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

I forgot, the only thing that I have changed was replacing DLSS + FG with the latest versions, but this can't be the reason. I definitely saw 20/21GB VRAM usage on Gamepass, now 10-11GB on Steam lol
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Game is a buggy unoptimized disaster. Do not touch.
Click to expand...
That's not what caught my attention. Skill Up said the game is "not made to be fun" and that you "have to die to anomalies" to learn how to deal with them. Trial and error based gameplay is the worst, and reminds me of soulslike and fromsoft games. It totally destroys any semblance of immersion if you have to die to learn how to handle situations.
 
lors said:
I can't believe it, but Gamepass is broken in terms of performance.
I compared the two and can't believe how much better the Steam version runs. No weird slowdowns anymore and much, much better frame times. I tested with the exact same settings. This is a night and day difference. WTF...
Click to expand...
Oh snap! I'm hoping I can move my savegame over to the Steam folder somehow, if not, I'll gladly start over... It'll reduce my death count :p. Gotta look up where I found the stuff I found though... I sorta told the main quest to go pound sand while I tried to visit every dot on the map and tall tower...

Also those floaty invisible cloud thingies suck. Why GSC, why?
 
lors said:
I can't believe it, but Gamepass is broken in terms of performance.
I compared the two and can't believe how much better the Steam version runs. No weird slowdowns anymore and much, much better frame times. I tested with the exact same settings. This is a night and day difference. WTF...
Click to expand...
Just one more reason why I don't rent my games from Game Pass and rent them on Steam instead.
 
I'm having great fun with HOC! Just made it through the opening section up to reaching the first town area and the gameplay and atmosphere feels very reminiscent of the originals, really seems like a proper S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game so far. (yes we are so back) Technologically the renderer isn't the most advanced (not bad, it's just easy to get spoiled these days) but the visuals are well-constructed and feel immersive.
Plays well on controller.
The initial shader compilation on first launch or gpu change is ferocious! 300W peak on 14700KF!
I feel like it says a lot about the quality and innovativeness of the originals, that I can say this new installment plays very similar and the "inventory management rpg-lite survival horror" gameplay loop holds up. Just now with more polish, newer tech, higher production values etc. Voice acting is decent. Atmospheric music and sfx are top-notch. I have died like so many times including the first time I encountered a mutant (in true STALKER fashion)


For fun, I ran through part of the intro with a few diff cards

HOC-7900XT-1440UW-Epic.jpg
HOC-3090Ti-1440UW-Epic.jpg
HOC-3070Ti-1440-High.jpg
HOC-A770-1440-High.jpg

7900XT does really well and has both higher averages and more consistent frametimes than 3090Ti... at first. Unfortunately I seem to be experiencing a system memory leak when using the 7900XT specifically and eventually system ram fills up and I get an annoying cyclical stutter. Hopefully there's a fix soon because otherwise the Radeon feels the smoothest of the cards I've tested and when sys mem is not bugged the frametime line is the flattest of the bunch.
The NV cards do fine as expected but things didn't feel as fluid as on the 7900XT when the Radeon is working correctly.
Alchemist has a terrible time here for some reason, really disappointing since that card at 2.8Ghz as tested can often reach 3070 non-Ti performance but here it's something like half the performance of 3070Ti considering the upscaling setting difference
 
NattyKathy said:
I'm having great fun with HOC! Just made it through the opening section up to reaching the first town area and the gameplay and atmosphere feels very reminiscent of the originals, really seems like a proper S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game so far. (yes we are so back) Technologically the renderer isn't the most advanced (not bad, it's just easy to get spoiled these days) but the visuals are well-constructed and feel immersive.
Plays well on controller.
The initial shader compilation on first launch or gpu change is ferocious! 300W peak on 14700KF!
I feel like it says a lot about the quality and innovativeness of the originals, that I can say this new installment plays very similar and the "inventory management rpg-lite survival horror" gameplay loop holds up. Just now with more polish, newer tech, higher production values etc. Voice acting is decent. Atmospheric music and sfx are top-notch. I have died like so many times including the first time I encountered a mutant (in true STALKER fashion)


For fun, I ran through part of the intro with a few diff cards

View attachment 692837
View attachment 692836
View attachment 692839
View attachment 692838

7900XT does really well and has both higher averages and more consistent frametimes than 3090Ti... at first. Unfortunately I seem to be experiencing a system memory leak when using the 7900XT specifically and eventually system ram fills up and I get an annoying cyclical stutter. Hopefully there's a fix soon because otherwise the Radeon feels the smoothest of the cards I've tested and when sys mem is not bugged the frametime line is the flattest of the bunch.
The NV cards do fine as expected but things didn't feel as fluid as on the 7900XT when the Radeon is working correctly.
Alchemist has a terrible time here for some reason, really disappointing since that card at 2.8Ghz as tested can often reach 3070 non-Ti performance but here it's something like half the performance of 3070Ti considering the upscaling setting difference
Click to expand...
Good work!
 
M76 said:
That's not what caught my attention. Skill Up said the game is "not made to be fun" and that you "have to die to anomalies" to learn how to deal with them. Trial and error based gameplay is the worst, and reminds me of soulslike and fromsoft games. It totally destroys any semblance of immersion if you have to die to learn how to handle situations.
Click to expand...
He must have not played the original because this game very much reminds me of it, including the difficulty. The new mechanic of navigating anomalous zones with a detector and your bolts, as I said, took me a couple of tries to figure it out (like any new mechanic), but now I'm good. I find it to be a good way to make finding artifacts more fun and immersive versus just finding them in random loot around high concentrations of anomalies in the original.
NattyKathy said:
I'm having great fun with HOC! Just made it through the opening section up to reaching the first town area and the gameplay and atmosphere feels very reminiscent of the originals, really seems like a proper S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game so far. (yes we are so back) Technologically the renderer isn't the most advanced (not bad, it's just easy to get spoiled these days) but the visuals are well-constructed and feel immersive.
Plays well on controller.
The initial shader compilation on first launch or gpu change is ferocious! 300W peak on 14700KF!
I feel like it says a lot about the quality and innovativeness of the originals, that I can say this new installment plays very similar and the "inventory management rpg-lite survival horror" gameplay loop holds up. Just now with more polish, newer tech, higher production values etc. Voice acting is decent. Atmospheric music and sfx are top-notch. I have died like so many times including the first time I encountered a mutant (in true STALKER fashion)


For fun, I ran through part of the intro with a few diff cards

View attachment 692837
View attachment 692836
View attachment 692839
View attachment 692838

7900XT does really well and has both higher averages and more consistent frametimes than 3090Ti... at first. Unfortunately I seem to be experiencing a system memory leak when using the 7900XT specifically and eventually system ram fills up and I get an annoying cyclical stutter. Hopefully there's a fix soon because otherwise the Radeon feels the smoothest of the cards I've tested and when sys mem is not bugged the frametime line is the flattest of the bunch.
The NV cards do fine as expected but things didn't feel as fluid as on the 7900XT when the Radeon is working correctly.
Alchemist has a terrible time here for some reason, really disappointing since that card at 2.8Ghz as tested can often reach 3070 non-Ti performance but here it's something like half the performance of 3070Ti considering the upscaling setting difference
Click to expand...
I highly suggest playing with Ukrainian VA and English subtitles. The Ukrainian VA is superb.
 
NattyKathy said:
I'm having great fun with HOC! Just made it through the opening section up to reaching the first town area and the gameplay and atmosphere feels very reminiscent of the originals, really seems like a proper S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game so far. (yes we are so back) Technologically the renderer isn't the most advanced (not bad, it's just easy to get spoiled these days) but the visuals are well-constructed and feel immersive.
Plays well on controller.
The initial shader compilation on first launch or gpu change is ferocious! 300W peak on 14700KF!
I feel like it says a lot about the quality and innovativeness of the originals, that I can say this new installment plays very similar and the "inventory management rpg-lite survival horror" gameplay loop holds up. Just now with more polish, newer tech, higher production values etc. Voice acting is decent. Atmospheric music and sfx are top-notch. I have died like so many times including the first time I encountered a mutant (in true STALKER fashion)


For fun, I ran through part of the intro with a few diff cards

View attachment 692837
View attachment 692836
View attachment 692839
View attachment 692838

7900XT does really well and has both higher averages and more consistent frametimes than 3090Ti... at first. Unfortunately I seem to be experiencing a system memory leak when using the 7900XT specifically and eventually system ram fills up and I get an annoying cyclical stutter. Hopefully there's a fix soon because otherwise the Radeon feels the smoothest of the cards I've tested and when sys mem is not bugged the frametime line is the flattest of the bunch.
The NV cards do fine as expected but things didn't feel as fluid as on the 7900XT when the Radeon is working correctly.
Alchemist has a terrible time here for some reason, really disappointing since that card at 2.8Ghz as tested can often reach 3070 non-Ti performance but here it's something like half the performance of 3070Ti considering the upscaling setting difference
Click to expand...
Have you tried running FSR3 on the 7900XT yet instead of XeSS?
 
Armenius said:
He must have not played the original because this game very much reminds me of it, including the difficulty. The new mechanic of navigating anomalous zones with a detector and your bolts, as I said, took me a couple of tries to figure it out (like any new mechanic), but now I'm good. I find it to be a good way to make finding artifacts more fun and immersive versus just finding them in random loot around high concentrations of anomalies in the original.

I highly suggest playing with Ukrainian VA and English subtitles. The Ukrainian VA is superb.
Click to expand...
I've been switching back and forth between Ukrainian VO and English and yeah I'm leaning towards sticking with the Ukrainian. The English version is good, but the accents sound kinda campy sometimes and the Ukrainian is also quite good and authentic to the setting
 
CAD4466HK said:
Have you tried running FSR3 on the 7900XT yet instead of XeSS?
Click to expand...
No. I don't usually bother with FSR, XeSS has so much better temporal stability and reconstruction. And I use Lossless Scaling for framegen so I don't really need FSR FG either.
I'll try FSR scaling sometime For Science. But I'll be surprised if it compares favorably to XeSS
 
NattyKathy said:
No. I don't usually bother with FSR, XeSS has so much better temporal stability and reconstruction. And I use Lossless Scaling for framegen so I don't really need FSR FG either.
I'll try FSR scaling sometime For Science. But I'll be surprised if it compares favorably to XeSS
Click to expand...
Hmmm, makes me want to try it on my 4070S for shits and giggles.
 
I'm playing fully maxed setting, 4K, DLAA (no scaling), with Frame Generation on, getting 110+ FPS most the time. If I use DLSS Quality, I'm like 130FPS or more... lol. But DLAA looks so nice. I'm also using FOV of 110. Steam version of the game BTW, smooth as butter for the most part, really enjoying it so far. :)
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
I'm playing fully maxed setting, 4K, DLAA (no scaling), with Frame Generation on, getting 110+ FPS most the time. If I use DLSS Quality, I'm like 130FPS or more... lol. But DLAA looks so nice. I'm also using FOV of 110. Steam version of the game BTW, smooth as butter for the most part, really enjoying it so far. :)
Click to expand...
I'm using 106 since that is the 16:9 horizontal conversion for a fixed 74 degree vertical FOV. It's what I use in everything that allows FOV adjustment.
CAD4466HK said:
Anyone else using a frame cap in this game? I'm not.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHQ3jAeza60
Click to expand...

Just my standard 117 FPS cap for G-SYNC reasons.
 
Bought it last night and played a bit past the prologue.

So far so good. On Veteran difficulty and getting absolutely wrecked. And I love it.

Performance seems to be fine - I'm on High Presets, Quality FSR with Frame Gen on - averaging somewhere between 80 to 120 frames depending on the area.

Only got to play for a few hours, but so far I'm intrigued by the atmosphere. Sound alone is creepy as hell and it's awesome.
 
NattyKathy said:
Got the GoG version installing now, very nice to see a new AAA release on that platform. No DRM and no launcher requirement FTW! Can't wait to experience The Zone again, it's been awhile.

Of course I'll be doing testing with various HW configs. I've got the main gaming system (14700KF + 3090Ti + 7900XT), workstation (5950X + A380 - the latter is below min requirements and I'm curious if a $110 6GB Intel GPU can eke out a playable experience), and the benching rig (12900KS) with A770, 3070Ti, rx5700, 1080Ti, and rx580 at hand.

At what point did I go from playing games to just using them to test hardware :LOL:
Click to expand...
You are playing PC hobby - The Game!

I’ve got Stalker 2 on my watch list for sometime next year most likely. Looks fun.
 
Can't wait to play this after work tonight! I spent about an hour wandering around this swamp area looking for the "Sheltered Stash". Has anyone had any luck finding this? It is within the Lesser Zone not far from the starting point of the game.
 

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loafer87gt said:
Can't wait to play this after work tonight! I spent about an hour wandering around this swamp area looking for the "Sheltered Stash". Has anyone had any luck finding this? It is within the Lesser Zone not far from the starting point of the game.
Click to expand...
I saw that spot on my map JUST before logging last night. Probably going to hop on and knock that out first. lol

Let's hope the loot in there is worth the grind to find it.
 
loafer87gt said:
Can't wait to play this after work tonight! I spent about an hour wandering around this swamp area looking for the "Sheltered Stash". Has anyone had any luck finding this? It is within the Lesser Zone not far from the starting point of the game.
Click to expand...

I just started the game again and going by your screen grab, it's in one of the cars in the middle of the swamp, can't be more accurate since the icon disappears after you grab it.
 
Last edited:
I tried to play the original repeatedly and just couldn't do it. Even with a pile of mods that supposedly made it a zillion times better. This seems like more of the same. I love the look of the world, but as a game it sounds like torture.
 
Domingo said:
I tried to play the original repeatedly and just couldn't do it. Even with a pile of mods that supposedly made it a zillion times better. This seems like more of the same. I love the look of the world, but as a game it sounds like torture.
Click to expand...
I mean, you know, it's kinda like...
1732223060243.png


Then you get stronger and it's like...
1732223151964.png


Then when it's over you realize you loved it all and alot of other games are like...
1732223202843.png


Because you were successful doing this...
1732223252152.png


Ya know? I know I'm like this dude, but you know..?
1732223329572.png
 
Positional audio needs work, 10 hours played, started to notice that sometimes I hear sounds from the side but the enemy is directly behind. I did report this to the developers, just wondering if anyone else has experienced this.
 
Heavy_Nova said:
I mean, you know, it's kinda like...
View attachment 692968

Then you get stronger and it's like...
View attachment 692973

Then when it's over you realize you loved it all and alot of other games are like...
View attachment 692974

Because you were successful doing this...
View attachment 692975

Ya know? I know I'm like this dude, but you know..?
View attachment 692977
Click to expand...

Totally fair take. I know some people that hate the Souls games for similar reasons and I love 'em. Different strokes 'n stuff.
 
deceptXS said:
Positional audio needs work, 10 hours played, started to notice that sometimes I hear sounds from the side but the enemy is directly behind. I did report this to the developers, just wondering if anyone else has experienced this.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, my surrounds go from one channel to the other when the dude/dudes are in front of me all the time.
o_O have to rely on the peepers more than ever now.
 
CAD4466HK said:
Oh yeah, my surrounds go from one channel to the other when the dude/dudes are in front of me all the time.
o_O have to rely on the peepers more than ever now.
Click to expand...
Plot twist... Working as intended. It's a side-effect of the mind-melting machine that uses brainiac mutants and psychics messing with your noodle remotely.
 
deceptXS said:
Positional audio needs work, 10 hours played, started to notice that sometimes I hear sounds from the side but the enemy is directly behind. I did report this to the developers, just wondering if anyone else has experienced this.
Click to expand...
Seems fine to me with Dolby Atmos for Headphones.
 
I just hope HoC is not as difficult as Shadows of Chernobyl is, I remember Call of Pripyat being much easier compared to SoC. Just took me a while to get a feel for SoC as it's not noob friendly so to speak.
 
VF31Tomcatters said:
I just hope HoC is not as difficult as Shadows of Chernobyl is, I remember Call of Pripyat being much easier compared to SoC. Just took me a while to get a feel for SoC as it's not noob friendly so to speak.
Click to expand...
SoC was my favorite and not that hard to me once you played it about 5 times. :D

CoP was good but i absolutely hated how the AI would wait till it got pitch fucking black while you were in a military base, and then would decide to spawn 20 soldiers and then rank and filed the bastards directly to your location no matter where you were. And after about 27 times of you dying and then escaping, it would let the wild dogs out to try and make you rage quit whoot whoot smh.

Good times, I expect nothing less from this game.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
I'm playing fully maxed setting, 4K, DLAA (no scaling), with Frame Generation on, getting 110+ FPS most the time. If I use DLSS Quality, I'm like 130FPS or more... lol. But DLAA looks so nice. I'm also using FOV of 110. Steam version of the game BTW, smooth as butter for the most part, really enjoying it so far. :)
Click to expand...
Controller or mouse? because even with reflex and my Razer DaV3 HS, there is very very noticeable mouse lag when playing DLAA with Frame Gen which is to be expected because the game does not run consistently above 60fps when DLAA, it's more like 45-55 average especially when in the town areas. There isn't a CPU/GPU combo n the planet that can hold a minimum of 60fps with DLAA at 4K which leads me to believe you are actually not rendering at 4K but are in pseudo resolution as there is a presentation bug in the game if using Windowed Borderless whereby it renders at a lower res and not actually 4K.

Only Windowed mode and Exclusive Fullscreen operate correctly for full res rendering.
 
socK said:
Oh man

Lack of shadows on your flashlight and muzzle flash is a crime in this game

I expect this will be corrected post haste by them or a mod, but ouch
Click to expand...

Yeah that is an odd one, in particular because the original STALKER was one of the earlier games to have it. And it adds a lot to dark cramped areas like the under ground labs.
 
robbiekhan said:
So yes, on this specific type of combo of hardware and display, Gsync off offers the better experience.
Click to expand...

That's totally valid in your case. I guess an OLED panel with a 240hz range might also be more sensitive when it comes to VRR-flickering. The Gamma of OLED subpixel is only optimized for a fixed refresh rate, so the wider the VRR-range, the worse it could get. Also from my experience, the closer you reach your CPU limit, the worse the frametimes can get.

There is also a panel variance on OLEDs etc. when it comes to VRR-flickering, which you can also see here in the 10 second video: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/learn/research/vrr-flicker

My older LG 65C9 (with two swapped panels where I also tested VRR-flickering), my Sony 55A80J and my LG 48C1 are way less sensitive to VRR-flickering. They are basically all on the same level. My 77C2 with a newer OLED.EX panel is sadly way more sensitive to it. That's why I aim for the most stable frametimes.

Here is Stalker 2 frametime graph after I switched to the Steam-Version:


View: https://youtu.be/icWCME5GPCo

I forgot the VRR-overlay, so here is a second video with it on:


View: https://youtu.be/hVbw6wHN7PI

As you can see, it mostly stays below 100hz and within the 60-90hz range, which is as good as possible in my case. The camera exaggerates the VRR-flickering, but it is not really visible while playing. At least not bothersome at all.

I wonder if VRR-flickering is even fully fixable. LG said back in the days, they would need to implement multiple gamma curves for different refresh rates, but there is radio silence about this issue for many years now. I guess it's harder to fix than we think.
 
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