Planet Coaster 2: General Discussion

[DistortAMG]

i just hope it's properly optimised, something a lot of modern games aren't.

I've been having this debate back and forth recently. A lot of games are, there have only been a handful of truly unoptimized games in recent times. The thing that threw everyone out recently with them calling almost all PC games un optimised, was when the bassline 'minimum' specs in general for PC games went up for what you would expect from an average PC game.

The went up a couple of years after next gen consoles released and they went up in line with those consoles now being the bassline target machines for performance, so naturally, the evolution would be for PC games in general to follow suit. Trouble is the voices that were shouting this the loudest failed to realise that this phenomenon happens a few years after every new console generation release. Consoles are the biggest target market so performance is targeted at them first as that makes sense economically for studios, what also then makes sense is to roughly target the performance of those machines, as the bassline performance or there about, for a PC games that is also on console platform. Until we have the next generation of console releases, you wont see cross platform games minimum specs rise greatly, a little bit for sure, but not massive. After next gen, there will be a big jump, something people seem to confuse for un optimised. I mean, if they want to play games that still look like Mario 64, then go ahead, but this is a way progress moves on.

This is not to say everything is un optimised, there have been exceptions though, Cities Skylines 2 was a true un optimised mess as a recent game, out of the oven far too early. Mostly been fixed now but not perfect still.

Back to Planet Coaster 2, I think the things we have that are promising for it being pretty well optimised a quite a few things.

• The version of the Frontiers Cobra engine used for creative management sims is quite mature now, having first seen the light of day in Planet Coaster 8 years ago. Multiple Planet and Jurassic games have been released since across both PC and Console, the codebase inside the engine appears to be very optimised and running quite well. Much better than back when Planet Coaster released.
• Youtube streamers got 2 hour play sessions via cloud streaming last week, videos posted to Youtube, what was clear was how polished and optimised the game appeared to be, even for it's alpha state. The game is only 7 weeks away, there still are some bugs, but overall, the videos show the game is in a VERY full and very complete state.
• The fact is is released on consoles on day one, mean they have to have their code base running well enough to hit the performance targets for consoles. Something they have done well for previous releases.

A game like this, where you can build anything, you will always run into performance issues at some point, that is what happens when you can add as much as you want. But overall, the game seems in a great shape. I personally have no concerns here. Frontier seemed to have learnt from the mistakes of other studios and they have a pretty good track record of delivering a pretty stable product on day one.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Yeah, you will have a good experience with that I am sure. Intel i7 11700F, is pretty much on par with my Ryzen chip and that is a pretty decent, modern processor, the F in the SKU name means there are no onboard graphics built into the chip, irrelevant anyway as you will be running a dedicated GPU. That CPU exceeds the recommended specs, so you are golden there.

32GB of RAM, again decent, looks like it is only running in 2666mhz though, not a big deal, but you will get a little more performance getting slightly faster RAM, it is not a deal breaker though and you would be talking less than 5%. GPU, RTX 3060 XC with a huge 12GB of VRAM, you will have no problem pushing texture details to ultra and having graphics settings.

An RTX 3060 is within 5% performance of the recommended GPU of the game, an RTX 2070, they are so close it is almost irrelevant. You will be running the game on the recommended specs with that PC, so I would expect a decent experience on nice graphics. Being an Nvidia card too, the game has been confirmed to be using Nvidia's proprietary and excellent image AI upscaling technology, meaning you can push the graphics even nicer, without impacting your FPS once turned on, it works very well.

That system seems very similar to mine in terms of specs, I am expecting a decent experience with nice graphics. I would recommend running something like that on a nice 1080p monitor, 1440p at a stretch, but that GPU will shine at 1080p, with graphics settings very high in a game like this, while maintaining decent FPS. 1440p would work too, even better with DLSS set on a more aggressive setting in 1440p, in game with larger parks, to maintain FPS, but I wouldn't go higher than that in terms of resolution. You don't need to anyway, the game will look great.

This is all well and good, but most importantly... can it run Crysis?

 

[DiogoJ42]

This is all well and good, but most importantly... can it run Crysis?

And can you run Doom on an in-park billboard?

 

[DistortAMG]

And can you run Doom on an in-park billboard?

They would go great for the Third Reich themed dark ride I was planning to build, interactive queue games and all that......is that too much? It was going to be for historical education, but I was planning one. In my defence, like any great Tarentino movie, the bad guys would loose in a spectacular finale ending, the same would be the case here. So more a celebration of the defeat more than anything else.....I'll get my coat.

 

[DiogoJ42]

They would go great for the Third Reich themed dark ride I was planning to build, interactive queue games and all that......is that too much? It was going to be for historical education, but I was planning one. In my defence, like any great Tarentino movie, the bad guys would loose in a spectacular finale ending, the same would be the case here. So more a celebration of the defeat more than anything else.....I'll get my coat.

Are you trying to out-dark my "Protect and Survive: The Ride"?

 

[DistortAMG]

Are you trying to out-dark my "Protect and Survive: The Ride"?

Sounds like a challenge that does...

 

[Matt N]

I whacked my PC specs into PCGameBenchmark (the first search result that came up when I put “Planet Coaster 2 System Requirements” into Google), and it seemed to think I met the Recommended specifications, which was pleasing!

On a random aside, it gave me a PCGameBenchmark score of 89%, which apparently means that I can run around 890 of the current top 1000 PC games at recommended specification! Given my computer is already over 3 years old, that’s quite a nice ego boost!

I tried another website, SystemRequirementsLab, but that tried to test the iPad I was browsing on… and I know very well that my iPad has not got a hope in hell of running Planet Coaster 2, not least because the game will have no iOS version!

 

[DistortAMG]

I whacked my PC specs into PCGameBenchmark (the first search result that came up when I put “Planet Coaster 2 System Requirements” into Google), and it seemed to think I met the Recommended specifications, which was pleasing!

On a random aside, it gave me a PCGameBenchmark score of 89%, which apparently means that I can run around 890 of the current top 1000 PC games at recommended specification! Given my computer is already over 3 years old, that’s quite a nice ego boost!

I tried another website, SystemRequirementsLab, but that tried to test the iPad I was browsing on… and I know very well that my iPad has not got a hope in hell of running Planet Coaster 2, not least because the game will have no iOS version!

Yeah your PC is quite decent. Although those PC benchmark websites are terrible for many, many reasons. They work OK I guess, not great just OK. You have plenty of steam left in that PC yet, quite a bit away from not being able to play the latest games.

There is a mis conception that PC's need upgrading year on year. They do not. Yes, they will become outdated usually fast, as technology moves fast. Being outdated though, does not suddenly make your PC run slow or stop working, it still crunches numbers as well as it always. Windows may slow down over time, but that is an easy fix.

Games like Planet Coaster 2, they want to sell as many games as possible. So making sure they run on a vast array of modem hardware is a must, else they would not sell many games. This is where the Steam hardware survey (which anyone can Google and view) is a god send. Huge amounts of data breaking everything down from the most common amount of CPU cores, processor speed, GPU type, RAM and much more, all into graphs to make this easy for developers to target the most commonly owned and used hardware. Seeing as Steam is very popular, it is a good metric to measure from. Frontier and other dev's will certainly use this along side other metrics when designing their games.

I was watching a video on the coaster than is Thirteen that is in the game, I cannot wait to get my hands on that, it looks soooo good. Got plenty of ideas already to use it, especially with the drop, trick and switch tracks, so many possibilities for that now. I love the fact they now have the standard AND 2 across Splash Mountain style log flume boats in the game. Along side quite a few other new decent non waterpark water rides.

 

[Burbs]

Lots of the videos I’ve watched about PC2 have mentioned that they think Frontier are holding something back about stations in particular. Seeing as we now have a wide array of switch and trick tracks, would transfer tracks, dual stations and offloads be that out of the question? Likewise, with the announcement of the omnimover style attraction which apparently has been said to involve continually moving stations, I have a feeling that the stations currently shown in the pre-alpha game mode that’s been tested by YouTubers is not the final product we’re going to see in the game. Pretty much everything else has changed to some degree, whereas stations are exactly as they are in PC1.

This is the last thing I think the game is really missing from what we’ve seen. Everything else looks fantastic.

 

[DistortAMG]

Lots of the videos I’ve watched about PC2 have mentioned that they think Frontier are holding something back about stations in particular. Seeing as we now have a wide array of switch and trick tracks, would transfer tracks, dual stations and offloads be that out of the question? Likewise, with the announcement of the omnimover style attraction which apparently has been said to involve continually moving stations, I have a feeling that the stations currently shown in the pre-alpha game mode that’s been tested by YouTubers is not the final product we’re going to see in the game. Pretty much everything else has changed to some degree, whereas stations are exactly as they are in PC1.

This is the last thing I think the game is really missing from what we’ve seen. Everything else looks fantastic.

Yeah I agree and I've seen those videos. It is clear the code base for coasters has been updated massively, so I do not think that this is out the question. I hope they surprise us. The stations currently seem like a placeholder, lots missing out of the menus for them, which leads me to think they might have another build of the game with reworked stations. It would be brilliant if they do. 7 weeks to go. They could have easily left them out of the build of the game that the Youtubers were given access too.

I feel dark rides are being held back too, while Youtubers were able to make the interior of buildings pitch black. It was not perfectly straight forward, but pretty easy to do. There could potentially be something getting held back here too. But the fact does remain, it is possible to make the interior of buildings pitch black. Amazing. I cant wait to build a huge indoor water dark ride to take full advantage. I hope we get a much more fleshed out set of lights too, to make full use of this amazing new lighting engine. The lights I have seen, look great.

 

[Burbs]

Yeah I agree and I've seen those videos. It is clear the code base for coasters has been updated massively, so I do not think that this is out the question. I hope they surprise us. The stations currently seem like a placeholder, lots missing out of the menus for them, which leads me to think they might have another build of the game with reworked stations. It would be brilliant if they do. 7 weeks to go. They could have easily left them out of the build of the game that the Youtubers were given access too.

Yes exactly! Everything else has been upgraded in one way or another. I really can’t see the developers doing all this work on improving all aspects of the game, then taking a look at coaster stations and thinking “nah this is perfect as it is!”

 

[DistortAMG]

Yes exactly! Everything else has been upgraded in one way or another. I really can’t see the developers doing all this work on improving all aspects of the game, then taking a look at coaster stations and thinking “nah this is perfect as it is!”

Me either, and they have absolutely heard the noise the community has made surrounding them. They have heard everything else and fixed them and stations were one of the loudest gripes too.

 

[MaxPower]

It's amazing how Frontier have responded to pretty much everything that PC1 was criticised for.

Don't mind spending copious amounts of money on DLC when such effort has been made like this on a game.

 

[Skyscraper]

Yeah I agree and I've seen those videos. It is clear the code base for coasters has been updated massively, so I do not think that this is out the question. I hope they surprise us. The stations currently seem like a placeholder, lots missing out of the menus for them, which leads me to think they might have another build of the game with reworked stations. It would be brilliant if they do. 7 weeks to go. They could have easily left them out of the build of the game that the Youtubers were given access too.

I feel dark rides are being held back too, while Youtubers were able to make the interior of buildings pitch black. It was not perfectly straight forward, but pretty easy to do. There could potentially be something getting held back here too. But the fact does remain, it is possible to make the interior of buildings pitch black. Amazing. I cant wait to build a huge indoor water dark ride to take full advantage. I hope we get a much more fleshed out set of lights too, to make full use of this amazing new lighting engine. The lights I have seen, look great.

Agreed, I certainly hope they've improved the stations. Adding to the omnimover, the Intamin water coaster has a moving station as well in real life, so it wouldn't surprise me if both that and the omnimover will have moving stations. We know they're possible given the cable car and chairlift in PC1. Just got to persuade my dad to preorder it as an early Christmas present so I get the bonus rides lol.

 

[Tim]

I actually managed to build a dark ride using a Chairlift, only I never managed to finish it (and I probably won't now with PC2 being so close )

The Chairlift is already confirmed to be in the game, so we know proper Omnimovers will be a thing!

 

[DistortAMG]

Planet Coaster 2 deep dive number 3 is confirmed for next week on the 25th, as part of their monthly Frontier Unlocked.

Did somebody say Deep Dive 3?

Get your exclusive first look as we take a deeper dive into the management features coming with Planet Coaster 2 plus even more reveals!

Wednesday 25th September 18:00 BST

I wonder if we will see the heavily rumoured station revamps. Surely managing stations to optimise them (or not) for throughput and efficiency is a management feature. I used to love doing that on RCT2.

 

[GJMarshy]

When they start making gaming-capable laptops that don't look like spaceships and don't have LED lighting everywhere that you pay more for, only to turn off, then I'll buy one! For now I'll be sticking with my trusty MacBook Air and play on console, as un-intuitive as they are for sandbox games like PlanCo etc!

Hopefully soon the gaming laptop industry will realise many people would like a laptop suitable for professional work, light enough to travel, and capable of running high-spec games for much needed downtime! I think Razer has made some progress here, but the they still bear an unfortunately cringey logo and LEDs, which I don't fancy going to the effort of having to cover up in professional settings!

Does anyone own two laptops for this reason? For example say an HP Envy or MacBook for work, and a separate gaming laptop? I wish I could afford both, but then again even if I could, I'd quite like not to have to carry two if I'm travelling etc!

 

[Martin]

Yeah, I have a 2023 Asus Zenbook Duo Pro (one of those gimmicky ones with the second screen above the keyboard, very useful for design software (great idea for PC2 to have a feature where all the menus and pop ups and things can go on the bottom screen)) and on paper it has all the specs to run this, but my experience with literally any other similar game tells me it's going to struggle.

I will absolutely pay for the preorder deluxe version even though I worry I'm going to end up rarely playing it because the hardware won't like it. I'd love something that could handle it better that doesn't look silly (to my taste)

 

[Matt N]

When they start making gaming-capable laptops that don't look like spaceships and don't have LED lighting everywhere that you pay more for, only to turn off, then I'll buy one! For now I'll be sticking with my trusty MacBook Air and play on console, as un-intuitive as they are for sandbox games like PlanCo etc!

Hopefully soon the gaming laptop industry will realise many people would like a laptop suitable for professional work, light enough to travel, and capable of running high-spec games for much needed downtime! I think Razer has made some progress here, but the they still bear an unfortunately cringey logo and LEDs, which I don't fancy going to the effort of having to cover up in professional settings!

Does anyone own two laptops for this reason? For example say an HP Envy or MacBook for work, and a separate gaming laptop? I wish I could afford both, but then again even if I could, I'd quite like not to have to carry two if I'm travelling etc!

I have two PCs; a lower powered, more lightweight Asus laptop for professional purposes (that I admittedly got through DSA for university), and my higher-powered gaming desktop PC that stays in my bedroom at home.

If I were you, I’d maybe plump for a desktop rather than a laptop for gaming purposes. Desktops often offer better bang for buck with regard to specs, so unless you’re going to be gaming on the go a lot, I’m not sure why you couldn’t keep an existing laptop for work purposes and have the desktop at home for gaming.

 

[DistortAMG]

When they start making gaming-capable laptops that don't look like spaceships and don't have LED lighting everywhere that you pay more for, only to turn off, then I'll buy one! For now I'll be sticking with my trusty MacBook Air and play on console, as un-intuitive as they are for sandbox games like PlanCo etc!

Hopefully soon the gaming laptop industry will realise many people would like a laptop suitable for professional work, light enough to travel, and capable of running high-spec games for much needed downtime! I think Razer has made some progress here, but the they still bear an unfortunately cringey logo and LEDs, which I don't fancy going to the effort of having to cover up in professional settings!

They do exist and have existed for a long time.

Here is one example of many, the only lighting on this is the white backlit keyboard, essential for alot of proffesional applications. Very powerful and very discreet.

Asking for a very powerful thin and light laptop is not a problem of the laptop industry unfortunately. The microprocessor technology doesn't exist right now, we are moving in that direction but we are not there yet. The processor side is almost there, it's the graphics side that is the problem. Tech is moving forward there though, Steam decks and what not prove that. But the Steam deck is not exactly capable of playing the very latest games and decent quality.

It will be nice being able to play Planco2 on the go on a thin and light, but right now the best option for that is Geforce now.