Witcher 3 - Coming to Next Gen

Originally Posted by JDR13
No surprise there. The soundtracks have been consistently great throughout the entire series. They rank among my all-time favorites for game music, especially TW1.

I started to play the Witcher series because the main theme for TW2 made me almost cry when I heard it for the first time. Have finished all games in the series multiple times since then. I found the soundtrack for vanilla-TW3 a bit disappointing after TW2 which was my favorite game music soundtrack until Hearts of Stone came out. That melody and the children's song is just an absolute masterpiece in so many ways. I still can't believe how well the melody describes the story and you-know-who in the DLC. I have listened to the Witcher 3 concert hundreds of times and it is among my favorite classical music performances. Really looking forward to the soundtrack of Cyberpunk. It cannot be equally good (because the Witcher soundtracks are just stellar for the entire series as you say) but if it is even close, it will become my favorite sci-fi game soundtrack.

On-topic: I wish they'd add GeForce Now support for GOG games. I really rather bought directly from them but it's more tempting to buy from Steam because that promises direct support for GeForce Now. There is no way my computer will be able to run any of the AAA games these days.

PS. I am aware that you can go around the GOG/Geforce Now issue and might try it with Cyberpunk.

It's impressive to see significant updates 5 years after release, shows the long-term support and the success of this game!

Perhaps it's my cue to buy some of its DLC

Originally Posted by JDR13
With Hairworks? There's no way you were running everything on max with a RX480 and getting consistently good framerates. I've got a GTX 1080, which is significantly faster, and I can't do Ultra + Hairworks if I want to keep 60 fps.

It's entirely possible that I don't get 60fps. He didn't mention frame rate, but "crying tears of blood" I hope means something worse than running at, say, 40fps.

EDIT: I still have Witcher 3 installed, so I installed Fraps and found out exactly what's what on my machine.

I have grass density and shadows on high, everything else Ultra, Hairworks enabled, and at 1920x1280 resolution.

My latest save was outdoors in Novigrad. I ran around for ~30 seconds and never went below 55fps. I was mostly at 59 or 60 (I have it capped at 60 in the menu)

With my AMD 570x when it released I played with Hairworks off, and a mix of high and Ultra. Ran the game at 50-55 FPS. Which is fine for me not a graphic snob.

Since then I upgraded to a newer AMD card and get 60 FPS on Ultra with Hairworks.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I have grass density and shadows on high, everything else Ultra, Hairworks enabled, and at 1920x1280 resolution.

My latest save was outdoors in Novigrad. I ran around for ~30 seconds and never went below 55fps. I was mostly at 59 or 60 (I have it capped at 60 in the menu)

Which Hairworks setting? Geralt only or everything? If it's the latter, CDPR must have made further optimizations since release. I'm tempted to start it up and see how it runs for me now with everything maxed.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Which Hairworks setting? Geralt only or everything? If it's the latter, CDPR must have made further optimizations since release. I'm tempted to start it up and see how it runs for me now with everything maxed.

I didn't check that. I just saw Hairworks = yes and moved on. Probably Geralt only. I have a faint recollection of thinking I didn't care enough about NPC hair to risk the FPS.

Forgot to add I also use an HD mod which I highly recommend.

Link - https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1021/?tab=files

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I have the same graphics card and ran it well with everything on high (plus ReShade). Something else is going on there.

I guess you're probably assuming 1920x1080? But he never mentioned what resolution he's using, that makes a world of difference.

Originally Posted by Stingray
I guess you're probably assuming 1920x1080? But he never mentioned what resolution he's using, that makes a world of difference.

I didn't assume anything, but I did list my own resolution above. Doesn't matter anyway. If he's higher than that, he can lower it. The Witcher 3 isn't a 4K game. Complaining that it doesn't run is not preferable to setting it to 1920x1080 resolution.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I didn't assume anything, but I did list my own resolution above. Doesn't matter anyway. If he's higher than that, he can lower it. The Witcher 3 isn't a 4K game. Complaining that it doesn't run is not preferable to setting it to 1920x1080 resolution.

Well, no, you did assume. You said:

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I have the same graphics card and ran it well with everything on high (plus ReShade). Something else is going on there.

If you're using 1920x1080 and he's using 2560x1440 or 4K, then your experience with the same graphics card is kind of meaningless…

Besides, it's not so easy just lowering resolution. When you run any LCD monitor at a non-native resolution (like running a 4K at 1920x1080), things generally look terrible, especially text (fonts). It has to be avoided at all costs. Although NVIDIA did add an "integer scaling" option to their drivers finally last August that lets you run 1920x1080 games on 4K with simple pixel-quadrupling, and AMD did the same last December, so running a 1080 game on a 4K monitor isn't necessarily the nightmare it used to be - assuming you configure things right. Doesn't really help people with 2560x1440 monitors though.

It's weird that you can quote me but somehow still not read what I wrote. The fact that you have to hedge with "essentially" says it all. I wrote what I wrote. You are not a mind reader.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
Also the soundtrack. So frikkin awesome!

Hmm…. idea for new thread…

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
It's weird that you can quote me but somehow still not read what I wrote. The fact that you have to hedge with "essentially" says it all. I wrote what I wrote. You are not a mind reader.

I don't have to hedge it and I'm not sure why I did. Fine, I'll edit that post and remove the word "essentially"