Hard Light Productions Forums

Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: MP-Ryan on January 13, 2013, 03:44:29 pm

Title: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 13, 2013, 03:44:29 pm
I'm thoroughly impressed that even after disabling post-processing, FxAA, soft particles, and shadows, your recent release brings my framerate in the opening cutscene of R2 from 120 fps down to FOUR.  FOUR.  There aren't many current games that can do that.  This machine is older but not ancient - an E8400, Geforce GTS 512 MB, and 4 GB of overclocked RAM are still respectable.

Guess I have to disable advanced effects.  Sheesh you guys, you've outdone yourselves =)
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 13, 2013, 03:54:35 pm
OK, perplexed now, even after disabling the advanced effects VPs for both bp folders and the mvps folder I'm still getting major stuttering and slowdowns in that cutscene...

It's been ages since I last ran an FSO build, do I still have to use single-core processor affinity?  I haven't set it yet for this but I'm wondering...
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MatthTheGeek on January 13, 2013, 03:57:11 pm
plz2log
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 13, 2013, 03:57:46 pm
plz2log

Will do when I get back.  We gotta run out right now.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 13, 2013, 06:02:19 pm
Attaching log file.

The framerate is still dropping significantly at various points during the opening cutscene mission.  There are are several hang-ups occurring at transitions.

I have not yet disabled specular / glowmaps /environment maps / normal maps.  Though I've never had to disabled them previously either...  I know there's a lot going on in this cutscene, but eish.

[attachment deleted by a basterd]
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: General Battuta on January 13, 2013, 07:38:56 pm
Try the builds The_E posted in the build repository. Reduce lighting detail in the in-game options menu to minimum. Any help for FPS?
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 13, 2013, 08:36:51 pm
That latest build with Lighting set to one pip in the in-game menu helped somewhat - the lowest the framerate dropped was about 15.  The transitions in the cutscene aren't totally smooth, but at least its now watchable.

Looks like (if any missions get that intense) I'm probably going to have to disable normal maps.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Spoon on January 13, 2013, 08:43:25 pm
Last time someone accused WoD of being 'teh worse optimized piece of crap evar', it turned out his performance took a massive dump because he had overclocked something in his system.

Last time I slightly overclocked my RAM, starcraft 2 would just randomly crash until I figured that the overclock caused it.

In short, try setting your RAM back to normal speeds and run BP again, see if that makes any difference. (can't hurt to try)
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 13, 2013, 08:48:32 pm
Last time someone accused WoD of being 'teh worse optimized piece of crap evar', it turned out his performance took a massive dump because he had overclocked something in his system.

Last time I slightly overclocked my RAM, starcraft 2 would just randomly crash until I figured that the overclock caused it.

In short, try setting your RAM back to normal speeds and run BP again, see if that makes any difference. (can't hurt to try)

The DDR2 RAM in this machine has been up-voltaged to its operating voltage for 4 years.  No offense, but everything else runs with total stability (and FSO previously did so as well).  I suspect this is more a case of the BP folks creating some seriously kickass assets that, coupled with the new FSO builds, mean my semi-modern computer now performs in its age bracket =)
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: General Battuta on January 13, 2013, 08:52:56 pm
The assets are almost certainly less the issue than the new deferred lighting code.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 13, 2013, 09:19:09 pm
The assets are almost certainly less the issue than the new deferred lighting code.

Well, as I said, basically shutting that off seems to have helped a fair bit.  I'll let you know how its goes in the missions themselves.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Pred the Penguin on January 13, 2013, 10:46:49 pm
So yeah, I'm having problems, too. Framerate so bad I'm getting killed during missions. Right now I'm replaying WiH1.

[attachment deleted by a basterd]
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Spoon on January 14, 2013, 06:58:02 am
The DDR2 RAM in this machine has been up-voltaged to its operating voltage for 4 years.  No offense, but everything else runs with total stability (and FSO previously did so as well).  I suspect this is more a case of the BP folks creating some seriously kickass assets that, coupled with the new FSO builds, mean my semi-modern computer now performs in its age bracket =)
Its funny because this was exactly my reaction too.
"I've been running this overclocked RAM for over a year now and everything works with total stability! that can't be the issue!" I too, was dismissing this possibilty right away without giving it a try. But then it turned out Starcraft didn't agree with me at all.
And that guy that had issues with performance, (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71092.msg1406210#msg1406210) discovered it was due to overclocking (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71092.msg1406226#msg1406226)

So no offense taken, its a familiar reaction!
But I still recommend you at least give it a try. 4 year old overclocked RAM might not be as reliable as you think it is.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: fierceeffect on January 15, 2013, 06:10:54 pm
Hey I just wanted to point out that I was having all of the above issues, but then I turned my lighting options down to 3 and bingo everything is super smooth.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Pred the Penguin on January 15, 2013, 11:12:09 pm
Something about this newer build is really killing my system. I've tried turning down all detail settings, disabling shaders, even taking out advanced vps. I'm starting to think this isn't a BP specific problem, BP assets just accentuate the problem.

My system specs:
AMD A6-3420M 1.50 GHz
RADEON HD 6520G
8 GB RAM

And log attached for anyone interested.


[attachment deleted by a basterd]
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: General Battuta on January 16, 2013, 01:48:09 am
As we've explained here a few times, the new deferred lighting system in use in these builds is probably killing your performance.

Please check out the build repository thread The_E posted here and follow the suggestions within.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Pred the Penguin on January 16, 2013, 10:03:05 am
Already tried that. If it was just a case low fps during the cutscene it wouldn't matter too much. Right now I'm getting framerate stutter when I look at a wing of Hercs.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: General Battuta on January 16, 2013, 11:38:49 am
Make sure you're using the builds The_E provided and that your in game options menu lighting detail is turned down to the bottom setting. If that doesn't help, I'm not sure what to do next.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 16, 2013, 11:42:30 am
Make sure you're using the builds The_E provided and that your in game options menu lighting detail is turned down to the bottom setting. If that doesn't help, I'm not sure what to do next.

I found that even reducing the lighting to minimum did not totally resolve the performance issues in the opening cutscene, BUT I have yet to experience major framerate drops in the Dreamscape or Nothing is True (haven't gotten further than that).

I'm going to re-enable the advanced features tonight (most likely) and see if its just the lighting causing these issues.  I'm positive I used all of them in WiH1 and some other recent campaigns.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: General Battuta on January 16, 2013, 11:48:59 am
Again, I just want to emphasize that anything you did before switching to these builds is not a good predictor of performance, as they use an entirely new deferred lighting model.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Pred the Penguin on January 16, 2013, 12:09:15 pm
Make sure you're using the builds The_E provided and that your in game options menu lighting detail is turned down to the bottom setting. If that doesn't help, I'm not sure what to do next.
Still having those framerate stutters that make the game pretty much unplayable.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: General Battuta on January 16, 2013, 12:11:24 pm
Your graphics hardware is probably struggling with the deferred lighting code.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Kolgena on January 17, 2013, 06:23:28 pm
My performance tanked as well, but setting spec_point 0 seemed to help. Of course, you lose all point light sources (glowpoint lights, explosions, laser lights), but at least the game is playable.

Is there a way to cap the number of lights that the deferred renderer draws?
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: MP-Ryan on January 17, 2013, 09:56:16 pm
Well, since cranking the lighting in-game right down with the latest build, I can once again enable advanced effects and post processing.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Kolgena on January 18, 2013, 12:00:55 am
The build I have for that turns off normal maps at 3 dots out of 5 or lower. Is there a newer build that doesn't do that?
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: TwentyPercentCooler on January 18, 2013, 03:33:49 am
I have a slightly related question: does the deferred lighting load the CPU at all? Because I didn't notice a framerate drop between WiH1 with the old builds and WiH2 with the new ones, without changing anything anything at all about my settings, and my graphics card is only on the low end of midrange.
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: The E on January 18, 2013, 04:47:55 am
The build I have for that turns off normal maps at 3 dots out of 5 or lower. Is there a newer build that doesn't do that?

Yes. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=83318.0)
Title: Re: Alright, BP crew, you've brought my system to its knees...
Post by: Kolgena on January 18, 2013, 11:20:57 pm
Thanks! Works better.

A certain oddity (intentional?) is that even at spec_point 0.3, warp rifts cast huge intense lights. Normally this looks alright, but when a wing of 6 fighters warps in all at once, nearby capships basically turn white from the intensity. This is at 3 dots/5, so no glow points, no laser lights.

Overall, the new rendering code seems faster than the old code that I capped to render at max 4 lights a scene. There was much enjoyment to go back and play Delenda este with smoother framerates.

Edit: Also weird: Cap ships receiving beam fire will be lit by the beam lights until they die, at which point their debris/exploding husk loses all lighting from beams. Maybe this always happened, but lights are behaving better and more reliably overall IMO, so this issue stuck out to me more.