> They may well be optimizing for a median gaming PC instead.
This is how you get games that could run good if the user got more control over the model LODs, post processing effects and even render scale, but the developers/project management didn't care.
What's worse, a lot of modern games have great ability to scale back and run on lower end hardware when necessary, but the companies behind them only care about that ability when it comes to getting them running on Switch or a similar constrained hardware environment, that would still let them rake in more cash.
And outside of particular hacks (messing with config files, or using untrusted utilities), the users are often left powerless because a few configuration variables weren't exposed to them for whatever reason.
That's actually worse than Electron apps that are typically badly optimized by default (platform overhead): it's very much like a developer in an enterprise setting choosing to go for the N+1 by looping over data in the app and doing DB calls for each iteration, yet everyone actually is okay with it.
Except for the people who actually don't want their software/game to run slow, just because they cannot afford to throw unreasonable amounts of hardware resources at the problem the devs (and whoever is telling them what to do) inflicted upon them.
Best counterexample to this is probably e-sports titles that are optimized for stable frame times because it actually matters to the developers, or games like Skyrim that expose some of the engine internals to the users, so modders can choose what matters to them.
That said, many developers don't really consider it worth the effort to put lots of thought into options menu and sometimes don't even gate performance intensive post processing like SSAO behind options that can be toggled on/off.
In other cases, they might not have the necessary skillset to use a profiler properly and recognize what is particularly badly optimized, especially for smaller indie projects.
This is how you get games that could run good if the user got more control over the model LODs, post processing effects and even render scale, but the developers/project management didn't care.
What's worse, a lot of modern games have great ability to scale back and run on lower end hardware when necessary, but the companies behind them only care about that ability when it comes to getting them running on Switch or a similar constrained hardware environment, that would still let them rake in more cash.
And outside of particular hacks (messing with config files, or using untrusted utilities), the users are often left powerless because a few configuration variables weren't exposed to them for whatever reason.
That's actually worse than Electron apps that are typically badly optimized by default (platform overhead): it's very much like a developer in an enterprise setting choosing to go for the N+1 by looping over data in the app and doing DB calls for each iteration, yet everyone actually is okay with it.
Except for the people who actually don't want their software/game to run slow, just because they cannot afford to throw unreasonable amounts of hardware resources at the problem the devs (and whoever is telling them what to do) inflicted upon them.
Essentially, it's Wirth's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
Best counterexample to this is probably e-sports titles that are optimized for stable frame times because it actually matters to the developers, or games like Skyrim that expose some of the engine internals to the users, so modders can choose what matters to them.
That said, many developers don't really consider it worth the effort to put lots of thought into options menu and sometimes don't even gate performance intensive post processing like SSAO behind options that can be toggled on/off.
In other cases, they might not have the necessary skillset to use a profiler properly and recognize what is particularly badly optimized, especially for smaller indie projects.
Other times, even large studios don't seem to care, or the actual reasons are convoluted and digging into things just isn't in the backlog: https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...