It’s about upscaling techniques like DLSS. They were used to determine the system requirements, as we only now know.
In recent days, the system requirements for Stalker 2 have attracted a great deal of attention, mainly due to the high memory requirements. But now there is a lot of excitement on Reddit about a completely different topic:
How did Stalker 2’s system requirements come about?
The key question here is whether the specifications released on November 12 refer to playing in native resolution or using upscaling techniques such as DLSS.
Meanwhile, it is clear that the latter applies. However, the graphics from the corresponding news on Steam do not indicate this until the time of publication of this article. You can see them here:
The situation is different for the system requirements mentioned in text form, which can be found at the bottom of the official Steam page for Stalker 2
The note has since been added there that the minimum specifications TSR and comparable technologies
were used and that the recommended recommended system requirements TSR, DLSS, FSR and XeSS
What is upscaling?; Using techniques such as TSR (Unreal Engine) and DLSS (Nvidia), the image is calculated at a lower resolution than set and then upscaled back to the target resolution in the best possible quality.
What is the point of upscaling? The lower the resolution, the higher the frames per second (FPS), provided that they are not limited by factors such as a too-slow CPU or too little (video) memory. Upscaling is therefore primarily used to increase the FPS.
How good does upscaling look? It varies depending on the game, the technology used and the quality level. In the best case, the image quality even improves, at least in certain areas. However, it can also be visibly worse. There may also be cases with only slight differences between the native and the upscaled image.
How the ball got rolling
That the system requirements for Stalker 2 refer to DLSS & Co. was first revealed by a question to the developers on Discord, as documented in a Reddit post, It is not yet clear why this was not explicitly stated in the official information from the outset.
Information about upscaling is important
Ideally, developers should always indicate whether system requirements refer to playing in native resolution or with upscaling techniques. Otherwise, one could mistakenly assume that there is an additional performance buffer through DLSS and the like.
Since these techniques are becoming more and more widespread for good reason and their use is often recommended, there is no fundamental reason not to base system requirements on them, provided that the exact conditions are clearly stated.
