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Silent Hill f looked great in previews - now seemingly down to a combination of high spec hardware, frame-rate caps and a warm shader cache. Looking at the PC version with both high-end and more mainstream hardware, the first play experience clearly needs some work. While this is no Borderlands 4, there's clear scope for substantial improvements to the PC game.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:38 First Time Play Experience
00:03:34 Awkward Shader Compilation Strategy
00:08:06 Traversal Stutters on Big and Little CPUs
00:10:15 Alex's Optimised Setings
00:14:44 Conclusion

 

[CrimsonTide]

Def excited to play, but will have to wait until Sunday night.

Saturday night is Alabama football game night with the fam

 

[Mister Wolf]

It must be truly difficult to have all of the shaders precompiled.

 

[adamsapple]

- 30 second long Shader comp step runs at the start of the game.
- In-game, smooth at the start with no shader comp stutters noticed
- However progressing further into the game, shader comp stuters as high as 300ms noted on high-end CPUs
- Spikes extend to 500ms on weaker CPUs.
- Minor traversal stutter also seen beyond the shader comp
- Game uses asynchronous shader comp, but devs are using it 'incorrectly'
- It can cause minor issues like characters hands in scenes to appear a bit late, as hand shader is being compiled asynchronously as the scene starts, instead of having it pre-compiled
- Aside shader comp, traversal stutters increase the more you go on in the game
- DF guesses the reason they didn't see stutters in the Gamescom demo is cause that demo had been ran on the same hardware multiple times

 

[adamsapple]

Side effect of poor asynchronous shader comp:

 

[rodrigolfp]

Looks very "light" to render. Software lumen only??

 

[Abysse]

UE5 Strikes Again.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Does Cronos have bad shader comp stutter like this?

 

[Lokaum D+]

Can Sony pls start selling Decima for other devs ?

UE5 is a gaming câncer ffs.

 

[Bitstream]

From my experience with these shaders, they need to be compd the first time an effect is loaded, and then the hiccups go away. Why aren't devs tacking on another few minutes to the load time on launch and pre-compiling and caching them? Who decided micro stutters throughout the gameplay was the better alternative?

 

[rodrigolfp]

Does Cronos have bad shader comp stutter like this?

No. It just missed some shaders for hardware Lumen.

 

[daninthemix]

Playing Silent Hill 2 atm and the traversal stutter is pretty bad.

 

[Gaiff]

From my experience with these shaders, they need to be compd the first time an effect is loaded, and then the hiccups go away. Why aren't devs tacking on another few minutes to the load time on launch and pre-compiling and caching them? Who decided micro stutters throughout the gameplay was the better alternative?

This has been known for years, but most devs just don't bother.

 

[rodrigolfp]

From my experience with these shaders, they need to be compd the first time an effect is loaded, and then the hiccups go away. Why aren't devs tacking on another few minutes to the load time on launch and pre-compiling and caching them? Who decided micro stutters throughout the gameplay was the better alternative?

The game does pre-compiling. It just misses some shaders that are then compiled in real time.

 

[adamsapple]

Playing Silent Hill 2 atm and the traversal stutter is pretty bad.

(On console) this seems to be a much smoother running game compared to how SH2 launched, at least.

 

[Mister Wolf]

No. It just missed some shaders for hardware Lumen.

Guess we can just attribute this to dev incompetence then, and not dogpile on UE5. Bloober do have way more experience with UE5 though.

 

[roosnam1980]

 

[Stuart360]

To be fair i havent played long but this is one of the better UE5 games in terms of traversal stutter, with the few i have had so far being single stutters, instead of a big cluster of stutters and hitching that some UE5 games can have.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Guess we can just attribute this to dev incompetence then, and not dogpile on UE5.

I am not sure but afaik, it is common for UE5 games to miss some shaders in the pre-compilation.

 

[scydrex]

So the problems lies on UE5 and the devs?

 

[rodrigolfp]

Side effect of poor asynchronous shader comp:

I don't think this is a shader compilation problem. Looks like a traversal problem.

 

[Doctor Hades]

It must be truly difficult to have all of the shaders precompiled.

It shouldn't be; after all this is done for the consoles and the pre-compiled shaders shipped with the game code and updated via patches. Console games do not have shader compilation stutters, only traversal ones, so that means all the shaders are properly precompiled and included for those versions.

This is just developer laziness in my opinion as they will know exactly what shaders they are using for the game since the same ones are used for the consoles. They just work differently on PC, is my understanding, due to the different GPUs and driver versions, which is why they cannot be shipped with the game code like on consoles.

I suspect that developers prioritise the consoles and then use whatever time they have left for PC. It would explain why so many PC games ship with poor optimisation and more issues than on console. PC requires a lot more effort due to the hardware combinations and not every publisher will afford the developers the time they need to test and optimise properly.

 

[Bojji]

Looks very "light" to render. Software lumen only??

All Konami games so far were developed with hardware lumen so I wouldn't be surprised if it can be forced in .ini like in MGS3.

Does Cronos have bad shader comp stutter like this?

No, "just" traversal stutter.

So the problems lies on UE5 and the devs?

Engine - traversal stutters, universal to all platforms in UE5 games
Developers - shader stutters, for some reason they don't compile all shaders when game is launching for the first time. This is 100% developers issue.

Between ugly PSSR artifacts on Pro and shader stutter on PC - developers these days don't play their games, no other way to explain this.

 

[NeverYouMind]

Playing Silent Hill 2 atm and the traversal stutter is pretty bad.

It is a bit unfortunate that even on the lowest settings there is a tiny bit of stutter occasionally while running the full length of the streets. Fortunately, every interior and fenced off area does not have this problem. I am hoping Bloober's Silent Hill Remake does not have this issue.

 

[Gonzito]

I haven't tried the game on pc yet, but I want to remind everyone that this person supports the murdering of Charlie Kirk. Sorry to derail this thread with this subject but I personally don't want to give him any clicks after this shit show.

 

[rodrigolfp]

All Konami games so far were developed with hardware lumen so I wouldn't be surprised if it can be forced in .ini like in MGS3.

Maybe but I mean in the DF video I am assuming the game can only use "officially" software lumen.

 

[evanft]

The HDR also doesn't look great, IMO. Waiting for a RenoDX mod to tweak it.

 

[viveks86]

All Konami games so far were developed with hardware lumen so I wouldn't be surprised if it can be forced in .ini like in MGS3.

Surprised that Alex didn't try that. Seems like the first thing I'd do if I had a PC.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

The real horror was the Engine all along

~Fin.

 

[lastmessiah]

Is Epic ever gonna sort this shit out or what? UE5 5.7 please?

 

[poodaddy]

I haven't tried the game on pc yet, but I want to remind everyone that this person supports the murdering of Charlie Kirk. Sorry to derail this thread with this subject but I personally don't want to give him any clicks after this shit show.

Thanks for posting this, I had no idea.
Unsubscribed from Digital Foundry, no further interest in supporting them or any other extremists, be they right or left leaning.

 

[Pharaoh 117]

The HDR also doesn't look great, IMO. Waiting for a RenoDX mod to tweak it.

Already out in the RenoDX Discord.

 

[Ellis]

Getting typical UE5 stutter whenever I rotate the camera, which I thankfully didn't have with MSG3.

Tried different screen modes, disabled Ultra Low Latency, and various other bullshit, but can't seem to counter it.
Forcing FSR frame gen on the 3060 helps somewhat, but still not great.

Be happy if I can nail it down before the weekend when I actually play properly, but if not, I'll grab on PS5 where I don't have to worry about that bullshit as much.
Silent hill 2 had the same issue in PC. Not sure it was ever remedied.

 

[Bojji]

Game has DLSS .dll from april 2024... Old 3.7 DLSS3. MGS3 was the same.

 

[Ellis]

Game has DLSS .dll from april 2024... Old 3.7 DLSS3. MGS3 was the same.

You can force games to use the new Transformer version without having to replace the dll file, via Profile Inspector.

Sadly, a lot of people probably won't know that.

 

[kevboard]

why yes! I am playing an Unreal Engine 5 game! How did you know?

 

[Stuart360]

You can force games to use the new Transformer version without having to replace the dll file, via Profile Inspector.

Sadly, a lot of people probably won't know that.

Is that how he got DLAA in the game because i cant find it at all and its been driving me mad thinking i'm being blind lol.

 

[Mr Moose]

Weird, I don't remember big pause dips like that in that area. Have had some random ass drops though.

 

[mckmas8808]

Can Sony pls start selling Decima for other devs ?

UE5 is a gaming câncer ffs.

SERIOUSLY!!!!

 

[Bojji]

You can force games to use the new Transformer version without having to replace the dll file, via Profile Inspector.

Sadly, a lot of people probably won't know that.

Yep, nvidia inspector, dlss swapper or just using nvidia app and overriding dlss "officially".

But simple stuff like this shows that game devs these days are just incompetent in many aspects. No reflex, no frame gen - basic stuff that is present in UE5.

 

[omegasc]

Anyone playing it on a 10GB 3080? How does it perform?

 

[mckmas8808]

I haven't tried the game on pc yet, but I want to remind everyone that this person supports the murdering of Charlie Kirk. Sorry to derail this thread with this subject but I personally don't want to give him any clicks after this shit show.

What is this post of his saying? Who is Drew?

 

[Bojji]

Anyone playing it on a 10GB 3080? How does it perform?

Game is not very vram intensive (with high textures memory pool) so it should be fine.

 

[roosnam1980]

Getting typical UE5 stutter whenever I rotate the camera, which I thankfully didn't have with MSG3.

Tried different screen modes, disabled Ultra Low Latency, and various other bullshit, but can't seem to counter it.
Forcing FSR frame gen on the 3060 helps somewhat, but still not great.

Be happy if I can nail it down before the weekend when I actually play properly, but if not, I'll grab on PS5 where I don't have to worry about that bullshit as much.
Silent hill 2 had the same issue in PC. Not sure it was ever remedied.

have you tried locking it down to 30fps?

 

[Gonzito]

What is this post of his saying? Who is Drew?

The developer that mocked Charlie's Kirk dev and was fired for it

 

[Ellis]

have you tried locking it down to 30fps?

I did just to test, but it was the same issue. I can't handle the latency with a 30fps base anyway. Frame gen is only really usable for me with a 50+ base frame rate.

 

[thekillergreece]

Side effect of poor asynchronous shader comp:

Playing now and this issue is quite apparent.

 

[adamsapple]

Playing now and this issue is quite apparent.

Is it happening often enough to be a bother?

 

[MidGenRefresh]

I haven't tried the game on pc yet, but I want to remind everyone that this person supports the murdering of Charlie Kirk. Sorry to derail this thread with this subject but I personally don't want to give him any clicks after this shit show.

Never watching DF again.

 

[GudOlRub]

I was so hopeful after John's first impressions when he went to Gamescom...

Spoiler