Most of the frame-rate issues in Zelda are just programming failures. If Nintendo sets the right people to it they can totally fix them.
Some dev friends and I have the same feeling about that. Because sometimes it is just a specific zoom ratio that makes the frame-rate drop. Just zoom in a bit closer or further away and it runs super smooth.
The problem is that the game wants to show both near and far LOD (Level of Detail) objects. This is a frame-rate killer if two objects are in each other. To show that, it would need around 10 times the power.
And if you see Kakariko Village, the framerate hell there, and then the more beautiful Hateno Village, which runs super smoothly, you see that doesn’t make sense. So something else is going wrong there.
If you zoom in just an inch or two, it has to show even more details of grass, yet it runs super smoothly again. Same thing when you zoom out just a bit. So on that one zoom ratio, it needs to render too much. It is an LOD problem that is known by the devs that need to handle that.
A lot of things change between docked mode for Switch, besides the resolution.
The distance for LOD’s are changed, the types of texture filters, the distance of texture filters, levels of tri-linear mappings, etc.
All depending on graphics. But for example, the zoom ratio of the LODs are changed, which is a coding part. That also would bold the issue with the zoom level frame-rate issues.
So yes, it is a programming issue in TV mode that doesn’t relate to power.
I’m sure Nintendo has the right people to know the issue and to solve it, so we’ll see if they issue another patch soon.
If you take a closer look, you can see a lot of things changing. BUT they could have done more!
From what Nintendo devs told me, the whole game originally ran at 60 frames on Switch. But they did not want it to have too many hiccups. So they focused it down to 30 frames.
There is enough of power there to run the game well. Just some programming issues.
I understand an open world at that size, it is unbelievable how smooth it all runs when you think of what it does load all the time and that it all works in real time.
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