Beautiful Light performance: every FPS figure Deep Worlds has shared in 2026
Every Beautiful Light FPS figure Deep Worlds published in 2026, from 100 to 130 native and 240 with frame generation, and the hardware behind them.
Performance has been Beautiful Light's sore point since its first playtests in 2023, when Deep Worlds itself called it mediocre even on high end PCs. In 2026, the studio started posting hard numbers in its official Discord. Here they are, in order, with the one caveat that matters most: every figure was measured on a top of the range PC.
April 2026: optimization pays off
On 1 April 2026, Aherys reported a jump in the outdoor areas, measured at 2K on an RTX 4090:
- 100 FPS in Ultra with tessellation, without any upscaler
- 133 FPS in Low, using 6.7 GB of video memory, down from 11 GB before
He added that the build still had logging and tracing turned on, which costs performance.
The shipping build numbers
Two days later, on 3 April, Aherys followed up because the first post had confused people: those were testing build figures. He shared numbers from a shipping build, the kind of build players actually get, all at 2K resolution:
| Quality | Rendering | FPS |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Native | 180 |
| Ultra | Native | 138 |
| Low | TSR | 155 |
| High | TSR | 125 |
| Ultra | TSR | 110 |
| Low | DLSS (DLAA) | 160 |
| Ultra | DLSS (DLAA) | 98 |
| Ultra | DLSS with frame generation (DLAA) | 160 |
Two things to know when reading the table. DLAA is DLSS used for anti-aliasing at native resolution, not for upscaling, which is why it does not raise the frame rate on its own. And Aherys was explicit that he could not test other graphics cards, because the studio has no budget for it. Deep Worlds said it would keep optimizing until release.
June 2026: 130 FPS native
On 14 June, Aherys announced a new milestone in the game's build, at 2K, on an RTX 4090 with a Core i9 13900KF and 256 GB of RAM:
- 130 FPS native in high quality, stable between 120 and 130
- 150 FPS with DLSS Balanced, stable between 140 and 150
- 240 FPS with DLSS frame generation (Balanced), stable between 215 and 240
He was careful to add that performance drops in firefights with other players, depending on the location, and that the numbers needed another round of playtests to confirm. The same day he pointed to a write-up on the game's X account, "Performance Breakdown - How we did it!", about the techniques behind the gains.
What the playtests said
In his July 2026 playtest report, Aherys said performance seemed good for most players, while lower configurations still needed work. Server performance was described as perfect, and some players crashed with the latest NVIDIA driver, which the team was investigating.
What these numbers do not tell you
- How the game runs on a mid range PC. Every figure comes from an RTX 4090, one of the most powerful graphics cards available. On the minimum or recommended hardware, expect far lower numbers.
- How it runs in a full raid. Outdoor scenery and quiet moments are the best case. Deep Worlds itself says firefights cost frames.
- The final build. These are development builds, from April and June 2026.
The official minimum and recommended PCs, from the Steam page, are on the system requirements page.
Sources
- Deep Worlds' official Discord (discord.gg/project-bl), #leaks-wip: posts by Aherys, CEO, on 1 April, 3 April, 14 June and 2 July 2026
- Beautiful Light on X, "Performance Breakdown - How we did it!", June 2026, linked from the Discord post of 14 June 2026
- Deep Worlds, "We conducted playtests, here's what we learned", 31 May 2023, on Steam
BL Guide, unofficial community coverage of Beautiful Light: how we check what we publish.