Sonic Frontiers Mods On PC Have Fixed The Pop-In Issue

There are a few characters in gaming that will stay icons for years and decades to come. Pac-Man, Lara Croft, Super Mario Bros, Scorpion, and Kirby are just some names that will forever be part of gaming lore. One character we can’t leave out from this list, however, is the Hedgehog with super speed: Sonic.

Since his first appearance in 1991, the speedster has become the face of one of the best-selling video game franchises. His most recent appearance was in 2022 with the 3D Platformer Sonic Frontiers.

Reviews for the new game were average, and a prominent reason for that was issues with LOD and pop-ins, but new PC mods have fixed these problems.

YouTube channel Sonic Central posted a video of these PC mods. By using these in-game, you can solve one of the most annoying issues in the game. As you can see in the video below, the results of this mod are excellent. 

The video below uses the “Higher Object Pop-in” and “Max LOD Open Zone” mods in Sonic Frontiers. Creators Adubbz on GameBanana is responsible for making both of these brilliant mods. And the game looks much better when we apply these mods on PC. 

In the gameplay we see in the video, the level of detail is much higher in the far-off areas. We can see graphically how beautiful the game looks instead of waiting for areas to load. Sonic Frontiers looks truly remarkable in the video with these mods applied. 

One of the biggest problems with the game since its release has been the pop-ins. Areas load slower and come into view much later than necessary for smoothly playing the game. This performance issue is one reason critics and publications have given Sonic Frontiers an average score.

However, by using this mod, you can reduce these pop-ins heavily and have a smooth playthrough. The video gives an example of this by showing us the Kronos Island gameplay. You can see how smooth the game runs, and we don’t have any areas popping in after we reach them. 

So, modders have fixed a major issue in Sonic Frontiers before even Sega. Pop-ins for different objects is significantly less after applying this mod, and you don’t even notice it. In the before and after screenshots from the video below, you can see the difference is light and day. 

As you can see, the visuals far away have much more detail and look a lot better. It truly displays the graphical capability of Sonic Frontiers and how beautiful the game can look. Hence, this mod drastically increases the LODs in the platform game.

Here’s how things look after the application of the Sonic Frontiers mod in question. 

Many have been wondering why this problem has been appearing in the game. PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series consoles have also been facing these issues since launch. And many think it is because Sonic Frontiers was optimized for Nintendo Switch. 

A thread on the Sonic Frontiers subreddit talks about this, and the main consensus among the fanbase is that developers just didn’t have time for versions programmed for consoles. It is a bummer as mods can’t be used on consoles, so this problem will persist. Hopefully, Sega will take some action and fix this problem itself.

You can try out Sonic Frontiers for yourself, as it is out everywhere right now. Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows are the platforms you can play this title on. We hope you have better luck with the pop-ins and the LOD than we have had.