The Callisto Protocol (survival/horror)

Yes the GPU is not being fully realised, it's waiting for stuff from the CPU which isn't happening since only one or two cores are being used and the whole performance bottlenecks as a result. Very poorly optimised, even with RT off as you can see from the stats.

On the lfipside I installed Death Stranding director's cut yesterday and marvelled at how well managed the CPU usage is, and as a result the GPU is breathing pretty amazingly. The Decima engine seems supremely optimised and I did some reading up, basically Kojima wanted the PC version to maximise thread usage, so even in scenes where nothing much CPU intensive is going on, the engine would allocate workloads to those idle cores to do other stuff instead thus sharing the work:

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DS and Doom Eternal will forever be my benchmarks for engine optimisation and ludicrous performance.
There is very little going on in DS at most times which is why it runs so smoothly. The decima engine is not perfect (though it looks great) but to see what it really does to a system you need to play HZD where its implimenting AI, foilage, combat physics and particles, etc, all at once.
 
There is very little going on in DS at most times which is why it runs so smoothly. The decima engine is not perfect (though it looks great) but to see what it really does to a system you need to play HZD where its implimenting AI, foilage, combat physics and particles, etc, all at once.

Got HZD but not installed having put several hours into it before but got bored of it - Reinstalled just now to check as not really played since more recent upgrades. Seems to scale really nicely. Ultra quality, DLSS Quality although fps is not that different using DLSS anyway, image just looks much better because the rasterised TAA is pretty crap lol.


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And the bench:
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Agree with points made on the game, as someone kinda a lot of the way through.

It's not that scary, in spite of wanting to be very scary. Probably depends upon the individual, but I personally am mostly immune to "jump scares" having a large number of older brothers who made that my life for a long time.

A couple things which ruin the scare, for me personally:
Telegraphing when big fights will occur by having bright yellow spikes on the walls. Not sure why they are there, but - there you go. See a bunch of these, you know what's up.
Being really proficient in melee combat. Okay, you made it to me, I'll dodge your attacks and beat you down. Dead Space was scary because if they got you, they got you.

I think it didn't really work on the "scare" angle, but it is still a decently fun game. I am not sure why they included the horrible vestigial and performance-destroying RT support at all. I really tried to see a difference, other than FPS. Came up pretty much empty.
I like RT in Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk. In this game, lordy, leave it off.
 
Agree with points made on the game, as someone kinda a lot of the way through.

It's not that scary, in spite of wanting to be very scary. Probably depends upon the individual, but I personally am mostly immune to "jump scares" having a large number of older brothers who made that my life for a long time.

A couple things which ruin the scare, for me personally:
Telegraphing when big fights will occur by having bright yellow spikes on the walls. Not sure why they are there, but - there you go. See a bunch of these, you know what's up.
Being really proficient in melee combat. Okay, you made it to me, I'll dodge your attacks and beat you down. Dead Space was scary because if they got you, they got you.

I think it didn't really work on the "scare" angle, but it is still a decently fun game. I am not sure why they included the horrible vestigial and performance-destroying RT support at all. I really tried to see a difference, other than FPS. Came up pretty much empty.
I like RT in Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk. In this game, lordy, leave it off.
The game takes it easy on you in the first half of the game, though. In encounters with multiple enemies the AI will 1v1 you most of the time. Another enemy would only attack you if you locked onto them. That goes out the window in the second half of the game, starting with the end of Chapter 4 and going into 5. You need to utilize your full arsenal at that point if you want to survive because enemies will start attacking you 3v1 or worse, and you can only dodge from one direction.
 
The game takes it easy on you in the first half of the game, though. In encounters with multiple enemies the AI will 1v1 you most of the time. Another enemy would only attack you if you locked onto them. That goes out the window in the second half of the game, starting with the end of Chapter 4 and going into 5. You need to utilize your full arsenal at that point if you want to survive because enemies will start attacking you 3v1 or worse, and you can only dodge from one direction.
And really - sounds like I'm playing on the wrong difficulty level. I tend to hate "random punishment", so typically balk at the highest level, but I am exploiting geometry and killing them too easily on mid.
But - I have been playing FPS games since FPS games existed, so I suppose it is high time to stop wimping out.
 
Yeah, Ray Tracing is very hit and miss, mostly miss in my experience, huge FPS hit for very little visual effect. Its only included to tick a box for marketing half the time, like I've said before, it'll be close to 2030 before RT really takes off when consoles can actually run it with decent frames (~60) and decent uncompromised resolution output. Also considering the entire industry has to relearn how to design and light a scene using it, at the moment its very apparent their just popping it in on top or instead of raster without any real thought to how RT lighting impacts the gameplay and visuals.

Here I notice nothing with RT on compared to off, and aside from Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk, Metro, and WD legions I haven't really notice RT making much of a difference in the actual look of a game.

So far I'm enjoying the immersion in this game, its nice to play something story driven and even on rails, not everything needs to be a Witcher 3 open world 100s of hours sandbox.
 
So far I'm enjoying the immersion in this game, its nice to play something story driven and even on rails, not everything needs to be a Witcher 3 open world 100s of hours sandbox.
I am as well. I like the world they made, and the general idea of "everyman put into an unimaginable scenario" in general. And yeah, I think there is room in the market for the open world stuff, and also a more tightly constrained story.

It's a fun ride IMO.
 
I'm still a big believer that most story-focused games are better delivered in a linear fashion. I like exploring an open world as much as the next person, but most of those titles throw urgency and any sense of time out the window. Either that or (like God of War), the main stories force you down a specific path for long periods of time.
 
AMD sponsored titles are always crappy for ray-tracing because they know their cards can't handle it as well as Nvidia...plus the best RT feature is Global Illumination...having GI, AO, reflections and shadows is the ultimate RT showcase but only a few titles have it- CP2077, Metro Exodus, Dying Light 2, Witcher 3...Atomic Heart should hopefully be another
 
Still doesn't change the fact that the performance hit is still massive, few titles do it well, and even fewer actually take advantage of it in their art direction, in fact I'd say only Metro and Control actually take RT art direction into account. Its a neat gimmick and looks great when its done well (I'd argue even then the Art Direction and Game Design have not caught up to using RT), but still just largely just a gimmick 4 years in until the rest of the world catches up.

Even in games like Dying Light I'll turn it off just to hit more frames, as honestly, a good 144+Hz monitor and hitting those frames makes things look better than most IQ settings do, especially with a performance hit like RT. That combined with at least my play style being that I don't go back and play many games, it doesn't matter to me that a 4090 can play those titles with better frames, because it still struggles with the next great title to hit great frames with RT on.

Atomic Heart in particular is going to be very frame heavy (or a shitty game), just watching what I've seen having 175hz on my monitor will matter more than RT.
 
Eh? my 4090 is maxed.
If you're testing completely uncapped and you can keep your GPU maxed out the whole time then you must have some special magical version of hardware or either the game itself.
 
If you're testing completely uncapped and you can keep your GPU maxed out the whole time then you must have some special magical version of hardware or either the game itself.

Here is 4K maxed graphics with no ray tracing.

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Unless you mean with ray tracing on?
 
And really - sounds like I'm playing on the wrong difficulty level. I tend to hate "random punishment", so typically balk at the highest level, but I am exploiting geometry and killing them too easily on mid.
But - I have been playing FPS games since FPS games existed, so I suppose it is high time to stop wimping out.
What I mentioned earlier about only needing 2-4 shots to take off both arms of enemies also goes out the window. It seems like every single enemy type gets a massive HP boost as you approach the end of the game. Running around and using cover to shoot and weaken them is still the preferable strategy, though. Unfortunately, that is sometimes impossible, especially in some parts of Chapter 7.
Here is 4K maxed graphics with no ray tracing.

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Unless you mean with ray tracing on?
With ray tracing on I am seeing around 80% on my 3090 at 4K. That is a big issue. It's close to 100% with ray tracing off, as in your screenshot with the 4090. The game still suffers from microstuttering with RT off, though. It is easier and more enjoyable with the higher FPS ceiling, though.
 
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All RTX Maxed, still max GPU usage. Don't know what you guys are on abut lol.
 
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All RTX Maxed, still max GPU usage. Don't know what you guys are on abut lol.
Okay I'm not trying to be a dick but do you think taking a screenshot of one spot literally means the whole game runs at that GPU usage? There are plenty of discussions and plenty of proof that the absolute vast majority of people cannot get full GPU usage even at 4K with Ray tracing on. Would you like me to post screenshot after screenshot after screenshot of that?
 
You know different CPU's run at different speeds right? Why would I care if someone with an old CPU is CPU limited?
 
You know different CPU's run at different speeds right? Why would I care if someone with an old CPU is CPU limited?
No I had no idea that a CPU affected GPU performance? LOL please tell me more.

There are people with the absolute top of the line CPUs out there still not getting full GPU usage. My gosh this has been discussed to death that with ray tracing on in this game that no CPU out there can fully feed the GPU. Now that said the last patch may have made things better.
 
How so? People were just saying ray tracing does nothing in this game. I'll take a SS with it on.
Whilst technically true, the technical definition of "maxed" would be to have every graphical setting maxed, it can't be maxed if one setting (RT) is off. It would be all settings maxed except RT. A matter of semantics or something I guess.
 
They just rolled out another patch for the game that's specifically targeting PC stuttering and performance issues.
 
Steam or something else? See no update here and no news on any website?

Steam. There are some mentions of it in the Steam discussion forum. Here are the patch notes that someone posted:

The Callisto Protocol 1.08 Patch Notes – December 15, 2022
Addressed ray-tracing related bugs.
More fixes for stuttering issues.
Addressed crashing issues.
Fixed random fps drop issue.
General gameplay performance improvements added.
Added general stability fixes.
Other minor fixes.
 
What I don't understand about all these stuttering or buggy PC games is why they only seem to start devoting resources to addressing it after a game is launched. I mean literally one minute of playing the average buggy PC game that gets released nowadays would show you that there are massive issues that should not be released to the public. A lot of the blame I think is on these people that make excuses and still give a game good reviews despite all the technical issues so game makers feel they can get away with this. There were actually so many people out there saying that technical issues shouldn't even be considered when giving a game a score which is just laughably fucking ridiculous.
 
Better to ask for forgiveness after, especially when pencil pushing publishers and board/management etc are adamant to meet release dates sadly.
 
I think they're just prioritizing the console versions, which rarely have major technical issues. The prevailing philosophy seems to be that it's better to get the PC version out the door than to sit on it. There's probably even a formula showing $'s lost for every day a game is delayed vs. on sale and broken. After all, "the community" will probably help you with homegrown fixes and bug reports vs. nada when you have no game available. That doesn't really fly with the console crowd, hence busted games for them are a much bigger deal. I don't like the way things are, but my opinion doesn't change reality.
 
I think they're just prioritizing the console versions, which rarely have major technical issues. The prevailing philosophy seems to be that it's better to get the PC version out the door than to sit on it. There's probably even a formula showing $'s lost for every day a game is delayed vs. on sale and broken. After all, "the community" will probably help you with homegrown fixes and bug reports vs. nada when you have no game available. That doesn't really fly with the console crowd, hence busted games for them are a much bigger deal. I don't like the way things are, but my opinion doesn't change reality.
All developers have, there is a long, long, long list of PC game ports broke on launch, some never fixed, yet look at how the world lost its freaking mind because CP2077 was busted on console (setting aside yhe over promise and under deliver issue).
 
There was a new patch today, 11 gb, didin't look at the post though. I glimpsed at it so I'm guessing there weren't specifics just general improvements? I think I saw something about combat improvements? I'm playing spiderman right now, but once I'm finished I think this is next.
 
There was a new patch today, 11 gb, didin't look at the post though. I glimpsed at it so I'm guessing there weren't specifics just general improvements? I think I saw something about combat improvements? I'm playing spiderman right now, but once I'm finished I think this is next.
They're not listing specific improvements with any patch, which is frustrating. How are we supposed to know what these gameplay improvements are if they don't tell us?
 
RT performance is definitely better and the motion is smoother for sure. Shame there's no replay value until the DLC so I will wait until then as already completed it.
 
I ONLY have a 2080TI, but my GPU is 99-100% utilized now. Similar to what Vega is reporting..not sure if it's due to the new patch. Core-i7 10700k is no longer bottlenecking GPU as when I OC the CPU c/w stock I see no improvement in FPS at all.
 
GPU usage mostly in the high 90% on 7900 XTX, 5800 X3D. Different areas have different fps, normally over 60fps, others in the 90s. 4K. Lowest I saw was 45fps for a brief moment, frame times look relatively smooth except for a couple of times.



Looks like RT in this title for the 7900 XTX is comparable to the 4090. I like this type of hard grind, atmospheric game play without all the hints treating you as stupid. May have to pick this title up once more is ironed out on it.
 
It does look good but even with FSR on and a new 7900xtx just with high setting not maxed one you goes significantly under 60 fps all the time, how is it specially less costly than the general RT title ?

Looks like RT in this title for the 7900 XTX is comparable to the 4090.
That would be strange, I cannot find actual PC benchmark with RT on, but it will require quite the drop
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It does look good but even with FSR on and a new 7900xtx just with high setting not maxed one you goes significantly under 60 fps all the time, how is it specially less costly than the general RT title ?


That would be strange, I cannot find actual PC benchmark with RT on, but it will require quite the drop
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It's not. He's just an AMD fan who will constantly find any reason, even if one day he says raytracing is useless, the next will claim that a 7900XTX has better raytracing than a 4090, while failing to realize that this game is heavily unoptimized and will run like crap even on a 4090 once you enable raytracing.
 
It's not. He's just an AMD fan who will constantly find any reason, even if one day he says raytracing is useless, the next will claim that a 7900XTX has better raytracing than a 4090, while failing to realize that this game is heavily unoptimized and will run like crap even on a 4090 once you enable raytracing.
Just like Witcher 3 with the 4090 unless you use DLSS 3 :D. No fanboy, just facts is all. There are choices and people have different priorities on what they want, some want 240 fps, smoothest game play -> RT off, other want pure graphics which mean RT on maybe. Everything in-between. There is nothing cut and dry in other words and in this title the 4090 and 7900 XTX are comparable, not sure how the 4080 fares. Too bad you seem to feel hurt when AMD does decent or comparable in a title.
 
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