The STALKER 2 community is attempting to fix the game’s stutters and increase frame rates using mods and tweaks. The results are promising, showing a great boost in performance with minimal loss in quality.
According to MxBenchmarkPC’s testing, at 4K Epic with DLSS Quality, the game’s frame rate improved by 27% when using the mod, jumping from 55fps to 70fps on an RTX 4080. These gains will vary depending on a variety of factors, including the hardware you use and the in-game environment you test in. Arriving at camps seem to offer the least benefits, probably due to a CPU bottleneck. At 1440p Epic with DLSS Quality, the game once more saw massive performance boosts, going from the mid-60s to the upper-80s, sometimes even surpassing 90fps.
Visually, the game doesn’t look any different from its original state, at least based on the mod’s short comparison clip. Textures seem unchanged, reflections are still present, and grass doesn’t look straight out of Minecraft. The mod’s description indicates that these changes reduce ghosting, stuttering, and boot/load times, while improving image clarity and upscaling/anti-aliasing quality.
Unfortunately, not every aspect of this mod is sunshine and rainbows. The most noticeable negative is the aggressive pop-in when running through the world. Trees spawn out of nowhere at close distances, which is very annoying. Though to be fair, this mainly happens on balanced presets that target less powerful hardware. There is also a chance of artefacts or unstable effects since the mod touches the upscaling and anti-aliasing algorithms.
If you find all of this enticing, you can head to Nexus Mods here to download and install this mod pack. The installation is pretty straightforward, but you may need to change some parameters for the best experience. Lastly, though the description doesn’t mention it, this mod seems to require a Steam version of the game, which is unfortunate for Game Pass users like me.
Credit where it’s due, the developers at GSC Game World are hard at work with plenty of official updates. Patch 1.01 introduces 650 fixes in one fell swoop, including 100 critical bugs that caused some systems to crash. It’s only a matter of time before STALKER 2 becomes the version players deserve, but the intervention of modders certainly speeds up the process. Here’s hoping the mod continues to work following such hefty updates.
