Starfield and Bethesda Tomfoolery
Can anyone explain what voodoo magic Bethesda used to make Starfield, a game that usually runs below 30fps on my pc, feel like it's running above that? I mean, not even Nintendo on their own console has achieved this feat.
It's called the Todd Howard Reality Distortion Field.
This guy was THRDF-d before!
Frame pacing and motion blur is my guess.
The main thing is simply being steady. You can get used to, and ignore a lower frame rate as long as it's not jumping up and down.
On the Xbox, 30fps feel like 30fps to me, but after a while, my brain reverts back to 2005 and I kind of get used to it.
But it’s pretty jarring if I switch back from another game.
Most likely a combination of dynamic resolution and FSR technologies.
They set our expectations realistically.
It’s the fucking engine they won’t let go off
Unfortunately there's not much choice in 3d game engines anymore. I'm not sure I want an unreal engine monopoly, btw.
It does seem to be the best one, although CPU parallelism seems awful. No one wants to use CryEngine, and Godot and Unity is only used by indies
Source still seems pretty good these days. I haven't played HL: Alyx yet but Source 2 looks way beefier.
It's a brand new game that has pretty high end system requirements. It's pretty normal to have to mess with the graphics settings to get new games to run smoothly.