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Earlier this month, Hello Games released its space-exploration RPG No Man’s Sky on the Nintendo Switch.
The tech experts over at Digital Foundry have now taken a closer look at the game’s performance on the hybrid system, summing it up as “comprised but playable”.
The game uses temporal anti-aliasing, but it’s coverage “isn’t great” according to DF when matched with the resolutions on Switch. In docked play on Switch, the resolution is 1152×648, and in portable mode it drops to 896×504.
Here’s the rundown (via Eurogamer):
“No Man’s Sky uses TAA, but the coverage isn’t great. Many screen elements, particularly those that intersect with certain effects, showcase sharp jagged edges. Making matters worse, the image seems to flicker at all times, with distracting pixel movement on geometric edges. The TAA doesn’t seem to do much for the game’s textures either, which are awash in aliasing when viewed at an angle. At higher resolutions on other platforms, No Man’s Sky’s TAA works fine, but as you might expect, the render targets here are pretty limited. In docked play, we’re looking at an 1152×648 resolution, while portable mode drops down to 896×504.
“Predictably, the docked mode fares worse here, with an unstable underlying image exacerbated by a low-res treatment with unexceptional TAA. On a large television the results don’t hold up well at all, with the game looking in line with some of the worst offenders on Switch. A tablet-sized 720p screen minimizes these issues to a degree but I didn’t find portable mode especially visually compelling either. In certain scenes, the reduced resolution really makes the flicker go into overdrive in mobile play, producing a rough-looking result. Outside of image quality the two modes do seem to be identical.”
As for the game’s frame rate on Nintendo’s hardware, it’s a “30fps target” with a v-sync cap and some dips going all the way down to the “mid 20s”. This was “about the same” in portable mode, with similar drops across similar scenarios.
“Performance-wise, we’re looking at a 30fps target with a v-sync cap, as you’d expect. Generally, while just walking around you can expect a 30fps update most of the time. However, there are relatively frequent frame-rate drops. Often, these occur without a clear cause – short spikes around 100ms or extended dips to the upper 20s. Slightly more complex scenery can pull frame-rates to the mid 20s, even while simply walking around. More complex actions, like firing at creatures or blasting away terrain, can cause similar issues. You’ll also see some pretty hard stuttering at times when transitioning between planets and space. When No Man’s Sky drops frames here the frame-rate cap does tend to break, making the stuttering feel more pronounced.
“For the most part though, that’s as bad as it gets. It’s not so much that the frame-rate is generally poor, just that the game feels unstable, with an FPS drop popping up about once every minute or so even in sedate areas.”
Despite these comprises, Digital Foundry still considers this version of the game to be a “serviceable” entry. You can get a second opinion in our Nintendo Life review:
Have you tried out No Man’s Sky on the Nintendo Switch yet? What are your thoughts so far? Tell us below.
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