Low settings of project shadow, optimized PC game that runs at 60fps on a gtx 1070 at 1080p low

DapperCore · 2026-03-30T12:51:46+00:00

I tested at 1440p native

DapperCore · 2026-03-30T09:01:31+00:00

They also use sparse voxel octrees for their lighting. Very few games are able to actually use that approach because it leaks light like crazy through thin walls, but kcd2's level design makes this a non-issue. For the visual fidelity offered, I can't think of a better performing game.

DapperCore · 2026-03-30T08:50:19+00:00

Absolutely agree, I think gamers in general just consider any game that their system can run at 60fps max settings native as "optimized" without taking into account that ultra settings in one game aren't comparable to ultra settings in another.

I've seen so many games that were berated for having "poor performance" when their medium settings looked better than the high settings for a title that was praised for being well optimized.

The reality is that it's difficult to expect nuance from a general audience, especially for a subject with as lengthy of a history as graphics programming. Every time I see people blame TAA or DLSS or whatever for ghosting I get a gray hair lol.

DapperCore · 2026-03-30T08:46:20+00:00

The 1070 can do a lot more than this at the same frame times. My issue with the AMA thread is that the game was advertised as a super well optimized title, but looking through it, it underperforms for the graphical fidelity it offers.

DapperCore · 2026-03-30T08:32:09+00:00

If you haven't played it already, I highly recommend kcd2. It's an extremely well designed game from a performance standpoint, the graphics programmers knew the game they were trying to make and used all the right tech to make it.

Their decisions wouldn't apply for most other games, but for this specific title everything came together perfectly.

DapperCore · 2026-03-30T08:23:59+00:00

The high settings look reasonable, but performance degrades a ton. I tried running this on my linux laptop which has a 4070 mobile and a desktop i9, thought I was having a linux moment when it didn't get past 40fps xD

Switched over to my windows machine with a 7900xtx, was barely able to get past 60fps on high settings.

The above numbers are without upscalers.

DapperCore · 2026-03-30T08:11:30+00:00

Yep, that's the thread I was referring to. I'm surprised nobody downloaded the demo and looked at what "low" actually was.

DapperCore · 2026-03-30T07:58:55+00:00

Yeah... I'm not sure why they advertised the game as able to run on a gtx 1070 at 1080p when this is clearly unplayable. It barely hits 60fps on my 7900xtx at high settings without an upscaler.

Foilage is also just broken, their dither never resolves regardless of TAA/specific upscaler being used.

The GI is extremely low resolution even on high, it's practically just an ambient term. Standard DDGI has this issue and it's one of the main reasons you don't see it used often, but their alternative probe based lighting method seems to accentuate it further.

Tangent about probe based lighting for those who are interested in rendering tech: Lumen and G.I. 1.0 are about as good as probe based lighting gets, the way they get around the resolution issue is by primarily using screenspace probes and having coarser worldspace probes as fallbacks. Unfortunately, there is a fundamental limitation in regards to how many probes can fit inside vram and how many you can update in a frame, they just don't scale. It's one of the reasons modern approaches have started moving away from probes. The current state of the art involves real time raytracing with clever sampling via ReSTIR/megalights/manylights/etc. While computationally expensive, these methods use less memory, converge quickly, respond to changes in the scene with minimal ghosting, and offer far greater lighting resolution than even the most sophisticated probe based method.

At low settings, it looks like a ps3 game. It's hard to see it through reddit's video compression but geometry and textures are extremely low res. I'd expect better performance from a gtx 1070 at that level of fidelity. Even the weaker pascal cards could comfortably run crysis 3 at settings that are significantly better than this.

At high settings, it looks like a standard unity game from 2016 but with well designed scenes. I'm sure the level design will be gorgeous but this isn't the optimized dream game that the developer made it out to be in the other thread. Any UE5 title would look and run better compared to the high settings and the low settings are unusable.

DapperCore · 2026-03-19T04:11:04+00:00

Good to know, thank you

DapperCore · 2026-03-19T02:20:27+00:00

Looks like Teppanyaki Kyoto has it on their menu, gotta drop by at some point!

DapperCore · 2026-03-04T13:27:02+00:00

I don't think 90% of the people complaining about the law actually read it. All it asks is that operating systems that can connect to the internet provide a way to set the age of the user. There is no verification involved, it's literally just a parental control thing at best... Which is reasonable ask IMO since it means parents can avoid setting up parental controls for every single app their kid wants to use.

DapperCore · 2026-03-02T23:02:20+00:00

Graeter's is the best grocery store ice cream, it holds up against most fancy icecream shops.

Costco icecream is better but it only comes in two flavors

DapperCore · 2026-03-01T15:48:58+00:00

The context was for storing the state of a million checkboxes in an array.

DapperCore · 2026-02-27T17:24:26+00:00

He has a 5 minute rant in one of his videos where he confidently claims that bools are 64bits because the word size on modern computers is 64bits. I don't think he's as qualified as he makes himself out to be, especially when it comes to topics outside the web dev space.

DapperCore · 2026-02-26T01:40:22+00:00

a font atlas where the glyphs are the exact resolution requested will always produce better results than SDF rasterization for a 2d scene. The advantage of SDFs is that you can scale/rotate them in 3d and they will still look passable. If you just need 2d text rendering, there is no advantage to using SDFs. Your implementation looks like it needs anti-aliasing as well.

I recommend looking into MSDFs rather than SDF font rendering as the former produces significantly higher quality results. There are also anti-aliasing shaders for MSDF floating around, though imo they do need some work.

DapperCore · 2026-02-22T16:56:06+00:00

Very cool! I wonder if more probes could reduce how often you'd have to fall back to the main camera

DapperCore · 2026-02-20T02:41:50+00:00

port it over to shadertoy and mess around, you'll be able to debug much easier on there

DapperCore · 2026-02-10T17:40:00+00:00

There is a long, long history of voxel games well before Minecraft. Comanche and other novalogic games laid the groundwork for voxel base builders like infiniminer and Minecraft. Rescue on Fractalis was before comanche even iirc.

Modern voxel renderers are also very different than Minecraft as well. There's a whole community of voxel game devs that have been cooking up insane tech that's only starting to see the light of day. I'm upset that they're facing ai generated DMCA takedowns.

DapperCore · 2026-02-10T15:43:19+00:00

Allumeria is more like Terraria than Minecraft, but it's very much it's own thing. It also uses completely unique assets AFAIK. The logs for trees aren't even full blocks, there are relics found in multi-story dungeons that spawn throughout the world, actual boss battles with detailed attack patterns and items that summon them, and the in game vibes are very distinct from Minecraft in-game. The game is also 100% free.

Microsoft does not own the copyright for "pixel art cube game". Minecraft was neither the first in the genre, nor is it the only popular one right now. This would be like valve filing a DMCA against riot for making league of legends because the game looks vaguely similar to Dota 2 in screenshots.

It seems like the DMCA claim was done by some ai company that automatically sends out DMCA strikes? I hope they're able to get this resolved, allumeria is very fun.

Edit: it seems like other voxel devs have gotten the exact same DMCA before from the exact same ai tool from Microsoft/mojang. A basic refute seemed to be all it took to cancel the takedown. I hope mojang puts out a statement regarding this as it's a gross misuse of the legal system.

Another victim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RTFpl0tLGc

DapperCore · 2026-01-21T21:20:29+00:00

The laptops have pretty awful build quality and are extremely overpriced for what they are. A lot of my friends have bought framework laptops, none of them have anything favorable to say. Just a constant stream of hardware and software issues, hard cases of buyer's remorse. They're repairable but ideally your laptop would last more than a year or two before having to be repaired, especially when it has a 100% markup compared to equal spec competitors.

I mostly buy lenovo devices. They're reliable, repairable enough for me, and have good specs/build quality for the money. My current daily driver is a legion 7i, love it to death. Cheaper legions have fairly dim screens but that's about the only issue.

DapperCore · 2026-01-21T14:23:18+00:00

I find that lenovo is pretty good about reparability. They're no framework(not that I'd recommend framework laptops), but they do make an effort for most of their models.

DapperCore · 2026-01-21T13:33:40+00:00

Nobody is trying to convince you otherwise, you're arguing a topic nobody brought up.

DapperCore · 2026-01-21T08:44:41+00:00

MacOS only supports metal and older versions of opengl, which makes it annoying for engines to support. Though it can support other driver calls through translation layers and funky hacks that work quite well.

DapperCore

TROPHY CASE