this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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It's a new day, and another badly-optimized AAA Unreal Engine 5 game has hit store shelves. A couple of YouTubers, including Daniel Owen, have discovered serious performance problems in The Outer Worlds 2 that almost mirror Borderlands 4's atrocious launch day performance. One of the most problematic graphics settings is the game's ray tracing mode, which prevents even AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D gaming champ from achieving 60 FPS at resolutions well under 1080p.

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[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 138 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Y'all member the time when hardware demanding games meant awesome graphics?

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was so excited when I finally had a machine that could run Crysis at full graphics settings.

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[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 74 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There's actually a very easy fix for all poorly-performing AAA games: don't be a fucking clown and buy shit games from shit publishers. They're only pulling this shit today because they have been getting away with it for years, and they've been getting away with it for years because they have stupid idiot fucking customers who have been enabling them. If you bought this game and are upset that it runs like a snail with nerve damage, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

[–] real_squids@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

90% of players don't even know which graphic option does what. source: pulled it out of my ass

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I trust this source. Never pulled anything out of their ass that was false.

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

It's a good ass, reliable if a bit stubborn. And man can it haul a load!

[–] ISolox@lemmy.world 49 points 1 day ago (5 children)

As someone playing this on a 3080 with no major issues, just turn off ray tracing. The game really isn't that bad once you turn it off.

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It's quite crazy how much performance you gain from using pre-calculated lighting instead of raytracing. I know it looks worse, but there's gotta be a way to find a happy middle ground, maybe a "raytracing lite" lol.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I find raytracing adds very little to the look of the vast majority of games unless they are slow enough to focus on shadows or fine details.

Maybe I'm not playing the games that benefit significantly from raytracing.

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The Finals (and Arc Raiders) might be good examples of fast-paced games that use raytracing to make their details pop. Although I think they intentionally stagger their settings so RT will not be enabled unless your card has enough grunt to push those graphics (Using my Ryzen 7 5800x3d and an RTX 3090, getting easily 140-150fps in game no matter the action with medium RT).

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[–] real_squids@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Dynamic lighting already exists. Look at Phasmophobia, it's probably one of the heaviest Unity games because it uses it everywhere. Basically every light in that game is able to cast shadows, and it's got a lot of lights. Doesn't have any of the RT noise or lag too.

edit: it doesn't come cheap though, they had to do some downgrades to port it to consoles. Interior candles for example, they're no longer interactive.

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yes, but it can be inefficient performance-wise, which is why precalculated lighting is often a mandatory performance setting in most games. The ideal goal is to use the dedicated RT hardware in a way that achieves similar graphical results but with minimal performance loss (to transfer the CPU-bound option to something that can comfortably run on most average consumer GPUs).

Traditional Dynamic Lighting is definitely a good option to have for the user, though.

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[–] baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

in this case it doesn't use baked lighting, it still uses lumen, just a software version of it with lower settings. I've tried a couple UE5 games with a hardware/software lumen toggle and every time hardware lumen is significantly slower. it's one of the curses of unreal.

[–] real_squids@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago

The curse of Lumen is also in it's default settings, apparently. It has tons of noise and delay in every indie game I've tried

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Does raytracing even make the game look noticeably cooler, anyway?

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[–] SolSerkonos@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago

I've been playing on an RX 6600 @ 1440p with zero problems. I didn't even bother turning it on, so terrible RT performance is news to me.

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[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 38 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

Am I the only one who doesn't need real-time raytraced lighting? Show off the skills of your artists with some fancy pre-baked stuff instead.

[–] winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Or dare I say make a good game instead of just a shiny one

To be fair this time it's obsidian. That is kind of their whole deal.

That and horrible game breaking bugs. If the plot is absolute fire, and also it crashes every five seconds, this is on-brand.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 5 points 21 hours ago

I don't need it, but not being able to do what it says with very recent hardware and shit resolutions is very telling of other major issues in the game.

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

im trying to get smoother clip art looking anime cock textures into rimworld

[–] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

The hero we ~~need~~ ~~deserve~~ asked for and subscribe to on patreon

[–] recursive_recursion@piefed.ca 38 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Because I don't like that game.

I kept dying from the same mistakes over and over and couldn't figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do or where to go. Supposely the ship log will update when you've made progress, but mine never did.

Got bored of playing what is basically a Game Over simulator after a day of frustration and never touched it again. I guess I'm just too stupid/ADHD for a game like this.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago

Lmao game over simulator.

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[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

It's great but I threw in the towel after a few hours if play. I've never played a game that so readily gave me car sickness.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Adding a pip to the center of the screen helps reduce motion sickness. I hadn’t experienced it until I installed a Skyrim mod that removed the reticle for most things. Suddenly I found myself getting mildly motion sick unless I was constantly un-hiding the reticle.

Worth noting that some monitors have an option to manually add a pip. It’s meant for shooters when you’re meant to zoom in instead of hip firing, but it also works to reduce motion sickness.

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[–] Skua@kbin.earth 27 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I haven't played the Outer Worlds, but isn't a whole lot of it about making fun of companies doing this kind of stupid shit?

Based on a quick look at some videos showing off the max settings, it doesn't even look like it's doing much with all that demand. It looks like a completely normal big budget game

[–] SteposVenzny@beehaw.org 8 points 1 day ago

It’s more about companies getting people killed, less about companies doing a bad job at making video games.

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 6 points 22 hours ago

It's very milquetoast critique in a safe corporate sort of way. Ironic.

[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 5 points 1 day ago

It's a dumbed-down critic of corporatism. «Creative freedom» of Microsoft-owned developers is a joke.

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

because nvidia has somehow convinced the gaming world that hardware has become powerful enough for realtime path tracing. It has not. Not by a long shot. And not anytime soon.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago

It is…if you render the lighting at like 64x64 pixels and then “deep learning super scale” it to 4k and then AI generate 3 ~~fake~~super-sampled frames for every real frame.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 21 hours ago

Another day, another unreal engine game with massive performance issues.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unreal Engine did some amazing things at a technical level but doesn’t really seem to be ready for consumers. I somewhat don’t even blame the developers for assuming that UE5 would be the right choice considering all the marketing Epic did to make it sound like a magical wand for free performance.

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[–] Muffi@programming.dev 13 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Imagine if modern GPU's were actually designed with gaming in mind...

[–] qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Imagine if modern games were designed with gaming in mind.

UE used to be, before they started chasing the military sector super hard.

[–] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 10 points 22 hours ago

To anyone who hasn’t seen it: The raytracing mode is actually broken and manages to look worse AND less realistic/accurate AMD run like complete ass. It’s not something turning on, and genuinely wild that they shipped something so broken instead of hide it from the options

[–] AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 10 points 14 hours ago

I'll care about ray tracing if it ever gets efficient enough to run at 60+ fps on an entry-level apu.

[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

Good lord that is bad.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 6 points 14 hours ago (4 children)

does anyone actually care about ray tracing?

[–] levzzz@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

It's amazingly beautiful when done right. (See cyberpunk 2077, portal rtx, half-life 2 rtx, alan wake 2, control, metro exodus, SEUS PTGI, etc.)

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

I mean, it's not necessary, but neither are HD resolutions or high framerates.

It has seemed every beautiful in some things.

It's not necessary, but like, lots of things aren't. The tech in itself isn't horrible, it's just horrible usecases which make it bad. Even if most usecases are horrible. Some aren't.

Edit for instance we have much the same power computers with my brother, aside from me having an outdated GPU. Last year when we played HP Legacy for a bit, I would say that his was far prettier when utilising Ray tracing, and the whole game is a sort of feast of aesthetics, so. Although his rig wasn't potent enough to have great framerates, so playing was still better for him as well without Ray tracing. But the scenery without much action still had good framerares so we saw rhe difference. Idk perhaps it will never be good but

[–] CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Yea, didn't care about ray tracing until I played Control, and that game is gorgeous with it, made me appreciate it when it's well Implemented into a game

I do but I'm also painfully aware that most implementations of it don't really add anything. Though my interest in it is more from a rendering perspective.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It won't be many generations before they stop leaving it as an option that can be turned off, just to force upgrades...

[–] Davel23@fedia.io 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle requires a card with ray-tracing capability. No option to turn it off.

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[–] Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago

It's called breaking boundaries, just on the other end! Let's see if we can reach 30 fps by 2026

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