Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: CKid on July 25, 2011, 07:01:12 pm
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After downloading the latest nightly build, I have noticed a massive slowdown in mission loading and in-game lag. It has been a while since I got myself a nightly, so I started downloading and testing each build, working backwards to see which build cause the problem. I finally found which build first cause the problem. Nightly (Windows) 05 Jul 2011: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=76964.0
Using the mission: Artemis Station from Blue Plant 2 as a test, hears what happens with pre and post July 05 builds.
Pre-July 05 Builds
Mission load time: 10 seconds (approximately)
FPS during UEFg Cormorant destruction: 30 and smooth
Post-July 05 Builds
Mission Load time: 60-70 seconds (approximately)
FPS during UEFg Cormorant destruction: jumping from 18 to 7 with extreme choppiness
I see that a crap load of things were added to that build and that newer builds have not made the problems go away, so I'm just curious if future builds will increase performance to pre-July 05 build speeds or if your going to forced me to upgrade my computer.
(Joking about that last part)
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I suggest you get us a debug log following this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=56279.msg1180359#msg1180359), so we can have an idea of what's going on. Post it in [ code ] tags.
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Are you using FXAA?
This build greatly extended FXAA functionality and could have changed some defaults, so if you have it enabled, but set to default value (ie. no fxaa_preset custom flag set), there's a chance that after this build, FXAA got set to something much more demanding.
It's just a guess though.
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Nothing changed between then and now that would affect mission load times that dramatically.
Also, FXAA has become _faster_ in recent builds.
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Yes, it did become faster overall, but I thought his preset setting could have increased to something far more demanding to what it used to be.
It seems that it's not the case though, so now I have no idea what could cause loading times to increase to six time what they were before.
It couldn't possibly load new shaders so long, could it?
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Not a chance. Shaders are only loaded once, during game startup (before you see the splash screen in fact).
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I never had FXAA enabled in the in the lanucher when I did my tests. When I do have it enabled, load times are the same but FPS drops by just a few. I am currently at work right now and away from my PC, so I will post a debug log when I get home.
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Ok, here is the debug log using the most recent nightly build.
Muzzle flash "BP_Cmuzzle_tiny" already exists! Using existing entry instead.
<no module>! KiFastSystemCallRet
<no module>! WaitForSingleObject + 18 bytes
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! RegisterWaitForInputIdle + 73 bytes
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That's not a debug log.
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Oops, sorry. Here we go.
[attachment deleted by ninja]
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So... Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts. Its kind of sucks not being able to play ones favorite campaign.
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I agree, latest nightlies are running way slower, will have to throw up my own debug log in a bit, I'm on an ATi card if that helps anything.
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same things here on ati too.
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Which particular ATi cards are we talking about here?
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6970 2gb for me.
4th ati i buy : 4th problem with opengl , i must be a sadist finally :lol:
and everytime i wanna change i say : i'll buy a nvidia but no i buy every time an ati... silly me :P
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I'm on a 4670 mobility. Usually get sliky smooth framerates at 1920x1800 but there's very noticable slowdown with the latest builds for me. I don't use AA or anything, that seems to be the one thing the card can't handle with FreeSpace.
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Holy Crap! The thread still lives. I got a ATI Radeon HD 4600 series 1gb.
I must say that the lag experienced is not as bad in any other mod then it is in WiH. Maybe because of the unoptimized models. The mission loading on the other hand is the same no matter the mod. It always take around a minute to load compared to the 10 seconds it normally takes on my system. I also noticed a few extra problems with post July 05 builds I get:
Clicking the tech room caused the game to freeze for a few seconds before you enter
Longer wait time to view ships in Tech room
Clicking continue from command briefing to mission briefing/Ship/Weapon selection causes same freezing as tchroom
Hope that helps.
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Since you guys are both using 4600 HD's, it would probably be useful if you told us what drivers you are using.
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Since you guys are both using 4600 HD's, it would probably be useful if you told us what drivers you are using.
11.7
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I realize I'm late to the party here, but latest nightlys are burning a hole in my preformance aswell (i have also updated my drivers, I will rollback to test).
Using the WiH intro as benchmark, I've dropped from 35-45fps to 25-30fps at my measurement point (karuna getting gutted) and for more then half the intro it tries to even out at 30fps dispite knowing I can push 60+ for those sections.
ATI Radeon HD 5570 1GB, Driver version 11.7
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11.7 should be ATI's latest attempt at the Mjolnir performance drivers right? I think I've read on Guru3D that the OpenGl performance on them isn't so great. Interestingly, I'm on the 10.8 preview with a 3650 HD mobility and have no slow downs to speak of, at least judging by my usual benchmarking method of using the ship lab. And I definitely don't have long mission load times.
@KyadCK: Are you just getting bad framerates, or super long mission load times as well? Did you remember that the newer builds run FXAA?
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Well I rolled back to 11.1 (the only other driver on my system at the time) and I have good news and bad news...
Good news: The rollback seems to have fixed all issues I had, I'm back to peak performance! This means that the nightlys are not the source of my problem.
Bad news: This puts the blame squarely on ATI's 11.7 drivers.
May I suggest a rollback to a last known good driver for those using 11.7? It seems to have worked for me and it's no more then an hour and 4 restarts at the worst to see if it works and put it back if it doesn't.
11.7 should be ATI's latest attempt at the Mjolnir performance drivers right? I think I've read on Guru3D that the OpenGl performance on them isn't so great. Interestingly, I'm on the 10.8 preview with a 3650 HD mobility and have no slow downs to speak of, at least judging by my usual benchmarking method of using the ship lab. And I definitely don't have long mission load times.
@KyadCK: Are you just getting bad framerates, or super long mission load times as well? Did you remember that the newer builds run FXAA?
Just bad and weird framerates on 11.7. I know the nightlys have been useing FXAA for a while now, but I don't use it as I just don't see much difference in-game except perhaps a slight fps drop (perhaps I don't know what i am looking for to compare?). Regardless, the driver rollback worked and I'm seeing my usual fps ranges on my benchmark, so I'm going to write it off as the drivers and do more research before I go jumping on the new driver bandwagon in the future.
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Good to hear your issues got fixed.
FXAA is supposed to help with aliased edges and normal map shimmering in freespace. This comes at the cost of a blurrier image though.
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I haven't actually ever updated my drivers through ATi, I've gone through the drivers on the Dell website which are updated with far less regularity (I hear a lot of *****ing about ATi's drivers whenever they update so I was a bit nervous of rocking the boat). However I'm not getting all of CKid's issues, the tech room and everything loads fine, missions may load slightly longer but I haven't noticed anything dramatic. It's just basically an obvious reduction in frame rate in game. I saw another oddity whilst playing Vassago's Dirge with the nightles also, the Fenris in the very first mission somehow transformed into a retail Fenris. Was quite strange. I'll have to start properly taking care of my card's drivers.
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Loading the wrong asset (Fenris) is very very unlikely to be a driver problem.
This is weird. When I have time, I'll dl a pre-july 5 build and compare it to the july 5th build to see if there's a difference in framerates in my end as well.
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:wtf:
Are you sure you didn't just witness the Fenris switch to a lower LOD and get stuck there? I'd think it highly unlikely that a model would just switch to a retail model mid-game.
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Wait, did he mean transformed as in "I switched builds, and now the Fenris is retail" or "I looked away and back again in the same mission session, and now it's retail"?
Because the 2nd would be really really really bad, relative to the first.
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Um.. well he said "whilst playing" .... "it transformed"..
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I downgraded to a earlier driver, but unfortunately I still get the same problem with post July 5 builds. Pre 05 builds still work fine. It has to be the new nightly's causing the slow down for me. Will go back to 11.7 drivers in the mean time.
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:wtf:
Are you sure you didn't just witness the Fenris switch to a lower LOD and get stuck there? I'd think it highly unlikely that a model would just switch to a retail model mid-game.
That sounds more plausible, it's still behaviour I haven't encountered before. Like CKid the problems appear to start with July 5 builds and onwards, haven't done a proper framerate check though.
EDIT: I just realised something, am I just being totally blind and not realising something obvious here, are these new builds running with FXAA on as default? I don't have the box checked in the launcher but if it would cause a drop in fps maybe that's the thing...
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FXAA is not on if the box for it is not checked. The only default FXAA has is a preset value if you don't specify one. Plus you also have to have post-processing on for FXAA to work at all.
The issue, despite the co-incidence, is NOT FXAA related.
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Also, while earlier FXAA is blurry, the shaders are still in development and have gotten better, so I wouldn't take it as a given that they'll always make things noticeably blurry.
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OK, that makes sense. Hope I can resolve this problem, I really don't wanna be left behind when 3.6.14 releases...
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Yes, I know what you mean. I have tried eveything that I can think of settings wise to solve the problem but so far, nothing. I will keep getting the new nightlys, cross my fingers and hope that the issue will be resolved sometime in the future.
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CKid, check the latest nightly. Seems to be running back at full speed, WiH intro running butter smooth again.
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No luck, load time when on for 1:30 plus and ingame lag has not changed. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUU!
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Sorry to get your hopes up, man :sigh: