As we’ve already said, NieR: Automata does not feature a lot of graphics settings to tweak and as a result of that, the game does not scale well on older graphics cards. However, it appears that modders have figured out a way to almost double the game’s performance; something that will be very useful to those with relatively weak PC systems.
Modder ‘DrDaxxy‘ adjusted the game’s Global Illumination solution, resulting in 30-60% performance increase in a modern-day graphics card (NVIDIA GTX980Ti). On mobile GPUs and older graphics cards, however, this fix/tweak almost doubles the game’s performance.
According to DrDaxxy, NieR: Automata uses a super expensive Global Illumination solution. Its GI compute shader is an array it loops over, which by default has 128 elements. DrDaxxy cut the number of elements to 16, which is the minimum as only values divisible by 16 are allowed.
As such, the overall performance has been significantly increased at the cost of a simpler GI solution. DrDaxxy has provided some comparison screenshots and as we can see, there are some slight differences between them.
Still, we strongly believe that PlatinumGames should offer such option for those facing performance issues (or at least include it in the game’s Low preset setting).
DrDaxxy has not released yet a mod with this fix, though those interested can download and add/use his code in a DLL.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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How in the hell is this not a default option? The game looks very last gen, shouldn’t be anywhere near this demanding.
Finally, words of wisdom.
Rushed port? Wouldn’t be first from Square Enix
TFW your brand new game has a worse options menu than a remaster of a 20 year old N64 game (Turok 2). I want to love NieR, but this is just abyssmal by any measure.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c0df3b22f457eb425aa84a5e0172f453a167a7cb2425224284a566425c38693.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9be4f5a2de6880864cebfa08ac497d5d45a2631917b276fbcd3000749b727bc9.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/24e7e74ee24085ffb2ca242974148cdfc852d7321da28a32689e1d5267ea8f7d.jpg
By any measure… are you sure?
1. http://pcgamingwiki (dot) com/images/0/00/Darksiders_-_Advanced.png
2. http://pcgamingwiki (dot) com/images/9/9c/RAGE_Video.png
Not by Japanese devs, this is middle of the road when it comes to PC ports, just look at the graphical “options” in dark souls it may as well be a single on/off switch.
The game doesnt look last gen at all but its not the top of the line graphics you get in FFXV or HZD – they didnt have a humongous budget that such Triple A title gets (lol at Triple A anyway when you see ME:A)
They mean last gen PC not PS3 level of last gen, which was last gen on pc already in the same month of release.(The 8800GTX was twice as fast as the 7800gtx variant which was used in the PS3)
Think unreal engine 3 PC games instead of unreal 4 😉
The first Dishonored for example was still an unreal engine 3 game.
Because the fanbase goes “oh it’s Yoko Taro and Platinum, it’s not an AAA stop expecting things”.
Getting 60 fps on 900p in a GTX 770 is now “expectation”. Add that to the fact that the entire game’s engine is bound to the framerate, and even dips to the 40’s-50’s range makes sections easier and gameplay more lenient.
And then you see PC hardware that gets 60 fps on open world games like Witcher 3 on medium settings hit 30 fps in Nier “because 1080p is actually upscaled crap” and no one bats an eye.
no difference in quality yet double the performance
Looks the same hahaha lol
No it doesn’t. Check the second set of screenshots. The difference is very apparent. Mainly because the modder reduced the GI quality to increase performance.
Not at all.
Looks identical. I used a comparison website and kept going back and forth, couldn’t tell a difference at all.
The red hue is missing / less pronounced on grass blades and on the vending machine. And you don’t need a “comparison website”, just open both images in new tabs and switch back and forth between tabs, lol.
The difference is there but irrelevant as the overall image looks the same at a glance and that’s what really matters when it comes to graphics, not individual pixels.
I would not say irrelevant, I would call it the first quality detail which can be lost compared to basically every other quality setting. It still looks better with the more expensive global Illumination, actually the gi helps a little to hide the bad texture work. 🙂
Looks different. Might I suggest going to get your eyes checked?
That’s because the example dsogaming is using is very poor.
Differences are minimal anyway and the game was never really looking like some massive AAA budget masterpiece anyway, it was more based on gameplay alone.
On story actually~ gameplay only helps deliver it better than previous games in the series (Drakengard & the first NieR).
I was on about the performance, not really the story.
Can’t even begin to tell a story if it cannot be told properly.
Conspiracy theory time: they don’t offer these solutions because they want people to ditch their old GPU’s and buy brand new ones. That’s why minimum system requeriments continues to increase while the actual graphics are stagnated.
I mean, looking at those pics it reminds me of PS3 level graphics, unless there is some sort of advanced effects in battles or destructive enviroments it’s all a load of bullshit.
Oh yeah. Platinum games and SE totally has this desire.
It’s not just Platinum games and SE, it’s a general trend between AAA releases.
It doesn’t make sense on how they’d want you to, because asking us for a GTX 980 doesn’t even show for it as a prime example. Simply saying to PC users “ya’ll need the most expensive hardware to run our console pot”, just translate to “yo, we cba making a scalable decent port, so we’l offload all those issues onto you via brute force hardware”.
The 980ti for example doesn’t show a massive difference in performance or visuals, inf act the graphics settings are not only minimal in the menu, but also the general output, the differences between low and max are so tiny it’s a joke.
Somewhere along the line, some devs have forgotten that more powerful hardware should actually equal a lot better performance and a visual boost to boot, not being able to barely play it and having it look virtually identical to the console versions, because quite frankly, that’s what most of this gen has been looking like.
Nier isnt triple A
They didnt have triple A budget and they cant expect to do everything triple A can
It’s not the budget that makes a game AAA, it’s the publisher, and selling price.
Square Enix is a AAA publisher, and $60 is a AAA price.
The game is thus a AAA game, however much it cost to make.
You’re completely mistaken – the publisher is not what dictates triple A, the Developer and the Budget is.
Platinum Games have made some very poor games because they had a tiny budget and extremely small deadlines – and yet they also made extremely popular and well made games with better budgets and time of course.
Square Enix didnt develop this with the focus of a Final Fantasy title – far from it, and yet it is definitely a must play, an instant classic and truly GOTY material.
I’d chalk it to ineptitude or some experimental engine (I think the engine was built from the ground up for the game) since it doesn’t run great on PS4 Pro either. It doesn’t look too hot in still images, but it has something advanced working somewhere because Platinum did similar stuff before in other games and managed to make it run better.
Careful with your opinion, you might get trashed by fanboys
No he’ll get trashed for being so fu*king ridiculous
My point exactly
You don’t need to be a fanboy to see how stupid his comment is.
Yeah Square Enix and Platinum are in cahoots with Nvidia. That’s why
Nvidia didn’t even get the information they needed so that Nier could be
recognized as a game by Nvidia’s control panel. Oh wait.
The Nier devs are just incompetent.
I think incompetent may be a bit harsh. They did develop an amazing game. A better word would be inexperienced in PC development (like a lot of japanese development companies [since most of them develop specifically for playstation])
Should be bet that the GI on the PS4 is set to high as well? 😉
I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle. They don’t directly care if GPU vendors sell newer GPUs. It’s kind of a cause and effect scenario. As GPU’s get more advanced, developers take less time doing tweaks and optimizing their games, because it’s easier, less time consuming, and saves the publisher tons of money. As a result, the game runs badly and newer GPU’s are needed to get the performance PC Gamers expect out of it. PC gamers then buy the latest and greatest hardware, but that just means developers can spend even less time on optimization, so you end up in the same boat. A top end GPU that has graphics and performance of yesteryear.
No one does much about this cycle, because the publishers and game studios are making extra profit and so are GPU manufacturers. The only people getting screwed by this are us lowly consumers, but we keep buying the games and crappy ports anyway so why should they care. The sad truth of the matter is, the vast majority of game sales are on consoles. As a result, we PC players can vote with our wallets, but they will retain their main source of income regardless, so it would take a huge backlash to really make a dent and not enough people are willing to forgo buying a game to make a statement. They just want to come home from a long day at work, play something that takes them out of life, and just accept the cruddy performance.
As long as people keep gobbling up their sh*t, they don’t care. Vote with your wallet and refuse to buy bad ports, people.
kinda reminds me of fallout 4’s dynamic shadows …
How can I add this mod to my dll?
You can’t unless you know how to compile your own dll.
GTX 1060 + 1440p
Yes pls!
Am I just a console plebe who can’t see the difference in IQ? Other than the FPS increase the stills look almost exactly the same with and without mod.
Look at the lighting, that’s all. The mod simply reduces the global illumination quality. It doesn’t touch anything else.
See the vending machine or the tires of the vehicle. You’ll notice the differences? in illumination. Without the mod you can see the details but with the mod the object are somewhat darker.
However for an average gamer it’s nothing. And instead we get huge boost in performance so I say it’s a win.
“ALMOST DOUBLE”
>30-60%
Modder ‘DrDaxxy‘ adjusted the game’s Global Illumination solution, resulting in 30-60% performance increase in a modern-day graphics card (NVIDIA GTX980Ti). On mobile GPUs and older graphics cards, however, this fix/tweak almost doubles the game’s performance.
Read again
Double on weaker systems. 30-60% on stronger ones.
Sorry that you seem to have reading problems 🙁
“Modder has figured out a way to almost double the performance of NieR: Automata”
By ditching your PC’s Ryzen CPU?
*runs for cover!*
Create a DLL which contains the code provided and inject it into the game.
Or wait until the modder of “FAR (Fix Automata Resolution)” includes this mod into his.
I’m a CPP newbie and I’m not sure how to link to direct3d to compile
Anywhere to point me to learn on how to do that?
The part on how to write the code to hook it into the game and injects it.
Just a curious person on the internet wanting to learn something.
The example of Global Illumination dsogaming is using is very poor.
Here’s what Global Illumination does in Just Cause 3: http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/just-cause-3/just-cause-3-global-illumination-interactive-comparison-001-on-vs-off.html
As you can see the difference is quite large and it will be large in Nier.
so it looks much better without it, ye ok
Those 2 shots are too different to really tell much of anything.
…except that, in both cases, the shadowing is alarmingly last-gen (looks like UE3) and the GI is underwhelming.
So how do I use this? Or does this question already disqualify me and I should wait until someone made it usable?
The game has performance issues on PS4 and PS4 pro, I assume it was the devs implementing the highest quality of the tech without understanding what it does.
good thing i didn’t buy this port
square enix can go to hell
At least it is not dark soul levels of bad. 😉
dark souls runs a lot better with the mod tho
Whaa?! That’s a massive gain for little visual difference.
Japanese developers look there is a worker you might be interested in.