Random video game news... renewed!

[LadyCrimson]

I'm not convinced yet I like UE5 as an engine, from a player/customer point of view. But oh well what do I know.  Edit: I'm sure I'd be able to run both Obs games, but yeah, 3080 is a little steep-feeling. They could've at least mentioned what that was targeting - eg, 1080/60/RT+DLSS on, or whatever.

And never mind RT stuff - I'm still of the opinion that TAA is one of the worst things to happen re: overall simple graphic clarity. Sometimes DLSS/Quality with sharpening looks better in some ways than native, because of TAA - depends on game tho. Sometimes it's not too bad, other times it horrid.  I don't mean pixel-hunting comparison type better, I just mean ... a clean sense of clarity, better contrast "pop", less smeary/soft lens sensation.

Edited January 5 by LadyCrimson

[Sarex]

38 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

The article you linked explicitly stated that Huawei could do any other business in the US, just not with government departments, the other is literally patent infringements together with threats of fines if they try to take the chinese companies to court, actually preventing foreign companies from doing business there. These things are nowhere near equal

The article is from 2020, Huawei is on a banned list in the US, along with some other companies from China, for "national security" reasons. No company from the US can do business with them. Hence why the phone don't have google play services anymore and why they are not sold. So yes, in my example they are actually prevented from doing business in the US/West, while in yours they are not. Per your article they will face fines not a ban. So yes, they are not equal. I would even go so far and say that China is being much more measured compared to what the west has been and is doing to them.

53 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

Whataboutism is never an arguement for anything

Especially when you are willing to ignore and downplay anything to support your argument. It is what it is. My whole argument from the start is that China is not doing anything special, it's just playing the same game the US/any other powerful country is playing.

The whole of west is trying to suffocate China's progress and economic rise and you what, expect them to just play dead and take it? It's just going to get worse and worse, as they become less and less dependent on the west.

[Azdeus]

41 minutes ago, Sarex said:

The article is from 2020, Huawei is on a banned list in the US, along with some other companies from China, for "national security" reasons. No company from the US can do business with them. Hence why the phone don't have google play services anymore and why they are not sold. So yes, in my example they are actually prevented from doing business in the US/West, while in yours they are not. Per your article they will face fines not a ban. So yes, they are not equal. I would even go so far and say that China is being much more measured compared to what the west has been and is doing to them.

They literally can't do business because their IP has been stolen and is being used by Chinese companies. One is preventing doing business over valid security concerns, the other is stealing and blackmail to stop them from doing business for profit.

41 minutes ago, Sarex said:

The whole of west is trying to suffocate China's progress and economic rise and you what, expect them to just play dead and take it?

No, mr Sarex, I expect them to die.

[Sven_]

13 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Avowed and Outer World2 run on Unreal Engine5 so it will be more demanding to run - I worry how stuttery it's gonna be. I wonder if high graphics card requirements come from VRAM requirements, like with Indiana Jones. It seems Nvidia cleverly throttled available VRAM in all but most expensive GPU, so my rather pricey 3070 will become dated faster than I expected.

 

I picked up the RTX 3060 as a replacement for my old 1050 Ti. So fingers crossed.  Really odd that they paired a lower card with more VRAM than the 3080. But I think they only did this because they wanted to upgrade from the 6GB of the RTX 2060 prior -- but only had the option of adding another 6GB VRAM due to memory bus / controller limitations.

Btw, Indy runs fine with fewer than 12 gigs. It has the same "issue" as Wolfenstein (also id Tech): It has a texture pool setting. That's basically a cache as opposed to a direct detail setting. In other words, just because you cannot max out the setting, doesn't mean all textures are gonna look like turd. Naturally, you cannot max this cache out on low VRAM cards. Germany's PC Games Hardware tested this with Wolfenstein Youngblood way back already -- if the setting was too high, the fps took a huge nose dive. But usually, all benchmarks are run with maxed out settings (industry wide)....

Edited January 6 by Sven_

[Sarex]

42 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

They literally can't do business because their IP has been stolen and is being used by Chinese companies.

Again they can do it, in an unfair arena, but they can still do it.

45 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

One is preventing doing business over valid security concerns, the other is stealing and blackmail to stop them from doing business for profit.

How are they valid, because China is the evil enemy? There was no shred of proof shown to corroborate that claim. To me it just seem like they had the better and cheaper product that the west couldn't compete with. Same as what is happening with the car industry nowadays. Every country is fighting to keep their industry alive and thriving, there is no playing fair in that game.

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, you can't really label a security concern 'valid' just because your side repeatedly states it. It's not like a meter ticks up 1% every time and once you get to 100 assertions it becomes proven.

Adage #1 always applies to such things:

"That which is asserted without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence"

Easily the most important thing to remember on social media at least.

(Ironically, the sort of evidence they should be providing is indisputably there for the US forcing backdoors onto the computer chips and network infrastructure that they sell to everyone else. You know, the 'essential security' of IME/ PSP that is so essential it's absent from US government computers and- coincidentally no doubt- the CIA had a hacking tool specifically tailored towards. Oh yeah, and it was essential (apart from US government computers) right up until the Russians leaked that hacking tool. That is of course quite apart from the CIA/ NSA operatives who got busted soldering chips onto Cisco network equipment.

Why does it quite literally seem that every accusation is an admission?

Occam's suggests the reason for the targeting of tiktok/ telegram and huawei etc is the absence of western backdoors and other control, not the presence of 'unfriendly' ones)

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Sven_ said:

I picked up the RTX 3060 as a replacement for my old 1050 Ti. So fingers crossed.  Really odd that they paired a lower card with more VRAM than the 3080. But I think they only did this because they wanted to upgrade from the 6GB of the RTX 2060 prior -- but only had the option of adding another 6GB VRAM due to memory bus limitations.

It's 100% the bus. They're more expensive size wise (relatively; and they get hotter) as the process size shrinks so there's always a push to keep them as small as possible and it's not trivial to change on the fly either. If you have a 192 bit bus the options come in 6GB slices or you end up with something like the 970 with it's 3.5 fast 0.5 slow configuration; you cannot change it to 256 bit. You probably could change it to 128, but that would be slower, and for no purpose.

[LadyCrimson]

When I built the 2080ti rig I thought "this will work for basic 4k a while, and in a couple generations they'll have a 4k gpu that will last at least me, even more years."
Now I'm unconvinced that even a 5090 would "last" more than 2-3 years before AAA/big dev games would be all like "haha, no, you need 48 vram for even 1440/High settings, now, just upgrade your PC man."

[melkathi]

11 hours ago, Azdeus said:

 

No, mr Sarex, I expect them to die.

 

Someone has been playing too much 40K.

[Azdeus]

45 minutes ago, melkathi said:

 

Someone has been playing too much 40K.

 

Edited January 6 by Azdeus

[Wormerine]

12 hours ago, Sven_ said:

Really odd that they paired a lower card with more VRAM than the 3080. But I think they only did this because they wanted to upgrade from the 6GB of the RTX 2060 prior -- but only had the option of adding another 6GB VRAM due to memory bus / controller limitations.

Btw, Indy runs fine with fewer than 12 gigs. It has the same "issue" as Wolfenstein (also id Tech): It has a texture pool setting. That's basically a cache as opposed to a direct detail setting. In other words, just because you cannot max out the setting, doesn't mean all textures are gonna look like turd. Naturally, you cannot max this cache out on low VRAM cards.

Yeah, in general I hear that lower settings aren't what they used to be these days, and games tend to scale pretty well. I was worried about not being able to run Indy, but from what I watched I will be just fine.

Still, it pains my heart to not be able to launch a game, max out all settings and still get 80-100FPS. Staying on a cutting edge is expensive. Need to find a better job.

[melkathi]

1 hour ago, Azdeus said:

 

That is archeotech. The Mechanicus will have words with you for not immediately surrendering it to a tech priest.

[Sven_]

On 1/6/2025 at 11:58 AM, Wormerine said:

Staying on a cutting edge is expensive. Need to find a better job.

I dropped out of that at the early 2000s already tbh. Prior I changed GPUs and CPUs like Al Bundy never changed his pants. Since then, well let's say that in the past twenty years, I'd spend less than 1,000 EUR on GPUs. I've been a mid settings gamer since (and have stopped played the majority of blockbuster games anyway). Indy is nice on high to max even on the RTX 3060 though -- with Pathtracing disabled, naturally.  

But hey, Nvidia have just promised the 5070 would be able to render as many frames as the 4090* (*with DLSS4). So who knows what the 5060 is capable of.  

Edited Wednesday at 05:21 AM by Sven_

[uuuhhii]

now people will say developer doesn't need to put more effort into optimization

player just need to upgrade hardware to 5090

Edited Wednesday at 09:29 AM by uuuhhii

[Mamoulian War]

No need for me. The only two new games scheduled for 2025/6 which are of interest to me, is Awoved and the Outer Worlds. And for that my 16GB 6900XT (to which I’ve upgraded after 8 yearsof playing on GT760) is more than enough. For everything else, there is always GOG

[LadyCrimson]

I seriously keep waffling between "wanna new PC" and "should quit pc-gaming." My pace of "try to fix my reboot-PC issue" has been super slow because at the moment ... I'm not sure I care. Or maybe it's that I wish I didn't care. Then next month I'll be all "but, but, Death Stranding 2!" or something. Then back to "I'll just play Diablo 1/similar if I need a game fix for a few hours, that bad."

I'm getting "old" enough I could just buy a console for an occasional big release and forget about it otherwise. But but ... mods! Other pc-gaming options/control! Edit: and ofc, the TECH-FIEND inside me

*tosses hands* 

Edited Thursday at 12:01 AM by LadyCrimson

[Lexx]

Oof, I just saw that Avowed is set with a 70€ price tag as well... Yeah, nah. I'm out for release purchase. If it's going to hit gamepass, I might consider getting back into that for a month, but I'm sure as hell not buying it on Steam.

[Hurlshort]

49 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Oof, I just saw that Avowed is set with a 70€ price tag as well... Yeah, nah. I'm out for release purchase. If it's going to hit gamepass, I might consider getting back into that for a month, but I'm sure as hell not buying it on Steam.

It will most definitely be on Gamepass. It is supposed to be one of their big titles, so playing it there should reflect well on Obsidian.

[melkathi]

Conspiracy theory time:

They set release price at $70 to drive people into subscribing to Gamepass.

[Mamoulian War]

Game of the Century comming soon!

 

[Sven_]

On 1/9/2025 at 1:00 AM, LadyCrimson said:

I seriously keep waffling between "wanna new PC" and "should quit pc-gaming." My pace of "try to fix my reboot-PC issue" has been super slow because at the moment ... I'm not sure I care. Or maybe it's that I wish I didn't care. Then next month I'll be all "but, but, Death Stranding 2!" or something. Then back to "I'll just play Diablo 1/similar if I need a game fix for a few hours, that bad."

I'm getting "old" enough I could just buy a console for an occasional big release and forget about it otherwise. But but ... mods! Other pc-gaming options/control! Edit: and ofc, the TECH-FIEND inside me

*tosses hands* 

The moment you realize it's a battle you can't win is the moment you're gonna slow down. It just never stops. You buy shiny new thing, the morning after shiny new thing is old thing. I had four (4) computers in between 1987 and 1994: An Amstrad CPC, a Commodore 64, an Amiga 500 and a 386DX40 PC. Oh, and of course a Gameboy on top of that.  As argued, that kinda lasted 'til mid 2000s-ish... and once I HAD slowed down, I realized there's nothing hugely much to miss really. If there ever was a game I couldn't play on release, game's not going away.

Speaking of which, first benches for Kingdom Come II are out. Alongside to the game running decently on Steam Deck they paint the picture of a better optimized release. Gamestar claims the game would be buttery smooth on their RTX 3080 tested, and pretty stable on Xbox as well. Of course, people sure haven't reached Rattay, er, Kuttenberg yet. 


Kingdom Come 2 benches, final release still pending: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II preview - PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards and Processors | Action / FPS / TPS | TEST GPU


As a comparison: Kingdom Come benches, end of 2018 (already patched some): Kingdom Come Deliverance - PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards and Processors 2018 | RPG/Role playing | TEST GPU

All ultra details. So RTX 3060 / 1060 should be fine on medium / low as officially claimed, accordingly. I played KCD I on a GTX 1050 Ti, which benched with 20-25 fps on ultra in KCD I (45-60fpsish on medium details). Maxed out you can still tank modern PCs with that (for increasingly minimal image quality gain). 




tl; dr:  I AM READY. 

Edited Saturday at 12:56 PM by Sven_

[Wormerine]

13 hours ago, melkathi said:

Conspiracy theory time:

They set release price at $70 to drive people into subscribing to Gamepass.

I suggested before that it is Microsoft's way of adding "value" to Gamepass after hiking the price on consoles. "Look how many AAA $70 releases you get".

On a sidenotes, it seems the floodgates have been open and games are in general pushing what they can charge.

[Azdeus]

18 hours ago, Lexx said:

Oof, I just saw that Avowed is set with a 70€ price tag as well... Yeah, nah. I'm out for release purchase. If it's going to hit gamepass, I might consider getting back into that for a month, but I'm sure as hell not buying it on Steam.

I'll wait for a gog release

[melkathi]

I'll wait for when I have a new computer. By that time GOG will give it away for free.

Or I'll be roaming a wasteland, fighting people for bottle caps and GOG will be a distant memory.

[LadyCrimson]

Avowed may be some fun but I never even finished Outer Worlds/didn't play Pillars2, so (for me) I'd wait until it's $40-50 or something. If I remember at that point. It gives me a sense so far, of colorful mediocrity (sorry, Obsidian). At least for my tastes. To be fair, I'm no longer really their target audience I suppose.    Edit: nor any AAA's target audience, basically

Edited yesterday at 06:34 AM by LadyCrimson