Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 is now available to all backers and our reader ‘Sean’ has shared with us some 4K screenshots from it. Since most of you don’t have access to this alpha build, we strongly suggest checking these screenshots as they showcase the game’s visuals in all their 4K glory.
Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 features planetary landings, persistent universe content, a new back-end item system, implementation of commodities, trading, automated cargo buy/sell kiosks, and, indirectly, piracy, as well as network improvements and user interface enhancements.
Those interested can view the uncompressed screenshots here.
Enjoy!
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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What are the specs of the machine running the game? “Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 is now available to all backers!” is the title of one of the articles here so I think every backer can now enjoy the game.
GTX 1070/i5 4690K, 4K, very High, 20-30fps. This is about right for an alpha, Ghost Recon Wildlands runs at 30-40fps on very high at 4K and that not even maxed out so SC has plently of headroom to be optimised.
runs at around 18fps on a 1080ti and 4690k @ 4.5 low or high!
pos!!
even with 470 you get 18 fps
Use 4K mate, NVIDIA DSR if you don’t have native and you’ll get higher more consisteny FPS, high GPU usage, then you’ll just be server bound.
I got 20fps with a GTX780, I5 4cores without multithreading and 16Go. Thos with better GPU will see serious improvment while CIG is improving data flow.
Minimum 16gb of ram now. I’m not joking the game does use around 16gb in the small Alpha right now. The fps problem should get fixed just takes time, I have been on servers with 65 fps on my medium end PC. It’s just a pity the code just needs sorted and the server drops down to 15 fps.
It runs like crap on my gtx 1080ti ryzen 1700x at 15fps. Oh well this better not be the case in 2020. I’m tired of alpha stage.
Has little to do with your GPU. Problem right now is more on CPU and memory side. They have a lot of optimization and reworking to do to get framerate up. Not to mention some people with worse specs than you are getting 20-30 fps on full servers. It’s weird.
The problem is mostly server side. When lots of people log in, use large ships and spread lots of items around, there’s just too much to keep track of, which bogs down the FPS for everyone.
It’s the server and networking, but that is overloading the CPU I think. Framerate is not tied to server is what I mean. The server running slowly might lead to desync and weird physics, but not low client side framerate. Atleast that’s what I gather.
Besides, it’s not just server and networking. If you look at what devs have been saying, there’s a lot of client side optimization yet to go in. Client side is also a big part of it.
3770k @ 4.2 and 980ti here. 16 gigs ddr3 @ 2400mhz.
The performance is absolute dog excrement. Way worse that 2.6. I am getting 15 fps tops in the PU.
Game looks gorgeous, and it runs well on the GPU side. Very impressed with the work done by the graphics programming team.
Runs well on the GPU side ? If 40-50% gpu usage cap is ok for you then alright. Otherwise they need to fix their heavy network backend that prevents gpus from being used to their fullest potential. Besides that, they’re making very big progress. Good!
Use 4K on GTX 1070 or above, 80-99% GPU usage and more consistent frame rates.
Didn’t try it. I’ve got a titanx i’ll try it just for fun. If that’s the case then why would using lower assests not use the 100% gpu ? honest question here.
“Runs well on the GPU side ? If 40-50% gpu usage cap is ok for you then alright.”
That proves my point. The graphics run very well on decent GPUs, atleast without too much on screen at once. I’m talking specifically about graphics and rendering. It’s not 50% cap, it’s just that the game isn’t taxing the GPU too much, with graphics like these. Surely you can agree the graphics guys have done an amazing job 🙂
“Otherwise they need to fix their heavy network backend that prevents gpus from being used to their fullest potential.”
It’s not just the network backend. Infact a lot of it is related to the client. Networking and servers also come into play here, but we don’t know how exactly. Suffice to say they have a ton of work to do to get frames up, but the GPU is really not the bottleneck.
I’m not a pro you might be right on some points but something sure is clear as water is that the actual state of the coding isn’t using what your gpu/cpu can offer. This was my point. Don’t care if i see 30fps@4k. If it was using 100% gpu it would be 60fps@4k. Quick maths
The first of the shared screenshots shows 30 fps at 4K. Whatever GPU that is, that’s pretty decent.
Ughh. I think we do not see the gpu usage. The problems lies in the fact that the actual state of the game doesn’t use your compute power to its fullest extent. 30fps@4k is decent but if it was using your gpu to 100% you’d get much better framerates. It’s just to show that it’s nowhere near done and there’s still much work to do on many fronts.
performance is a total mess, hope CIG improve it soon.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d8bc94f95e71a9ae01b421bfc4b69e2e79e43a7046ce5f749ab885f9c8f10f52.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/477ee72fe9b22d504bd24be37bf3dfd3408ef9660f13c707321b23b5e3b195a5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/29d056cd04dfdc72ef32f7de7349a074cf7c6b4a180f54451b6d520c649895d7.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1dcaf240c749a178baace9535f9f22dcb6c40886ad634f9cc187680c92330063.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e2434f3109380d5912a8819d7e33cf60f4aef536bb7dc9652864c2447ae8e6e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/84a9a7b339b3290b29fe1945c6cf2cbe34ccc5075b33c4139c6793801cd062c7.jpg
Says performance is a total mess and shows us screenshots of what the game is doing in alpha build. Nice one. Like, of course?
It’s been a mess since day1 on the gpu usage problem. Backend is so heavy it’s a pain, it’s the only reason i’m not playing. It ruins the game to be blocked at 35fps
35fps is playable but it’s a slideshow when you’re used to 144fps
A slideshow, I mean a real one is 3 or 5 FPS. 30fps is totally playable even if the feeling is less satisfactory than 144FPS.
30fps isn’t smooth at all and for many gives headaches and some have dizziness. Not my case but 30fps is a big nono in this day and age for the biggest part of gamers. But the good thing is that there’s a 50% gpu usage gap in most places (in my case, 1440p titanx) so there’s room to improve it. Once it reaches 60, i predict this is going to be a blast. I do have fun right now but it’s just not there yet.
so what you are saying is that you can’t go to the movies because it gives you a headache you can’t watch TV because it gives you a headache you can not even use regular Windows because it’s not giving you 144 fps…
Man sucks to be you.
In theaters it’s around 24fps and on tv (north america) it’s around 30fps. Both are quite fluid. While it’s the same number, 24fps in a theater compared to a game is quite different. In a game it is very sluggish and not enjoyable for many. Same goes for 30fps.
The technology behind film making and movie creation (3d rendering) is very different.
Do some research and never comment on this the way you did ever again.
NTSC is 29.97 FPS not 30 FPS or “around 30 fps”. It’s a set figure that doesn’t vary (due to technological limitations). Can’t even get a basic fact right but yet you lecture me to “do some research blahblahblah”.
I like how despite being the same fps you just declare one is smoother because umm you say so. It’s MAGIC dictated by maxim..
It doesn’t matter what tech is behind the creation of a movie or game because in the end it’s going to be displayed by the same screen technology.
So follow your own suggestion and learn a little before pretending you’re the end all of everything.
EDIT : I’m curious, what monitors are you using?
I am using a Rog Swift. 144hz/1440p.
Excellent you’ve graduated beyond most consumer display capabilities with that.
It’s nice that 144hz monitors have dropped into the affordable range. For decades we were limited to 60hz at most which means nothing beyond 60fps was noticeable because the monitor/tv wouldn’t even refresh fast enough to keep up.
My download speed isnt very good where I live so ill have to leave it downloading when i go to bed later. Looking forward to trying it. Iv been holding off for a few days while the servers get hammered. Hopefully when I log on that will have died down a bit and performance will be better.
i want an alien game or an avatar game like this, that’s my ultimate dream game, atmospheric realistic open world planet with horror theme
A tip for getting better or more consistent performance. play at a higher resolution, so if you play at 1080p, play at 1440p. A GTX 1070 or above will play better at 4K and you’ll get a more consistent FPS with high GPU usage. Just to prove that, at 1080p my GPU usage is at 30% while at 4K it’s 80%-99% and I’m between 20-30fps.
https://i.imgur.com/5fbDCSH.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/LAKv5sK.jpg
Performance is rather janky, but that’s completely to be expected of a game that’s still in Alpha. It’s nowhere near complete, but boy do those visuals look nice.
I wish a lot of AAA devs would focus more on dishing out good textures on everything, rather than giving good textures for player character models and poor texture details for everything else.
wow phenomenal graphics!
Had a best experience yet in 3.0 last night, got about 2 hours of gameplay with a smooth 24fps constantly at 4K, the most stable FPS I’ve ever had. Flying around the planets and enjoying the views, Yella is stunning at night, you can see the asteroid belt asteriods from the surface and the rings look amazing. Asteroid field look very dence as well, looks awesome.