It was reported that the latest addition to ARK: Survival Ascended performs worse than the base version. The game on Unreal Engine 5 in native resolution delivers less than 30 FPS even with the use of an RTX 5090 video card.
In an interview, the authors said that to run the game on Switch 2 and increase the stability of the frame rate on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, they intend to use frame generation. According to the studio's plan, Switch 2 will produce real 15 FPS, which with the help of Frame Generation will be brought up to 30 FPS. The team also states that Unreal Engine 5.7 provides a performance increase of 33–40% compared to previous versions of UE5, but even this, they say, may not be enough without frame generation.
Lead programmer of ARK: Survival Ascended, Jeremy Stieglitz, stated:
I'll be honest, I would prefer 30 frames per second without interpolation. But if we can achieve 20–25 frames without it, and then use Frame Generation to get 30, I think that will be enough. I don't think the game will be too blurry or laggy if we get close to 30 frames without interpolation. The truth is, we are close to this goal. Work is ongoing, so I hope the game will be released [on Switch 2] this year and will be impressive.
The Digital Foundry editorial team criticized this approach. In their opinion, the input lag during interpolation from 15 to 30 fps will be too high and will make the game practically unplayable. Even frame generation at 60 fps, based on 30 real frames, is considered a controversial solution there.
"The input lag would be so high that the gameplay would become completely unplayable," Digital Foundry noted.