Fast Fusion may be the most technically impressive Switch 2 launch title - but image quality is an issue

DLSS problems apart, it's different victor from Shin'en Multimedia.

While galore of Switch 2's motorboat games are simply ports of existing games, nan level presently excels successful 1 cardinal area - racing games. For my money, there's thing amended than a strategy motorboat packed afloat of arcade racing action and, successful that sense, Switch 2 doesn't disappoint. Mario Kart World is nan system's biggest title, while nan original arcade type of Ridge Racer besides makes its quality - yet different strategy motorboat pinch a Ridge Racer game! Yet perhaps nan astir awesome racer connected nan system frankincense far, and besides 1 of nan astir enjoyable games period, is Fast Fusion from Shin'en Multimedia.

We've featured Shin'en's activity connected Digital Foundry galore times over, astir precocious The Touryst, and for bully reason: this Munich-based squad has continued to nutrient amazing, tightly designed games crossed aggregate genres, each while maintaining an exceptionally mini team.

Fast Fusion is simply a due sequel to nan original Switch's Fast RMX and nan Wii U's Fast Racing Neo, offering caller mechanics and massively enhanced visuals while aiming for a fluid 60fps. At nan aforesaid time, nan crippled looks weirdly pixelated, truthful I wanted to analyse this rumor and find what's going on.

Launching connected nan original Switch pinch Fast RMX was an awesome prime by Shin'en but, ultimately, it was an enhanced and expanded larboard of Fast Racing Neo for Wii U - which, to beryllium fair, fewer group astir apt played fixed nan console's deficiency of success. With Fast Fusion, however, we yet person a due sequel to that game. All caller tracks, caller mechanics and nan fusion conception activity successful tandem to create thing very typical and fun. However, it was nan visuals that caught our attention, pinch modern rendering techniques producing a stunning acquisition astatine 60fps.

The biggest upgrades stem from basal changes to nan lighting and materials exemplary deployed successful Shinen's proprietary engine. It needed to beryllium beautiful but besides robust capable to grip nan game's enormous, high-speed tracks. More accepted ray probe solutions were excessively memory-intensive - according to Shin'en, it would require upwards of 1GB of lighting information for conscionable a azygous track. Furthermore, screen-space lighting unsocial wouldn't beryllium sufficient, arsenic ambient and specular lighting were some basal to propulsion disconnected nan look.

To lick this, they engineered a hybrid strategy - blending aggregate lighting techniques pinch a operation of move caching and a mini magnitude of baked lighting data. Lighting information per way comes successful astatine conscionable 5 to 15MB total, while pre-calculation only needs 1 to 2 minutes per track. This intends nan crippled only needs astir 120MB of baked lighting information successful total, keeping nan record size down to conscionable 3.5GB successful a proud Shin'en tradition.

There's besides an abundance of volumetric fog introduced successful nan game, fundamentally simulating ray scattering done nan atmosphere. Volumetrics are usually rendered astatine overmuch little resolutions to support performance, particularly connected a bandwidth-constrained mobile system, but successful Fast Fusion nan devs were capable to blend nan 3D froxel measurement rendered astatine a very debased solution pinch a screen-space upsampling walk to amended nan fog. It's impressively unchangeable and moreover supports adaptable occlusion based connected moving biology specifications - truthful it is not static!

The capacity implications are huge, pinch each lighting calculations being deferred and executed wholly connected nan GPU, truthful there's zero CPU cost. Better still, nan strategy scales linearly pinch resolution, truthful nan lighting costs remains fixed astatine conscionable 0.5ms whether you're playing solo aliases successful 4-player divided screen.

However, it's this scalability pinch solution that connects america backmost to possibly nan game's 1 ocular foible - image quality. Shin'en has often deployed clever image value tricks to compression much retired of a portion of hardware. Fast Racing Neo, for instance, uses interlaced rendering while Fast RMX uses some move solution scaling and adaptable complaint shading.

Fast Fusion, is simply a small different, pinch pixel counts during camera cuts revealing dense DLSS upscaling. The 1080p mode seems to render astir 540p, 1440p mode is weirdly somewhat little astatine 504p, while nan 4K60 mode renders astatine astir 648p. Portable mode seems somewhat little than this arsenic well, though it only needs to upsample to a 1080p screen. The immense upscale factors needed to target a 4K surface origin nan important image break-up evident successful nan game's fast-paced visuals. That's nan main weakness here, and successful position of earthy pixel output, Fast RMX connected nan Switch really runs astatine a higher solution pinch much unchangeable image quality.

The developers do look alert of nan issues pinch nan DLSS position though, and a spot expected adjacent week will adhd a "pure" mode that strips retired DLSS successful favour of a consecutive 1440p docked and 1080p handheld experience.

Here's a glimpse astatine really each mode compares visually - there's small betwixt them, prevention for nan solution differences and immoderate other settings tweaks connected ultra quality. | Image credit: Digital Foundry

Regardless of nan image value concerns, nan frame-rates connected nan 4 modes disposable now are excellent, pinch performance, balanced and value modes each moving astatine a near-locked 60fps, while nan value mode drops down to 30fps. Interestingly, nan value mode besides disables real-time shadows successful bid to maximise solution - a trade-off that's not really worthy it.

Beyond image quality, nan remainder of nan visuals merit plentifulness of praise. We already talked astir lighting but nan existent value of nan materials, nan way item and nan ships are each wonderful. I emotion nan subtle specular reflections connected tracks pinch shiny aliases bedewed materials. The tracks themselves are besides massively much elaborate than thing successful Fast RMX and nan value of nan post-processing is improved arsenic well, pinch sublime mobility blur . Weather looks awesome too, pinch nan rainfall and droplets forming connected nan surface looking suitably dramatic.

Fast Fusion besides features an fantabulous HDR implementation, amended favoritism betwixt highlights and darker regions of nan image than Nintendo's ain games. In portable mode, this is constricted by nan screen, but connected a due HDR display, it really pops. All this is to opportunity that, contempt nan chunky image quality, it is genuinely a stunning crippled and I still judge it's nan astir technically awesome crippled of nan motorboat lineup, owed to its operation of high-quality visuals and accelerated performance.

Fast Fusion connected Switch 2 really runs astatine a little guidelines solution than Fast RMX connected nan OG Switch. | Image credit: Digital Foundry

Another facet I wanted to concisely mention is nan audio - Fast Fusion supports afloat situation sound, for starters, which is thing that was comparatively uncommon connected nan original Switch - hopefully we'll spot it much often this time. The sound activity is really good done, and nan euphony steals nan show pinch due high-energy physics tracks that perfectly suit nan action.

To wrap this up, though, let's talk astir nan game. Now this is an absorbing 1 because Nintendo has released F-Zero GX alongside nan console via nan GameCube NSO app. GX is 1 of nan champion futuristic racing games ever made, truthful really does Fast Fusion compete?

Well, fundamentally, while they're some very fast, nan halfway mechanics are alternatively different. Fusion focuses connected a blue/orange mechanic that requires you to lucifer your ship's colour to nan boost pads you hit, akin to Treasure's Ikaruga. Adding nan expertise to jump to nan operation makes nan crippled truthful overmuch much exciting, not only by allowing for much branching way designs and pickups successful different locations, but introducing immoderate risk/reward, arsenic it's easy to jump disconnected nan way aliases clang into a bridge.

All successful all, though, moreover pinch its shortcomings, I deliberation Fast Fusion is simply a must-have motorboat title for Switch 2. With truthful fewer choices successful position of existent caller games, it's a no-brainer, really.