So far: HOLY HELL this looks amazing. It. Looks. AMAZING. Next-Gen is HERE folks. No wonder this release took so long, well worth the wait to be honest..
Issues: I definitely ran into a substantial fps drop with this release. I use a laptop with a 3060 and an 8 core 16 thread AMD 5900HS and you fucking BET I have the laptop in 'Turbo' mode for this, my goodness. What's interesting is, when you fire up the FPS numbers in-game the BOTTOM number (frame prep time, someone correct me please if I'm wrong) is way higher with UE5, this is the same issue I kind-of resolved in Blue Is Better 2 recently. Resolved it for myself, not a specific trick for everyone, my apologies... THAT SAID... Here's what's working for me:
-- 60% Res does work, not a bad tip. But I'm a stubborn guy, I want 100. Nothing less. Or I might as well throw this awesome monitor in the garbage. So.. Instead of 2560x1440, I am enjoying the strange widescreen movie experience of 2560x1080. Walking around in-game is full movie-style, but conversations and possibly H scenes, including other 'video' clips (Sequencer/Matinee Events in Unreal-speak) are clearly 'packed' in the game at a traditional 16:9 aspect ratio, not a problem at all. Somehow full-on 1440p was chugging at around 36 fps but I'm at 60/16 for the fps (static/stationary in game) and the range seems to be from 38-ish to 78-ish depending on wtf is happening. First playthrough of this version so I imagine a chunk of that performance hit is a lack of shader cache until a full playthrough or 'most-of-one' happens, which for me is right now.. K that's the first issue
-- Second issue: Spring has SPRUNG, and shit is IN. BLOOM. I've never seen such a gorgeous bathroom for a video game, let alone Adult content, but the light we all knew and loved for that incredible shower scene is now a blast of damn near SUNLIGHT and many of the other lights appear multiplied or something. I'll mess with settings and try to find a solution, if UUUnlocker or however you say it - can get their UE5 version out then there are console commands to fix that. Possible pro tip would be to run ReShade if you HAVE to set your PC on fire today, but in all seriousness maybe there's some goodies in ReShade that can help with the Bloom Bonanza! Because Bloom is not the only issue... read on, friend
-- Either it's default to UE5, or Auril applied something, something, really not my area of expertise here, but there's a grainy quality to the image that I have seen from over-use of sharpening effects, but it also has the old-TV static appearance like Cycles in Blender with Optix (or with CUDA I suppose, maybe, I use Cycles..) and it allows for an incredibly realistic image, it's not, technically speaking, a 'flaw', but it looks strange and it comes into game-view regularly but without a distinct pattern ~ it isn't isolated to a character in particular or lighting specifically or a room in the house. It's kind-of everywhere, but somewhat subtle. Strange, just strange. Might be my own issue I will double check my NVidia settings. Looks great in general but this over-sharpening isn't consistent so it keeps drawing my attention.
-- This release is 25b, going back in time to 24b which I was playing all night actually, I had some flashing, some weird lighting 'glitches' in-game (off the top of my head I don't recall it being an issue in cutscenes.. if anyone is curious DM me and I'll check). Now, back to 25b. I'm getting all kinds of artifacting that seems RTX related, it almost looks like there's an instability of light data in certain areas so the GPU is constantly recalculating them (as a gpu should do if such gpu were to trace rays..), for a more coffee-table description, little areas here and there as I move through the game almost look like a swarm of fruit flies going a million miles/kilometers an hour. Again, might be my own settings, I will double check. Just doing an immediate impression report here folks, please don't hate my dry corny jokes and obvious assessments. Doing this for the people
-- Finally, in more of a heartfelt sentiment, as fans of the game and all of us as a community on F95 we HAVE to acknowledge how much fucking time, frustration, endless headaches, and potential catastrophes it takes -- to not only switch engine versions mid-development (generally an industry no-no), but to instead level the fuck up, instead -- switch -- to the modern JUGGERNAUT of game engines is worth our time as users and those who enjoy the content to at least say thank you. Money here, money there. Money is wonderful, but all of you LURKERS not joining in the comments :: SHOW AURIL SOME LOVE :: She/He/They just did a FUCK-TON of work to make this happen. And UE5 isn't.. really.. if we're being honest.. optimized that well.......... yet. The performance isn't entirely on the devs. Unreal is free. Download UE5 and play around with sample projects in the market and you'll see a very similar performance oddity that we're seeing in Silicon Lust and Blue is Better 2. Performance will come -- but with UE5 fully released and off to the races it is likely time to start penny pinching again and build a serious machine if detail and fidelity is your one true gaming love. Performance will come. In time folks, in time! I just wanted to quickly acknowledge that because to do that conversion in 2 months (I assume they started converting prior to v.24b but maybe not, idk) takes some serious experience, time, and constant left/right problem solving for absolute bullshit that should just work as it did before, let alone the face you just want to make the damn game and try to have fun with it. In this thread I see tons of complaints: oh this doesn't work, now that's broken, the game's abandoned it's been 60 days, WHATEVER. Most of those complaints are valid performance issues for the individual, no disrespect from me I've had them too. But Auril got this monstrosity of a conversion done knowing full well that everyone was stuck with a beautiful game that only played through Day 2. They know. We may even owe them an apology, that's on you. At our fingertips are some awesome games to play, made by individuals or the smallest possible 'team' or dare I say 'studio'. We're spoiled with so many talented creators on this site and for what it's worth, what these devs are doing for us and our gaming niche is NOT. FUCKING. EASY. You can REALLY fuck things up for the game itself and ruin all the work you've done, or at the extremes the release could wreak havoc on people's systems somehow, in one way or another (assuming, the game actually builds and packs.. but.. still possible I would imagine..). You need to know a TON about the engine and game development in general to do this by yourself, even a small team is setting out to ruin all of their free time TROUBLESHOOTING for months or a few years, so yeah -- so hats-off to Auril3D, the person, the duo, the team, the studio, whatever it is. I THINK you fucking KNOCKED it OUT of the PARK, and from here on out things will continually improve!! Unbelievable, the graphics upgrade, un-fucking-believable
@Auril3D or whatever their handle is for F95 if they have one, may I sincerely say,
THANK YOU
~pajamapanda
*continuing my playthrough now, if I hit any other oddities or snags I will write a much, much, shorter message than this one. Or not. Fuck it
