Eli5: How can a game such as Horizon Forbidden West look and run as beautiful and smooth as it does, when comparatively uglier games such as Star Citizen run terribly?

Question

I’d like to be able to understand how the aforementioned example looks like so ahead of the curve graphically while also running really well. It has very taxing visuals that I can identify, such as dense foliage, detailed physics and animations, and incredible lighting. It doesn’t seem to compromise in ways that other games such as Star Citizen do, and yet I get way better performance out of it too.

In: Technology

Answer 1

You can make anything run like crap if the code is poorly optimized.

Just by way of a simple example: Back in the day, computer hardware couldn’t perform multiplication. It could only do addition. Computers performed multiplication by repeated addition (3×4 is 4+4+4). You could do 4000 x 2 as 4000 + 4000 or 2+2+2+…. Not picking the larger of the two numbers as a base for the addition is a really simple (like ~5 lines of assembly) change in code with massive implications for performance.

Suffice it to say, there’s a *lot* going on under the hood and you can put a crappy engine in a really nice looking car.