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Alan Wake 2 on PlayStation 5 Pro – Behind The Scenes

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I’m not sure about Xbox, but I know PC also got nice performance improvements over time as well. It now runs substantially better in some areas.


Why optimize games prelaunch anymore when you can do it over time when people have already beaten it and moved on a year later? (rhetorical)

And they wonder why there are a core group of gamers who won't buy games until well down the road now.

Our industry man, I swear.
 

hinch7

Member
I’m not sure about Xbox, but I know PC also got nice performance improvements over time as well. It now runs substantially better in some areas.


Yeah it I recently got back into the game and completed it. A lot better since launch. Still crazy demading with pathtracing; with some dips in some woodland areas but now totally playable on a 4070Ti at 4K.
 

Kenneth Haight

Gold Member
Considering the Series X and base PS5 maintain the 60 fps, it's probably some issue with DRS values on the Pro. Or higher RT effects, like shadows, that tax that scene too much.
I doubt it's the CPU that is causing the performance issues there.
Do you think that could maybe be improved with a patch then or is this as close as we will get?
 
The 3D juegos analysis mentions that PSSR has to work with the already low resolution of 864p from the base PS5 so that’s why there’s not too much difference.

But I dunno if that’s the true or not.
 

Radical_3d

Member
The 3D juegos analysis mentions that PSSR has to work with the already low resolution of 864p from the base PS5 so that’s why there’s not too much difference.

But I dunno if that’s the true or not.
Look at the hair in the Analista de Bits video at 1 minute timestamp. You’ll see a breakdown in the hair in the main character that the base PS5 doesn’t have.
 
You’ll see a breakdown in the hair in the main character that the base PS5 doesn’t have.
There are several things noticeable that are better on the Pro compared to base PS5.

The average Joe will say that they look the same, but I think Sony is playing the long game, more demanding games are coming with the likes of MH Wilds, GTAVI and many more that will run best on the Pro.
 

Mister Wolf

Member
Considering the Series X and base PS5 maintain the 60 fps, it's probably some issue with DRS values on the Pro. Or higher RT effects, like shadows, that tax that scene too much.
I doubt it's the CPU that is causing the performance issues there.

AW2 does not have DRS.
 
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Bojji

Member
Considering the Series X and base PS5 maintain the 60 fps, it's probably some issue with DRS values on the Pro. Or higher RT effects, like shadows, that tax that scene too much.
I doubt it's the CPU that is causing the performance issues there.

Then that is probably the issue.
The game was forced to run at a fixed resolution, got to a point where there were too many shaders to calculate and performance dropped, because the GPU could not keep up.

No RT and it's 8xxp in performance mode (they can't really go any lower), just with higher gfx settings. I think it's fair to be disappointed with performance, they should have left settings as they were.
 

Bojji

Member
We always knew Alan Wake 2 was going to be a bad showcase.

Why? It's one of the newest engines around, it favors Xbox probably because it' likes compute performance. I don't know why they used settings in performance mode on Pro that drops fps this much, this is stupid.

Even if they used DRS - where they can go? 800p to 720p?
 
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winjer

Member
No RT and it's 8xxp in performance mode (they can't really go any lower), just with higher gfx settings. I think it's fair to be disappointed with performance, they should have left settings as they were.

But it's using RT.
The Pro in Quality mode improves reflections by a good margin, for example.
 

Mister Wolf

Member
Those drops aren't a big deal to anyone with a VRR display. Having the higher settings running at 60fps the majority of the time means more than some trivial frame drops. If people are upset about this wait until they see all the framedrops Wilds will have on the Pro.
 
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vkbest

Member
In PS4 pro happened with the first patches games too. Those companies are not testing the game, they only upgrade resolution, effect, expecting the game is better
 

Bojji

Member
In PS4 pro happened with the first patches games too. Those companies are not testing the game, they only upgrade resolution, effect, expecting the game is better

Sometimes PS4 Pro had worse performance than base console, like The Last of us 2. Same is true for some games on Xbox SX, higher resolution than PS5 but worse performance.

Devs have fucked up priorities.
 

Bojji

Member
I don't think it's the CPU.

It's not. AW2 isn't very CPU heavy.

Looks like they fucked up the shadows:

VAU6DJn.jpeg
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
In 30fps quality mode, yes. But 60fps mode has drops not related to RT.
How do you know they aren't related to RT? RT still hits the CPU even though it is mainly hitting the GPU. If you are already maxing out the CPU then RT will push you over the edge into CPU bottlenOops.
Edit: Oops ignore
 
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Bojji

Member
How do you know they aren't related to RT? RT still hits the CPU even though it is mainly hitting the GPU. If you are already maxing out the CPU then RT will push you over the edge into CPU bottlenecks.

RT is turned off in performance mode so how can it affect... performance?
 
No RT and it's 8xxp in performance mode (they can't really go any lower), just with higher gfx settings. I think it's fair to be disappointed with performance, they should have left settings as they were.
When you look at how perform a 7700XT in Alan Wake 2, it's hard to understand how they can have a resolution that low on the Pro.

performance-1920-1080.png

performance-2560-1440.png

I wonder if it's because their engine isn't optimized well enough on console.
 
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Bojji

Member
When you look at how perform a 7700XT in Alan Wake 2, it's hard to understand how they can have a resolution that low on the Pro.

performance-1920-1080.png

performance-2560-1440.png

I wonder if it's because their engine isn't optimized well enough on console


Without DRS they have to set resolution for the lowest performing scene. And that forest scene at night is probably around the heaviest in entire game.

City segments and Alan segments run much better, I don't know where TPU took those measures but i doubt it's the same place we have videos from.
 
Without DRS they have to set resolution for the lowest performing scene. And that forest scene at night is probably around the heaviest in entire game.

City segments and Alan segments run much better, I don't know where TPU took those measures but i doubt it's the same place we have videos from.
It's really a strange choice not to have integrated DRS for such a heavy game on console.
 

sachos

Member
When you look at how perform a 7700XT in Alan Wake 2, it's hard to understand how they can have a resolution that low on the Pro.

performance-1920-1080.png

performance-2560-1440.png

I wonder if it's because their engine isn't optimized well enough on console.
Came here to post this, again. And remember this bench was done on launch patch and Max Raster settings. The PS5 Pro is not using Max settings either and should have all the perf improvements from patches too. Really disappointing showing by AW2 here.
 

Filben

Member
Unfortunately I only have 10GB of VRAM and it's really struggling with HDR and RT despite raw power delivers enough FPS for me.

I was considering the PS5 version but this one seems to have issues on its own. :(
 
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