lot of trial and error to get the balance of settings and the continuous reboot makes the process frustrating and limitless to work.
And keeping in mind how performance changes dramatically even in the same area, a boxed benchmark designed to individually test the CPU and GPU would be particularly useful. At the moment, adapting the experience to work well on your system is almost impossible – thanks to the constant need to restart the game, simple trial and error settings take steps hours, even though there are not really many options. There is a real sense of greatness with No Man's Sky and the range of new features introduced in the next update is remarkable – but we really hope that Hello Games will come back to the PC version and will do its best to improve the tweaking process and to ensure that basic things work as they should on the entire playing equipment.
Source link
