[Digital Foundry] Oblivion Remastered PC: Impressive Remastering, Dire Performance Problems (www.youtube.com)
from simple@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 15:05
https://lemm.ee/post/62465507

#games

threaded - newest

SolidShake@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 15:12 next collapse

Yes. It runs like dog water. And it seems people are just looking past it because of the nostalgia effect.

[deleted] on 26 Apr 16:18 next collapse

.

SolidShake@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 16:23 collapse

Yeah I play on my PC and I’ll cross play my save on my Xbox when I want to use the TV. The series X is quite a bit smoother. Sucks lol. Every UE5 game I’ve played on PC has not been a good experience lol. (I can play star citizen around 60fps in cities, KCD 2 on the highest srtting, for reference)

[deleted] on 26 Apr 16:26 next collapse

.

SolidShake@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 21:48 next collapse

Probably good. What’s a 9080? Lol I have a 5800x3d. Love that chip

[deleted] on 26 Apr 22:55 collapse

.

SolidShake@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 22:57 collapse

Ah okay. Nice

metaldream@sopuli.xyz on 27 Apr 23:37 collapse

I run it on ultra at 1440p with RT on high and FSR performance upscaling. I get 60 fps consistently with these settings, no drops. I have a 9900X/7900 XT so I imagine you’ll be able to get quite a bit more out of it.

[deleted] on 27 Apr 23:54 collapse

.

acosmichippo@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 05:56 collapse

Avowed is UE5 and that ran well for me.

shneancy@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 18:54 next collapse

i’m looking past it because my laptop is 7 years old and i’m happy it even runs lol

SolidShake@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 21:49 collapse

Right. But your laptop and my PC shouldn’t be playing the game at the same performance ya know.

shneancy@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 23:09 collapse

yeah i’m aware, i wasn’t generalising it was just my personal experience

ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 12:34 next collapse

My FPS drops from 60 to like 25, but that’s rarely. It’s not like it’s a constant 25.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 27 Apr 13:57 next collapse

And this is why I don’t buy day 1. Performance actually looks reasonable compared to other day 1 releases, but it’s still not what I want to play. I bet most of these issues will be resolved in a month or two, and definitely resolved by the first sale, so I’ll hold off. It’s not like there’s going to suddenly be content to miss out on, it’s a remaster, so waiting is absolutely reasonable.

metaldream@sopuli.xyz on 27 Apr 21:09 collapse

I had to tweak quite a bit but it’s running at a stable 60 fps at 1440p now. I wouldn’t say I’m looking past it, just enjoying it in spite of the performance issues.

fossilesque@mander.xyz on 26 Apr 15:36 next collapse

Ngl I’m running a pirated copy through Lutris and it’s not too bad. Beggars can’t be choosers though lmao.

SassyRamen@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 15:56 next collapse

Tell that to the Gray Fox!

pedro@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 26 Apr 16:09 collapse

Metal gear! /s

simple@lemm.ee on 26 Apr 17:16 collapse

[Have a coin, beggar.]

fossilesque@mander.xyz on 26 Apr 17:48 collapse

Lmao I’ll buy it when I can. :)

verdigris@lemmy.ml on 26 Apr 18:28 collapse

Bethesda doesn’t need any more money, spend it on an indie game.

MudMan@fedia.io on 26 Apr 16:05 next collapse

Heads up, because I imagine the DF guys were too PC master race to notice, but you can smooth out a lot of the hitches by using framegen.

There's this weird implementation in the game where if you set frame gen to auto it seems to automatically turn it off if you're over the fps cap and then turn it on when you drop below and it's worth giving that a shot. It took some tweaking but I did end up finding a mix where between that and VRR with a low enough cap to maintain it most of the time but high enough to get acceptable latency the game is... mostly playable?

It was still a shock to go outside for the first time (most of the hitches seem to be around outdoors traversal) and it's still not perfect, but it did clean up a lot of it. Well, some of it. Your mileage may vary based on hardware and expectations, though.

chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 18:50 next collapse

Frame gen shouldn’t be a crutch, and by design it’s only supposed to enhance games that’s get above 60fps naturally. It doesn’t do anything good for the open world that constantly tanks to 45. It’s not a master race thing, it’s a poor optimization thing.

MudMan@fedia.io on 26 Apr 19:16 collapse

No, the point is the DF video never even tested framegen or upscaling before deeming the issue unsolvable in this video. I'm just trying to offer additional options to tune settings they don't cover in the video that may help.

Frame gen, for the record, is fundamentally a crutch. Specifically for CPU limits. It serves no other purpose. If you don't need it as a crutch you don't need it, period. It takes you from wherever you can get natively to hopefully closer to your monitor refresh rate. If you can reach your refresh rate then you don't need it in the first place.

Or at least it does that in the default implementation from GPU vendors where you're locked into uncapped, non vsynced FPS when using it.

I'm calling out that there seems to be a specific implementation here to use it with a frame cap. And with that fame cap if you can get yourself to, say 45-60 fps you can get a semi-decent 90 or 120 cap out on the other end that does trim down some of the stutters, especially if you also have VRR to eat a few extra miliseconds.

So it's not ideal, you're effectively locking the game to 90 or 120 and then trying to scrape by at 45-60 and double up with frame gen just so you can use an AI frame to slide in between the 45-80ms spike and eat the rest of the time difference with VRR. But hey, it kinda works, at least in my setup. Crutch or no crutch it makes the game more playable for me. I don't have the tools to measure exactly how much more playable, and I'd like to see DF test it, but at a glance it seems to help.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't look into the cause and patch improvements, but if it can take the game from unplayable to playable for some people on some setups that's a good thing.

ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 26 Apr 21:13 collapse

IME framegen hasn’t meaningfully reduced the open-world hitching. It gets the framerate nice and smooth while standing still, fighting a bandit or whatever… until you walk a bit and the game becomes CPU-limited while streaming in new cells, at which point you noticeably hitch.

The performance in interior cells (including cities) is very good even on Ultra settings.

I suspect that this is one of the compromises they made by keeping the old engine running under the hood, because as DF notes this also happened in the original.

MudMan@fedia.io on 26 Apr 21:21 collapse

That is entirely possible. My setup seems to be in this sweet spot where the normal performance is high enough over the cap AND the framegen gets you enough extra smoothness AND the VRR is able to eat enough miliseconds off the hitches that it is noticeably improved (but crucially not perfect, so if you're more sensitive than me that may also be part of it). Still, even if it doesn't help for everybody it's worth a shot and not covered in the video.

I bet there is something to having to load the world in chunks in the underlying engine and then having to render the chunk all at once in UE5 that makes UE5's struggles even worse. Still, the game was a shadowdrop, you have to assume they could have taken some time to try to figure it out a bit better.

The worst case scenario is that further optimization isn't an option, but... I mean, even if it is related to what people think it's related they should be able to find some way to ease some of the load off. The observation that a lot of the performance hit is related to hardware Lumen alone points that way. Especially since having a faster base framerate does seem related to having smaller hitches. But hey, who's to say? I guess we'll see where they go from here.

Montagge@lemmy.zip on 26 Apr 16:07 next collapse

I don’t trust this shit anymore after City Skylines 2 ran just fine. A bunch of people lost their shit anyways.

[deleted] on 26 Apr 16:17 next collapse

.

Montagge@lemmy.zip on 26 Apr 17:00 collapse

Just fine on my PC

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 27 Apr 13:58 collapse

X to doubt…

Maybe you just have low expectations, but I’ve seen so many threads about terrible performance on top tier hardware. That’s inexcusable.

HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth on 26 Apr 16:49 next collapse

I mean I enjoy CS2 as well but I can't deny it had pretty major performance problems. It's gotten better over time but launch day was a disaster.

Montagge@lemmy.zip on 26 Apr 16:59 collapse

And yet I had non other than some minor stuttering that was completely ignorable in a city builder.

HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth on 26 Apr 23:53 collapse

Good for you.

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 19:39 collapse

I tried it again recently and starts out tolerable but gets worse the bigger your city gets, even when you lower settings. It would be one thing if the game looked amazing and had these deep, detailed simulations… but it just looks okay and the digital corner-cutting trickery becomes obvious when you start looking closely. I feel like there is something fundamentally wrong under the hood of Skylines 2.

Montagge@lemmy.zip on 26 Apr 20:03 collapse

I’ve had cities in the hundreds of thousands with no issues even if it does start to drop in framerate.

bread@feddit.nl on 26 Apr 17:29 next collapse

If somebody didn’t realize it was almost certainly going to run poorly the second it was revealed to use UE5, I wouldn’t even know what to say to them.

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 18:58 collapse

Can we please stop blaming UE5 for sloppy development and poor QA?

Chronographs@lemmy.zip on 26 Apr 19:04 next collapse

As soon as someone releases a UE5 game that doesn’t run like ass

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 19:23 next collapse

Fortnite, Wukong, Tekken 8, Layers of Fear, Firmament, Everspace 2, Dark and Darker, Abiotic Factor, STALKER 2, Jusant, Frostpunk 2, Satisfactory, Expedition 33, Inzoi, Immortals of Aveum, Starship Troopers: Extermination, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, Lords of the Fallen, Robocop, Myst (UE5 remake), Riven (UE5 remake), Palworld, Remanant 2, Hellblade 2, Subnautica 2… and the list keeps growing.

When a big studio skips QA and releases a broken game, it’s not the engine’s fault, it’s the studios fault. As long as consumers tolerate broken games that can maybe be fixed later (if we’re lucky) then companies will keep releasing broken, unfinished, unpolished, untested games. Blaming UE5 is like blaming an author’s word processor for a poorly written novel.

Chronographs@lemmy.zip on 26 Apr 19:30 next collapse

Idk I think the only one of those on that list that I’ve played that ran well enough that I’d consider it ok was tekken and I’m assuming that’s more because it’s a fighting game.

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 19:32 collapse

So what you’re saying is that Tekken being a fighting game just magically made a “bad engine” run well?

Chronographs@lemmy.zip on 26 Apr 19:36 next collapse

No I’m saying that it being a fighting game meant that it’s much easier to optimize because you have such a fixed camera angle and few characters on screen.

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 19:41 collapse

So it’s because the developers paid attention to optimization and polish to ensure the game ran well on the largest number of devices.

My point exactly. It’s not the engine, it’s what you do with it and how you do it.

Chronographs@lemmy.zip on 26 Apr 20:09 collapse

It’s because there’s a lot more optimization you can do on a fighting game vs a big open world, it just doesn’t have to render that much comparatively.

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 16:33 collapse

Exactly. It’s not the engine, it’s what you do with the engine.

XM34@feddit.org on 27 Apr 11:37 collapse

Fighting games would run well on a fucking smart fridge. They’re by far the least performance hungry game genre. There is no live loading of assets, the Background scenery is 100% static and there are usually just two characters on the screen on any given moment. It would take actual effort to fuck up the performance of something so simple

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 16:29 collapse

Right. So it’s not the engine, but what you do with it.

GoodEye8@lemm.ee on 26 Apr 21:28 next collapse

Well that’s a pretty shit list. You have there games that aren’t using UE5 (Layers of Fear 2), that are known to have poor performance (STALKER 2), that just released into early access (Inzoi) and that haven’t even released into early access (Subnautica 2).

I’d throw half the list out the window, actually probably more because the other half of the list are mostly games I don’t know enough to evaluate their performance.

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 16:31 collapse

unrealengine.com/…/layers-of-fear-reimagines-horr…

Also, “I don’t know what I’m talking about, so your list is invalid” isn’t the dig you seem to think it is.

GoodEye8@lemm.ee on 27 Apr 20:22 collapse

I didn’t know the original game was remade. I assumed you meant layers of fear 2 because the original layers of fear wasn’t even on Unreal Engine and Layers of fear 2 is on UE4. Nothing I said was explicitly wrong. It was wrong in the context only because you weren’t precise with what you’re saying.

And how nice of you to pick out the one thing I was wrong on while completely ignoring all the other examples. For instance how the fuck can you put Subnautica 2 on that list when it’s not even in early access?

Nalivai@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 23:42 collapse

Satisfactory alone would be enough, the game runs so smoothly for the amount of shit going on there, it’s amazing.

acosmichippo@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 05:59 next collapse

Avowed ran well for me.

Jumi@lemmy.world on 28 Apr 06:10 collapse

Clair Obscure runs pretty well out of the gates.

Chronographs@lemmy.zip on 28 Apr 09:25 collapse

I had to use upscaling to get it to 60 but there’s certainly worse

bread@feddit.nl on 27 Apr 16:28 collapse

I’m not blaming UE5, but I’m capable of pattern recognition. There’s a pattern of developers not fixing UE5 issues and releasing games with them still present. The fault lies with both game developers and UE developers.

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 16:53 collapse

You just touched on the problem, which is a confluence of Base Rate Neglect and Availability Bias.

UE is the most popular gaming engine, so it’s used on the most projects and has a high amount of visibility. No matter which engine you build a game with, there are many factors to keep in mind for performance, compatibility, and stability. The engine doesn’t do that for you.

One problem is that big studios build games for consoles first, since it’s easiest to build for predictable systems. PC then gets ignored, is minimally tested, and patched up after the fact. Another is “Crysis syndrome”, where developers push for the best graphics they can manage and performance, compatibility, and stability be damned - if it certifies for the target consoles, that is all that matters. There is also the factor of people being unreasonable about their hardwares capabilities, expecting that everything should always be able to run maxxed out forever… and developers providing options that push the cutting edge of modern (or worse, hypothetical future) hardware compounds the problem. But none of these things have anything to do with the engine, but what developers themselves make on top of the engine.

A lot of the responses to me so far have been “that’s stupid because” and then everything after “because” is related to individual game development, NOT the engine. There is nothing wrong with UE, but there are lots of things wrong with game/software development in general that really should be addressed.

Parptarf@lemm.ee on 26 Apr 17:58 next collapse

It runs like most UE5 games.

Like shit.

It’s playable though, that’s all I want right now.

bort@aussie.zone on 28 Apr 02:24 collapse

It runs like most Bethesda games.

Like shit.

Parptarf@lemm.ee on 28 Apr 13:31 collapse

Double shit when it’s in UE5

commander@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 20:18 next collapse

I run it medium with a 7600xt at 3440x1440. Seems fine to me

CosmoNova@lemmy.world on 26 Apr 22:11 next collapse

It’s Unreal 5 slop with OG Oblivion running in the Background. Of course it has these issues.

MacNCheezus@lemmy.today on 28 Apr 04:30 collapse

Yeah, I wonder if that’s perhaps the result of basically stapling the old game engine onto UE5 in order to preserve the core gameplay. Back when Oblivion was first released, multicore CPUs were incredibly rare, so it’s likely the engine was not built to take advantage of them. But ever since then, most of the improvements in CPUs have come in the form of adding more cores rather than increasing clock speed, and it’s by no means trivial to convert single-threaded code into multi-threaded. Most likely it would require a complete rewrite, which they’d probably want to avoid in order not to introduce more bugs.

But of course, it could also just be UE5’s fault, since even a single core on a modern CPU should not be slower than a 2006 model.

KeenFlame@feddit.nu on 29 Apr 00:00 collapse

It does not work like that, no. But you arrived at that on your own somehow

KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml on 27 Apr 00:18 next collapse

Its Lumen. Its 100% Lumen.

recall519@lemm.ee on 27 Apr 06:24 next collapse

For day one, performance is actually fine. I have much bigger gripes than getting fps dips in the open zones. Like levelling ffs. I have 100 strength, willpower, and blades, but am doing less damage to mobs now than I was doing in the beginning of the game. Or levelled loot drops and quests.

Airowird@lemm.ee on 27 Apr 10:46 next collapse

So … just like the original Oblivion?

recall519@lemm.ee on 28 Apr 22:41 collapse

Yeah, and I always stop playing the original early for the same reason.

LaserTurboShark69@sh.itjust.works on 27 Apr 14:02 next collapse

There are mods that help with this

recall519@lemm.ee on 28 Apr 22:41 collapse

True, but I’m currently playing with my kids on Xbox too.

the_crotch@sh.itjust.works on 27 Apr 14:06 collapse

The key to oblivion is to pick tag skills that you won’t use. If your build is a stealth archer, pick block blunt and restore. You only level when your tagged skills level, so your archery illusion and sneak will be 100 but your character will be sub level 10 so you’ll basically be a god

VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 20:55 next collapse

Doesn’t work in the remaster; they changed so that all skills contribute to level up progress.

ripcord@lemmy.world on 28 Apr 01:40 collapse

So they took the mechanic in the game yhat was universally hated, and made it worse…?

mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 27 Apr 21:20 next collapse

Sort of. The new leveling system has minor skills contribute to your levels, to a lesser degree. IIRC it’s something like 10 major levels or 20 minor levels (or some combination thereof) to get a character level.

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 28 Apr 00:00 collapse

The level system doesn’t work that way anymore. Now when you level up, it doesn’t matter what skills you leveled up when you get a new level, you always get 12 points (called “virtues”) to spread around to any stat. Luck, however, takes 4 “virtues” to level one point, while the others are just 1:1 and you can add up to 5 at a time.

I can level up entirely through using Agility linked skills but then put my stat points into Strength and Intelligence instead of agility.

The real issue has to do with the level scaling on enemies still being the worst of any Elder Scrolls game because they didn’t change anything about that from the OG. So once you’re level 50, everything has the best weapons and armor on them.

supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 11:56 next collapse

It is verified for the Steam deck though.

DeathsEmbrace@lemm.ee on 27 Apr 12:16 collapse

At 30fps if you call that verified

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 27 Apr 13:52 collapse

That’s fine honestly, provided it’s smooth. In the video, there was a fair amount of hitching though…

mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 27 Apr 21:17 collapse

It’s definitely not smooth. Interior cells run decently, but my OLED Steam Deck dips into the low 20’s in exterior cells.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 27 Apr 21:34 collapse

Ouch.

Faildini@lemmy.world on 27 Apr 17:31 next collapse

I’ve been playing it on steam deck, it’s definitely playable but I wouldn’t call it smooth.

Blackmist@feddit.uk on 27 Apr 23:55 collapse

Does it freeze up all the time like in the Digital Foundry video?

If not I’m wondering if it’s that stupid shader compiling thing that has plagued PC games all generation.

Faildini@lemmy.world on 28 Apr 02:22 collapse

I’ve gotten a lot of freezing and stuttering playing on my desktop PC (Linux with Proton). The deck actually seems to be more stable, though it is locked to 30 fps and textures still take a minute to load sometimes.

josefo@leminal.space on 27 Apr 21:36 next collapse

It’s poorly optimized. At version 0.4 is probably the first thing that looked decent, with final art in place, but no QA or optimization done. My bet is that they had to launch earlier than expected due to the rumors, or they extended way past the due date and the money for the project ran out. If successful, probably optimization will take place, but they are waging on it.

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 27 Apr 23:58 next collapse

Mentioned this in another thread yesterday:

Like many UE games over the years, they didn’t properly optimize Unreal itself for their use, and there were already several ini tweaks up on the Nexus to remedy this the day of launch.

Went from 27 average fps when in exterior cells to a solid 60, with an unsupported GPU by just using one of these ini tweaks.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 28 Apr 00:53 next collapse

Nice, amateur hour it seems.

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 29 Apr 01:20 collapse

This is such a common problem with games on any iteration of Unreal Engine, and has been for over 2 decades. Since it’s so common to see, I wonder if the documentation just sucks.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 29 Apr 15:38 collapse

Since it’s common, the devs should be aware of it, regardless of how the official documentation is.

FooBarrington@lemmy.world on 28 Apr 10:21 collapse

While the updated config I installed helped, I still get noticeable frame drops on my pretty beefy PC in the overworld.

drmoose@lemmy.world on 28 Apr 03:33 next collapse

I’m having relatively good performance in 6600rx on Linux but after a while theres some sort of GPU memory leak (would be my guess) where fps halves until the game is restarted.

Adulated_Aspersion@lemmy.world on 28 Apr 14:41 next collapse

People from the original title want to capture the essence of buggy Berhesda gaming for future generations!

How thoughtful!

nagaram@startrek.website on 29 Apr 03:24 collapse

Bethesda game runs like ass

That’s not news