Massive FPS Hits

[Apocalypse 31]

Since 4.0 I've been experiencing massive FPS hits in regards to maps.

 

The hits are inconsistent; it only happens when I look AT certain areas - sometimes built-up areas with lots of buildings, sometimes not. I'm trying to find the root cause so I can edit my maps and increase the performance.

 

Is there a map object that the game doesn't handle well?

 

Large masses of buildings?

Player-placed tree's & bushes or rocks?

Larger buildings (high rises) ? (I'm starting to feel like this has something to do with it)

Larger textures? 

 

[Ssnake]

Is it at least consistent that it always happens when you look at the same areas/into the same directions, or is THAT part also inconsistent?

[Apocalypse 31]

33 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Is it at least consistent that it always happens when you look at the same areas/into the same directions, or is THAT part also inconsistent?

It's consistent.

 

I'm trying to narrow it down between Highrises and user-placed tree's (versus Con/Dec forests)

 

Also - for reference, I'm using the Columbus, GA map made by Rhyfel

 

 

 

I've never had FPS issues with this map before 4.0

Edited November 12, 2016 by Apocalypse 31

[Rotareneg]

Probably the same issue here:

 

[Apocalypse 31]

Line objects?

 

That could possibly be it. The map I linked above has a TON of fenses/line obj. 

 

This is not the first time I've had the issue; we had a similar issue a few weeks ago with a Kanium map.

EDIT: ALL players were having the issue at a certain point on the map, near a city.  

Edited November 12, 2016 by Apocalypse 31

[Ssnake]

I suspect that you are running into the same issue, the object count per scene simply being too high. We're working on ways to reduce that issue, but ultimately the way to go (for us) is a transition towards DirectX 11 or so. Which, unfortunately, happens to be a major effort.

 

At this point I can but recommend to create a copy of the map, to delete elements that aren't tactically essential (like fences, light masts) until you get an acceptable frame rate back. You could still work on the "too detailed" map in the expectation that at some point we find a way to boost the performance. But it will take us at least until the next major release - if not longer.

[Apocalypse 31]

43 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

At this point I can but recommend to create a copy of the map, to delete elements that aren't tactically essential (like fences, light masts) until you get an acceptable frame rate back. You could still work on the "too detailed" map in the expectation that at some point we find a way to boost the performance. But it will take us at least until the next major release - if not longer.

Ok. I'll start with that. 

[jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ]

I was at a LAN party where we played friends, and we noticed that forests give you a massive performance hit across many different hardware setups. Even with a GTX 1080, a wide FOV, eg. looking out of your tank as commander, in a forested area would bring down the FPS to around 10 or so, whereas using a high magnification optic worked fine. This points toward tree count on the screen being the main reason for performance loss, as opposed to overdraw from the high amount of overlapping objects with alpha blending. The draw call counts sound insane, so maybe you could try consolidating different objects into the same draw call, or try using some occlusion culling technology to lower the amount.

[Ssnake]

I'm not entirely sure about your explanation. I mean, we ALWAYS had many trees, in that respect nothing has changed since version 2.251. Now, the forests in Steel Beasts do however depend on consisting of the same tree type and, ideally, being contiguous. If you "disturb the crystal structure" by inserting other tree types, the clustering that we're doing at long range (where 3x3 tree tiles are being combined into a single tree cluster imposter, provided that they are all of the same type) will not work. At which point the number of objects that need to be drawn increases.

 

So, it may be a matter of how exactly these forests are designed. I cannot say anything about that because I haven't seen it and wouldn't know where to find the right spot. But it's worth checking out.

[jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ]

Maybe it's something that's changed when moving to 4.0. I didn't play 3.0 that much, but I don't recall having this serious issues there. I tried some testing with different viewpoints and zoom levels in the Meeting engagement (winter) vanilla scenario, and there it seems that FPS decreases noticeably when you're looking at dense woods. I've noticed the same on many other maps as well, but tested it more thoroughly just in there. It does seem like the tree models are all identical, so the whole forest should be just a single draw call, but I can't say much more than that without knowing anything about how the engine works. I also noticed that thermals cause another big performance hit, probably due to the depth of field effect. So to reiterate my findings:

 

Thermals vs day sight: FPS noticeably lower on thermals, gets worse with low magnification and when looking at dense woods

Wide vs narrow FOV: Wide FOV far worse, when looking at forest out of turret hatch with binocs or with high zoom on gun sight, FPS is smooth enough (30 or so), with wide angle, eg. view from turret hatch with no binocs, FPS drops down to 15.

Looking at dense woods vs open ground: another noticeable FPS hit happens when you move your camera so that it's filled with dense woods. With wide angle day sight, FPS is around 30 when looking at open ground, and drops to the 15 mentioned above when looking at woods.

 

With wide angle thermals and looking at woods, the FPS drops as low as 5 in some places, which makes aiming quite impossible. We had to stop using thermals completely in some scenarios with dense forests due to this. This does sound like the graphics engine could use some work, a 1080 should be able to handle SB graphics fine.

 

Other scenarios that had performance issues were Red Decision Point Attack (Leo2A4) winter and the Kouvostoliitto scenario downloaded from here. All of them have dense forests, and all of them had the same issues.

[Ssnake]

Thermals render out farther (up to triple the daysight range) so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the frame rate suffers. Add to that the DOF effect, but that attributes only for a smaller part of it, actually. This just FYI.

 

But your original report was about the vehicle commander looking out of his hatch. That would not incur anything related to thermals...?

[jtyotJOTJIPAEFVJ]

I tested it by looking out the hatch as the commander, as well as using the gunner's thermal and day sights. The fps is pretty bad when looking out of the hatch, but even worse in low magnification with the gunner's thermal sight. I guess the further render range for thermals could explain that as well.

[DavidZill]

I'm experiencing similar issues, and it seems to indeed be in regards to certain maps. I have a core i7 4790K @ 4.9Ghz and two 1080 GTX's in SLI. M1A2 SEP's CITV screen slews with horrendous FPS. My refresh rate on my 4K monitor is 60hz, however I find myself playing a mission at 15-22 FPS with nothing more than a moderate object count. I think either the graphics engine or something is worth a good analysis.

[Ssnake]

We're preparing an update that may help a bit, and yes, it's a known issue, but at the end of the day I can't promise a quick solution to this.