Kirby Air Riders tech analysis, including frame rate and resolution

Kirby Air Riders only just released on Nintendo Switch a few days ago, and Digital Foundry has now shared some details about the game from a technical perspective, including frame rate and resolution. A few other aspects are covered as well.

The full rundown is as follows:

– Fans were running with the theory that the game uses ray-tracing, but that doesn’t seem to be the case
– NVIDIA RTX instead likely being used in an offline fashion to bake out GI probes, possibly to light dynamic objects
– New engine used, SOL-AVES
– Kirby Air Riders frame rate targets 60 FPS
– Targets 1080p-1152p resolution when docked
– Top Ride mode comes closer to 1440p
– Portable mode is more variable with resolution
– 900p is more common for handheld play
– Very intense moments can drop handheld resolution to 720p, but can also go up to 1080p
– HDR implementation isn’t great, can look washed out
– City Trial is where the game can drop frames regularly
– You can also see some decimated animation a distance in this mode such as with NPCs
– For four-player multiplayer split-screen, in busy sections, there are a lot of dropped frames
– City Trial runs in the 40s and 50s for multiplayer

See the video below for a further exploration of Kirby Air Riders’ technical side, with frame rate, resolution, and more discussed.

Tech Analysis

Kirby Air Riders is out now on Nintendo Switch 2. You can also find technical details about the recently-released Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition here.