Horizon: Zero Dawn

dreamers75 · 27-08-2020 11:27am

Enjoying this on PC, not a great port tbh.

Should be running far better than it is.

Just entered the larger part after the proving ground, whooped a bandit castle and did the 1st "chase the killers" mission. Now to complete every side mission before moving on.

Controls are grand from a distance, can easily aim accuratley and fire with the bows. Up close is a nightmare as with all 3rd person games, riding the striders is something i may have to get used to.

Enjoying it tho, seems to be been worth waiting for. Shame it wont run in 4k60 tho

Markitron · 27-08-2020 11:32am

dreamers75 wrote: »

Enjoying this on PC, not a great port tbh.

Should be running far better than it is.

Just entered the larger part after the proving ground, whooped a bandit castle and did the 1st "chase the killers" mission. Now to complete every side mission before moving on.

Controls are grand from a distance, can easily aim accuratley and fire with the bows. Up close is a nightmare as with all 3rd person games, riding the striders is something i may have to get used to.

Enjoying it tho, seems to be been worth waiting for. Shame it wont run in 4k60 tho

They said they were gonna patch it right?

Azza · 27-08-2020 1:39pm

They have patched it twice already from reading online, mostly fixing stability and crash issues, but issues remain. The developer said they are aware of them and are still working on fixing them.

dreamers75 · 28-08-2020 12:56pm

Its a good game no doubt about it but its a really poor port, when you see Death Stranding running a lot better it makes it worse.

Guerilla made the Decima engine

Azza · 28-08-2020 2:28pm

I think the engine used in Death Stranding is a more up to date version of the Decima engine which might have helped it a little but its still surprising that the developers of the engine have struggled with the port while another third party developer got it right on their first go of using it. Maybe Horizon is just a doing more with the enegine than Death Stranding is.

Having put in around 100 hours into Death Stranding, I can say I didn't have a single crash and running at max settings at 1440p on 5700XT the frame rate hoovered in around the 70-80+ FPS most of the time. I very occasionally got sub 60FPS dips and there was stutter when traveling at speed on the roads with the bike but 99.9% of the time it was very smooth.

dreamers75 · 28-08-2020 3:38pm

I get 4k20

in Zero, 4k60 in Death Stranding (of which I have played it only to see how it runs, thats next to complete)

Dropped to 2K(peasant mode) on Wednesday night and havent played it since :P

28-08-2020 4:45pm

I also dropped it. I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I wasn't getting the most out of it. I'll come back in a year or so.

_CreeD_ · 28-08-2020 5:01pm

Death Stranding makes excellent use of DLSS 2.0 and while absolutely gorgeous has much less to deal with than Horizon Zero Dawn, it's 90% landscape. HZD has a tremendous number of objects in play in any scene, from foliage to NPCs/wildlife/Machines.
I know it is behaving oddly with different configs and accept someone else's experience may be much worse but on my 2080ti (OC'd to 2050 boost) at 4K it is performing about the same as The Division 2 or Assassin's Creed Odyssey (50-60fps, rare drops below). DS is a pleasant oddity for allowing 4k60+ on much less horsepower but very few modern visually complex games run constantly at 4k60 even on high end rigs. I think there is a presumption that because HZD is 3 years old from an even older console that it should run faster but I really think that's blinding folks to the reality that across the board 100% reliable 4k60 is not guaranteed on current gen anything.

dreamers75 · 06-09-2020 2:19am

Stuck another few hours into my 2k :rolleyes: game, its actually a really good game.

Just runs like **** in 4k.

Major annoyance I can overide a strider and call him but when I override a non mountable it just stays there. I want to bring a thunderjaw with me!!!!

Also the most annoying ****ing bug in the world in this game, when you loot something, it stops you going in one direction (usually the one you want to go) it happens constantly like there is an invisible wall stopping you.

I like this game but its going in the fridge for a bit until it actually works.

07-09-2020 12:53am

pretty rubbish port alright.

notwithstanding the challenging graphical world that it has if it could run well on a base ps4 1080p albeit at 30fps it should be able to run well on pc.

not being cross-platform from the outset usually ends up in an unoptimised debacle though due to code and asset reuse that was made for one particular system even if it is x86 based.

may well never be "fixed"

Azza · 07-09-2020 1:35pm

glasso wrote: »

pretty rubbish port alright.

notwithstanding the challenging graphical world that it has if it could run well on a base ps4 1080p albeit at 30fps it should be able to run well on pc.

not being cross-platform from the outset usually ends up in an unoptimised debacle though due to code and asset reuse that was made for one particular system even if it is x86 based.

may well never be "fixed"

I don't think its as bad a port as its being made out to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGOS6ksvPdk

As the the video above explains basically its a game that was designed heavily around the PS4's architecture and performance wise its about where it can expected to be as without massive changes to the underlying engine architecture it was never going to scale as well as PC gamers might have expected it to do performance wise.

Not excusing the bugs and crashes that where in the game at release but they have been patching the game fairly quickly.

A 4th patch has just been released with further crash fixes, CPU optimizations and general fixes (cutscene movement fix and HDR issues).

They have got to fixing most of the major issues already, and those outstanding like Aloys hair physics not working above 30FPS and anisotropic filtering not working (whcih can be run via your graphics card control panel for a quick fix) have been acknowledged by the developer and thus will likely be shortly fixed as well.

So I'm wouldn't actually worry that it will never be fixed.

Carfacemandog · 07-09-2020 1:51pm

I only play games on-and-off, and find a lot of big name titles can be very repetitive and narratively boring, so this was an surprise. I thought the story was phenomenal and possibly the best since The Witcher 3, it was one of the only times I have found myself taking the time to do additional scouring for those voice/text messages that fleshed out the world a bit more. It's not only excellently done, but in a lot of ways very relevant. That said, while the DLC was fun I found the characters were quite 'meh' and a good deal closer to the two-dimensional bore-inducing types you would expect in the recent (unbearable after 2-3 hours in my opinion) Assassin's Creed type titles.

I also loved that the combat dynamics gave you the option to approach a group of robots in a number of different ways which reminded me a little of Metal Gear Solid V. It was actually quite rare that I engaged a group head on, and instead tended to creep around the grass on the outside to take out Watchers etc, or trying to get close to something more dangerous to override before slipping away and watching the utter carnage.

One other small thing, but I also found manipulating the AI in ways that can feel cheesy in other titles actually tied in well here given that you literally are fighting AI in the story. Also

Lt. Daniels flying in on robot horseback was genuinely exhilarating in it's execution, and I that character looks set to be one of the best antagonists in games in a long, long time. I also loved that while he sounded familiar, I just couldn't pinpoint why until the first time he appeared on screen.

The artwork inside the Cauldrons was also genuinely jaw-dropping and fantastically juxtaposed the 'outside' world. One of the more 'wow! Look... at... this!!' moments of the decade.

I played on PC, and did have some crash issues at about 3 points in the game which thankfully were overcome by repeating 2-3 times until it stopped. There were also some stutter problems when I would come into a new area or one I hadn't been in for a bit, especially if moving quickly and/or if it was densely populated. I was playing on relatively old hardware though (2200G/GTX970) which may have played into this as my OH has had no such issues with on her 2070/9750h laptop), which may have played into this somewhat.

dreamers75 · 07-09-2020 5:35pm

Todays patch has given me a considerable bump in performance to 4k50 (high settings) (9900k 1080ti)

Regardless of the issues, this is a very good game like above I am scraping for every bit of info on the old world, some of them are really well done.

Combat is excellent which is always good.

07-09-2020 10:08pm

glasso wrote: »

not being cross-platform from the outset usually ends up in an unoptimised debacle though due to code and asset reuse that was made for one particular system

Azza wrote: »

I don't think its as bad a port as its being made out to be.

As the the video above explains basically its a game that was designed heavily around the PS4's architecture .

yes, that was the point that I was making.

Azza · 07-09-2020 11:39pm

glasso wrote: »

yes, that was the point that I was making.

Well you called it a rubbish port and a debacle. I reckon that's being overly harsh.

As for it never being fixed.

Well if you definition of it being fixed is for it to achieve a very high level of optimization for PC architecture that would require a fundamental rewrite of the games code then no it almost certainly won't be.

If your definition of being fixed is that all the major bugs are eliminated and it achieves a perfectly playable higher frame rate at higher graphics setting than the PS4 versions, then yes it will almost certainly be fixed. Sure it could be better but I don't think it will fall into the debacle/rubbish port category.

08-09-2020 12:27am

well if you throw enough gpu and cpu horsepower at it it will run ok yes

but it needs a lot more gpu and cpu horsepower than a better optimised game needs

by that definition I consider it a bad port but I understand why that is the case

I see that there were some performance improvements made with the patch today - up to 10% being talked about.

Thecageyone · 08-09-2020 12:38am

I was under the impression that it actually perfromed worse on higher end cards, because those running them want to play 4K, thought it was fine in 1080p? which any mediocre card can manage at reasonable settings. I steered clear because there seemed too many fidley-fixes to get it running smooth, seems things have improved a lot? I wonder how my Ryzen 2600x with plain Jane 1660 would handle it?

dreamers75 · 08-09-2020 10:03am

Just got the plot, what was done, how it all happened and what needs to be done.

Excellent way of delivering the story shame some of the data is buried and can be missed.

Should I leave the DLC till after the main story? Level 40 something atm.

gimli2112 · 08-09-2020 10:07am

I played the DLC recently and thought, man this is hard (relatively speaking), I'm glad I hadn't played it earlier.

SolvableKnave · 08-09-2020 10:41am

dreamers75 wrote: »

Just got the plot, what was done, how it all happened and what needs to be done.

Excellent way of delivering the story shame some of the data is buried and can be missed.

Should I leave the DLC till after the main story? Level 40 something atm.

Finish the main story first.

Carfacemandog · 08-09-2020 11:34am

Thecageyone wrote: »

I was under the impression that it actually perfromed worse on higher end cards, because those running them want to play 4K, thought it was fine in 1080p? which any mediocre card can manage at reasonable settings. I steered clear because there seemed too many fidley-fixes to get it running smooth, seems things have improved a lot? I wonder how my Ryzen 2600x with plain Jane 1660 would handle it?

On 1080p, absolutely fine - I used a 2200G and GTX970 and only had a few stutters at intervals (new areas, especially crowded ones, for 30 seconds or so while I'm assuming it was loading in new assets or whatever - I'm a million miles from very knowledgeable with that kind of thing). I had maybe 3-4 times where it repeatedly crashed but just had to a) keep trying until, or b) if in dialogue options, avoid asking particular questions (which was fine since I had asked them prior to the crashes). These were maybe 3-4 crashes at a go, so not a whole pile of them or complete roadblock either and I never needed to 'go away and return a few hours later' to avoid it. Far from ideal, but far from game breaking.

Carfacemandog · 08-09-2020 11:37am

SolvableKnave wrote: »

Finish the main story first.

What I found was waiting until immediately after the second last mission (called

Mountains May Fall, I think?

) was the best spot. I initially finished the game thinking like The Witcher, doing it after would be recommended, but narratively it actually made more sense to leave it until just before the very last one. I can't imagine having done it before then though, since there are one or two items you can get at this point that make the difficulty a lot more manageable - it was hard enough with them, but would have been extremely tough and just frustrating without.

08-09-2020 11:46am

Azza wrote: »

I don't think its as bad a port as its being made out to be.

...

As the the video above explains basically its a game that was designed heavily around the PS4's architecture and performance wise its about where it can expected to be as without massive changes to the underlying engine architecture it was never going to scale as well as PC gamers might have expected it to do performance wise.

...

You're kinda defeating yourself here. Saying its not a bad port then going on to explain why its a bad port.

Cordell · 08-09-2020 11:55am

It's a bad port and there is no excuse for that today, PS4 architecture is not that different like it used to be up to PS3.

SolvableKnave · 08-09-2020 1:24pm

Carfacemandog wrote: »

What I found was waiting until immediately after the second last mission (called
Mountains May Fall, I think?
) was the best spot. I initially finished the game thinking like The Witcher, doing it after would be recommended, but narratively it actually made more sense to leave it until just before the very last one. I can't imagine having done it before then though, since there are one or two items you can get at this point that make the difficulty a lot more manageable - it was hard enough with them, but would have been extremely tough and just frustrating without.

You could be right. I had finished it long before Frozen Wilds was released, so I've only got that experience to go on.

It was tough enough though. It's a shame it's had some problems on PC, as it's a great game (I'm a sucker for post apocalyptic stuff).

Azza · 08-09-2020 1:54pm

Deleted User wrote: »

You're kinda defeating yourself here. Saying its not a bad port then going on to explain why its a bad port.

I said it wasn't as bad a port as was being made out to be.

PC Gamers can be unrealistic with performance expectations, the cost of gutting the code to optimize for PC may not have been worth the return on investment.

Cordell wrote:

It's a bad port and there is no excuse for that today, PS4 architecture is not that different like it used to be up to PS3.

Its true the architecture is far more similar this generation but there is still differences (such as memory architecture) as the video I embedded explained.

What level of performance where you expecting from it?. Just looking at the benchmarks everything from and above an RX570/GTX 1060 runs the game at higher settings than the PS4 version does.

Retr0gamer · 08-09-2020 2:13pm

Could it be a lot of PC users expecting the game to run at insane settings? I mean stuff like the clouds eats ridiculous amounts of resources but should be fine at medium. Digital foundry said the cloud system takes up about 30% of resources on PS4 which is insane so PC users expecting it to run well above the medium setting might mean they are throttling their own performance.

Cordell · 08-09-2020 2:50pm

I think expecting something similar in quality and performance with, let's say, AC:O, if it's not too much.
But the main issues were bugs, not poor performance: non working anisotropic filtering and stuttering, which is a clear indicator of a rushed past proper QA release. And 30fps animations that are a clear indicator of a lazy PC port.

PC Gamers can be unrealistic with performance expectations, the cost of gutting the code to optimize for PC may not have been worth the return on investment.

This argument can make sense, but not for a game that's 3 years old, already made a profit, and being sold again for e50.

As for unrealistic expectations, I already played the PS4 version, so if I am to pay for it again I want the full PC experience and this is the realistic expectation that should be true on both sides.

dreamers75 · 08-09-2020 3:14pm

SolvableKnave wrote: »

You could be right. I had finished it long before Frozen Wilds was released, so I've only got that experience to go on.

It was tough enough though. It's a shame it's had some problems on PC, as it's a great game (I'm a sucker for post apocalyptic stuff).

I just walked out of

All Mother after the Nora attack, I believe I am on the mountain quest now

0 available side missions or errands, assumed I was getting close to the end.

_CreeD_ · 08-09-2020 3:27pm

Cordell wrote: »

I think expecting something similar in quality and performance with, let's say, AC:O, if it's not too much.
....

As for unrealistic expectations, I already played the PS4 version, so if I am to pay for it again I want the full PC experience and this is the realistic expectation that should be true on both sides.

So for the sake of apples-to-apples I set my GPU to max boost/lock, enabled Steam's ingame FPS counter and loaded both HZD and AC:O up for a (very) quick test.
Both at Ultra 4K (excepting AC:O shadows down a notch and HZD Clouds and Reflections at Medium as that was my old config, after yesterdays patch I'll probably up them later). I do have VSYNC forced at 60Hz, I could test on my other monitor at a higher refresh but since the majority of discussion is around 4k@60 I didn't think it was necessary for a quick test. HZD was in an open part of the world on the carja/desert side, AC:O the same in the Atlantis realm.
HZD was a solid 60, didn't fluctuate running around. AC:O averaged 55 or so with some dips to 50 with more volumetric lighting in view.

Your own metric is met.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

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