Overall the game runs pretty well on my machine (I7 8700, RTX 2080, 16gb memory) at high settings without ray tracing, but there are a handful of locations in the city, ones with large crowds, where performance tanks a bit (from locked 60 to mid 40s). I found that changing the crowd density setting from high to low dramatically improves fps in these areas, sort of. Weirdly, the framerate is 60+, only when not looking around. As soon as you start panning the camera, the framerate drops back to 40's or even 30's, and then stabilizes back to 60+ as soon as you stop moving the camera.
A good test for this is the crowded area just out back of Tom's Diner, looking towards the market with the crime scene etc. On high crowd density the camera-stationary framerate is around 45, and it dips to 40 ish when panning. On low crowd density, the stationary framerate is almost 70, but when panning it drops even lower into the mid 30s. As a result, in this area at least, the low crowd density creates the appearance of worse performance, because there are enormous fluctuations. On low crowd density, by rapidly moving the camera, you can see the fps dip from 70 to 25! This also happens, although not nearly as badly, in Japantown just outside of Jig-Jig street where the big statue is.
So is the crowd density option bugged somehow? Seems like maybe the framerate drops are related to repeatedly loading or activating crowd npcs whenever they come into view (that's a guess at least), but if so, why would having far fewer npcs around with the low density setting cause bigger fps dips?
A good test for this is the crowded area just out back of Tom's Diner, looking towards the market with the crime scene etc. On high crowd density the camera-stationary framerate is around 45, and it dips to 40 ish when panning. On low crowd density, the stationary framerate is almost 70, but when panning it drops even lower into the mid 30s. As a result, in this area at least, the low crowd density creates the appearance of worse performance, because there are enormous fluctuations. On low crowd density, by rapidly moving the camera, you can see the fps dip from 70 to 25! This also happens, although not nearly as badly, in Japantown just outside of Jig-Jig street where the big statue is.
So is the crowd density option bugged somehow? Seems like maybe the framerate drops are related to repeatedly loading or activating crowd npcs whenever they come into view (that's a guess at least), but if so, why would having far fewer npcs around with the low density setting cause bigger fps dips?