In this video, the Gen 12 renderer is being discussed in relation to Star Citizen, specifically in the 318 PTU version of the game. It is mentioned that the PTU is not an accurate place to test performance as it contains debugging code that affects the results. The overall performance in the PTU is currently lower than in the live version of the game (version 317). However, the developer behind the Gen 12 renderer revealed that users can switch between the different renderers in the console. The different renderers include the Legacy renderer, the 317 version with static geometry, and the full Gen 12 renderer. Switching between these renderers shows that the render thread itself becomes faster with the Gen 12 renderer, but overall performance does not see significant improvement.
The video also includes testing of the renderers on two different systems: a main system with a 5800 x3d processor and a minimum spec system with an i5 8400 processor. The results show that the Gen 12 renderer is faster on both systems, especially on the minimum spec system. However, the bottleneck for performance on both systems remains the main thread.
The video also discusses the variability of server performance in the PTU, with the number of entities on servers ranging from 90,000 to 150,000. This variability affects client performance indirectly as more entities on busy servers require the client CPU to process more data. The current performance in the PTU is unstable, with varying results depending on the server. It is noted that these results may change with future patches or updates.
In conclusion, the Gen 12 renderer in Star Citizen’s PTU version is faster in terms of the render thread, but overall performance remains similar to previous versions. The PTU is not an ideal place for accurate testing, and more extensive testing will be conducted once the Gen 12 renderer is live.