I actually noticed this during beta 4, but it was the first time I noticed buildings, on my new laptop, so I thought they just needed some optimizing, which would be done for the release.
I get a constant max framerate (limited to 90 in my case, for example) over all the map, on a bare ground, units for example are ok. But as soon as a small 3D object enters the field, it decreases. A tree in the corner? 45 fps. A city (not a big one, just the first settlement) visible? 15 fps.
I tried to change the various settings, deactivated soft lighting, AA, shadows, resolution, it's still doing the same. It works good on the cloth map, without a problem, though, as there are no such elements.
Now I would understand such thing on my older laptop, but I'm surprised to see this on the new one. Specs:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~1.6GHzMemory: 8192MB RAMVideo Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
So I'm guessing there is somehow a problem with drivers (though latest ones from ATI), or at least some incompatibility somewhere. Because the objects are nice, the cell shading effect too, but it's hardly something to bring this computer to its knees.
ps: I understand that a game like this doesn't need to run at 90fps. But 15-20 is actually unpleasant on the long term.
Edit: To make a complete (more or less) analysis, I tried at a high and low configuration, similar effects:
LOW Settings:
- Video Configuration
- Over a city: 20 fps
- Without objects: 138 fps
HIGH Settings:
- Over a city: 18 fps
- Without objects: 80 fps
So it doesn't seem to be related to the video settings. I also tried windowed, same.
It is really related to these 3D objects, as shown by these two other screenshots:
- Full zoom, empty ground: 99 fps
- Same place, just a bit higher to have one tree in the view: 29 fps
So far, the only thing which seems to improve performance is to force the game to run only on one core (physical one, so two virtual cores on Core i3/5/7), as suggested by thebigJ_A in this answer.
It should be the other way around, clearly, so maybe it's giving a hint on where the problem could be. Note that this doesn't solve the performance problem, there is still a big decrease on framerate when passing on cities, but less than when the game is authorized to run on all cores. I noticed however that doing this since the 1.05 version makes the sound choppy, probably because it was expecting to run on a different core to begin with.
I'm glad to hear most people are seeing a performance boost with ver 1.07. Rest assured, we will continue to work on making performance better.
Also, in 1.07, we added an option under the Video tab for disabling the outlines around objects. For those whose framerates are still lower than expected, this option may give you the boost you need.
It also looks better without outlines.
disabling the outlines around objects gave me a massive performnace boost, is this graphical option here to stay or is it a short term measure?
Yeah I got a 20+ fps increase when I disabled outlines, though the frames do drop later in game with a few cities. The Outlines are a crazy big impact on performance it seems. I also prefer the look without them, everything looks cleaner.
Why would they remove a feature?
Plus it's aesthetic preference. I, for example don't like cell shaded look, so losing those black outlines improved graphics for me.
yes exactly the outlines are a crazy big impact, i also get the probelm of lower fps once you get a few big cities on the go, however i guess this is to be expected. Stardock have said they will continue to improve performance, so I look forward to seeing better performance, as i feel as though my laptop is capable of better fps still.
Btw, while I do notice all mentioned performance improvements in the game, performance is still not "great". It's playable, but notas good you would expect.
Also, Catalyst in Overdrive tab still displays 0-1% activity for GPU (other games have much higher values), and CPU barely ever goes above 30-40% (3 core phenom 720). So why doesn't game use all available resources? What exactly is the weak link that keeps both GPU and CPU underutilized?
^Tested in windowed 1280x800 AAx8 mod, with everything maxed out.
well, i dont know how well each of these do their part, but I downloaded 1.07, disabled outlines, and use hardware cursor, so now there is definitely a nice boost in performance. I guess its playable, but now I'm hooked on AoW with that BNW mod, had to move to something else after the bad first experience with elemental.
I'm still waiting for my 100% refund. Elemental came out ~2.5 weeks ago. I've been dealing with support for a week. We are now some 4 patches in and the game still crashes on me every time I play it. According to previous journals and various posts, the game developers now appear to want to completely rewrite the game to fix the primitive AI, address the horrendous mechanics and hopefully make a bland game semi-interesting. In other words, another year plus before the game, as it should have been released, will be available. I am not waiting another year or more for these issues to actually be fixed so the game can, first, play without issues and second, be enjoyable. I am not paid to do QA for Stardock, nor do I pay them to QA their products until they work (what a ludicrous idea).
Regarding the early betas, the entire pay-to-test paradigm obviously won't work if the company is not willing to actually listen and act upon the feedback generated by the program. Fanboys will throw their money at the company and laud anything given to them. Moreover, fans are going to be the dominant majority in any beta program, so a positive feedback loop is inevitable. The moral hazard is that the fanboys will be heard above the sensible complaints and suggestions of serious contributers who don't have an irrational loyalty to the company. The fact that the serious contributers have no refund recourse when they vocalize their concerns only to be ignored is just rubbing salt into an already gaping and painful wound.
Claiming emotional ties to the game blinded one to the truth is just an easy cop out and I don't buy it. It is an insult to everyone's intelligence when the proof is there that the game wasn't ready and everyone knew it.
I just want my money back for this game. I'm giving Stardock the chance to make it right by actually going through them to get the refund because they have a refund policy and a so called gamer's bill of rights. They purport to stand behind their software and give you your money back if it does not work as it should or was intended. Customer service goes hand in hand with loyalty and brand recognition. Customer service is not releasing a game in an unplayable state and patching it over the course of a year until it is playable, and then patching it for another year to make it fun and in line with the original marketing vision. That is stringing morons along. In any other circumstance, I would just initiate a chargeback through the credit card company, citing the technical support emails and forums (which I am close to doing here). However, I want Stardock to give the refund, if only for the fact it will give me minor satisfaction in their acknowledgement to me that they screwed up. Unfortunately, the only thing I have seen so far from the technical support staff is a tendency to procrastinate until the next patch comes out, followed by a "Did that fix it?" and the obvious hope you will go away or take the easy 75% refund option so Stardock at least gets to keep some of your hard earned money. F that. I want ALL of my money back.
The latest patch doesn't really seem to have too much of an effect for me. Framerates still suck, the game still crashes, maybe the only thing it fixed is the save/load damaged units bug, but I didn't bother looking because the game was still crashing and choppy. That is ignoring all of the still present game imbalances, bland mechanics, boring customization, and non-functional AI.
2 weeks. officially, 1.5 - at least be honest.
Sorry, 2 weeks. I can't help but feel this boondoggle has dragged on for longer than it really has. My refund request was submitted last weekend, so at least that part is accurate. Notice I did use the ~ to say approximately because, lets face it, the game was released earlier than the "official" date of August 24. Pedant.
I just installed the game and I'm getting lower fps in v1.07 hotfixed then I was in the beta. Mind you the terrain looks much nicer now. Still though the framerates are extremely poor for this kind of game. Should be running 60fps solid in 1920x1200 on any mid level system. Even with some of the older cards. Hell I get better performance in wow rendering 80 players on high settings with max particle detail in a full blown PvP skirmish and this is ONLINE. As another example even Empire Total War runs smoother with high settings and it's very unoptimized and rendering a boat load of details. Something is wrong with the renderer or the game needs serious optmization. I do love it though I just wish it was running alot better.
Even with post process/high quality lighting off it runs slow. Sure lowering the resolution might help but who wants to run in a non native resolution on their panel for a TBS that runs worse than any other game they have that runs fine at their native resolution within reason. Even with a bit of tweaking the fps is just too low. I'm talking about the start of the game on medium map default settings. Seems to be a problem with the cities themselves in my brief exposure to the retail game. I will wait for a few more patches and try again.
you've gotta be kidding, that difficult to get a refund when they know d**n well whats wrong with the product? i'm fed up, i'm going to try and refund mine i think, how do you go about doing that? wouldn't doubt if I asked for credit to buy something else on impulse, all the sudden it would be a different story and I'd instantly have my refund
So like I said before 1.07 did give me a tangible performance boost, especially with outlines disabled - but continuing to play my game to the ~250 turn point things still manage to slow down far below tolerable levels (tiny map). Even the drastic move of dropping from my Eyefinity resolution to regular old 1680x1050 hardly made an improvement (as does changing AA, shadows, etc - the only thing that helped was disabling outlines).
So I took my saved game and loaded it up on my nephew's computer, he has a GTX 275 and I have a Radeon 5870 but otherwise our systems are similar, same OS (Win7x64), quad core CPUs (he has an i5 vs my Core 2 but I doubt processing power is a factor here), 4GB RAM, SSDs, etc. I was AMAZED how his lower end (but still quite speedy) video card performed so much better than mine with all the same graphical settings. I didn't bust out FRAPs or anything but it was easy to see unaided but such tools that his game was running ~5x smoother than mine was over the same areas on the map.
Also I still get out of memory errors every 30-40 turns and he's never had one. Oh and tactical battles are buttery smooth for me, no matter how many units are involved...
Anyway, I have MANY computers at my disposal and can do some more research and provide hard numbers if needed, just looking for some feedback to see if this is an issue that is already nearly solved or if more of my help would be useful...
@dr_fishy: if you look at what actually is going on, by monitoring GPU and CPU usage, you'll see that CPU power is the MAIN factor in all of this. Elemental is clearly underutilizing GPUs, and hammering the CPU.
I wouldn't say hammering. On two machines I tried out, one had around 30-40% and other 50-60% CPU utilization while playing. First one was Phenom II X3 720, and another T4400 dual core Intel.
I see CPU usage across all 4 cores in the single digit percentage range. I haven't messed with setting the affinity to few cores though... His i5 @ 2.66Ghz isn't going to be all the different from my Core2 at 2.4Ghz - does not explain the crazy real world impact...
Ok, I went ahead and did a little research - the results were even worse that I imagined! This is on a Win7x64, 2GB Radeon 5870, 4GB RAM, Core 2 Q6600 system. Here is the data:
5540x1050:zoomed in - outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - 11fpszoomed in - no outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - 16fpszoomed out - outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - 5fpszoomed out - no outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - 6fpszoomed in - outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - 12fpszoomed in - no outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - 17fpszoomed out - outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - 6fpszoomed out - no outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - 6fps 1680x1050:zoomed in - outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - 14fpszoomed in - no outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - 19fpszoomed out - outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - 10fpszoomed out - no outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - 8fpszoomed in - outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - 14fpszoomed in - no outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - 20fpszoomed out - outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - 10fpszoomed out - no outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - 10fps
Screenshots displaying the zoom level and areas I covered are attached, be nice about pulling up the full size ones though, I have limited bandwidth (if you want to see the full sized ones take the URL of the small one and delete "_thumb" from the file name)... One thing to observe is that outlines vs no outlines are clearly the single largest impact on the frame rate, just compare the two highlighted lines! Yikes! However the bottom line is the performance is is just completely out of whack considering how little impact the graphical settings have on the speed of rendering including rendering 3x less by turning off Eyefinity!
I suppose something else could be a bottleneck but I've never seen anything like this in other games...
Still doesn't work correctly one my system (i7 + ATI HD Mobility)
I get single digit FPS over cities. If I change affinity to a single core, it goes into mid teens. Turning off outlines bumps it to 20
Does 1.08 tackle this issue specifically or is it more of a generic performance boost? Maybe a better question, does "this issue" (Win7x64 w/ ATI cards) really exist or is it part of some more generic problem?
I'm looking forward to the 1.08 improvements. I get much better FPS with the 1.07 patch, anywhere from teens to 20 when viewing cities on the default zoom. Zooming out to view my kingdom results in FSP of 8 to 12. This is with outlines disabled. My debug file, not sure if it helps at this point.
http://pastebin.ca/1936133
its definitely less specific than than, I have a Nvidia gtx 460, and I think i've heard plenty of people who still have the problem without win7 and/or 64 bit OS
While we're waiting, if anyone is interested, I uploaded the save game (http://dr_fish.speedymail.org/moto6.zip) those numbers came from, so we can compare FPS from hovering over the same areas as my screenshots just to get some kind of baseline of who is where and with what hardware... I know I'm curious... All the other video settings were at their defaults BTW.
OS: GPU: CPU: RAM: [Resolution]:zoomed in - outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - ??fpszoomed in - no outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - ??fpszoomed out - outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - ??fpszoomed out - no outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - ??fpszoomed in - outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - ??fpszoomed in - no outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - ??fpszoomed out - outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - ??fpszoomed out - no outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - ??fps
OS:
GPU:
CPU:
RAM:
[Resolution]:zoomed in - outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - ??fpszoomed in - no outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - ??fpszoomed out - outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - ??fpszoomed out - no outlines, 8xAA, High shadows, 10x groundcover - ??fpszoomed in - outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - ??fpszoomed in - no outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - ??fpszoomed out - outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - ??fpszoomed out - no outlines, No AA, no shadows, no groundcover - ??fps
thought i read something about all the "technical issues fixed" with 1.08 update, so plz start posting if anyone's noticed the performance issue has finally been fixed! between work and moving, not sure when i'll get a chance to play enough to test it myself
Well i think performance does seem better overall with 1.08 but will continue to need tweaked.
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