Playing Red Dead Redemption 2 in native 4K on PC is not a piece of cake, even if you own the best graphics card and best CPU of the market. The game is very generous when it comes to graphics settings, but Rockstar included a bunch of presets to choose from. We gave the balanced preset a try to see if it would allow us to enjoy native 4K and a perfectly smooth framerate (some options are even set to low on that preset, among which lighting quality). In gameplay, it is pretty much the case, except for some close-ups during the muddy and rainy fight against the colossus outside the saloon, but cutscenes see a few frame drops. We only had time to try the preset in Valentine and in the wild so we're bound to encounter areas where framerate will suffer, but what is certain is that playing in native 4K offers much crisper background landscapes compared to playing with an 80% resolution scaling and most settings set on high and medium (and a couple on ultra).
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AA: TXAA High
Volumetrics on medium
Water physics slider on medium
Everything else on high
I probably can bump some of those options to ultra but I am lazy to test it. The most taxing options are those two, volumetric effects and water physics (which causes fps drop if you're anywhere near body of water).
i9-9900x, 2080TI, 64GB 2133MHz, 970 NVMe Pro (It's mainly a video editing rig).
This native 4k stream looks blurry too by the way. Not sure if its the encoding or the AA used. Something is wrong.
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...but it doesn't. So all I see is a game that needs more powerful GPU's for very little gain.
...but it doesn't. So all I see is a game that needs more powerful GPU's for very little gain.
"(the law of) diminishing returns - phrase of diminish
used to refer to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested."
Though this is true for almost all PC games, games in general, and countless other examples in real life. Blaming Rockstar or Red Dead Redemption 2 of this is unwise, since it's just a part of life. Gears 5 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance have settings that are insanely taxing on current hardware.
Also, Xbox One X's version at native 4K has a mixture of High - only 2 settings, Medium, Low and even some settings being "Lower than PC's Low". With a lot of other graphical features in the PC version not even present in the XB1X version.
The most powerful console with fixed hardwre and low level API is only capable of that, so this game and engine pushing PCs' hardware beyond today's limit isn't wrong. It gives you over 50 settings to mess around. As long as people stop with the "everything must be played on 4K@60-200fps with Ultra settings because I have X hardware" mentality, they will be fine.
Arguably, Rockstar's error was in not giving more classes of options and labelling them differently. In RDR2, High is actually Ultra in most other games, Ultra should have been titled Epic/Extreme/Ultimate/Uber/Ultra High, etc.
Still, as long as people are realistic and sensible with settings, the game scales very well among thousands of different configurations. If Rockstar had limited/restriced the higher-end extreme options, it wouldn't have made current hardware play the game better or look better, it would just have limited people in the future for playing this game better and looking better.
At the end of the day, isn't that exactly what a "PC version" should do? The answer is yes, and most games do it. Limiting the options based on current hardware would only have pleased some people's fragile egos. People who look at gorgeous game, but keep instead of appreaciating it, focus on the fact that they are using High, Medium and/or Low settings.
All this debate is really stupid, RDR2 is one of the best games of all time and people are debating over splitting hairs instead of just enjoying the game. Reminds me of a recent article on EuroGamer, where people were cheating on FIFA and conspiring against other players just to keep ahead with no benefit to them.
EutoGamer - Inside FIFA's "dodging Discord" scandal:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-11-07-insi...
So many stories like these in the past few years. So much drama about nothing. Two users on that article said it best:
SBandy: "When did playing videogames become such a drama?"
Tosdevino: "Blimey, there I was thinking games were supposed to be fun."
Fuck modern gaming!!!
it being said, i still can't help to appreciate all what UE4 has brought to PC gaming. at the cost of much better performance gains. like this recent demo that was running on a GTX970 at 1080p, near 60fps.
https://youtu.be/ecerIIClbMA
game developers will have to start optimizing their game engines for performance. if the next consoles are to game at native 4k.
it being said, i still can't help to appreciate all what UE4 has brought to PC gaming. at the cost of much better performance gains. like this recent demo that was running on a GTX970 at 1080p, near 60fps.
https://youtu.be/ecerIIClbMA
game developers will have to start optimizing their game engines for performance. if the next consoles are to game at native 4k.