[eru]

Even seven years ago the hardware was already quite underpowered, and only really made sense because it's a hybrid console.

Yes, the game looks good. They also seem to have fixed some issues compared to BotW, eg the pop-in of objects isn't as jarring.

[underdeserver]

Why is every one saying seven years ago? I remember the Switch coming out around March 2017. We're in May 2023. That's six years (and change) ago, not seven.

[conor_f]

I presume it's related to how old the components are, not necessarily the console hardware itself. Seems like the main chip was released first in 2015

[eru]

> Why is every one saying seven years ago?

I don't know about everyone, but I'm just bad at arithmetic.

[alexjplant]

> pop-in of objects isn't as jarring.

I don't play modern games and am hardly a connoisseur but I seem to recall this being a mostly-solved problem via "level of detail" and hardware fog effects... has pop-in been an issue in the last decade? Saturn/PS1 games having it was par for the course but modern hardware is so powerful that it seems unnecessary.

[htag]

Pop-in essentially exists because the draw distance is too low. As the player get's closer to an object, it is more likely to be drawn, and the level of detail it is drawn at is higher.

While it's not Saturn/PS1 levels in modern games, in very large and very open maps you can have this problem where you know in the distance there can be things that you simply cannot see because of draw distance. If your running towards something in the distance, there can be noticeable 'step-ups' as it decides to draw the model with more and more details. So it comes up in exploring very large and very open areas. This happens to various degrees even on PS5+ level hardware.

There's a similar issues with movement speed, but instead the limit is how quickly can the game load new content.

[eru]

BotW had (and still has) quite bad pop-in.

They use level-of-detail tricks for the actual landscape, but the objects (like flowers etc) still pop in abruptly.