I'm sorry if these issues are already known, but I only got my beta yesterday and I'm experiencing some slight performance issues on my first game and I thought I should do my part for the beta testing process.
1. FPS drop. I should start by mentioning I have an Nvidia 9600GT card with latest drivers, running at 1920x1080. It's a decent card, it does its job in games far more prettier than FE. While in 3D mode I usually get around 25-30FPS, as indicated by Fraps, but while looking at an Imperium zone, with many walls, many trees, 1-2 cities, I experience a FPS drop down to 12FPS which is very noticeable and annoying. The FPS is of course worst when at maximum zoom out (the level before switching to cloth map). I keep the cloth map zoom change level to default. I was able to gain 5 more FPS by disabling outlines. Antialiasing does not seem to affect FPS when switched between 0 and 2. In cloth map I get a constant 60FPS. Disabling Shadows, Particle effects or Pedestrians has no effect on FPS either.
2. Clunky switch between 3D and cloth map. When either zooming in from cloth to 3D or zooming out from 3D to cloth, there isn't a fluid transition, but rather feels like a stop-motion transition and I find myself zoomed in or zoomed out more than I wanted because of this. This issue was also reported by Keith Turner in his preview of Fallen Enchantress on Space Sector. EDIT: After further testing I can say that this issue is caused by antialiasing. When set to 0 the transition is visibly smoother and more fluid. When set to 2 however, it is very clunky, as described.
I didn't think a debug.err was needed for these issues. If anyone has any suggestions, or if more details are needed please say so.
EDIT: Without opening another thread, I should also mention health bars during combat do not update correctly to reflect the actual health of the unit.
EDIT: The Knights of Asok camp building seems to be missing. It shows when not constructed, but when under construction it disappears and doesn't appear even when finished. Its icon does show on the cloth map and it does spawn units. But it's not visible nor selectable in 3D view.
I second the FPS drop. It is significant and stops me from playing the game. Maybe 30 or so turns in. It is a problem for me which had plagued my laptop since War of Magic.
Othello
I have updated my post as the most important part of it is still true for .981. I should also mention I play with ground cover set to none, not that it makes much difference for FPS. Also, I noticed forests and cities affect performance the most.
I don't remember having problems with WoM. But I might have had a lower resolution monitor back then. Still, it's a very annoying issue and must be solved.
EDIT: Disabling HDR gives another 2-3 FPS, but it isn't worth it, since it makes the game look much uglier.
Really sounds like you tried all your options thumps up for that
Wish I could help
Sincerely~ Kongdej
What about the other computer specs? I'm sure the devs would like to see a debug.err file to see what the issue may be.
AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz
ATI HD 5830
6GB DDR2 Ram
FPS initially is 60 fps, after around 5 cities of mine, drops down to 30 fps, when I've taken half the map, is unplayable(10-20fps) in 3D mode unless very zoomed in.
From what i can tell, this is both a resource optimization issue, as well as a LOD optimization issue. Give us a LOD Slider plz!
http://pastebin.com/VWMfJrNf
It's actually full of errors and warnings, but the errors seem to be font-related. Maybe someone will take a look at this and tell me what's going on.
I have a decent machine, I don't have problems with more spectacular games like World in Conflict for example.
I too think it's a LOD optimization issue, because I don't think LOD scales with zoom level, so at higher zoom levels, everything is still rendered in full detail, and there's a lot more of everything on the screen, hence the FPS drop. Usually shadows are a FPS killer, but disabling shadows in FE doesn't make much difference, I've actually disabled everything relevant I could find in the prefs.ini and still didn't gain a significant FPS boost.
+1. The FPS im getting is ridiculous considering the rig im running this game on.
What I'm seeing in your reports is not that the video cards are bad but rather the resolutuion they're being pushed at is too high.
Here is what *I* would do if I were you.
I'd lower my resolution to something like 1280x768 and play that way. Lower your desktop resolution if that helps (FE, by default, runs at your desktop resolution).
It's kind of like Battlefield 3. I have a monster machine but if I run it at 2560x1440, bad things happen for me. So I lower it to 1680x1050 and it runs fine.
FE is a pretty demanding game. In a game like Battlefield 3, you've got, max around 50 "units" and those units are all pre-made. In FE, every one of the hundreds (or thousands) of units have their own boots, shields, armor, helmets, weapons, etc. So there's a lot you can do.
The #1 performance thing you can do though is turn OFF the outlines. They suck up a lot rendering time. On my machine, I get around 10fps (which is meaningless to go from 50fps to 60fps but still).
This is true, outlines do affect performance noticeably.
Regarding your other suggestion, I did run FE at 1600x900 (as opposed to the desktop resolution of 1920x1080) and there's like a 2 FPS difference, so it's not worth it not playing in full screen.
There are simply too many complex meshes that are rendered in full detail, especially in the cities. Reducing city details and perhaps forests' details would help this. I remember WoM was supposed to "run even on a crappy laptop"
One other workaround, is decreasing the zoom level at which the cloth maps kicks in, so that way you can only see 3D when really close, when there's less stuff on the screen to be rendered. But this makes the 3D mode even more useless...
^This can be huge, and highly recommend it be dynamically set based on the users' machine specs (as well as manually configurable).
Then give my 32-bit laptop back those little pedestrians.
Hmm we'll guild wars 2 has a lot going on too, lots of peeps with different armor and weapons.......I get 60fps in that game @1080p.......
You can set that level in the advanced options area.
We did indeed want WOM to run on every laptop. But that isn't a promise we're making for FE even though it runs better for most people. It's not the forest details but rather tha units and buildings that are hard on the graphics card. You can also turn off pedestrians, that helps as well.
How many peeps are on screen at once? How many cities are you seeing at once. I've never had more than a handful of units on screen at once in GW2. It's apples and oranges.
At the end of the day, if you have a 4 year old video card, it's going to be tough to play FE with all the goodies turn on.
Oh I knew that, it's the workaround I use now, it was a suggestion to other people with similar issues. I wasn't clear
Pedestrians are only shown when zoomed in close to a city, they disappear when zoom out, and the FPS drops when zoomed out, when pedestrians are not shown anyway. But it's good that they disappear at an appropriate zoom level, less stuff to render.
If there are any more advanced tips you can provide, we'll be grateful. Disabling the obvious, shadows and HDR, has little effect. AA and outlines do have an impact on FPS, and I recommend disabling them, but I don't have any more ideas beyond this. However if in fact, the issue are units and buildings, because of their fixed LOD, then there's simply a need for more graphical processing power. And I've squeezed everything I can from my GPU...
EDIT: I was able to find a combination of settings that does improve my FPS from ~11 in the worst areas to ~21:
- AA set to 0
- Outlines disabled
- Pedestrians disabled (it does indeed affect performance, my apologies Brad)
- Shadows disabled (small effect, but they all add up)
- Using the camera setting 4, by pressing the '4' key on the keyboard, which gives a smaller view angle, hence less stuff to render
- Cloth map zoom level 91
Particle effects also have a small effect on FPS, but I really like them. Stylized lighting might too, but it looks too ugly without for me. You guys give these settings a try, maybe we can further refine them.
I spent part of the evening seeing if I could optimize graphics performance. I think you'll notice a difference. I'll be interested in finding out if it helped your PC.
I'll be sure to post here my findings as soon as I play the new patch. You have my utmost gratitude for your efforts in this matter.
hmm well i also have civ 5, runs at about 80 fps.....pretty similar game...i realize they are different engines...but still.....
Actually, no. Not even remotely.
I've talked, at some length, with the Civ 5 team on these issues. First, if you're playing on DirectX 10, you get the benefit of multithreaded rendering.
But most importantly, every unit in FE has its own unique equipment that shows up in game and has to be rendered. That means a lot more passes.
If you want to just say we suck a programming or whatever you're trying to imply, the knock yourself out. But it is what it is.
It's been a long time since I have seen slow graphics performance in EFE. I think Stardock has done a great job of improving it already. Of course it will still be interesting to see the graphics improvements in tomorrow's patch.
@Frogboy, is there actually LOD in FE? It's really difficult to tell, especially since the buildings are in most situations small and cluttered together anyway.
Some possible optimisations could be:
- Disable pedestrians in all cities except the one closest to the centre of the screen
- LOD slider for pedestrians (turn them off at a certain zoom level) - might already be done? Might cause issues for certain tiles eg wild horses?
no i love the game, i just....i want to love it more.....i want perfection! stars overall. im just glad games like this are being made. sorry dood didnt mean to cross the line.
pedestrians are like one of my favorite parts of this game.....that shall never get disabled in my games...a slider i guess would be cool....love to see those peeps.....
I have a 9600GT and haven't noticed any performance issues. I also am running FE at a much lower resolution than 1080p (1680 x something).
I'll be interested in seeing the performance improvements Brad mentions. Performance optimization is always a nice thing. My only performance gripe has to do with load times. I have FE on an SSD with a quad core and it still takes quite a while to load a new game. Other than that, performance has been great.
I can't remember if it's been mentioned, but turning off unit outlines is supposed to help with performance, too.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
