A year and a half ago, Fortnite was removed from the App Store due to a legal dispute with Apple. According to Apple, Fortnite will not be reintroduced to the Store until after the legal dispute is over – and that could take years. Now the Mobile Edition is available via GeForce Now. ComputerBase tried this.
Fortnite by GeForce Now: Necessity is the mother of invention
iOS and iPadOS users can now play Battle Royale on their mobile devices once again. However, not as a native app directly from the App Store, but with transfers through Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service (test). It’s been a closed beta for a long time, with 500,000 users participating, according to Nvidia, but now everyone has the chance.
Here’s how Fortnite comes to iOS via GFN
First, Apple users must visit the GeForce Now website via the Safari web browser and drag the page to the home screen as a progressive web app. Then Fortnite can be streamed from Nvidia servers via Safari, because there is no iOS app yet.
The requirements to play Fortnite on GeForce Now are an Nvidia account and a GeForce Now membership – a free membership is enough too. Once you are in the app, you can select Fortnite and click play, the game loads. When streaming the game, depending on your internet connection, there may be fluctuations in latency, which in turn can cause lag.
They are also streaming on Android
Android users were only able to play the desktop version via the cloud gaming provider until now, but the Fortnite mobile app without streaming was also available for Android users. Although Google has also removed Fortnite from the Play Store, the game can be downloaded directly from the Epic website and installed natively on your Android device. In conjunction with the release of the mobile version for iOS, it should also be available to Android users from now on, Nvidia notes.
The classic battle royale shooter mobile app version is equipped with a mobile-adaptive user interface that can be controlled by touch for both Android and iOS devices. Additional controls such as automatic shooting, aim assist, and visual cues on the direction of origin of sounds within the game have also been added to the mobile version.
Fortnite Mobile Training with GeForce Now
GeForce Now managed to impress in testing the new GeForce RTX 3080 tariff at the end of 2021, but the streaming royale shooter left only a mixed impression when first trying it out. The user interface and touch input fields are known from the mobile version – you have to get used to it and accept a longer familiarization phase, but that’s always the case in Fortnite Mobile in general. But what was remarkable was the unexpectedly muddy graphics. Combined with the iPhone’s small screen, it is often difficult to see details or opponents from a distance.
Additionally, the title could play reasonably smoothly after a typical Fortnite shader cache initially faltered, but there were sometimes massive stutters at irregular intervals, interrupting the game’s fun for a while – in terms of performance (VDSL 100) or shouldn’t The WLAN signal is present. The following video, showing a no-comment session of about 15 minutes, provides an impression (eg at 5:30).
Touch inputs also have a very short but noticeable lag due to cloud gaming latency. Crossplay with PC players is possible. As usual with cloud gaming, when in doubt: give it a try.
Stream in 640p or 720p
However, the muddy appearance was soon explained. By default, Fortnite runs on GeForce Now smartphones at a resolution of 1,376 x 640 pixels in 19.5:9 format. On our test device, the iPhone 12, this is full screen, but by no means exhausts the available screen with a resolution of 2,532 x 1170 pixels. .
In GeForce Now, an alternative resolution of 1,280 x 7.20 pixels can be selected in 16:9 format with black borders on the left and right side of the screen on the iPhone. The refresh rate can be selected from the standard 60 to 30 frames per second, and the bitrate can also be adjusted manually. Otherwise, there are no graphics options available in the game itself. On the iPad, a higher resolution can also be configured via the GeForce Now settings.
The precision and graphics are astonishing
That’s especially surprising in light of the GeForce Now tariff: Editors subscription tested the RTX 3080, which Nvidia explicitly advertises with the RTX 3080 (test) both with resolutions up to 3840 x 2160 pixels and refresh rates that promise up to 120 frames per second. In a less performance-hungry title like Fortnite, the latter should already be possible without any issues, and that’s when the PC version is streamed to laptops or PCs. However, Fortnite for iOS and Android smartphones currently do not offer this experience.
The version now available for iOS and Android with a touch interface is officially this PC version. However, there are no settings for them in the graphics menu either. However, Nvidia denied the editors’ assumption that Epic moved the ARM mobile app to x86 in the background or that GeForce Now emulated it.
Conclusion
GeForce Now isn’t new, Fortnite via GeForce Now isn’t new and Fortnite Mobile isn’t new – Fortnite has a touch interface and is thus similar to Fortnite Mobile via GeForce Now. That has its technical appeal, but more politically: The game that Apple banned from the App Store due to legal disputes with Epic over the commission system is now back via Nvidia’s cloud-streaming service in collaboration with Epic. This is the only way that users who toy with the idea of using Fortnite Mobile on iOS will get the choice back in the first place.
Whether the game meets your particular taste on this device is a personal decision. It would undoubtedly be an advantage if Nvidia also allowed higher resolutions for streaming on smartphones – performance is certainly available on the RTX 3080 tariff.
ComputerBase received information about this item from Nvidia under a non-disclosure agreement. The only requirement was the earliest possible release date, of course. The manufacturer did not influence the test report and there was no obligation to publish it.
