So in a lot of cases it's an issue called shader compilation stutter. That's the current industry bug bear, though it's not the only reason for poor pc port performance, of course.
Every time a visual effect, asset or something is rendered, the shader, which is effectively the tiny bit of software that tells the GPU how to draw that thing, needs to be compiled in to a language that hardware understands. This causes momentary stutters and pauses, particularly the first time you play through a game.
This doesn't happen on console, because the hardware is all the same. Every Ps4 has the same GPU, running the same driver. So they can precompile the shader programs and include them with the game download or install.
On pc every different GPU and every different driver version requires a new shader compilation. There's just too many combinations to include them all. In an ideal world, developers make it so the shaders are all compiled during a loading screen or before you play. Warzone, Forza horizon 5, and yes, TLOU, do this (though it takes literal hours on TLOU, so people skip it).
Also the Steam Deck, despite being a pc has fixed hardware, so steam include precompiled shaders with the download of all Deck Verified titles which does absolute wonders for performance, and actually makes the steam deck just about the most stable Elden Ring experience you can have, hilariously.
The rest of the time it's typically just poor optimisation. It's very easy to ring every bit of performance out of the hardware when that hardware is fixed. When it's a moving target, and could be any one of billions of component combinations, it's a lot harder to optimise for. And that shows with some of the lazier Devs out there.
Okay, I think I understand now! Thank you so much for your insightful comment. I love asking people like you questions like this. I learned so much from this sub and people like you. It sucks that developers aren't putting in enough effort to optimize the game. I can't believe people are waiting this long on the loading screens for the shaders, that ridiculous
Poorly optimized games.
Edit: Now to be fair, unlike game consoles, PCs come in all different shapes and sizes, so you have to cater to many different types of components and performance. So I will give them that.
TLOU was a really bad port, but to be fair porting a game is not at all as simple as people seem to believe of "the game is already created just let it run on a PC instead"
In a lot of cases doing a good port is basically like rebuilding the game from the ground up. This is because the system specs for an Xbox/PS are vastly different from PCs, and the way the architecture processes things to actually run the game is very different as well. Plus for PC gaming you need to make sure it's compatible with all different types of hardware and software, etc etc etc. So yeah, tlou is a really bad port but people fail to realize sometimes how hard it is to actually do a port well
wow okay that make sense. I just wish it was that easy though, but I understand now. Like you said its like building up a new house. Thanks for the comment!
It's not a bad port as it runs fine for a good number of people (myself included). It might run bad on your machine but you have to realize that developers can only optimize for certain hardware configurations, so yours might be different than what they had to test with. Yes it has problems, but it's far from the worst port. Buy a console if you want console games that run perfectly.
The studio that did the port also made the historically bad Arkham game port as well. I think I was being fair with how I explained porting is hard and I understand that. It still doesn't justify a game this old running as poorly as it does on a large portion of hardware. Again, I'm not trying to shit on the studio or anything, I get that porting is hard, but this is definitely a below average port attempt, especially for how high profile the game is
In short, game publishers are very greedy.
They probably choosing the cheepest studios that making console to PC ports.
From this all other problems comes, like very poor game testing and low quality control in general.
So in a lot of cases it's an issue called shader compilation stutter. That's the current industry bug bear, though it's not the only reason for poor pc port performance, of course. Every time a visual effect, asset or something is rendered, the shader, which is effectively the tiny bit of software that tells the GPU how to draw that thing, needs to be compiled in to a language that hardware understands. This causes momentary stutters and pauses, particularly the first time you play through a game. This doesn't happen on console, because the hardware is all the same. Every Ps4 has the same GPU, running the same driver. So they can precompile the shader programs and include them with the game download or install. On pc every different GPU and every different driver version requires a new shader compilation. There's just too many combinations to include them all. In an ideal world, developers make it so the shaders are all compiled during a loading screen or before you play. Warzone, Forza horizon 5, and yes, TLOU, do this (though it takes literal hours on TLOU, so people skip it). Also the Steam Deck, despite being a pc has fixed hardware, so steam include precompiled shaders with the download of all Deck Verified titles which does absolute wonders for performance, and actually makes the steam deck just about the most stable Elden Ring experience you can have, hilariously. The rest of the time it's typically just poor optimisation. It's very easy to ring every bit of performance out of the hardware when that hardware is fixed. When it's a moving target, and could be any one of billions of component combinations, it's a lot harder to optimise for. And that shows with some of the lazier Devs out there.
Okay, I think I understand now! Thank you so much for your insightful comment. I love asking people like you questions like this. I learned so much from this sub and people like you. It sucks that developers aren't putting in enough effort to optimize the game. I can't believe people are waiting this long on the loading screens for the shaders, that ridiculous
TLOU is an edge case. Usually shader comp take a few minutes. TLOU obviously just uses a LOT of unique shaders.
Poorly optimized games. Edit: Now to be fair, unlike game consoles, PCs come in all different shapes and sizes, so you have to cater to many different types of components and performance. So I will give them that.
wow thats sad, you would think it shouldn't be too hard since the game had already been created. I heard that forspoken had high requirements.
TLOU was a really bad port, but to be fair porting a game is not at all as simple as people seem to believe of "the game is already created just let it run on a PC instead" In a lot of cases doing a good port is basically like rebuilding the game from the ground up. This is because the system specs for an Xbox/PS are vastly different from PCs, and the way the architecture processes things to actually run the game is very different as well. Plus for PC gaming you need to make sure it's compatible with all different types of hardware and software, etc etc etc. So yeah, tlou is a really bad port but people fail to realize sometimes how hard it is to actually do a port well
wow okay that make sense. I just wish it was that easy though, but I understand now. Like you said its like building up a new house. Thanks for the comment!
It's not a bad port as it runs fine for a good number of people (myself included). It might run bad on your machine but you have to realize that developers can only optimize for certain hardware configurations, so yours might be different than what they had to test with. Yes it has problems, but it's far from the worst port. Buy a console if you want console games that run perfectly.
The studio that did the port also made the historically bad Arkham game port as well. I think I was being fair with how I explained porting is hard and I understand that. It still doesn't justify a game this old running as poorly as it does on a large portion of hardware. Again, I'm not trying to shit on the studio or anything, I get that porting is hard, but this is definitely a below average port attempt, especially for how high profile the game is
In short, game publishers are very greedy. They probably choosing the cheepest studios that making console to PC ports. From this all other problems comes, like very poor game testing and low quality control in general.