New The Ascent patch targets performance improvements across platforms
Cyber surgery.
A new The Ascent patch aims to make various performance improvements to the game across platforms.
The patch is now live for The Ascent on Steam, and is currently going through the deployment process for Windows Store and Xbox console, developer Neon Giant said in a post on Steam.
The most important part of the patch for me is it targets performance improvements for the PC version, specifically the Windows Store version.
As I reported this week, The Ascent's Windows Store version is a bit of a mess.
The cyberpunk twin-stick shooter's previous patch negatively affected the Windows Store version of the game, with stuttering, poor framerate and other technical struggles experienced by players.
I'm playing The Ascent via Xbox Game Pass on PC, and therefore the Windows Store version, and I've experienced many of these problems.
The new patch makes DX12 the default for Windows Store players. Currently, the Windows Store version defaults to DX11 - despite the fact it only supports DX12 and regardless of whether players see DX11 displayed in the in-game menu.
Related, the new patch means the Windows Store version supports DX11.
Meanwhile, the patch makes improvements to reduce stuttering and hitching for DX11 and DX12. "More work will continue here for future updates," Neon Giant said.
Ray tracing is set to default 'off' on all platforms, and the patch improves hot joining loading times on Steam and Xbox consoles.
Elsewhere, under "stability", the patch fixes a number of crashes in single-player and co-op, improves save progress on all platforms, and fixes issues where weapon skins, character shirts and gear could be lost.
There are fixes for some achievements on all platforms, too.
It's worth bearing in mind this patch is currently only out for the Steam version of The Ascent - it took two weeks for the previous patch's changes to hit the Windows Store version of the game after Steam.