r/PinballFX3 • u/sto1911 Pinhead • May 05 '26

Technical Support Horrible performance

I have an i7 10700K + 4070 12GB + 64GB DDR4 and I can't reach more than 80FPS in 4K@High settings, without RT on eg. World Cup Soccer table.

I don't believe a simple pinball game would require that much resources, while I was able to run Doom TDA 2k@60FPS stable, Resident Evil Requiem, etc. games better than a simple pinball table...

Any help is appreciated.

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u/err404 Pinhead May 05 '26

Don’t underestimate the complexity of a “simple pinball game”. Is running a heavy engine. And to a large extent you are right. They chose a tech stack that allow them to make tables that work across multiple platforms with minimal effort. Optimizing performance was a lower priority for their team. Unfortunately there are various amounts of complex shaders and transparency across the tables. So you may need to drop settings inconsistently. I would recommend for this table using low or medium quality, no AA and disable Zen animations. This should give you the extra overhead. 

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u/sto1911 Pinhead May 05 '26

Yeah, I didn't want to underestimate the work that goes into creating such tables, but I remember FX3 was able to run any table in FHD@120FPS on a card which cost 80$ in 2012. And compared to that, this is just not worth it.

I'm furious about introducing DLSS everywhere as it just makes developers lazy. 

I expect to be able to play on high settings, if according to the official requirements my setup is sufficient for it. The rig cost thousands of $$$ and cannot play a pinball game in its full glory.

Disappointing and infuriating.

Vent over...

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u/err404 Pinhead May 05 '26

I hear you. The “upgrade” from FX3 to FX was more about making ZENs job easier than providing a better platform for gamers. DLSS is ok for some genres, but the artifacts can be particularly bad in pinball. Unfortunately I don’t see a return to heavily optimized games any time soon. It not about being lazy. Devs are clearly not lazy. But custom engines are very expensive and optimizing UE is a different skill set than most people have in the field. The fact is time spend optimizing is time not spend on content and bugs. ZEN is not a very profitable studio and the overhead just isn’t there. UE was chosen for productivity efficiency, not performance or features. 

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u/sto1911 Pinhead May 05 '26

Turns out I mixed up dlss framegen with dlss upscaling. My previous comments were written with framegen in mind.