Sons of the Forest - Graphics analysis & Investigating average performance

News & General Discussion
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So, I’m not sure if similar threads are around. But would love to read some clues behind this beautiful looking game.

It’s pretty much known, that SotF is created with HDRP pipeline, utilizing many standard solutions.
However, it doesn’t use any GI iirc. It’s kinda bothers me, how they got rid of that “Unity look” without any GI?
The lighting is rich and stellar, especially in forests (ironically)

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sons-of-the-forest-walking-simulator1920×1080 305 KB

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sotf-11920×1080 467 KB

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steamuserimages-a.akamaihd1920×1080 248 KB

The game uses good amount of post-processes, color correction etc. But still doesn’t really show how they managed to make such dark and rich shading.

But when it comes to performance, it’s not so great. As many users reported on this thread Reddit - Dive into anything
It’s average 60 fps, though I’m not complaining, but also bothers me - why lowering setting doesn’t do much and DLSS along with FSR 3.0 adds tiny bit amount of performance (around 7-10 fps with Ryzen 2700 & RTX 2080ti)

I know this game is pretty much CPU bound, but some of you maybe did some tests or other clues? Would love to know!

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What is “that Unity look”? What makes you so sure it has something to do with GI?

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Usually it’s that ‘blue-ish’ tint, from this detail you can definitely say this is Unity game (Unreal has purple tint). Naturally GI eliminates this effect, or simple baking too.

Even with renderdoc and without any post-process I cannot spot it. Hence the question about GI.

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I’ve never noticed anything like that. Could it be something so simple as people not bothering to change the default skybox or shadow color? :thinking:

What about just simple post-processing? Tone-mapping, color grading, LUTs and stuff. You have a lot of control over your game’s final output colors.

2 Likes
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…what?

This just means they didn’t use the default lighting settings. This is a natural part of actually caring about art direction and lighting.