this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Optimise for which PC though? There's only so much you can optimise for general PCs.
This argument was a really good one when consoles used to be highly specialized to play games, but new ones are just PCs with a different OS.
Consoles are essentially PCs locked down to gaming but they still have their own APIs and have very few hardware variations. Games can be optimised for the handful of different consoles in ways that just aren't possible with the thousands of combinations of PC components.
One good example from current gen is the shared RAM between CPU and GPU in the PS5. That doesn't really exist in the PC world (yet), even in systems with "shared VRAM" (in those PC setups, the GPU just gets a chunk of regular non-VRAM that the CPU will no longer access until the GPU gives it up). In the PS5 it's implemented as a way to eliminate making copies of data between system RAM and VRAM, which can hypothetically be a boost to efficiency, depending on the workload. Of course it also leads to a cheaper hardware bill of materials, which was probably Sony's primary impetus.
I think the trend for manufacturers has clearly been away from that sort of thing, though. There used to be very deep, architectural differences between PCs and consoles (anyone remember PS3's Cell?), and for the most part, those days are over.
-- That guy
Check out steam hardware survey, and target the most used config. That way you can make sure your game is enjoyable for the most players
This would be insane. The majority of Steam users are running outdated hardware. Devs aren't going to cut their PC games down just to focus on the majority.
insane you say? So it's much more sane to aim your PC optimization towards a config that only the top 5% use? So that 80% of the possible users cannot run it?... interesting definition of insanity you have there. Forsaking 80% of your possible target group, therefore missing out on a bunch of money, instead you put out some hot garbage that needs a PC with the cost of a small new car to be played, to still look like absolute shit
People's PCs will improve in years to come and as tech advances, games like Starfield will look fantastic and run remarkably well. PC gaming always used to be about pushing the boundaries of what's possible, not catering to decade old hardware.
Sure, but up until recently new games still looked and ran kinda decent on mid-tier off the shelf hardware
Starfield, just as any new triple a title (excluding bg3), is just another proof how incompetent, greedy and fucked up big game studios have become.
I'm sorry but i don't think starfield looks nearly as good as it demands performance. And to get acceptable performance with current hardware, you have to crank down the quality so far that it looks shit again.
This isn't "pushing the boundaries". This is simply "not understanding what the market wants".
Consoles at this point are literally just outdated hardware (within months of release) that everyone agrees to keep supporting. It really wouldn't be that different for a dev to use the Steam hardware survey to come up with clear patterns for their target system.
Nah, there's tons of things you can optimize, independent of the hardware. The whole industry runs on smokes and mirrors, because even a 2D game can bring the strongest hardware to its knees, if it's badly coded / unoptimized.
(Yes, I have experience with that. 🙃)
And there's always more smokes and mirrors you could be integrating to squeeze out more performance.
Not optimized for HIS pc