Skate 3 Recomp v2 is out: the game now runs on its own fully native renderer. More than double the FPS at a quarter the GPU power
Some of you might remember my earlier post about Skate 3 Recomp, my native PC recompilation of Skate 3 for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Since then the project has had one big focus, and it's finally done: v2.0.0 replaces the entire emulated Xbox 360 GPU with a native renderer built directly on Direct3D 12 and Vulkan.
Showcase video: https://youtu.be/ETXCOsip1Uo
What that means in practice:
- More than 2x the frame rate at roughly a quarter of the GPU power draw compared to the old emulated renderer (excluding optional graphics enhancements).
- Steam Deck should see a large uplift in performance, as well as other weaker machines.
- On Apple Silicon the difference is drastic: roughly 25 FPS to 250 FPS at 4K on an M4 Pro.
- The renderer runs exact ports of the game's own material shaders (world, characters, water, glass), so it still looks like Skate 3, just faster and sharper.
New optional graphics enhancements:
- Up to 8x MSAA
- Real-time sun shadows from buildings/trees/props with contact-hardening PCSS soft shadows
- Ambient occlusion, HDR pipeline with real bloom, volumetric light shafts
- Draw distance up to 5x with extended world streaming
- Experimental true 21:9 ultrawide: the world actually renders wider, HUD stays put
Quality of life since the last release:
- Fully redesigned in-game settings menu; most options apply live
- One Windows build ships both DX12 and Vulkan, switchable in settings; live renderer toggle on F5 with automatic fallback if anything fails
- Auto framerate cap that kills display judder without hand tuning
- Native DualSense/Switch/generic controller support via the SDL backend
- Portable saves and DLC folders that live next to the exe
- Linux build now runs on older distros (Ubuntu 22.04+, Steam Deck), and the macOS build is a proper app that launches from Finder and supports Game Mode
The native renderer is new and I haven't tested every corner of the game. There are known issues with skater customization rendering, some park-editor visual parity, and occasional streaming pop-in.
The emulated renderer is still there as a fallback toggle if anything looks wrong. macOS and ultrawide remain experimental.
Be sure to give it a star on GitHub if it worked well for you!