Stalker 2

Pretty impressed with how its turned out, was worth the punt on the pre-order. Some stuttering in Zalissya (or whatever the place is called) other than that im happy. This is on a 13700K with 4080 @ 1440p

Im using TAA with Frame Generation, quite happy with that so far. How does TAA compare to DLSS quality btw? Image was shimmery at first and aliased.
 
Really enjoying this so far. It's bloody tough at times but so immersive. Feels like a game from the past but with modern graphics.

I feel like a lot of its issues have been exaggerated by reviewers.

I had a few crashes in the prologue but it's been fine since. Haven't even noticed any traversal stutter.

Actually really surprised at how smooth it's performing. Over 100fps at 4k, dlss performance, fsr3 frame gen. HDR. No complaints here at all.
 
QWC658g.png

cleared a base with a single kill
bC7Y1gb.png

10+ people spawned around me when I went to leave
 
Last edited:
Had my first CTD just after placing the scanner in the ground, though maybe Alt-tabbing out might not have helped.

Earlier, after dying, when I loaded my previous save, I noticed the frames were much lower than before.
So, I just altered something like shadows, and then it shot back up to the previous frame rate.
I've also noticed it happening all of a sudden at any random point while playing. Maybe I am running out of video memory.
Thankfully, it doesn't seem to happen too often.

Altering some keys doesn't seem to work.
 
Last edited:
Noxia said:
Gamepass version inferior shocker. I recall in the brief time I had it there was always some nonsense, especially on the modding side which sometimes wasn't possible at all.
Click to expand...
100% this. I don't know how M$ have managed to go 10-15 years with awful services like games for Windows live and then there 2/3 iterations of the App store. Absolutely awful.
 
JHONO said:
Im using TAA with Frame Generation, quite happy with that so far. How does TAA compare to DLSS quality btw? Image was shimmery at first and aliased.
Click to expand...

I did some testing this evening and have come to the conclusion that, and after using the Engine.ini tweaks posted earlier, that the game engine has CPU limitation optimisationa nd runaway memory bugs that still need addressing!

C0DKZN9.png


For instance I can run the game at 4K in the first town with any method of native AA (FSR/DLAA/XeSS/TAA) and it can hit up to 100fps but sits around 75fps average with the GPU utilisation sitting at say 95% even when running around. I can then enable any upscaler at 66% (Quality mode) and the fps only marginally shifts up. This is all with DLSS Frame gen enabled with Reflex and mouse RAW mode (part of the engine.ini tweak) so mouse latency is actually decent now with native AA and Frame Gen:


I also found, and as the video shows, that reflection quality from a medium distance is actually not great with even DLSS Quality and is better with FSR/XeSS Quality, and that XeSS Ultra Quality gets the same image quality as DLSS Quality but without the reflections temporal instability.

So on a capable GPU the best setting really is any of the native AA methods as they all produce similar fps numbers and same IQ, or XeSS Quality or above, or FSR Quality for lower GPUs. Getting 80fps+ in the town with DLAA/NativeAA now means you're 100fps+ anywhere else. so may as well leverage the crisp and stable reflections in water.

Also, the storm that rolled through tonight was so cool to watch, don't think I've seen this kind of dynamic weather in a game before, the lightning bolts even struck rooftops causing sparks, one hit the ground right in front of me and spark particles flew up everywhere :eek:


incredible immersion, this is what we have been waiting for. Just patch the few trivial technical bugs and we're golden,


Edit* Lol WAB

 
Last edited:
I just use DLAA and didn't feel much of a hit from it tbh, town was still saying about 80, I didn't bother checking elsewhere
yea I just checked where I am and I'm still getting 120fps

I noticed even if you press escape to the menu the game still molests the GPU, alt tab and it's still doing it, and that's with 120fps limit set.

is it calculating all the fake ray tracing even when the games not active

:D
 
Last edited:
arknor said:
I just use DLAA and didn't feel much of a hit from it tbh, town was still saying about 80, I didn't bother checking elsewhere
yea I just checked where I am and I'm still getting 120fps

I noticed even if you press escape to the menu the game still molests the GPU, alt tab and it's still doing it, and that's with 120fps limit set.

is it calculating all the fake ray tracing even when the games not active

:D
Click to expand...


Yep it's cpu limited mostly so difference between dlaa and dlss quality is like 10-20fps
 
Last edited:
Noxia said:
Which is funny because I recall very well all of the looking down about the PlayStation checkerboarding and then people did a swift U-turn as soon as PC was doing any kind upscaling.
Click to expand...
DLSS from 2.0 onwards has been so far ahead of PS4 pro checkerboarding it's not even funny.

Often in games with TAA, DLSS quality mode looked better than native 4k.
 
Last edited:
VincentHanna said:
DLSS from 2.0 onwards has been so far ahead of PS4 pro checkerboarding it's not even funny.

Often in games with TAA, DLSS quality mode looked better than native 4k.
Click to expand...

Yes because TAA is terrible. It is excessively blurry and makes games look like crap. Prior to any upscalers existing you had to use sharpening to get TAA to look remotely decent.

It’s easy to claim “better than native” if you are deliberately making native look like crap with one of the worst FSAA techniques ever invented. It was invented purely for performance rather than image quality.

I know some games bake it in to the engine, so it looks OK. But any game that allows actual MSAA will show how poor TAA is and how much detail can be lost with it enabled.
 
Last edited:
I'm absolutely loving this game, it feels like a return to when I used to love gaming, I wish more games had this feeling of like a made for pc vibe. (Showing my age!)
 
Last edited:
ICDP said:
Yes because TAA is terrible. It is excessively blurry and makes games look like crap. Prior to any upscalers existing you had to use sharpening to get TAA to look remotely decent.

It’s easy to claim “better than native” if you are deliberately making native look like crap with one of the worst FSAA techniques ever invented. It was invented purely for performance rather than image quality.

I know some games bake it in to the engine, so it looks OK. But any game that allows actual MSAA will show how poor TAA is and how much detail can be lost with it enabled.
Click to expand...
Go back in time to 2018 when DLSS was released and you will find that most games were using TAA as the 'best' option available though.

I believe DLSS (Quality) does still look better than native 4k in a lot of games. Death Stranding is the obvious one, but even a fairly modern game like Hogwarts legacy has a better image with DLSS than native 4k.
 
I see a lot of people posting about A-life being broken or even missing. First of all. I have seen stalker squads move from place to place but equally I have seen groups just seemingly disappear, not in front of my eyes but just not there a minute after they were. I can absolutely confirm this crap happened in old stalkers as well.

The AI creation system was always a component of scripting for critical missions (for obvious reasons. Spawning AI at military bases for example, you would clear them out and go back later to find a watch tower, or look out post had enemies again. Finally you would have some of the AI existing as part of the a-life system.

The a-life system would have stalker squads, mutants and loners all doing their own thing. Patrolling, searching for anomalies, hunting for food and resources etc. Though my understanding was it was buggy as hell and was significantly reduced in scope for each subsequent “new” release.

Let’s hope it gets improved, but all the old stalkers had spawning enemies and relied heavily on scripting as well. Don’t assume all AI in the original was pure a-life.
 
VincentHanna said:
Go back in time to 2018 when DLSS was released and you will find that most games were using TAA as the 'best' option available though.

I believe DLSS (Quality) does still look better than native 4k in a lot of games. Death Stranding is the obvious one, but even a fairly modern game like Hogwarts legacy has a better image with DLSS than native 4k.
Click to expand...

I never said up scalers can’t look better than native (it’s not just a DLSS thing by the way). I just caveated why that is the case in many newer games with poor TAA implementations.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom