I wish that were the case, then they'd have released the (original) 3D models!

The post had me wondering if factorio had done like [1]Prodeus did where it's all 3D models, but by default is viewed as 2D sprite animations.

[1]https://www.prodeusgame.com/website/index.php

> That's the amount of VRAM that has shipped in budget to midtier gpu's since at least 2016

In desktops maybe, which will be somewhat popular still among people who play a lot of games but not a majority (IDC has laptop sales at a 3 to 1 ratio to desktops in 2022, but that's not specific to people who play games, much less (2d) Factorio players specifically). The system I bought before my current one was in 2018 and mid-tier then was 2GB. There was no craze for (V)RAM at the time, more a question of which setting you want to play games at (and with which render distance) than whether a given laptop works for games at all

As of last month, Steam reports that >15% of their customers still have 4GB VRAM or less: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

I'm not familiar with Subnautica beyond the name, is that known for being particularly efficient?

edit: meant to say 4GB rather than 2GB in the Steam stats reference, fixed

Sure I play video games, but not usually the ones from the current year. Besides the price of the game itself, it won't run well on laptop hardware anyway and there's such an enormous collection of great games from past years. Factorio is an exception for me, I've played it since not long after the initial release in 2016 and actually got entertainment for so many hours that I thought it fair to buy it a second time ^^'

You can play Factorio on laptops and other devices that don’t have dedicated GPUs. A mid-grade computer from 2013 would be a $599 laptop with a Core i3 integrated GPU that shared the 4 GB of system RAM.

the "minimum requirements" aren't even the actual minimum, the game can definitely play on worse machines than that (just inconsistently). I know from personal experience that you can play factorio (at least the base game) on a crappy old 2009 toshiba laptop. Pretty sure it doesn't even have a GPU, just integrated graphics. It doesn't run well but it's not an action game, a little stutter isn't the end of the world and anybody playing on a system like that should not be surprised by it.

> 8 bytes per channel seems rather large here as well.

That was a typo. I meant 8 bits per channel.

I also struggled with performance in space age and mentioned it to a developer, but the solution was setting a setting which I had tested previously (no fog) and did nothing... on Nauvis. Turns out it's the difference between stuttering and smooth when in space platform view. They do still care but I guess there's only so much you can do if you also have other tasks to get to

Reporting the issue with mods to the team will likely get them to fix something - they're that performance oriented.