In this game, It's a bit sad to see tons of hard work met with bad payoff.

[Rasha]

There are four of us living on my island, my two sisters (28, 32), my brother (17) and 31 year old me. All three of them were never interested in animal crossing until this game and it got em hooked. Since that day they all wanted to be part of it and decided to help me hand by hand in turning it into a beautiful paradise so we started working hard, especially my older pregnant sister and I for nearly a month now, taking advantage and making use of everything the game had to offer us, it felt like we broke sweat and lost sleep and spent most hours of each day of this month trying to beautify the island and breath life into it, like we should, until we almost succeeded, we still have more work to do..
BUT, close to finishing we started noticing the ugly starting to form, the game became laggy, really laggy with frame drops and items popping up on the screen in a none eye pleasing fashion. I tried to ignore it at first but the more we work on the island the worse it got until it became pretty noticeable and irritating to play and even to look at, it feels like our hard work is looking more like a heavy pile on the game rather than what we originally intended.
No, I do not believe that our island is cluttered it is not. The only thing that felt like it's overdone was the inclusion of customized simple panels on three sections of the island. The lag that formed felt like fog against motivation to continue, we will continue what we started and we will be proud of it because it's looking great but I wish the performance was on our side.
Will Nintendo fix this? Can Nintendo fix this? I honestly feel like I shouldn't bother to wait because it feels unlikely to happen.

 

[bebebese]

I'm sorry to hear that If it's any consolation, you're not the only one this has happened to: framerate drop thread

It sounds like this will only become more common as people continue decorating their islands. I've only experienced pop-in on certain parts of my island (both are tiered areas near the top corners, dunno if the combo of stuff on tiers and the ocean is what causes it to take its time loading).
I'd say it wouldn't hurt to contact nintendo support and let them know it's an issue. As you and others have pointed out, this interferes with basic enjoyment of the game.

 

[InstantNoodles]

That is frustrating for sure! I'm consistently experiencing this on my island as well. The pop-in annoys me the most because it occurs with large objects such as the monster statue and the huge bear (don't remember the actual name haha). I don't feel like my island is cluttered as the paths are quite wide. Hopefully performance in the game is improved in the future

 

[Vonny]

I dread going in my house because of the 5 second load time and how I wish the game ran at 60fps... I mean the graphics are great and all but it just looks clunky. I hope the “Switch Pro”, whenever it’s released can save us

 

[Feraligator]

My island is like this too...I can physically see the frames drop every now and then because my island is super decorated (but it's not even cluttered or as detailed as those urban islands). I can see trees vanish in the corner of the screen as I walk away. It actually hurts my eyes when the frames drop because it gets blurry and it's unpleasant to play with. I don't think this thing can be fixed so I will have to literally walk slowly in the game so that the blur isn't so bad. I totally understand where you're coming from and it's frankly annoying.

 

[Solio]

Sometimes it can help to turn of the console completely (not just sleep mode). Some games start accumulating data when played for a long time without turning off the system, resulting in performance issues and eventually crash. Thats called a 'memory leak'.
I know that is (or was) a problem with Skyrim and Hyrule Warriors, so maybe thats the case here?

 

[Rasha]

Sometimes it can help to turn of the console completely (not just sleep mode). Some games start accumulating data when played for a long time without turning off the system, resulting in performance issues and eventually crash. Thats called a 'memory leak'.
I know that is (or was) a problem with Skyrim and Hyrule Warriors, so maybe thats the case here?

Hey I might actually try this! So far I've only been going on sleep mode when I turn off the game

 

[fluttershy300]

I never heard of this yet nor have I experienced it. Omg noooo. :'(

 

[DJStarstryker]

If you have a regular Switch (not a Lite), it might help to play in docked mode instead of handheld mode. The Switch actually has less power to dedicate to running the game itself when in handheld mode, so the performance is less good.

I haven't seen this really in my game, but I've absolutely seen it on others' islands and on YouTube island tour videos. If you have too many items on your island, it can cause lag, frame rate drops, and sudden pop in/pop out loading. I don't know what is considered "too much" for the game though. Is it too much in 1 area? Too much across the entire island? I haven't seen any data on this.

 

[Cheallaigh]

Sometimes it can help to turn of the console completely (not just sleep mode). Some games start accumulating data when played for a long time without turning off the system, resulting in performance issues and eventually crash. Thats called a 'memory leak'.
I know that is (or was) a problem with Skyrim and Hyrule Warriors, so maybe thats the case here?

mem leak is the bane of every game in existence in some form or another no matter the platform. think of turning it on and off as a way of "refreshing" the system, it's a great suggestion, and should help if that's the issue.