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S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chernobyl

So 2 crashes in 3 hours. Not terrible I guess lol.

To be honest I am glad there isn’t ray tracing. This game is a gpu killa and I love it. The atmosphere is fantastic!!! Now there are some things I don’t like. Weather effects are super loud. Also some lightning in areas does look off.

No game. Realing bugs yet.
 
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What the actual fuck...why can't I see shit? Everything is so god damn dark. I don't know how to fix it.
 
lors said:
What the actual fuck...why can't I see shit? Everything is so god damn dark. I don't know how to fix it.
Click to expand...
use the flashlight. Hit and hold tab and hit f to bring out the flashlight.
 
Well those early reviews can be ignored completely lol.

Game looks/runs excellent. Zero stutters with a 4K output. 44-55fps with 4KDLAA indoors, or up to ~66fps DLAA 4K outdoors, but as mentioned this is UE5 and you get the best quality and fps balance using upscaling, so I use DLSS Performance for up to 91fps and enabling DLSS Frame gen gives well over 100fps and there's no issue with mouse latency either so all's responsive and smooth.

Not encountered any bugs yet either.

Great stuff.
 
Brackle said:
To be honest I am glad there isn’t ray tracing. This game is a gpu killa and I love it. The atmosphere is fantastic!!! Now there are some things I don’t like. Weather effects are super loud. Also some lightning in areas does look off.
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There IS ray tracing, why do people keep saying this about UE5 games? Lumen is unreal engine's ray tracer, it operates in software mode by default by using async compute shaders, whereas hardware Lumen (when enabled by the developer) uses the GPU#s dedicated RT cores.

You are always using ray tracing in UE5 games.
 
Anyone playing on Game Pass? Sometimes Game Pass performance is worse than buying the game on Steam. I'm hoping that's not the case when I get home.
 
cvinh said:
Anyone playing on Game Pass? Sometimes Game Pass performance is worse than buying the game on Steam. I'm hoping that's not the case when I get home.
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I've played about two hours on GP and everything is running well, no issues so far.

That being said, it feels just like classic stalker which is mostly good but the gunplay still kind of sucks. I was hoping it would have improved some after so many years. I'll probably wait to see what the modding community is able to do for this before I get too heavy into it.
 
polonyc2 said:
STALKER 2 Benchmarks & PC Performance Analysis

Graphics-wise, STALKER 2 looks amazing...for those wondering, the game has not been downgraded...however, it suffers from major pop-in issues...STALKER 2 uses Unreal Engine 5.1, which does not support Nanite for grass/vegetation...as such, you’ll see trees and grass popping in the distance...big buildings will also suddenly appear and disappear while exploring the environments
Click to expand...

No Nanite is a huge disappointment. Would have been wonderful for this game.

Found one review where someone said they were struggling to get 60 frame rates at high settings with a RTX 4070 and 5700X3D. Will probably have for a few patches.
 
Game is great and is running at 120fps @ 1440p Epic settings with DLSS on Quality and FG. I could probably play at 4k.

Had to use my glove utility to rebind both melee types (gun and knife) V to KP1, which is stupid.

Had to rebind the headlamp to one button so I don't have to go into the radial menu to activate smh.

Sensitivity is mighty low as well on traversal and aiming.

Brings back good vibes of old skool STALKER though.

How da fuck do you climb ladders??
 
Flogger23m said:
No Nanite is a huge disappointment. Would have been wonderful for this game.

Found one review where someone said they were struggling to get 60 frame rates at high settings with a RTX 4070 and 5700X3D. Will probably have for a few patches.
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Lotta bugs apparently and performance is very inconsistent. Hopefully the first several patches go hard on fixing these.
 
Flogger23m said:
No Nanite is a huge disappointment. Would have been wonderful for this game.

Found one review where someone said they were struggling to get 60 frame rates at high settings with a RTX 4070 and 5700X3D. Will probably have for a few patches.
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When i looked at the pc gamer performance analyst https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/st...e-gets-ray-tracing-but-the-entry-fee-is-high/, It seems Zen 3 struggles a bit here. Especially with the low's. Though i was hoping x3d would do a bit better, I'm sure it does with the lows.
 
Flogger23m said:
No Nanite is a huge disappointment. Would have been wonderful for this game.

Found one review where someone said they were struggling to get 60 frame rates at high settings with a RTX 4070 and 5700X3D. Will probably have for a few patches.
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Their probably near or at a camp, which is where I heard that fps tanks according to youtube reviewers.
It's playing great for me with rig in the sig.
 
polonyc2 said:
so what happens when hardware ray tracing is added?...I thought Lumen and Nanite were a form of software ray tracing which is less performance intensive but is baked into the engine?...so what happens with Lumen and Nanite once you enable hardware RT?
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In Black Myth, Nvidia ray tracing looks better:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhTAaZt51vI

Lumen does an okay job but you can see ray tracing does look better though it comes with a larger performance hit. I'm sure different games will have different results but just using this as an example.
 
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GoldenTiger said:
Why would you be happy that there aren't even better graphics options, whether you want to use them or not?
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99% of the times it runs like ass when its released. Rather have them work on it and do it properly.
 
No bugs as of yet and performance is pretty solid on Ultra with my setup so far. I only finished the prologue, though.
 
Bigbacon said:
Wait, you dont just look up or down like ladders have worked in games since forever?
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It's not a big deal if it would use the arrow keys the whole time after you rebind them and not make you switch to wasd controls like FO4 does with build mode.
 
I'm running the GamePass version of the game.

So, was finally to fire it up briefly, have optimizations to make so it runs better, but I played up to the bunker and framerates were solid @ 4k, everything set to epic with FSR and Fluid Motion active on this setup:

https://hardforum.com/threads/rog-ally-x-and-rx-7900-xt-egpu-build-results.2037567/

Using DSX I was able to set my Dualsense Edge controller emulating an Xbox controller. All controls working fine so far.

I need to optimize to eliminate screen tearing when moving around quickly, that was kinda yuck. I'll get some FPS counts later this evening when I can really get some playtime in. The shader compiling went pretty quick on this setup. I also had some initial sound issues which I was able to resolve by restarting.

Most importantly, hot damn, Stalker is back! I got a huge grin on my face when I got out into the open and realized my pewpew sticks shoot like the barrels are bent sideways... Looking forward to re-gearing myself until they work as intended.

From earlier - if my little Ally X + RX 7900XT EGPU rig runs this fine, I think the 7900XTX rigs should crush it. Can't wait to migrate it down to the 150" projector and my home theater surround. It'll run even better there and still be gorgeous!
 
GoldenTiger said:
That'll be awesome. I speak from experience :D.
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YASSSSSSSSS! I dunno what's happening with the folks reviewing this initially and their rigs. I wish them all the best... But for an old codger like me - it's running fabulous. I hope the folks encountering issues today can overcome them. The moment I stepped back into the zone and listened, watched the horizon and buildings, and scrambled like a quarterback with no defense... I knew I was back in the zone.
 
Obviously people are keen to know if this is worth playing or not, so here are some thoughts after playing through the "tutorial" mission and just starting to run about the open world (about an hour total).

Things I like:
* It's properly dark at night and underground, like real life.
* The headtorch never runs out of batteries (far too many games do that, for no good reason).
* It looks very good generally, especially with HDR on.
* It has the sort of conveniences you'd expect in a modern game, like marking nearby corpses on the compass (so you don't have to spend ages hunting through the undergrowth for your hard-won loot).
* It feels just like a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game.

Some things that aren't so good.
* It runs a bit slow (60fps or so with a 5950X and 7900XTX at 4k), especially given that upscaling is on by default. It's smooth and playable though, and it would no doubt run faster if I fiddled with the settings (it defaulted to "epic" everything and "TSR" upscaling, whatever that is).
* They rather dump you right in it, with sudden death from invisible mutants during the first mission. Veterans of the original games will cope, but n00bs will likely be put off.

So far I don't regret pre-ordering it. I'll have to play a lot more before being able to form a full opinion.
 
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So, since i pre-ordered it and got the ultimate edition. Did anyone else find/get the free starting stuff?
 

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDYjQ0uQw1s

Gman both praises it and criticizes it for being true to its S.T.A.L.K.E.R. roots, which I think is pretty spot on haha.

I think I'd want the Ultimate Edition from GOG so that the studio gets a larger cut but man, I'm not jonesing enough for an early S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 experience to pay $110 lol. I'll give this a few months to get patched and find a sale price. Nice to read the feedback so far though, sounds like most of the really early reviews with more performance issues and bugs were probably pre-patch which is a shame.
 
Seems like I get a heavy memory leak or something. Just got to the base camp and it tank my performance to single digits after the cutscene in the bar. Also happened earlier in the game after a cutscene.
 
Flogger23m said:
Lumen does an okay job but you can see ray tracing does look better though it comes with a larger performance hit. I'm sure different games will have different results but just using this as an example.
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but isn't Lumen/Nanite built into the UE5 engine?...so what happens to them when you enable hardware ray-tracing?...the software RT can't just be removed
 
Stalker2.jpg
 
polonyc2 said:
but isn't Lumen/Nanite built into the UE5 engine?...so what happens to them when you enable hardware ray-tracing?...the software RT can't just be removed
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It's just another graphics feature at the end of the day. The engine itself doesn't care if you turn it off. There's no real need or requirement for it to be on as far as the engine is concerned. Whether the game lets you or not is another story, but the engine doesn't give a shit.

Lumen doesn't trace against triangles in software, it uses another data structure.
 
socK said:
Whether the game lets you or not is another story, but the engine doesn't give a shit
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that was my point...does any UE5 game that uses those features give you the option in the Graphics settings to enable/disable Lumen/Nanite?...you can do it as a developer but can the end-user disable it?
 
The game is running perfectly fine on my PC with Epic settings and DLSS Quality. I am not using frame generation. I am not experiencing any microstutter or load stutter whatsoever. It feels so smooth. No bugs or crashes in 4 hours. I honestly don't know what all those reviewers are talking about. This game is excellent. I didn't want to stop playing.
 
polonyc2 said:
that was my point...does any UE5 game that uses those features give you the option in the Graphics settings to enable/disable Lumen/Nanite?...you can do it as a developer but can the end-user disable it?
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The developer can add in options to disable it.
 
Armenius said:
The game is running perfectly fine on my PC with Epic settings and DLSS Quality. I am not using frame generation. I am not experiencing any microstutter or load stutter whatsoever. It feels so smooth. No bugs or crashes in 4 hours. I honestly don't know what all those reviewers are talking about. This game is excellent. I didn't want to stop playing.
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From what I've read, they had played and prepared their review videos on an earlier release of the game. Then, when the embargo lifted they published their vids. Shortly after release GSC put out a massive patch which addressed most of the things. Kinda feel like they shot themselves in the foot with that gameplan = /
 
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