[Huggybaby]

It would be awesome if we had a benchmarking routine we could run, like they have with Quake, DOOM, and the like. You change your settings, run a preset scene, and get a result with min, max, and average frames per second.

Well, it WOULD be awesome.

Barring that, I'd like to know:
Which settings have the most effect on visual quality, and which the least.
Which settings have the most effect on frame rate, and which the least.
And what might be the best compromise.

The goal is to derive specific guidelines for new users who want to tweak their systems, without spending so much time doing so that they don't end up playing as much as they should. Like me.

This topic will complement my other topic on visual quality screenshots.

You have your video card settings, like Anisotropic Filtering and Antialiasing, and you have your game settings, pictured below. Both are entirely relevant.

I will most likely remove some of the settings below (like "Disable Music") once they are deemed irrelevant.

FS2 SCP uses OpenGL, NOT Direct3D. As such, it's even more important that you have the latest video card drivers installed. From my signature:

Before you update your video drivers:
Use the Hard to find DriverCleaner Pro Download.

FS2 Open uses OpenGL instead of Direct3d. The manufacturer's drivers may not be exactly what you want, so try the NGO Optimized Drivers (I've had good luck with these on my ATI card), or the slightly older Omega Drivers.

OK, below are the 3.6.9 launcher 5.5a game options, which ones do you insist on using and which ones can you live without?

[Pnakotus]

Does anyone really have such critical performance problems with SCP?  Let's face it: you can turn most of the graphics options on and never turn them off.  You could *maybe* turn mipmapping off and have it done in hardware, and lighting missiles *might* be considered a waste of resources... but it's not like SCP requires hours of uber l33t tweakz0ring.

[DaBrain]

Env mapping can be pretty bad for older cards.

At least my Geforce 4 TI didn't like it very much @ 1280*1024.
Well, but that was D3D, so... I don't really know.


Atm, the content is wasting performance. It loads too many maps and they do not have mip maps. -img2DDS will compress uncompressed maps and even create mip maps (afaik), but that takes time... so your loading will take longer.

[Bob-san]

nVidia GeForce FX 5200, 128MB on APG 4x (2.0).

Graphics:
All on except...
Disable motion debris

Game Speed:
All on except...
Disable vertical sync

HUD:
All on except...
Enables 3D radar

Gameplay:
All on except...
Toggle features for The Babylon Project
Toggle features for Wing Commander Saga

Audio:
All off except...
Preload mission game songs

Experimental:
All off except...
Use specular alpha for env mapping

Facing blank area, empty mission:
minimum fps: 55
maximum fps: 65
average fps: 60

Facing blank area, busy (100+ ship) mission: (updated)
minimum fps: 5
maximum fps: 20
average fps: 15

Facing action area, busy (100+ ship) mission: (added)
minimum fps: (unknown; the game freezes for about 10 seconds, rendering and calculating everything, likely a processor-bottleneck)
maximum fps: 10?
average fps: 5?

In a dogfight:
minimum fps: 15
maximum fps: 45
average fps: 35

Against bombs/bombers:
minimum fps: 5
maximum fps: 35
average fps: 15

I find my card has the worst time doing the explosions of bombs; they tend to lag it up until the shockwave passes and so does the audio.

Computer info:
Intel Celeron 2.0GHz on Socket 478
Intel D845PESV mainboard
512MB x 1 of DDR Memory, PC3200 (400mhz?) read as PC2100 (266mhz?)
PNY nVidia GeForce FX 5200, 128mb on APG 4x (2.0)
-Normal resolution 1024x768x32 at 75hz
17" CRT Monitor
Onboard Audio
Western Digital? 80GB Hard Drive, 8mb Cache, 7200RPM, on IDE 33/66/100?

[Huggybaby]

Bob-san, I think your frame rates (very nice documentation, thank you) answer the question posed by Pnakotus. I also slow down below 60 when everything is cranked up. I've noticed many people say they slow way down when the big shockwave is released.

The problem isn't so much maximum frame rates either, it's consistency. That's why I leave vsync on.

200fps that drops to 100 doesn't look as good as 60fps that is constant under all conditions. A rock solid 60fps is like butter.

DaBrain is working on a really cool update to the vps files and I can hardly wait. In the meantime I'm going to try this -img2DDS flag...

[CP5670]

The biggest framerate killer is by far the 1024x1024 shockwave in the current (3.6.9 zeta) mv_adveffects vp. It causes the framerate to drop like a brick on basically any system. These will be cut down in the next vp revision, but for now you need to either remove them from the vp or extract the ones from mv_effects into the game's data\effects folder, which will cause the game to use those instead. The blue/orange issue is a matter of personal preference. I like the orange shockwaves better and use those. Apart from that, the mv_models vp caused a substantial performance hit in the past, but the last time I tried the game without it was over a year ago and it may be different now.

adveffects in general contains a lot of bloat at the moment (e.g., the old tga nebulas, which actually look slightly worse than the original ones in the game while using about 20 times the memory), but also has plenty of good stuff like the animated glowmaps and beam effects.

Some of the weapon effects in the main effects vp also look quite terrible. I use a duplicate of the mv_effects.tbm file with some of the image names removed to revert to the originals. I also use the older thruster graphics instead of the ones in the current effects vp. They look better to me, although they do at times look funny from certain angles.

These are my game settings:

Graphics: Everything except disable motion debris, stop fog from intersecting hull and disable movie scaling. I prefer the feeling of motion that the debris provide and don't like how the 3D poof rendering method looks (the stop fog thing), especially out of the side views of your ship.

Game speed: Cache bitmaps is on and the other two are off.

HUD: Extra scanning lines, target info, rearm/repair timer and the ballistic gauge are enabled. These are personal preferences for the most part, although there is really no reason to leave the last two off.

Gameplay: 3D warp is on, although it occasionally causes bugs with a few ships.

Audio: Preload sounds is on.

Experimental: Ingame joining is on. I leave specular alpha off since it causes rendering bugs on quite a few ships at the moment, although this should change with the next media VP.

Dev tool: The framerate display is on.

Extra flags (need to be typed in manually): -ambient_factor 90 -ogl_spec 70 -spec_exp 1.0 -spec_tube 1.0
The first one is especially important, but the same value will look different for everyone depending on the monitor and ingame brightness settings.

The game is set to 2048x1536 with vsync, triple buffering, 6x MS AA and 16x AF (forced through the driver) and runs on an X1900XTX (512MB) at 710/800mhz. The framerates are generally between 70 and 85 in most missions (the 85 is forced by vsync), but can drop to the mid 50s with a lot of ships in view. Fighting/action generally doesn't influence the framerate much, as long as the adveffects shockwaves are not used. There are certain reproducible situations where beams cause an enormous slowdown when fired for the first time in a mission, even when they're using the original retail graphics, but this isn't very common and may be due to some bug in the game.

[Turey]

Another important consideration to take into account is graphics card/processor throttling on some machines. Check this out:

System:
IBM Thinkpad T30
Pentium 4 2.18 Ghz
512 MB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500

Both my graphics card and my processor want to throttle back when the laptop is running on batteries. I can turn off the graphics throttling, but I haven't been able to turn off the processor throttling yet.

Running on batteries:

No AA, AF, or other high-quality options on it graphics card.
Vsync turned off in both the graphics card and the launcher.
running FSO 3.6.9 RC8 with retail data - no command line options (except -fps and -no_vsync), no mediavps.
In-game detail on low.

FPS: 5


No AA, AF, or other high-quality options on it graphics card.
Vsync turned off in both the graphics card and the launcher.
running FSO 3.6.9 RC8 with mediavps (no adveffects), -spec, -glow, -env, -jpgtga, -mipmap, no motion debris, fog intersect hull, 3d warp, flash on warp, envalpha, -no_vsync, -fps)
In-game detail on high, model detail on max.

FPS: 1-2, pretty much a freeze.

Plugged in:

No AA, AF, or other high-quality options on it graphics card.
Vsync turned off in both the graphics card and the launcher.
running FSO 3.6.9 RC8 with retail data - no command line options (except -fps and -no_vsync), no mediavps.
In-game detail on low.

FPS: 130 min, 140 max.


No AA, AF, or other high-quality options on it graphics card.
Vsync turned off in both the graphics card and the launcher.
running FSO 3.6.9 RC8 with mediavps (no adveffects), -spec, -glow, -env, -jpgtga, -mipmap, no motion debris, fog intersect hull, 3d warp, flash on warp, envalpha, -no_vsync, -fps)
In-game detail on high, model detail on max.

FPS: 60 average, 50 min, 80 max.

Makes a BIG difference.

[Bob-san]

CP5670... nice to know that some of us can afford such hardware...

Anyways how do we force a certain hertz setting ingame? I don't want 1024x768x32 at 75 hertz (setting I use for both WinXP Home SP2 and Ubuntu 5.10 Linux) to revert to 1024x768x32 at 60/70/72 hertz, since it causes problems with me getting headaches and monitor scaling (I have it setup near-perfect).

Anyways I need to fix my benchmark... I did two missions last night called "Orion Assult" and "Colossus Assult", and got some new benchmarks... noticed something that I didn't notice before-massive slowdown when facing all 96 other ships, resolved with a large performance boost by turning the ship away from it all.

[Huggybaby]

This is a well known problem, and fixes abound. Google "refresh rate fix".

A refresh rate lock or game specific profile is available in all stock drivers now I think, just poke around. I don't like the stock ATI drivers though.

I'm currently using ATI tray tools, the fix in there looks like this:




ATI Tray Tools

NVdia Tray Tools

Or, get them bundled with the NGO Drivers

I used to use RefreshForce,  I even sent them some money back in the day.

[CP5670]

CP5670... nice to know that some of us can afford such hardware...

Anyways how do we force a certain hertz setting ingame? I don't want 1024x768x32 at 75 hertz (setting I use for both WinXP Home SP2 and Ubuntu 5.10 Linux) to revert to 1024x768x32 at 60/70/72 hertz, since it causes problems with me getting headaches and monitor scaling (I have it setup near-perfect).

I actually consider my system fairly midrange these days. It's almost nine months old now and I would usually have upgraded by this point, but the lack of any good games at the moment has put me off from it.

Anyway, I've found that all of those refresh rate override programs fail with some game or another. The best way to do it is to remove the low refresh modes out of your monitor driver (inf) file, so Windows thinks your monitor is incapable of showing them and never outputs them under any circumstances. Rivatuner can make the inf file for you, but it's very easy to do through notepad.

For FS2 specifically, at least on Windows, you can add in the dword flag OGLRefreshRate into the game's registry section and set the decimal value to your desired refresh rate.

[Taristin]

I'd attempt to participate in this benchmark, but I think my card (x1950xt) would skew the results too much

[Cobra]

Well, here's what I have:

System:
P4 3.0GHz HT Enabled
512 MB RAM (soon to be a gig if my ignorant grandmother will get the hint that memory isn't related to my hard drive and buy the ram stick she promised me >.<)
GeForce 6200 256MB AGP

FSO Settings:
Graphics
Enable Specular
Enable Glowmaps
Enable Environment Maps
Enable JPG/TGA Textures
Enable Mipmapping
Apply Lighting to Missiles
Mediavps
MV_Core
MV_Models
MV_Textures
MV_Effects
MV_Adveffects

I can play all the FS2 missions without slowdown, but on user made missions with ****loads of ships being rendered, I can go maybe one mission and then the rest of the time i have less than 15 fps. Damn low RAM count.

[MP-Ryan]

You want a low end benchmark?

AMD Thunderbird 1.33 Ghz processor.
512 MB SDRAM CAS2
RADEON 9500Pro 128MB overclocked to 312/300 mHz.

Flags:
-mod Mods\mediavps -glow -jpgtga -mipmap -img2dds -cache_bitmaps -dualscanlines -targetinfo -snd_preload -fps

Mediavps are the latest set, excluding cell and adveffects

1024x768x32 @ 85Hz, OpenGL on High

And generally I get framerates in the 50s and 60s.  It's only in missions where there's a lot going on (Clash of the Titans II, Part II for example) that I get really bogged down... ship explosions knock me down to 5 fps every now and then too.

[Huggybaby]

Thanks for the report.

WHAT WE REALLY NEED is a true benchmark. They have them for doom and quake, etc.

I wonder how hard it would be for someone to write a self running sequence that logs min, max, and avg frame rates? The sequence would naturally include lots of ships and explosions.

Please, any programmers reading this?

[Bob-san]

As of this very second... the best benchmark we have is turning on the FPS counter in-game and watching it when it lags or you're not busy.

There are some benchmark tools that run as another program, writing a long file to a *.txt file and modifying it as required. Search up one or somehting.

[Huggybaby]

Search up one or somehting.

Yeah, umm, thanks. Can you be more specific? I know posting a link takes work...especially after all the links I gave you for the refresh rate fix.

And that doesn't address the need for the benchmarker to run the exact same sequence. It has to be pre-scripted or it's worthless.

[TheAgent]

Well here's my system and my set up for fred_open

Pentium 4 3gig HT @ 800mhz FSB
Ge-force 6800ultra 256 AGPX8 mem speed 1.1 GHz / Ramdec 400 MHz (not overclocked)
PNY 1024ddr 3200 @ 400mhz (2x512 duel channel mode)
AC97 On board Audio (its crap but then it hasn't buggered up like my Audigy2, go figure?)

OS = Windows Vista Enterprise edition (genuine with valid key)

LAUNCHER SETTINGS

Features

Easy set up, set to HIGH MEMORY FEATURE USAGE ON

FLAGS

GFX

enable specular
enable glow
enable environment maps
enable jpg/tga textures
enable mipmapping

HUD

Enable 3d radar

GAMEPLAY

use models for ship selection
enable 3d warp
enable flash upon warp

SOUND

Preload mission game sounds

DEV TOOL

Show FPS on hud

I must point out, that soon as them large shock waves come in, my system drops to what would be considered a stop animation recording frame rate.

Something really needs to be done about them

*EDIT*

oops forgot to add, my FPS are solid at 120, they don't go higher, and they don't go lower, i don't have V-sync on neither
its just them Shock waves that do it, i think its more of a memory issue than Graphics to be honest.

[Herra Tohtori]

Well, I'm posting my setup too...

System - Windows XP SP2/Kubuntu 6.06 LTS 32bit

CPU - AMD64 Athlon 3200+ (~2100 MHz absolute freq.)
RAM - 1024 MB DDR-SDRAM
GPU - XFX GeForce 7600 GT XXX-edition, 256 MB DDR2 memory - no idea about frequencies

Launcher Video settings: 1280x1024@32bit, OpenGL, Trilinear text. depth, 16xAF, general settings High, Use large textures on.

GPU settings for 3.6.9 official exe:
AA - 8xS
AF - Application controlled (16xAF set in Launcher)
Image quality set to highest possible
VSync On
Forces trilinear mipmapping
Uniform surface texture Enabled (dunno about exact translation - my control panel is Finnish)
Extension limit - disabled
Hardware acceleration - one display
Trilinear optimization - disabled
Anisothropic mip filtering otimization - disabled
Anisothropic sample optimization - disabled
Gamma Correction anti-aliasing - enabled
Transparency Antialiasing - Supersampling
Triple buffer - enabled
Negative LOD Level - Clamp


Launcher flags:

GFX - All on except Disable Scale to Window

Game Speed - All on

HUD - All on except analog ballistic ammo gauge, 'cause I don't need it for the time being.

Gameplay - All on except features for TBP and WCSaga are off when I play standard FS campaigns.

Audio - Preload mission game sounds

Multi - All off

Troubleshoot - All off

Experimental - Ese specular alpha for env mapping on, others off.


Custom flags: -ambient_factor 18 -no_emissive_light -spec_exp 16.7 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.9 -spec_tube 1 -fov 0.7


Max FPS: 120 (hardware limits to 60 but the game counter shows up to 120)
Average FPS - above hundred. Ie. almost always up to what my TFT screen can do - 60 Hz only...
Minimum FPS - sometimes, on huge explosion fest, FPS can briefly drop to 30-40, but it's always very much playable.


On Linux side, I can boost Anti-Aliasing up to 16x level, but then the general FPS drops to 50-70 when anything but empty sky is visible. <20 FPS when something big explodes, so I only use that to take kick ass screenshots for background etc.


By the way, may I suggest a suitable mission for estimating the minimum FPS on certain settings?

Axem's Just Another Day: Electric Boogaloo's huge Disco Inferno mission "Well Duh", where Alpha one and Not Derek Smart clash.

It gives me absolute down peak FPS of ~10 when Not Derek Smart ruins the Disco Show. Most of the time even that stays above 20 FPS though. Screenie attached.


Dropping Anti-Aliasing down to "only" 4x gives me practically monitor-limited FPS on almost every situation.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Huggybaby]

By the way, may I suggest a suitable mission for estimating the minimum FPS on certain settings?
Axem's Just Another Day: Electric Boogaloo's huge Disco Inferno mission "Well Duh", where Alpha one and Not Derek Smart clash.

Cool suggestion, thanks.

Your observation on AA is well taken. I read in a performance guide to drop AA and crank AF, which seems right.

Now if someone could script the mission you suggested and give us a FPS benchmark. Maybe taylor knows what that would entail.

[taylor]

WHAT WE REALLY NEED is a true benchmark. They have them for doom and quake, etc.

The problem is that we don't have working demo support.  Without the ability to replay a mission exactly the same every time there is no way to really test general performance, particular for graphics.  The existing demo support is lacking at best, and though I had gotten all of that old code working at one time, it was before I had joined SCP and I don't know what I ever did with that upgraded code.  The problem with simply scripting a mission to test FPS with is that you can't get accurate FPS averages, and you are going to largely be CPU bound rather than measuring the performance of your video card at various graphics quality settings.

Getting the demo support is on the todo list though.  But it's about as low priority as it can get, as there are far more important things to work on.

Your observation on AA is well taken. I read in a performance guide to drop AA and crank AF, which seems right.

And the reason for that is pretty simple.  AF has more of a hit on general processing performance of the GPU, so if you have a fast GPU then you can get away with a really high AF setting.  AA on the other hand will have a significant hit on memory usage.  Since FSO has very high texture memory requirements, you are better off performance wise sacrificing some AA quality in order to get far better render performance.  Unless you have a 256 or 512 meg video card, don't even think about using a high AA setting.  Otherwise you will be sacrificing up to 80% of your video card memory just for frame buffers and AA, giving you only 20% for textures and model data, which is far below what you really need.


I have changes in progress which will greatly reduce system memory usage for OpenGL.  This will translate to higher overall performance, but not necessarily better rendering performance.  Plus I recently fixed a bug that was causing those 3D shockwaves to take so long to display the first time.  I'll be able to reduce rendering passes when shaders get here which can translate to much better looking fullneb missions, as well as increased rendering performance.  Also I have code in the works to greatly improve memory usage and state switching performance on model data that the card buffers, and that will increase rendering efficiency of each model rendered to the screen.  So, there will be further improvements throughout this year.