Is the game *really* capped at 30 FPS, or is something else going on?

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

A lot of people tell me that 2048 can only run at 30 FPS tops, but I noticed that during Zone mode, there are a few brief instances where it manages to go at what looks like 60.


Then when I play the HD/Fury DLC, and it seems to sporadically shift between 30 and 60, and in the HD/Fury zone mode it almost consistently goes at 60.


What if the game isn't artificially capped at 30, and it just seems like it because it is pushing the Vita too hard?

So I double-check the Playstation Vita's hardware specs, and sure enough while it has a respectable 512 megabytes for System RAM, it only has a pitiful 128 megabytes for graphics memory... And that is just the RAM, I don't even know what kind of processor it has, so I have nothing to compare it to.

The point is, I think the Vita, while to make certainly is a powerful system, is not yet powerful enough for 2048 and needs a memory upgrade. What are your thoughts?

[Jonny]

You wanna tell me that a launch game is to good for it´s system?

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

From a technical standpoint, 2048 is very demanding. In some cases, even more demanding than HD (the latter running at 60 FPS consistently, and the PS3 had lower specs than the Vita outside of the specialized cell processor). Also of note is that the HD tracks in the HD/Fury DLC take nowhere near as long to load as the 2048 tracks, which implies that there is a lot more stuff packed onto the maps than in HD.

As far as everything else in 2048, it is a good game on it's own. It just doesn't hold up to the rest of the WipEout family.

But no, this is not a debate about how good a game 2048 is, this is a debate about whether or not Sony should upgrade the Vita's specs.

[Aidan]

The Vita definitely does not have better specs than a PS3, you can't even really compare the two as the technologies used in mobile and desktop components are radically different. 2048 is not as demanding than HD and from my understanding they ported the HD engine to the Vita, to get acceptable performance they would have had to make changes to get games to run on that engine on much lower hardware, the main difference seems to be texture quality. The difference in loads time is down two two different storage systems, the PS3 uses a standard HDD whereas the vita uses a propitiatory flash card which probably has slower read and write times among other things. I would say there is less stuff in a 2048 track as well as it being at a lower poly count in order to get good performance, so again less demanding. Racing games are not very technically demanding which is why they are usually some of the best looking games around, especially on consoles.

Sony aren't going to update the vita's hardware, there's a reason why companies don't update the hardware of consoles throughout its life cycle. It's expensive, and it break compatibility. See Nintendo's new 3ds, they added new buttons, a faster CPU, and have already got games that will only work on the new 3ds. Sony also don't care about the Vita enough for them to put time and money into upgrading the hardware, apart from when it saves them money. (see vita 2000s LCD screen)

2048 is also capped at 30fps, varying frame rates makes games unplayable and horrible, especially fast paced games.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

How would doubling the clock speed of a CPU or adding slightly more RAM break compatibility with older games? And there are instances in 2048 where it seems to run at 60, even if those instances are few and far between.

Also, even in 2048, the HD tracks load a lot more quickly (between 5 and 10 seconds faster) than the 2048 tracks. How do you explain that?

[Darkdrium777]

How would doubling the clock speed of a CPU

Some games have physics or even frame present code tied to the clock rate of the CPU. Double that, and the game goes twice as fast or whatever. This shouldn't be happening anymore today because there are ways to make the code independent of refresh or CPU clock rate, but it's a shortcut to do it the bad way. If the game stays on a fixed platform, there's basically no repercussions, but on a platform with varying specs it's absolutely idiotic.