Briefly: Some followers had been dissatisfied upon discovering that Alan Wake 2 runs far worse on older GPUs than different latest titles. If you happen to should play one of many 12 months’s most critically acclaimed video games however cannot improve to a graphics card that helps mesh shaders, operating it by way of a Vulkan compatibility layer may assist. Your mileage could fluctuate.

Alan Wake 2 is incomes a few of the finest evaluations of 2023. In a 12 months with an unusually excessive variety of critically acclaimed releases, Treatment’s newest has emerged in Sport of the 12 months conversations alongside titles like Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and the Resident Evil 4 remake.

Players who wish to play the lately launched Alan Wake sequel however solely have a Pascal or RDNA 1 GPU could wish to strive a mod that swaps the sport’s DirectX 12 implementation for Vulkan. Though, be warned. The set up course of is complicated, nonetheless has many points, and will not work for everybody. Within the best-case situation, gamers on an Nvidia GeForce 1080 Ti or Radeon RX 5700 XT ought to solely count on 1080p gameplay at low graphics settings.

Sadly, the PC model’s requirement of mesh shaders, which might handle scene geometry extra effectively than earlier strategies, locks out some older fanatic GPUs despite the fact that they’ll nonetheless deal with different latest releases. A few of the weakest playing cards supporting mesh shaders, just like the RTX 2060 or GTX 1660 Ti, often seem under the GTX 1080 Ti or RX 5700 XT in benchmarks, however Alan Wake 2 assessments reverse the scenario.

The latter two GPUs usually cannot keep 30fps in native 1080p on the lowest graphics settings. This difficulty may restrict the sport’s attain, because the inhabitants of customers nonetheless enjoying with older-generation playing cards is not insignificant.

Fortuitously, a consumer on the TechPowerUp boards found {that a} Vulkan-based compatibility layer designed to run DirectX 12 video games on Linux may elevate efficiency by as much as 50 %. With the mod, the 1080 Ti managed round 37fps in 1080p on the low preset, probably simply playable sufficient for some customers, particularly in the event that they join a controller.

The tactic is much from preferable, neither is it foolproof. It did not work for Tom’s {Hardware} or some commenters within the authentic discussion board thread. The unique poster supplies a number of options to deal with points like altering the DXGI swapchain technique within the Nvidia management panel, disabling the Nvidia overlay, manually putting in Vulkan drivers, and extra.

Trying the mod with AMD graphics playing cards is much more complicated. The TechPowerUp thread lists a special set of information they require, and a few may carry out higher on Linux than on Home windows. The 5700 XT hit 60fps on Linux in no less than one check. Nevertheless, these workarounds will not carry acceptable efficiency to Polaris GPUs like the favored RX 580.

When Treatment defined Alan Wake 2’s excessive system necessities by noting its dependence on mesh shaders, the developer theorized that mods may decrease the barrier to entry. These early Vulkan compatibility experiments may very well be step one towards that purpose.

In associated information, Treatment launched the 1.0.8 patch for Alan Wake 2 this week. It guarantees over 200 enhancements and bug fixes, which may no less than barely enhance graphics and efficiency.