This is by way of thanks to HelloGames, particularly for the ongoing work on Performance.

But also I have a tip for everyone in case you haven't seen it before now :

Vulkan though it was more of an improvement overall for AMD machines, has also put to bed my hope for us NVidia users to finally see the game nail all aspects of Performance nags.

I made a topic on Nexus Forums reference getting the best out of a laptop which is towards the lower end of the scale with regards to its graphics card ..

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/7657133-no-mans-sky-general-performance-tips/

.. The one major thing that has irked me ever since this game was released has been the less than perfect performance when flying fast at low level on planets.

Over the last 3 years it has steadily made progress, from :

1. Occasional stutter ( fixed by down tweaking a lot of settings which really didn't need to be for the machine it was on ), to ..

2. A bit of lag with the Next Update ( again down tweaking solved it, and not quite so much as prior to Next needed ) ..

3. And now recently with Beyond there was a slightly perceptible periodic .. how can I describe it .. slight dampening of the ships speed for a fraction of a second which after a few more seconds would happen again. Feels like the Turbo in your car is not quite doing its thing for a fraction of a second, then its 100% again for a few seconds, then not quite doing its thing, then 100% again .. repeat ( this was while holding W and Shift to get max flight speed )

The latter is entirely solved by turning down the Motion Blur Amount. I reckon this one setting, combined with Volumetrics and Atmospheric effects ( including when you are low enough to kick up those little dust clouds ) is what cause lag in various degrees ( depending on your machines capabilities ). For me and my new laptop, I can go screaming around the planet with my hair on fire and not be distracted by any performance issues with the Beyond update.

I think the Motion Blur Amount is set far too high by default for everyone. If you are having any flight lag on planets, zero the Motion Blur setting and see if it makes a difference for you too.

The main point being though that you do not need to tweak down much from what the game initially sets these days, if you just down tweak the Motion Blur Amount setting. The games initial assesment of how it should be setup is also better in the most recent updates to the game.

Try :

Delete the games settings files ( refer to the above linked topic if you dont know how to do this )

Run the game and let it re-assess and create the settings files again.

Try the game flying low and fast on a planet, turning hard, and see how it feels.

Now set the Motion Blur Amount to zero.

Reload the game and fly the same as you did before and see how it feels now.

Depending on your machine you might have to down tweak a few more settings as per the linked topic above, but you should be able to achieve an acceptable game performance now, even if you own a machine with an NVidia Graphics card.

-------

TL:DR - Monitoring NMS Beyond with MSI Afterburner, and the Motion Blur Amount tweaked down to 30 in my case, the game is consistently way above 60fps (it does not dip below 60 anyway which is more than good enough for me), and even if you dont use MSI Afterburner - It feels superb! :)

Edit : I cannot take credit for finding that Motion Blur Amount tweaking can help greatly, I saw it linked from a Reddit conversation, which linked a youtube vid .. I cant recall where or what the titles were. But thought the tip certainly needed making more widely known. Fingers crossed it does the same for you.

For reference, Beyond very seldomly drops below the 60FPS I've set as maximum on my rather old rig (i7 975ee@4.2Ghz, GTX1080, 24GB RAM, 2560x1600 flatscreen, Vsync Tripple Buffer, everything on Ultra, 16xAnisotropic Filtering, no AA, HBAO High).

But sometimes, after reloading a save, changing planets, teleporting or even entering my Freighter, I suddenly see 100% load on the GPU while my CPU shows no spikes, and the framerate drops down to around 30 FPS and stays there, until I change places again and/or reload.

Sounds like you are using V-Sync

From the linked topic in the OP :

"V-sync.

To prevent “screen tearing” V-sync forces a constant frame rate. If you are expecting a consistent 60fps frame rate, but you frequently drop just below 60fps, V-sync is likely to force your frame rate to remain at 30fps.

If you alter your V-sync settings check that your V-sync settings are also the same in your PC’s Nvidia/Radeon dashboard.

Tripple buffered VSync is better for performance, or Adaptive VSync which limits the GPU render rate similar to VSync On, however if render rate drops below refresh rate this setting then allows screen tearing which is a compromise between latency and visual clarity.

Try Tripple Buffered first, Adaptive if you need more of a compromise, and VSync off if you are desperate."

Thanks -- as noted, I am using Tripple Buffered V-Sync (but did not touch the NVIdia Control Panel settings).

The odd part about the behaviour I experienced was, that it occured seemingly at random, even in less complex scenes I've visited before, like on my freighter and a reload (or game restart) always fixed it.

Now, I could speculate about how the game maybe averages frametime, and then decides on lowering the framerate based on V-Sync settings, so the GPU can keep up, or I could speculate about how the game maybe lowers the framerate, because otherwise my CPU couldn't keep up with supplying geometric data to the GPU (and running the actual game). At 30FPS, the CPU gets 33.3ms, at 60Hz half of that -- quite a substantial difference.

But then, what do I know about the games engine -- my GPU load hit 100% in locations it previously didn't, while my CPU picked its nose. The wonders of load-changes in pseudo-randomly generated universes in combination with the odd rounding error, and maybe a grain of 'we're still working on it' :o)

I have not seen these drops in a while now. In that respect, the game works as smooth as ever.

Again, thanks for the hints (also to OP) -- they just didn't apply in my case.

Ah my bad, I somehow skipped your mention of it. But good to know things worked out. Maybe it was just a bad update for your machine which has since resolved. HG do slowly improve everything, but occasionally take a step backwards with some of the progressing patches for specific machine setups.

HelloGames are also updating advice on the official website help articles, the following linked page was updated yesterday 3 Sep 19 :

https://hellogames.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004591645-I-am-experiencing-severe-graphics-or-performance-issues-on-PC

More here https://hellogames.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

The games graphics settings descriptions have now been fixed to display correctly in the latest beta of the game, so the update that follows 2.11 will have them.

Really helpful too, describing which settings affect GPU or CPU or both and a few other useful bits of info - I haven't seen a game explain its own settings so well before.

HelloGames leading where others can only aspire to follow :)

I saw mention of them in the beta patch notes, and installed the beta via gog galaxy just to check them out. The knowledge they gave enabled me to lower one setting to compensate for increasing another (both impacted CPU usage), and the game is still smooth as butter only now with better setup to my liking.

I think that you mean "next release" since 2.11 was released a week ago and therefore will not have changes released today in Experimental_52423. In all probability GOG using offline installers are unlikely to see 2.11.

I didn't bother with a screenshot but the new format of the settings is an improvement with the main settings in a single, simple table with the setting name followed by the settings Low, Enhanced, High and Ultra.

HBOA and AA are separate items at the bottom.

"the update that follows 2.11" == "next release", you thought correct
GOG 2.11 offline installers hit the streets today, but what has that to do with this thread? Yep, but its not just the table, hover your mouse over one of those Standard, Enhanced, High and Ultra options, and there is a new description to the right of them in the current beta, which we had a preview of on the official NMS site Beyond release announcement .. But they have never shown correctly since HG made that screenshot, now they do :)

See this post (and the quote in that post) for a screenshot of what I mean - This fix to those descriptions showing is new to the current beta.

Just to make a (rather unhelpful, I realize) point, the game has been a rock-solid, high FPS, no-CTD and no lock-up experience for me with very, very few exceptons ever since I started playing with Atlas Rising.

I do enjoy the luxury of having dedicated, swapable drives, though, so I naturally run all of my GoG games of off installations free of any non-gameplay related software.

Edit:
Specs:
Core i7-975ee@4.2GHz
24GB RAM
GTX 1080 (non-TI)

Updated the guide at Nexus forum

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/7657133-no-mans-sky-general-performance-tips


Overhauled the 1st post there, HelloGames have made a lot of changes to the Help Desk articles and in game settings recently, so changed it all accordingly.

Notably the information about changing a setting which controls Texture Streaming in one of the .xml files has now vanished, so I presume since the more recent Beyond patch updates it is no longer an advised practice, and probably better controlled .. or maybe compensated for .. by a few of the new Graphics settings.

Its not something I have ever needed to change from its default anyway

Really enjoying my AMD 5700XT (19.9.2 Adrenalins) with NMS-Beyond--installed the Experimental post 2.12 today : Experimental_52717! @ 4k the Vulkan frame-rate is excellent, and one thing I've noticed is that setting Vsync to "Always off" in my drivers results in almost no frame tearing at all--this is in all my games! Could be because my monitor, a BenQ EW-3270U, has a "no-flicker" feature built in that compensates for 99% of the Vsync-off screen tearing I'd otherwise see from a lesser display. Turned down motion blur to < 20% while everything else is maxed to Ultra--the game has never looked this good! HG is really going balls-to-the-walls on making this game the best they can possibly make it! I anticipate a long and successful career for HG should it sustain its current drive for quality games. Few other companies put as much time in their games--inXile & CDPR come to mind. Definitely a limited number of developers!

:) I'm also enjoying it very much. In the new experimental they have replaced HBAO with GTAO (Ground Truth based Ambient Occlusion), I didnt like HBAO in NMS because at distance the landscape would get some horrible lines which are very obvious if you compare before and after switching off HBAO .. That issue is no more with GTAO, and it has three settings for a better range of machine specifications. Going to have to update the General Performance Tips topic after this releases (But Hellogames need to fix the Description for GTAO, currently it does not have anything descriptive similar to how the public release of Beyond didn't have the proposed new descriptions for things like Textures .. I have submitted a bug report to Hellogames Zendesk with the experimental as the basis).

GTAO is supposed to be better than HBAO for performance too, I cant determine if it is better in that regard on my laptop, but its certainly no worse anyway.

Updated the first post in the General Performance Tips topic - I am running the most recent Experimental version of the game ( after 2.12 ) which has a new setting, GTAO instead of HBAO. So remade the settings screenshot and video to show how the game performs now. I also increased the Graphics setting for Planet Quality in my game, I am finding with this new version of the game, and with the few down tweaks to compensate, I can have better LOD etc on planets without degrading performance.



Anyway, if you are wondering about GTAO, and not running the experimental, you will catch up with the next public update to the game.