Is Starfield an example of Creation Engine ageing poorly?

[Exobine]

Just a thought that many probably have had already, mostly in regards to performance issues with decent or higher-end hardware in comparison to Unreal Engine and redEngine.

Now to be clear, I know Starfield is apparently using what is labelled as Creation Engine 2, but the finer details on what it is capable of and how it has improved, on a really detailed level, is unknown to me.

My argument here mostly resides with how the engine handles loading assets and effects like shadows or lighting and how they scale performance wise via higher resolutions in comparison to the other two engines mentioned above and as a result, if Creation Engine is at all being optimised or is simply being frankenstein'd with new features/capabilities which causes the engine to perform less than ideally expected.

Additionally, another argument is how the engine handles complex scenarios vs non-complex scenarios and the difference in performance between other engines outside of Creation Engine.

My suspicion, as modestly educated as it could be, is that the Creation Engine (1/2) is simply too old and is only being retro-fitted with support for new features and ways to handle loading of assets or effects, which it isn't fully capable of handling without detrimental performance loss that Bethesda has deemed "acceptable".

The above results in Todd saying "You just need to upgrade your PC.", while that may be a part truth that is hard to accept sometimes, I think there is a larger problem with Bethesda's Creation Engine that they themselves are not willing to come to terms with just as much as consumers, in relation to their PC specs.

My main beef here with Bethesda and their Creation Engine (1/2) and Todd's poor choice of words. Is the performance comparison between their own engine, Unreal Engine and for the time being redEngine. People can see comparisons themselves between Starfield and a game like Cyberpunk 2077 easily, along with any new feature heavy Unreal Engine game.

Cyberpunk 2077 has a large space/world that has way more going on with additional complexity than Starfield, yet somehow Starfield still performs worse in comparison than Cyberpunk 2077.

One can argue that Starfield has many different worlds to go to and some main-cities on large planets, but these are not all loaded at the same time and are "loaded instances" with a limited exploration/boundary range (a sign of Creation Engine ageing). My biggest problem with Creation engine is how the performance does not improve, even with less demanding/complex environments (like a barren planet).

I can land on any barren planet in Starfield and push between 30-48 frames rarely 50. Yet I can walk throughout Cyberpunk 2077's city, without ray-tracing (all settings maxed), and manage 45-70 frames (depending on much more dense areas beyond a fair comparison with Starfield).

The above makes me concerned for Bethesda's new Elder Scrolls game that is on the way, and I can only hope that Starfield was low-key pushed out too soon on a early version of Creation Engine 2. Sadly, I don't expect that Bethesda will care much, and will just increase the spec requirements to accommodate for their ageing engine, that's also not to say I expect potato PC's to run any of the latest games forever, but that Bethesda may not be willing to go the extra mile to ensure a performance optimised game relying on a retro-fitted engine.

---

Now to clear things up, I'm no expert on engine development, but I don't need to be. My experience with performance between various games and their engines used has shown me what is to be expected performance wise, depending on what effects and details are being rendered, Starfield for me is an outlier in performance compared to many others that are much more demanding yet run better on my hardware.

Additional side-note: Star Citizen with no DLSS runs better than Starfield with FSR, with Star Citizen @ 1440p and high settings. :/

Details on Starfield vs Cyberpunk 2077 reference settings:

Both games: 1440p

Starfield: medium settings, FSR @ 62%

Cyberpunk 2077: Max settings (no ray-tracing), DLSS - Quality

Specs: 2070S - 32gb RAM - Ryzen 7 3800X

My final note: I don't hate Starfield, I'm not on that hate wagon and thus I do enjoy and like Starfield, I just wish it would perform better, and I'm concerned about future performance with continued use of Creation Engine for future titles on Bethesda part.

Thanks for reading my story and thoughts, I typed too much.

[System105b]

Sorry it ain't going to work on a 386 pc

[xybolt]

It's an engine that worked well in the past and has been retro-fitted many times in the years afterwards, yes. It is perfectly possible to re-use an engine for an old game if time is taken to review some of its aspects and refactor the code when necessary. Similarly for adding additional (like god rays, that got introduced for Fallout 4) features. However, the quality of these adaptions are dependent of the skillset of the devs (= developers) working on it. I have taken the god rays as an example because it was horrible, in a way that I believe the devs that has been working on it were not understanding this NVIDIA library at all. If they took time to comprehend it, then it would not be that bad.

It has to be noted that tweaking such code requires a former knowledge, from people that has actively worked on that or that have been working with it for years. I am not sure if these people are still around at Bethesda, leading to some risks that a dev is not willing to take. Comprehension of a codebase is a crucial part if you want to alter it. There are devs and devs. From my experience, those that take time to understand the code are in the minority. The evil lies in the measurement of time; deadlines. Usually there is not enough time given to truly/fully understand why something is written in that way because the delivery of a feature, either added (by retrofitting) or refactoring (improvement, such as supporting larger textures) is subject to a deadline, given by project management.

That you have mentioned Cyberpunk 2077 is a fair comparison because the game has also shown the limitations (of which started to become obvious in Witcher 3, especially with texture streaming) of the RED engine the game is running on. According to the latest information I have is that CD Projekt RED (the company behind Cyberpunk 2077) is going to move to Unreal Engine 5 for their next projects. The latter engine is developed and updated by devs who knows the engine very well, ensuring that newest technology (such as light fx's) is implemented properly. There are enough video's on YouTube (just consult their channel) showcasing their work. It is possible that this step is necessary for CD Projekt RED to ensure that their next projects would not have lots of troubles (of which has an impact on the budget) like they might have gotten during the development of their previous games

Other companies have their own engines as well, either retrofitted or refactored to ensure that its continuity is guaranteed. However, for that you need both money and the right people (those developers that have knowledge), something that is not feasible.

[Exobine]

Originally posted by xybolt:

-snip-

Awesome response, I do remember the god rays in Fallout 4 and my first thing to configure for it was how many cascades god rays had, due to it having too much of a performance impact with default settings.

And I did think of that, and deem it as an inevitable factor in terms of development regarding knowledge and comprehension of engine functionality, especially if prior devs are no longer present, new devs may not alter code accordingly to support new features where needed. Deadlines are indeed another factor as well, that I think affect the process of development behind the scenes, which I am quite sure most AAA studios will never admit or elaborate on when it comes to it potentially affecting a games stability/performance. Which is why I hate what Todd said in my OP.

Regarding redEngine, I am aware they're moving to Unreal engine 5, which has me excited to see what the dev team is capable of for the next iteration of Cyberpunk.

It does seem some unfortunate factors are to be considered when a game is an outlier in performance sadly, but I can only hope that down the road they fix or improve performance, but I do feel that is in vain. Moreover, while it may affect their stocks and shareholders, I think some of these AAA studios should be more transparent about internal issues that don't breach any sensitive information they wish to retain so consumers can develop better understandings of what is going on, instead of being left to guess why a game is so underwhelming performance wise to other fair comparisons.

[Riitoken]

The data structures involved with outposts are independent from the engine itself. Those data structures are currently not fault tolerant by any normal understanding of fault tolerant.

I am a professional software engineer, and the loading behavior has all the signs of race-conditions. The outpost data structures are not stable. The loader is not stable.

I've tested outposts quite a bit. On one outpost I have a floating crate about 30 meters in the air ... apparently from a nearby PG base, because I never created any crate.

The supply missions can bork an entire outpost.

Deleting certain items can crash an outpost.

Certain combinations of builds will cause an outpost to crash.

Adding crew to an outpost will disappear existing robots.

Outposts can hang when entering build mode and overhead view.

******************
The HDD to ram loader is not stable.
The ram to GPU loader is not stable.

The engine itself is beautiful and the lighting model is first class.

[kdodds]

I should have stopped reading at "is unknown to me". You're right, the finer points are completely lost on you if you're even comparing these engines. You want to know why you never see a thousand potatoes rolling out of your cockpit in UE or RE? Or why you can't like up food tray like dominoes? Or explode 10,000 watermelons into a watermelon rain on a low grav planet? Because the engines are simply incapable of doing these things. If you played CP2077 early and paid attention, you know one of the first major overhauls they did was to limit dynamics in the Open World drastically so that it's almost purely geometry, very few, large polys. By all means, continue whatever debate y'all think is necessary, but do it knowing that it's like comparing apples to elephants.

[Mountain Man]

I'm not sure what you mean by "aging poorly". Starfield's graphics are top tier, its able to render massive environments, and the physics engine is outstanding. Doesn't seem to be aging poorly to me.

[Zebedee]

Something to keep in mind about RedEngine is that CDPR may well have scrapped an expansion post-release to refactor it to address underlying issues which had accumulated over Cyberpunk 2077's development (and to then better fit a vision for the game not limited by the constraints of 10 year old hardware). The move to Unreal 5 is only happening because of the bespoke support being provided to try and better suit the engine to an open world arpg in the style CDPR make (useful reference point: trying to make large RPGs with Frostbite 3), and is ultimately driven by CDPR needing to recruit in the US to make 2 x AAA games at the same time. If you speak to devs about it they point to the trade-offs involved with both sticking and switching from RedEngine.

Which is just really a long way of saying that there'll be trade-offs going on and would be useful to have a clearer insight into those rather than just pointing at the tools being used, especially when the tailoring of custom engines doesn't lead to each having the same priorities.

[Dr. Sinister]

Creation Engine: Get off my lawn!!!!

[drommels]

Ark Ascended is doing great since they switched to the Unreal5 engine... well, not really. Most don't have the hardware to run it.

[Mooman]

What gives it the '2' title? Underneath is probably a lot of the same systems going back decades. Is it just new rendering techniques? I'm sure once the modders start pulling it apart they'll find ancient evils.

https://youtu.be/jqymg_prARI?si=7d4aQgTYpng-JIRp

[Doctor Zalgo]

It's hard to argue that its aging 'badly' when everything but graphics feels worse than Skyrim.

Why are there two shops on the neon concourse that require a zone change? What's special about those two?

[lizzo(overturned bans x 69)]

Originally posted by Mooman:

What gives it the '2' title? Underneath is probably a lot of the same systems going back decades. Is it just new rendering techniques? I'm sure once the modders start pulling it apart they'll find ancient evils.

https://youtu.be/jqymg_prARI?si=7d4aQgTYpng-JIRp

its the same engine, sadly its already been debunked.

[Exanimus Sativa]

short answer, yes. and it's console focused design direction. why it requires an ssd, why it has so many loads. why some textures are low and some high rather than being more uniform, why lighting can be so HORRIBLE in many cases. you load up starfield and are instantly transported via horrible specular rendering back to every other beth game. that ugly as plastic look. sure, they've slathered more makeup on the pig, it's more capable than it was.

but it isn't modern and obviously can't handle what modern engines can which also leverage all the hardware capabilities on consoles and PC's. any fanboys who want to try and argue i refer you back to the sheer number of load screens REQUIRING that ssd installation. that's pure copium on beths part and not a great bit of copium either. that shows serious issues with their asset pipeline or just sheer laziness and only designing around consoles.

[The Presence]

We already had examples of that before the release of Starfield with their other games.

[RiChuF]

Originally posted by Lizzo:

Originally posted by Mooman:

What gives it the '2' title? Underneath is probably a lot of the same systems going back decades. Is it just new rendering techniques? I'm sure once the modders start pulling it apart they'll find ancient evils.

https://youtu.be/jqymg_prARI?si=7d4aQgTYpng-JIRp

its the same engine, sadly its already been debunked.

By who ? You??