Star Citizen now features a Vulkan render, DLSS, and FSR

Star Citizen has finally received its Vulkan update alongside modern upscaler support

Alpha 3.23 for Star Citizen is now available, and it has brought some major technological changes to the game. Now, Star Citizen has a Vulkan renderer, making the game’s current version a major stepping stone towards the game’s full transition to the Vulkan API.

Sadly, Star Citizen remains very CPU-bound despite the game’s move to Vulkan, though future game updates aim to make the game “more performant“. When compared to DirectX 11, the game’s new Vulkan renderer appears to deliver similar levels of performance. However, CapFrameX has reported that the game’s DirectX 11 renderer needs time to “warm up” before smooth frametimes can be achieved.

Alongside Vulkan support, Alpha 3.23 has added support for both DLSS and FSR upscaling. Frame Generation support remains missing from Star Citizen, but these updates will help gamers to achieve smoother framerates in GPU-limited areas.

Alongside these purely technological features, Star Citizen’s alpha has been updated with a new character customizer. The game also has a new starmap, and players will be able to hunt creatures within the game. Above, you can see the trailer for Star Citizen Alpha 3.23.

The Star Citizen team are currently working to make the game’s StarEngine more performant. The transition to Vulkan will help with this, s it should allow the team to better utilise CPUs resources. Ray tracing support for the engine is also in the works.

You can join the discussion on Star Citizen’s Alpha 3.23 update on the OC3D Forums.