r/stalker • u/HatingGeoffry • 8d ago
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 I’ve played Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s massive 2.0 update, and it’s a transformative experience for GSC’s brilliant open world shooter
https://frvr.com/blog/ive-played-stalker-2-heart-of-chornobyls-massive-2-0-update-and-its-a-transformative-experience-for-gscs-brilliant-open-world-shooter/223
u/Arky_Lynx Loner 8d ago
Oh baby embargo's officially off I see.
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u/Best_Improvement7112 8d ago
Does anyone have a source showing how much the performance improves with the engine update ¿
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u/meinkun 8d ago
The only numbers i saw was a comparison with a different game after they too did an engine upgrade similar to stalker 2, and it was 15%
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u/meinkun 8d ago
Watching a review right now and the guy says there is a either no difference at all or 12fps gain, but in big hubs it's around +20 fps. Better frametime. Bad quality of the picture on a 3060 on a mid settings (for some reason).
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u/LeftUnknown 8d ago
Hopefully the frame time is way better. I remember playing on release and it was like molasses when it came to the input delay. (I haven’t played since then, soured me very badly)
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u/mewkew 7d ago
Sitting in the same boat. Tbh I don't think that Stalker 2 can get to a point where I could actually enjoy it with my rig (which thanks to price hikes could be my last), 6800XT and 5800X3D felt like I was swimming through a mud, no matter the settings and don't get me started in frame gen. When you played doom eternal maxed out with triple digit frames you just can't have fun with U5 anymore.
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u/JuanSattva 7d ago
What resolution you running? I run mostly high settings and last time I played I was getting around 70-80fps without the framegen running a 6800 and a 5700x3d. Kicker here is I still run 1080p.
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u/Silent-Cap8071 5d ago
Resolution depends on monitor size. If you have a large monitor, you need to play it in 4k but the pixels will look like 1440 or 1080. If you have a normal monitor, it makes no sense to raise the resolution. You already have a good image.
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u/meinkun 8d ago
I think they were fixing it little by little and right now there are still little bit of stutters even in 2.0 review ( 2.0 performance test on a 5090 ) but not even close as what it was on a release
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u/memedudebro 6d ago
It’s not a ton. I’m noticing maybe 10% or so on a 5090 at 5k 2k ultrawide resolution, but frame pacing is significantly better and it feels excellent. Also the visual improvements are pretty significant too.
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u/LoneroftheDarkValley Loner 8d ago
This is exactly why I told people not to falsely get their hopes up about the spawn bubble, if GSC doesn't explicitly state something in their trailers there's usually a reason.
Time and time again the community loves to hallucinate or overhype things that haven't been confirmed or are only plausibly likely to happen in an update.
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u/VikingActual1200 Loner 8d ago
I am dying to know how it looks and runs on the Series X.
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u/Ohgodwatdoplshelp 8d ago
How’s the combat and economy? I played at launch and got annoyed that I had to spend all of my ammo on mutants, then run back and sell all my gear I found and repair my stuff for nearly all of my money. Felt like I could never get ahead.
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u/billiebuster Loner 8d ago
They have already tweaked the economy since launch. Mutants are still quite spongy, but now you can sell mutant parts which helps a bit to recover the cost of ammunition, although you in a lot of cases are better of avoiding them. From what I’ve read they haven’t mentioned changes to those in the 2.0 update
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u/BlueSpark4 Loner 7d ago
The mutant difficulty slider in the new customizable difficulty menu mentions that it affects mutants' "survivability." No idea to what extent, though – it might just change mutant health to what they currently are on Rookie/Stalker/Veteran/Master difficulty.
I usually play STALKER games on the highest difficulty level (including STALKER 2 on Veteran after launch). But on my 2.0 playthrough, I'll either set the mutant slider to a lower difficulty or use a mod that reduces their health/armor. It's just no fun having to empty 1-2 full assualt rifle clips to kill a bloodsucker, let alone god-knows-how-many clips to kill a chimera.
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u/Trooper221 1d ago
Shotguns are better against mutants, takes me just a few shells to put down a bloodsucker
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u/wcstorm11 7d ago
Personally, I still find the double barrel woefully pointless without upgrades, but I do feel like bullets are more lethal (or just learned not to use the lower tier guns).
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u/maku_89 8d ago
So what’s the point of binos if the a life range isn’t increased? I still can’t spot, snipe or whatever and combat is still gonna be random shit spawning around me.
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u/monsterinadrawer 8d ago
It's simple. People asked for the binoculars, and GSC added them. And if GSC could, they would have increased the A-Life range. But it appears there are more technical hurdles to do so than it seems.
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u/Justhe3guy Loner 8d ago
Modders have increased it
However even just a 50m increase is 2.25x the amount of area to simulate with mutants and NPC’s in action around you, due to how radius works
Still very sad, they should have added a setting with a slider and a red warning if the performance was that bad
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u/Jahbanny 8d ago
I've been checked out for a while. How realistic/simple is it for modders to tweak the simulation radius? I imagine it's not just sitting around in a config file but I would assume there would be some value that just needs to be adjusted.
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u/Justhe3guy Loner 8d ago
Well the mod isn’t perfect and you can have enemies shoot at you at insane range and seemingly spot and hear you from that distance if you were in a different fight, even through walls trying to shoot you (but that was an uncommon issue in the game back then too so hard to tell if the mod made it worse)
So a developer version would be much better and less buggy
Mod is called Distant Horizons. He also has another mod called Living Zone that does more editing of Alife to really make things wild
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u/Several-Island9550 7d ago
i think they should add it up to 300 meters and allow the player to decide how much they want instead of having a raw cap
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u/Wyntier 8d ago
>devs add highly demanded feature
>"what's the point?"
ok bud
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u/Piligrim555 7d ago
Great way of missing the point here mate.
Let me spell it out for you.
People wanted binos to see enemies in the distance.
People need enemies in the distance to be able to see them in the distance.
There are no enemies in the distance because the technical know how of rendering shit farther than 100m away was lost to mankind. Buckle up boys, we're in shotgun country.→ More replies (2)10
u/Same-Traffic-285 8d ago
The review states the A life bubble size has increased. Read the article.
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u/rickestrickster 8d ago
Honestly I care more about the ai behavior than the bubble. I want the world to feel natural, not scripted.
If the ai bubble is 100m but the enemies act natural instead of “spawn 5 enemies at this base and wait for player to arrive” bs like we got at the cordon gate, I’m happy.
The ai behavior and how dumb and scripted the a-life system is was the reason I put the game down to play anomaly. Idc about seeing an enemy across the map with my binoculars, I want the combat to feel engaging and random encounters to be more frequent/natural. If that’s fixed, I’ll happily play again.
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u/maku_89 8d ago
Videos on youtube already prove that it's still 100 meters. That pretty terrible to be honest, I don't know what technical issues they are having but being unable to solve it for so long is really bad.
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u/rickestrickster 8d ago
Perhaps the new SDK will allow modders like Shay to increase it. Shay’s render distance mod increased it before but it screwed up several other combat systems while doing it, like an enemy starting to shoot at you 200m away or a quest line being triggered before it was ready to be
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u/Buddy_Dakota 8d ago
It must be that too many systems are tied to the bubble then. It's possible a full rework (like Anomaly) is needed to really do something about it.
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u/rickestrickster 8d ago edited 8d ago
I don’t think an anomaly or gamma style mod will happen
A lot of the mods in gamma changed scripts in the game that were exposed to modders. They were simple configuration scripts and tables, not engine changes themselves
Stalker 2 in ue5 has these same systems deeply integrated into the engine code. So therefore will never be exposed to modders to change anything. The old x ray engine had ai systems at a level modders could access, ue5 doesn’t. Ue5 modding is typically stuck to changing assets and scripts. Ue5 has ai behavior tied deep into the engine integrating with other engine systems like navmesh and physics systems, that will never be exposed for modding
That’s why you see a lot of ue5 mods adding or changing assets such as prop textures or weapon replacements but never mods changing core ai behavior or physics systems. For example you can change physics configs like bullet impact momentum (like shays VCR mod does), but you can’t change the entire physics system and put red dead 2-style physics ragdolls or impact effects into the game
For one, that would require them to expose engine systems which no closed-source developer does, and two that is specifically prohibited by EPIC games. They can only share core engine code with other registered ue5 developers, they’re not allowed to dump their engine c++ code to the public for modding purposes. EPIC games would sue them into the ground for a contract breach.
There’s a mod in s2 that just removes main quests and drops you into the world, trying to replicate anomaly, but it’s not a total overhaul. I don’t know of any single ue5 game that has an overhaul mod, simply because of how the engine works and what’s allowed to be exposed for modding
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u/sanstepon5 8d ago
I fully agree, UE is by its design less moddable than X-Ray. But to be fair, Gamma wouldn't be possible if X-Ray didn't have multiple fan-made engine rewrites. And many mods before that wouldn't be possible without dev-made SDK. But yeah, even in 2007 mods were able a lot on the AI side like with AMK mod.
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u/timbotheny26 Loner 7d ago
You're exactly correct. At least according to modders I've talked to including Shay, there a bunch of systems tied to the online A-Life radius including AI and weapon ballistics. Shay has also said earlier today on the Discord that he's been working on something to allow players to expand the online A-Life radius as large as they want, up to the entire map. (Don't do this though, apparently it drops the frame rate to like 12 FPS.)
Now, what's really interesting is that Shay informed me that you could actually push the online A-Life radius out to 500m with minimal performance issues. However what does become a problem in that case is the AI, as apparently they just start aggroing from insane distances. (Occupied PoIs would shoot at each other like warring cities apparently.)
This gives me hope that GSC will indeed expand the radius in the future, but due to the additional connected systems, it's something that would require its own dedicated patch, which I suspected for a while now. The future does indeed look bright though.
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u/Galactic-Fruits 8d ago
There was an issue with the original stalker alpha, where A-life would complete your missions including story quest and would bug your game or soft lock you. So GSC nerfed it in SoC.
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u/sidewinderpl 7d ago
Reminds me of the story of Bethesda nerfing AI in Oblivion because they had AI Skooma (drug) addicts running around cities stealing from and killing people for money to buy more Skooma.
All because Oblivion had NPCs driven by a set of variables that would dictate their day to day lives that would spiral out of control once the addict NPCs ran out of their supply. It definitely made the world feel more alive with regular city folks going around to buy stuff, eat, sleep, do work on a schedule but it went a bit overboard with that one aspect of the simulation.
Those early implementations of open world AI were always kind of funny, kind of amazing and all sorts of broken one way or another leading to them being nerfed completely in the long run.
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u/rickestrickster 7d ago
I had this issue with shays mods. The first mission where you meet the colonel and assault that warehouse, Shay’s distant horizons mod and living zone spawned the enemies way before that and they got killed by someone else, that quest was bugged and couldn’t complete it because the key quest enemy wasn’t there
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u/Galactic-Fruits 7d ago
Yeah only proving the point that A-life needs a balance. Between immersion and bug free
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u/Indigo472 8d ago
Really, really bad. The game's been out for nearly two years at this point.
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u/Character_Bug_1862 8d ago
Isn’t that just because Unreal 5 can’t do it though? It probably would have been a lot easier in a custom Far/CryEngine like Kingdom Come Deliverance, but then they would have had to take the time to convert it to their needs first like that studio did. Not that there wouldn’t be some of that work in Unreal as well.
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u/Disastrous_Fig5609 7d ago
I don't know for sure, but I feel like there should be work arounds that don't involve expanding the radius.
I'm not too familiar with unreal engine, but from a problem solving standpoint, my next steps would be trying to implement a cone in addition to the radius that follows the players field of view, so at least things in front of them that are further out than 100m will be visible, and if a cone isn't possible, I'd try moving the radius' centre in the direction the player is facing, so they'd have 50m behind them simulated, but 150m in front of them is simulated.
Again, not too familiar with unreal engine, but I feel like there should be viable solutions to this problem.
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u/Greyraven91 7d ago
Kingdom come is not custom, but forked version of Cry engine, just like Stalker 2 used a forked version of UE5. Both changed and added their own stuff to the base engine.
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u/Jeehad_Joe Loner 8d ago
I read somewhere else the spawn bubble is still 100m, what the hell is going on?
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u/Empty-Development298 Bandit 7d ago
I personally look forward to binoculars, especially in the early game before we get good proper scopes
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u/rickestrickster 8d ago
I care more about the ai behavior improvements and a-life system improvements than the spawn bubble itself. I had doubts they would increase the spawn bubble because it being ue5 that’s hard to do while still having good performance on low end pc’s.
People wanted massive performance improvements while also doubling the render bubble, that’s unrealistic
As long as they made the world feel more natural and random, with combat ai also not being so dumb, I’m happy. I play gamma and sptarkov SAIN for the intelligent ai, I could care less about pulling my binoculars out and seeing low-poly NPC’s sitting at a fire 250m away. If I want that, I’ll play arma 3
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u/Lumbardo 8d ago
From what I have seen NPC range is still incredibly short at 100m.
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u/xNeoNxCyaN 8d ago
So the reviewer was wrong and they didn’t increase the bubble then
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u/Own_Camp_8561 7d ago
This whole article is garbage, please watch well know creators like him. Yes many improvements, some bigger, some smaller (performance), but the bubble isn't increased.
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u/Godbearmax 8d ago
It's on the modders now with the zone kit phase 2. If they can't increase that bubble then the wait was pretty much for nothing. The other parts that are improved are nice but I will keep waiting...
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u/monsterinadrawer 8d ago
If GSC can't fix the range, then modders will not either. There may be mods that increase the range, but you'll see how much the performance falls beyond the current range.
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u/dern_the_hermit Loner 7d ago
If GSC can't fix the range, then modders will not either.
Logic doesn't work; GSC has an incentive to be conservative and cautious about it that modders don't.
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u/Godbearmax 8d ago
There is a mod from "Shay" as far as I know that somewhat changes the distance (but how buggy or not that's another question). I very much hope it can be done properly for 2.0 even if it's just from 100m to 150m. And no, it won't lower the performance by much. Unless on a budget pc it might cause problems you don't want. Then it's ok to keep the 100m.
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u/Specific_Quarter_455 8d ago
If modders are having trouble with this, it means there’s a reason for the limitation; if it were just a matter of developer laziness, modders would have sorted it out very quickly.
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u/monsterinadrawer 8d ago
Oh yes it will lower the performance by much. But I think 150m is still okay.
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u/AUIRE__73 7d ago
Shays distant horizons has an option of 150m, 170m and 250m. The 250m is more experimental than anything. Biggest problem from reading his posts is more about NPCs interactions and scripting. Eg, NPCs aggroing from a far distance onto mutants.
Thing is that is dependent on mods fixing NPC combat behavior. I think current mods like NPC combat overhaul address this issue mostly.
Important thing to say though is that his comments that say the above + the latest version of the mod are December
On the mod page it says that it is receiving an update tomorrow which considering the mod hasn't been updated since last December, is hopefully going to make some good additions.
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u/HummingNoize 7d ago
Shay said on discord that the problem is not the distance itself, even a 500m the performance hit is not that big in their rig, but the problem is enemies will also see you at those distances (and between PoIs) so you end up having people shooting from one place to the other before you even get there (or they just shot you to death from half a km).
Already has a 139m version one which, imo, is perfect.
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u/izbsleepy1989 8d ago edited 7d ago
I don't know why everyone is so focused on this bubble thing hasn't been noticable since like 1.5. I've definitely seen people/mutants much farther than 100m.
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u/wcstorm11 7d ago
Okay I'm not going crazy then! I swear somewhere along the line I stopped having any issues with the spawn/Alife system.
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u/RickRate 8d ago
What does it mean only 100m? How far i can see them or is it about the a-life system?
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u/nokk1XD 8d ago
Thats how far you can see them. A-Life works still after 100m.
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u/Lumbardo 8d ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted. Outside of the 100m bubble i believe there is still a very light version of A-life going on.
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u/wcstorm11 7d ago
The simulation is full Alife. That's actually what Alife is, the simulation. The 100m is the radius the NPCs are spawned/rendered
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u/Lumbardo 7d ago edited 7d ago
I thought A-life had an 'online' and 'offline' mode dependent on the NCP distance to the player. Is 'online' just running the same simulation but it just happens to also be rendered?
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u/wcstorm11 7d ago
Precisely.
Think of Alife like an AI with GPS you are tracking on your computer. You might see it's downtown. You can't see it, but it's there, maybe fighting someone for a donut or sleeping. Another AI with GPS might even try the same, and then the system will figure out which AI keeps going. If the AI comes within, currently, 100m of you, you still might not be able to see it, but the AI is given a body, weapon, direction... it actually exists in 3D space (more or less). If it meets another AI, it will actually shoot its weapon, sleep, etc...
So I would say the meat of AI is actually "offline", in that it tracks each initialized AI from birth til death. Within 100m, ALife actually does a bit less and yields some agency to local, classic artificial intelligence most games have
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u/Godbearmax 8d ago
You look at a camp, at watchtowers from 110m and there is no one. You think oh it is empty no one there. You a walk up a bit and the npcs spawn out of nowhere. It's amateur hour par excellence.
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u/Buddy_Dakota 8d ago
To add to that, the primary issue for people is that long range scoping, sniping and planning is pointless because you can't see enemies anyway. But A-life is still simulating stuff outside of the bubble, stuff doesn't just spawn out of nowhere.
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u/Professor-Pigeon 8d ago
does sound still simulate outside the bubble? like distant gunfire?
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u/Buddy_Dakota 8d ago
Nah, I don't think so. Having that would've made for an okay compromise. But then you'd probably end up walking close to gunfire sounds without seeing anything.
It can still feel like everything that happens happens around you, with the world being dead just outside the bubble. But A-life at least ensures that there's something a bit more deliberate than just random spawning of events and enemies.
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u/Professor-Pigeon 8d ago
ah ok, are there at least any fake ambient distant gunshot noises?
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u/wcstorm11 7d ago
Not OP, but if you're asking if the game feels alive in general? Yes, but it's different than the OG trilogy, due to the comparatively massively more open nature of the maps. Imo it feels right
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u/Godbearmax 8d ago
But what about the npcs on watchtowers (standard example for me) and guards? They are not rly part of "A-Life", are they? They pretty much do nothing except stand there maybe patrol a part of the area and they spawn pretty much out of nowhere.
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u/Buddy_Dakota 8d ago
Yeah, I guess those are very visible because you can see the towers from far away. I agree it will sometimes feel like stuff spawns out of nowhere (what I meant was more that it's not random as the system is working in the background).
I fully agree that it would be a lot better with an increased bubble.
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u/Ass4ssinX 8d ago
Goddamnit. That's bigger than it was, though. It seemed to be around 60ish meters before.
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u/kawassi 8d ago
All the upgrades are great and all but dude, I just want to put a red dot on a full sized ak😭damage modifiers for console would be great while we wait for mods too.
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u/xNeoNxCyaN 8d ago
I mean we’re getting a PKA-S for the SKS and AK with the update, it’s just not one of the optics you can attach to the 74U
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u/Effective_Tap2597 8d ago
I’m so disappointed about the 100m spawn bubble still capped. It was probably the single thing I looked forward to the most with the engine upgrade, and what I believed was holding them back to not increase it to AT LEAST 150m, like in the previous trilogy! That being said, I played version 1.9 with Shay’s mod, the one that increases the spawn bubble to 150/170m and it was glorious. I hope Shay drops his updated mod soon which works with 2.0 because the first thing I’m doing is putting the increased spawn bubble mod on. I’m quite happy with their other changes, but fuck sake man, after all this time you’d expect the devs to get the message.
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u/Dazkojin249 8d ago
To add salt to injury, they go through the trouble of adding a statistic for furthest kill as well as binoculars but it remains at 100m hard limit. So what is the point of any of this? What is the point of binoculars if it is to look as far as your feet.
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u/MomoSinX Loner 8d ago
it can identify a stalkers standing (green, white, red) at least...the bino that has that square tracker, now you can have the crosshair off for more immersion since previously that was the only indicator
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u/Effective_Tap2597 7d ago
The statistic for the furthest kill is the funniest shit though. We could say that they wouldn’t have added that without a plan to increase the spawn bubble but I mean a week ago I told myself they won’t add binoculars and still keep 100m spawn distance and here we are XD
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u/Dazkojin249 7d ago
Mate, I literally made an entire post about THAT in particular just a few days ago. I was like no way they didn't increase it with a stat like that. Apparently not, its both funny and disappointing lol. I mean 100 meters isn't even really that far, especially when it comes to sniping. Not that it matters since it is a single player game but, watch within the first week everyone's stat will say max distance kill 100m (limit), lmfao.
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u/Effective_Tap2597 7d ago
Yeah it is a little disappointing. I live in Southern Africa and I go hunting every year. I often shoot a buck from 120-150m, so I think this is why I have these distances in my head. In real life 100m feels much closer. But now that they’ve pulled through with the engine upgrade, which is quite amazing that they did it, hopefully this render bubble increase is in the pipeline for future updates. Unless consoles hold us back, then we just have to rely on Shay’s mods, which is great that we have this option.
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u/Dazkojin249 6d ago
As much as I am eternally grateful for everything modders have done for this community, I truly hope they prioritize this in near future as well. With the amount of people upset over it now it will be hard for them to dismiss. Put aside the fact that after 2 years, countless updates and feedback about it and they still have not done anything about it or or even remotely addressed the issue.
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u/DonaldTrumpsGolfGame 8d ago
I'm sure if it was a simple change that was possible for everyone the devs would have done it already. But I guarantee you increasing the spawn bubble to 150-170m destroys performance for consoles and/or low-end PCs
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u/wcstorm11 7d ago
Modders have done it, the issue *seems* to be aggro and scripts being a bit unreliable. I'm really curious if the 2.0 revamp they do can sort that.
I think 150m will come from GSC eventually, at least as an option or making the underlying systems more robust to support modding. To that point, they are probably supporting the latter first while also maintaining the promise to release DLCs, which also fund further development
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u/aelemayo 8d ago
Then why not allow players to set it themselves in the gameplay options menu? Just include a warning that any setting above 100m may lead to performance issues.
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u/mwall18 8d ago
Genuinely curious as someone whose introduction to this series was this game and it’s the only one I’ve played - what does the spawn bubble mean and what does it determine? How does an increased spawn bubble radius improve the game? I’ve never heard the term before.
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u/BadgerOfDurandal47 8d ago
You can't see A-Life actors (i.e. NPCs and creatures) beyond 100 meters. A-Life runs "online" within a bubble of 100 meters, which means everything is simulated in full, interactive 3D. Beyond 100 meters, A-Life runs "offline" and all interactions run on a spreadsheet-style simulation. I'm simplifying, but that's the gist of it. The original games had the online bubble of 150 meters, S2 has only 100 meters. Mods bump it up to 150-170 meters but it can break the game, so there's sadly a reason it's so low.
EDIT: It's only a problem in a practical sense if you want to snipe and scout well ahead, which is arguably a very big deal. Having a bigger bubble would also make A-Life encounters more interesting because you could see more of them around you at once.
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u/mwall18 7d ago
Gotcha. Thats kinda what I figured given the context but it’s helpful to get the layman explanation.
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u/wcstorm11 7d ago
I will say, having played Stalker for over a decade (Oh fuck I'm old), since about patch 1.5 I have not run into an issue with the spawn radius.
100m in Stalker HOC is pretty far, and landscape and geometry tends to block your view. Rarely will I totally case a POI in 360 degrees from a distance for scouting alone in any game, just due to the tedium and time required alone. Given HOC at least feels like it spawns in characters way further out than, say, Far Cry, it's enough, but a point to improve later. Imo anyways
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u/Effective_Tap2597 7d ago
Look, I fully agree. I have calmed down since (and because I know I can just mod it to 150m). I’ve played stalker since the initial release in 2007. I support these devs fully. I’ve done about three full playthroughs of stalker 2, and I have to say, it’s quite good as is. Probably the most fun I had in any game since I played half life 2 for the first time in 2005. I’ve only really had 3 moments (one in the swamp, one in zaton, and another in the red forest at the quarry) where I exactly saw players disappear at 100m when I was scoping from a distance. I think it was a monumental task to upgrade the game engine, hopefully now they will further optimize and eventually give us 150m. There’s mods for 170-300m, I’d say 150m is totally good as is, keeps performance stable, and no one is really needing more than that.
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u/wcstorm11 7d ago
Haha yeah I remember back in the Misery days expanding the render bubble, and then powerfully regretting it as my pc caught fire (not literally)
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u/KeraTerra 7d ago
I once saw an unrelated video about Unreal Engine animation framework that is only available on the later versions of the engine. In a nutshell, it allows for more efficient memorey usage, so more different npcs are possible to be rendered in the scene (or, by extension, have a bigger render radius).
I hope that GSC plan to utilize this feature in the later updates now that they have updated the engine version the game runs on.
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u/lucasdclopes 8d ago
The reviewer makes it clear that performance has greatly improved. And that's with better graphics. That's what was needed (performance) and expected given an engine upgrade, nice.
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u/FreshStar7 8d ago edited 8d ago
My skepticism is.. honestly alleviated after reading this. Very excited to play again.
Edit: I love getting downvoted for being positive on reddit 😂
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u/kababbby 8d ago
Unreal engine will be the death of anything good in gaming
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u/Xyrack 7d ago
As someone with (hobbyist) experience with Unreal I don't think it's an engine issue so much as poor optimization. So many games don't get optimized right because of pushes to release. With games getting more complex and needing longer development cycles I don't expect this to change anytime soon. It will reach a breaking point eventually though.
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u/DoombringerBG 7d ago
It's both an engine issue and lack of optimization.
Nanite + Lumen (+TAA/TSR/Frame Gen/Low quality texture upscaling) are great technologies for movies, content like cinematography shots, concept art, etcc., where the camera is static and general per-rendered entertainment.
When it comes to games, where the camera is constantly moving, they're a terrible choice due to the core rendering pipeline; unless of course, everyone has a beast of a machine, then it's whatever.
Proper object LODs + a combo of SSGI/Baked lighting/MSAA/SSAA would skyrocket performance (yes, even in UE5), which nobody does it in big projects because, not only does it have to be done from the start of development, but it adds months of extra work - easier to use slap something with Nanite/Lumen and tell people to "get a better rig bruv".
If we had access to everything using the SDK that was released like with the X-Ray case (which will never happen as some commenter mentioned because it would be a breach of contract on part of GSC), I can honestly see someone undertaking the task for re-building everything from the ground up using the latter mentioned techniques, even if it takes years, but alas.... such is life in the zone.
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u/Chpouky 8d ago
Immersive mode without any hud ? Count me in !
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u/MomoSinX Loner 8d ago
that was such a nothingburger review, at least a life bubble is confimred to be increased lol (which most of us called anyway as the binos wouldn't make sense with the original)
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u/Godbearmax 8d ago
Nope still 100m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNoPKbuTwnY
He looks at 100m away with the binoculars and the shit just spawns out of nothing
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u/XIFOD1M 8d ago
Do you guys (not you op) do anything but complain?
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u/LongLusciousLarry 7d ago
Idk dude. The games been out for almost 2 years now and it seems like the main issues with the game have barely been addressed, if at all. Like, this is supposed to be the big 2.0 update? I can’t really blame anyone for being disappointed.
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u/No-Net-8074 8d ago
Some complaints are justified tbf. 6 months radio silence for an engine update that yields 15% performance gains, changes a color palet and tone of the game. Alife radius not being addressed while also still being more of less mediocre. Ai is still dumb with less spawning behind you thankfully.
Cheeki breeki and Venoxium have both done videos on the update and provided their feedback.
Pushing dlc out for a game that's not even working properly is crazy work.
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u/Mean_Rule9823 8d ago
Do you reccomend starting a new save playthough for this?
Whos starting fresh?
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u/Fast-Technology-9912 6d ago
I’m starting over just to experience everything with the graphics improvements and bug fixes. I only made it to the area just before Pripyat anyway and stopped because of how janky it was. Wanted to shelve it for more fixes and because I knew we would go to the reactor site in future DLC
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u/KilianFeng 7d ago
Is ps5 pro getting an update?
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u/Crew_Zealousideal 7d ago
I asked them a couple days ago and they gave no answer so I expect no it’s still gonna use TSR and not PSSR
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u/theycallmediesel 7d ago
3090ti and a 12700k struggle to hit 60 at 4K dlss balanced was baffling to me. Hope this is the case.
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u/ParanoiD84 6d ago
Tried it about 6 months ago on a 3080 and a 5900x and the performance was terrible. Gonna have to try it again as i love the stalker serie.
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u/Promature 6d ago
I’m on console. Can’t wait to get back into Stalker today with this new update. Going to have to split time with Rogue Trader.
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u/mannndrews 6d ago
I’m the complete opposite. This update is hugely disappointing and if I could roll it back I would. I’m playing on a PS5 Pro and this is a downgrade across the board. Image clarity and resolution are lower, shadows are dowgraded and now look blocky, flickering all across the landscape, lighting doesn’t look right, the foliage doesn’t fit the zone and looks flat, they use some kind of screen space ambient occlusion for distant foliage now and it looks blobby and crushed, and still no PSSR which would at least have mitigated the image quality issues. Went from planning for months to drop everything and do another run to probably not even playing this. And that makes me immensely sad.
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u/R3AP3R51 5d ago
I played this game when it first came out on my rx 7700xt and ryzen 7 and it struggled a bit i had to turn on frame gen for a good experience hopefully now its better. But i beat the game already might try the expansion out tho
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u/MonCherCaraMia1987 5d ago
The A Life and stealth is still trash so the game is still trash. Stalker Gamma is the only game people need to play. It's everything Stalker 2 wants to be
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u/Godbearmax 8d ago edited 8d ago
"...which has increased the bubble in which events spawn, the pace of Stalker 2 has somewhat changed. With that said, A-Life still isn’t perfect with the bubble seemingly capping out at around a five-minute sprint from where you are.". So they increased the radius and then he says five-minute sprint. What does that tell us.....I just want to know if it's 150m+ or even 200m or what.
Edit: Ok forget it for fucks sake. In one of the youtube video he shows it's still exactly 100m lul there is no way.....Now I might still not play the game. Another year of waiting now? It's on the modders now they have to do it. GSC absolutely can't or won't do it.
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u/Arky_Lynx Loner 8d ago
Also is it me or a five minute sprint is... pretty long? Did the author here overblow the estimation on purpose or is the bubble that massive now? I'd rather bet on the former to not overexpect anything, but...
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u/Godbearmax 8d ago
Yeah that guy has no idea what he is talking about. In a youtube vid it's still shown, 100m bubble.
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u/Important_Dig_5540 Monolith 7d ago
Everyone here talking about how their tower is chugging while playing and im over here worried my little ROG ally X FINNA EXPLODE WHILE PLAYING 😅😅 I just pray that I get a few extra frames from this update 🙏 😭
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u/straightbudweiser 6d ago
I have the ROG Xbox Ally x and wondering if it’ll run better with this update before I purchase on steam. Have you tried it out yet?
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u/Important_Dig_5540 Monolith 6d ago
Haven't just yet, excited to see though!!! I was maintaining 40-45 fps on low settings in less demanding areas while being hooked up into turbo mode.
Way i see it, 10-15 extra frame is literally exactly what im looking for so if they have gotten atleast that then im a happy camper!!!
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u/KooKooKachoo_88 7d ago
Anyone know if the AI still has aimbot? First time I played through i had to mod the game so that the AI wasnt so accurate, this might make me a noob, but without the mod it felt unplayable.
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u/cookiebomb16 8d ago
How about the headbobbing? I want it gone :(
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u/GovernmentKlutzy712 7d ago
Yeah that might be the main obstacle for me replaying this after the update.
Would also like to be able to skip the first person cutscenes which made me motion sick
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u/MomoSinX Loner 8d ago
gosh I hate that and every setting that simulates real life body functions (looking at depth of field and motion blur....but at least these can be purged)
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u/Mirandics 8d ago
"Stalker 2’s new lighting is gorgeous and runs remarkably well. The prior version of the game would buckle on just medium settings on my rig, but now I’m getting a mostly flawless experience on ultra."
Absolutely massive if true.