UPDATED: ATI/AMD have issued updated drivers for Rage, which you can download here.
We've installed the updated drivers on our in-office machine, and the frame rate and texture pop-in seems much improved. There's still texture pop-in, but that's just part of the engine at this point. There does appear to be some significant tearing, however, which proved pretty distracting.
--
If there was one thing people expected from Rage, it's that the PC version would be impeccable on day one. If PC owners could count on any developer to knock it out of the park, it would be the father of the first-person-shooter. Right? Right?
Unfortunately, for reasons partially out of id Software's control, Rage has had a bumpy launch since its midnight unlocking around the Internet.
The response from players has been...loud. Just take a look at the gaming section of Reddit today.
The main issue is performance, which id Software and Bethesda Softworks are currently squarely blaming on driver issues. Players are experiencing an incredible amount of texture pop-in, especially so on ATI/AMD cards. We can confirm this, having loaded Rage on our in-office PC. It's inexcusably bad right now.
The texture pop-in is not exclusive to PC; it's also very much present on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
There are problems with both ATI/AMD and nVidia cards, but it's reportedly most egregious on ATI/AMD.
"While many folks are playing RAGE on PC and not running into issues," said the company on its blog, "we’re aware that some of you are experiencing issues with screen tearing and texture issues. These problems can be attributed to driver issues, and we’re currently working with Nvidia and AMD to resolve them as quickly as possible."
For the moment, it's recommended you do not update the ATI/AMD drivers and wait for the updated drivers to come "in a few hours," according to AMD's Catalyst developer on Twitter. Also, if you're using the Battlefield 3-specific drivers, the CTD (Crash to Desktop) rate is apparently 100%. A driver/battlefield-3/61-27006/ rollback is necessary there.
nVidia owners should be using the current beta drivers, which will be automatically include more Rage-specific improvements as they happen, so long as you've flipped updates on.
Expect more updates on this throughout the day.
I bet too much ICI points on this. I will lose all one million of them.
Kinda glad I have to wait to the European launch on Friday, hopefully they will have fixed it by then.
@rjayb89 said:
Aw man, that's fucking harsh. Hope it works out for ya yet.
This is so disgusting I cant even start, fuck them.
How did they not know about these problems, did the play tester not notice?
But - have they put Top Men into fixing this? - if not, then get a hold of Vinny - he will allocate the needed resources!
I saw some video for this problem. It completely boggles my mind that this got missed, during play testing. Especially since this seems so widespread.
Sounds like there's a lot of rage over these problems.
The drivers do not help at all. The texture simply do not load in some spots, or when they do, they are hideously low resolution. Pretty much none of the Dead City section textures are loading whatsoever.
Mate as been going mad about this all day, it's even unplayable for him. What a joke!
@Gav47: People have a right to complain when the product they got was shit, if all my others games work fine on AMD cards how is it their fault that Rage is broken at launch?
Rage's PC Launch Problems Creates Rage
Why did you past that up?!
@Delta_Ass said:
Dear god.
Kind of expected this to be honest. This is why I'm probably waiting a few months before I play Rage, to when it gets smoothed out. The same thing happens with many PC games these days, sadly.
no no no no PC is best platform.
I think Brad ought just post his review and add any appropriate addendum later.
Remember when games used to work perfectly on day one?
Good to hear they are trying to fix this as quickly as possible