Do they optimize the game separately for PC vs PS4/Xbox ??

[Adon604]

Do they optimize the game separately for PC vs PS4/Xbox ??

Probably could have worded my thread title better, but I'm asking when these patches come out, is the game being optimized for Xbox1, PS4 and PC together ?? Or do they optimize it for PC separately because obviously we have much better machines that can handle better graphics ?

I'm asking because I'm STILL dealing with ridiculous texture loading problems as I'm sure many of us are, texture pop in whatever you want to call it, actually it has GOTTEN WORSE through the patches, I'm talking things like...

-- People literally appearing out of thin air feet away from me while I'm walking around (this especially has actually gotten worse for me throughout the patches, used to be rare it happens, now it happens ALL THE TIME everywhere I go)
-- Massive "pieces of the picture" loading way too late, (for example I'm swimming towards a large ship docked in a harbor, and as I get close to it, the whole friggin mast and it's 100 foot sails literally appear out of thin air, and I thought people popping in was bad, lol)
-- All sorts of textures loading way too late, low polygons until I'm up close and the high res loads (for example if I'm walking up to a building it's a blur until I get super close to it, happens with people as well)


And other issues of this nature, and like I said I'm no expert but to me it seems they're optimizing the game to run on consoles at a stable 30fps, but then the same "optimization" gets pushed through for PC users as well, we're getting dragged down downgraded because of consoles ???

Basically for you guys familiar with this issue, comparable to other games it would be something like a LOD (Level of Detail) slider that you can set to how far it loads trees and such.... the game actually has one for Foliage, so why don't we have a distance slider for general textures as well, wouldn't that solve the problem ??

 

[Suntory_Times]

They will be optimizing separately though i'm sure plenty of the work they do can be moved from one build to the other.

Consoles are not anywhere close to holding the 30fps they where aiming for. Just look at moments in the bog. Does it actually ever hit 30fps there?

 

[Adon604]

Well from what I been reading on the gaming websites for the most part the game holds a steady 30fps on consoles, except in a few areas in the game, like Novigrad and the Bog swamp area....

These texture loading problems just leads me to believe the game is optimized together, only difference being we have a few extra sliders available to us to tweak..... so I don't understand since we already have all these options, why wouldn't they just give us a LOD slider as well..... I mean unless the core of the problem is the game engine itself and the way it loads textures, which case cannot be fixed...

 

[moonknightgog]

The texture problem and pop in...I think it's a problem of the engine. A problem that will never be completely fix, because it's bound to deep in the development.
Probably, Cyberpunk 2077 will be better.

 

[Suntory_Times]

Yep, as a guess I would say it is an engine related issue that will never be completely fixed sadly.

 

[Adon604]

yes I'm thinking the same thing, that it's an engine problem, because 8 big patches and still the issue remains, but I am still somewhat hoping it's just a matter of simultaneous optimization

 

[Brogan80]

no Pop In probs for me ever since I set the texture mem pool to 1600.

I have 4GB VRAM on my card, though, so technically with the way the game allocates that and sys ram, I could set it much higher. But I don't need to.

It also has to do with how you load your memory. Are you moving back and forth between maps, then riding thru Novigrad? You need to clear your buffers.

And we'll never know exactly how the REDEngine transitions between platforms, but the textural assets are the same, just the PC has way more adjustability and freedom to enhance the effects.

 

[Adon604]

I know there are some options you can edit in the various configuration files, but I don't see many people talking about it....... is there something you can share here with us, I would like to know which options you manage to edit that would solve these issues for myself and maybe others.

I am running 2 cards in crossfire mode, 290x's btw if that matters

 

[rethla]

Ofc they optimize the game separatly for each platform. The question should be how much time do they spend optimizing for PC vs consoles, in my opinion they first make sure it runs ok on consoles and then dont spend nearly enough time on the PC optimization.
A bit of bad performance i can take becouse its a huge game to optimize for PC but when i can literally fast travel across the entire world in a sub second load and still the game needs to pop in some insignificant NPCs and textures here and there when i slowly walk around wtf?

 

[archaven]

Those who said CDPR optimize each platform separately has no idea nor proof of they are saying. Consoles are where the big monies are and to be honest, in my opinion that is the big focus. Also, they have mentioned in interviews that the majority of the team has moved to new projects which is Cyberpunk. Based on common sense, there's still a small team left (for the expansion and the patches). So don't expect they treat PC gamers nicely as they are just 1/3 of the sales. If you want any evidence, here it is:
1) PC graphics downgrade
2) consolizeds UI and clunky keyboard&mouse support
3) patch release parity (starting at 1.07 and 1.08 if that don't hint anything?)
4) mods will also be supported on consoles.
5) patch 1.07 affected PS4 gamers that the FPS capped at 20FPS in certain area. this shows patches and optimizations were done based on the lowest common denominator. only that it was greatly complaint, they were fixed in 1.08.

anyway this is just to highlight to you that PC gamers you are no longer important as you are just a minority. so people can stop on their high horse.

 

[Tuco]

Those who said CDPR optimize each platform separately has no idea nor proof of they are saying. Consoles are where the big monies are and to be honest, in my opinion that is the big focus. Also, they have mentioned in interviews that the majority of the team has moved to new projects which is Cyberpunk. Based on common sense, there's still a small team left (for the expansion and the patches). So don't expect they treat PC gamers nicely as they are just 1/3 of the sales. If you want any evidence, here it is:
1) PC graphics downgrade
2) consolizeds UI and clunky keyboard&mouse support
3) patch release parity (starting at 1.07 and 1.08 if that don't hint anything?)
4) mods will also be supported on consoles.
5) patch 1.07 affected PS4 gamers that the FPS capped at 20FPS in certain area. this shows patches and optimizations were done based on the lowest common denominator. only that it was greatly complaint, they were fixed in 1.08.

anyway this is just to highlight to you that PC gamers you are no longer important as you are just a minority. so people can stop on their high horse.

What a load of ignorant, needlessly condescending crap.

Anyway, back to the topic.
First thing first, I wonder how many people fail to realize that there's no such a thing as "magical optimization" at zero cost, and the word is typically a shorthand to describe a trade-off.
When developers "optimize" things, they aren't working miracles beyond the capabilities of the hardware, they are just finding a way to detract from the complexity of the software, possibly but not necessarily in the least noticeable way (i.e. a simpler, pre-baked illumination, somewhat more approximate physics simulation, lest complex shadows, less resource-intensive weather effects, less volumetric fog, etc etc).

Second, precisely because of the previous reason, OF COURSE each platform will require some degree of specific tuning.
Just, don't be under the delusion that this is because everyone is a special snowflake and they care about every single one of you very dearly.
It's done on a platform-by -platform basis simply because each one has different capabilities, that call for different restrictions.

Third, this constant claim that "consoles are where real money is" doesn't even match reality at this point and it's just wishful thinking. A lot of multiplatform games tend to perform equally (or at least comparably) across different platforms. Sometimes the PS4 is ahead, other times it's the PC... I'm not sure of any case where it happened with the XB1 so far, but even then we are talking about scenarios where the other plaforms outperformed it at most ina 2:1 ratio.
We aren't really talking about a scenario where a single device takes the overwhelming majority of sales (say, 75%) and the others have just to fight for breadcrumbs.

Oh, and slightly OT, but...
I know there are people who had a field day and masturbated furiously over that quote of few weeks ago "TW3 couldn't exist without console sales", but if you guys are assuming that meant one of the consoles in particular was all that mattered, then think again, because that quote was simply meant to imply that TW3 , given its budget, would hardly be sustainable selling on a single platform, no matter what that platform would be.

 

[moonknightgog]

anyway this is just to highlight to you that PC gamers you are no longer important as you are just a minority. so people can stop on their high horse.

Thanks for your opinion.

 

[dragonbird]

And... back on topic now, please.

 

[GuyNwah]

There is no limitation in textures occasioned by the consoles. Modern consoles are powerful enough and have enough memory to hold in memory and load any texture that a PC can. Accusations that consoles "drag down" the PC edition are false and offensive, the moderators treat them as attempts to start flame wars, and if you value the good standing of your account, you will not make any such further claims.

 

[Adon604]

Yea I wanted this to be a discussion on what potentially is the problem that the game has with textures, not something people could jump into and start throwing wild accusations.

So what's the real issue then if it's not multi device optimization ?
So then it's an issue with the game engine and the way it streams textures ??
We are not oblivious we know it's a massive game, we know there are issues, but many of us would like to know if theres anything more that can be done about it, because 8 sizeable patches have done nothing for texture problems

 

[laod159]

There is no limitation in textures occasioned by the consoles. Modern consoles are powerful enough and have enough memory to hold in memory and load any texture that a PC can. Accusations that consoles "drag down" the PC edition are false and offensive, the moderators treat them as attempts to start flame wars, and if you value the good standing of your account, you will not make any such further claims.

Are you serious? Are you saying that having memory is good enough to load any texture that a PC can? Let say that it can. Can the console actually load the same texture texture and setting as the PC? Are you saying that the GPU in the so called next-gen consoles are good enough for GTX 980? It's not an accusation, it's a fact. We have seen The Witcher 3 in 2013. It was amazing. It was mind blowing. What happened to those particles and shades? They can't be seen thanks to "next-gen consoles". There are many more examples of such graphic downgrade.

 

[SoloCreep]

PC user here. Ever since I lowered "number of background characters" to medium "100 npc's", it has helped a lot. Even so, I never had npc pop in when the game first came out.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

We have seen The Witcher 3 in 2013. It was amazing. It was mind blowing. What happened to those particles and shades? They can't be seen thanks to "next-gen consoles". There are many more examples of such graphic downgrade.

Not necessarily because of consoles, but because according to developers even PC hardware couldn't handle them with current APIs. We'll need Vulkan to push it further. May be in enhanced edition they'll bring some of that back when they'll rewrite the engine.

 

[Zat0ichi]

There is no limitation in textures occasioned by the consoles. Modern consoles are powerful enough and have enough memory to hold in memory and load any texture that a PC can. Accusations that consoles "drag down" the PC edition are false and offensive, the moderators treat them as attempts to start flame wars, and if you value the good standing of your account, you will not make any such further claims.

To the best of my knowledge you are wrong.

There are identical assets to a certain point across platforms but how they are all stiched together is a mystery. I know about the overall capabilities of the 3 platforms (hence the quote above being wrong) but the finessing of each build is alchemy to me.

The OP has an interesting point.

There has to be some differentiation between platforms but the similarities mean they have the option to cookie cut the bulk of patch content.

 

[vesemas228]

Back around release they publically stated there was only one version of the game.

How much of the engine code is shared between platforms, well i can only guess. And how much of the shared engine code is coded so that a change required for one platform hardware must effect all hardware (or end up making 3 copies of the game) we can only guess.

As much as i enjoy it, i'll try not to just blame consoles (low end pc users can make support tickets too), but at the very least the graphics since release have just pointed in one direction, down, and kept going.

As a fan of tinkering on pc's.. this has provided me with too many hours of entertainment, its just a shame its been more to avoid screwups and downgrades rather than pushing the upper boundaries. It is what it is.