Feedback - Extreme FPS Loss through binocs #3782

[Bacon55]

No' date=' the fillrate is not lower, but the 8800GTS has a shader power of about half of the 4830.[/quote']

The 4830 is an entire 2 generations ahead.

[Bacon55]

Just got in and drove a Crusader III in the beta. When using my sights and foliage was around my FPS dropped to 15 - unplayable.

This is a gamebreaker for me.

[amorosa]

No' date=' the fillrate is not lower, but the 8800GTS has a shader power of about half of the 4830.[/quote']

Ok. But you can substitute 8800gts for just about any nvidia card based on what was posted in this thread.

[lutorm]

Ok. But you can substitute 8800gts for just about any nvidia card based on what was posted in this thread.

I wish those people would do my bino test that I posted about above so we can get some systematic data on this. Currently I don't have any Nvidia data for anything newer than a GTX260.

[Bacon55]

I wish those people would do my bino test that I posted about above so we can get some systematic data on this. Currently I don't have any Nvidia data for anything newer than a GTX260.

There's only a few other cards in that series, being the GTS 250, GTX 275, 280, 285, and 290.

The stats scale pretty easily, aside from the dual GPU card, which is identical to the 280 unless in SLI.

The 300 series isn't out yet.

[Bacon55]

Gophur what resolution are you running at?

Maybe that has something to do with it.

1920x1200 on my end, everyone else what's your resolution?

[lutorm]

Still need people to post their results from my bino test.

I made a separate page so it would be easier to find: http://forums.battlegroundeurope.com/showthread.php?p=4886434#post4886434

Please try it out so we can get to the bottom of this.

[Bacon55]

In beta again .29, I did a more thorough examination - it seems to be caused mostly by looking at distant clumps of speed trees.

[makrel]

Tested as well in .28 and .29 - I get the exact same results (FPS slowdown) when the screen is filled with either speedtrees or speedgrass - no matter if it is through binos or not.

So basicly - walking up close to a bunch of speedtrees or speedgrass so that they fill all of the field of view will give a slowdown. Just as with the binos looking at a field full of speedtrees.

So for me it does not look related to the binos - but more to the fact that you are looking at a screen full of speedtrees.

OS: Win XP 32 bit

CPU: AMD FX-57 Single core 2,9 GHz

RAM: 2 GB

GPU: Nvidia 9600 GT

[lutorm]

So I now have a sample of 13 different people in my bino test. (The test is here if you want the details.) It's not enough to make any firm statements and the model can be improved, but it is enough to make some observations about what seems to dictate the fps when looking through binos.

In my model, I try to determine what decides the fps with binos (which should be a very gpu-limited situation). The input parameters are fill rate in gigapixels/s, texture fill rate in gigatexels/s, and raw shader power in gflops, taken from the card specs. I then fit the parameters of this model to the data.

• As of now, every single person with an ATI card has higher fps through binos than every single person with an Nvidia card. There are no really old ATI cards in the sample so that's not unexpected, but there is no sign of a performance problem with ATI cards in the binocular test.
• In the fit, the dominant influence of fps is the gflops/s of shader performance. Somewhat surprisingly, the fill rates do not seem to be that important. (This also explains the dominance of ATI cards, because they tend to have proportionally more shader power in relation to fill rate compared to the Nvidia cards.)
  
• There is no indication from the model fit of a systematic difference in performance between the different manufacturers. Based on their fill rates and shader powers, both ATI and Nvidia cards seem to do equally well.
  

For the situations that are not so gpu-limited, ie for the same view without binos, it's harder to say something because it's going to depend both on CPU and GPU performance and I need to make a model for this. However, just from looking at fps in relation to what cpu they have, there are no obvious signs of a systematic difference between people with Nvidia and ATI cards. Like I said, this needs more work, though.

If you haven't already done so, please help out by doing the test and posting your numbers.

[ghostrider]

Tested as well in .28 and .29 - I get the exact same results (FPS slowdown) when the screen is filled with either speedtrees or speedgrass - no matter if it is through binos or not.

So basicly - walking up close to a bunch of speedtrees or speedgrass so that they fill all of the field of view will give a slowdown. Just as with the binos looking at a field full of speedtrees.

So for me it does not look related to the binos - but more to the fact that you are looking at a screen full of speedtrees.

OS: Win XP 32 bit

CPU: AMD FX-57 Single core 2,9 GHz

RAM: 2 GB

GPU: Nvidia 9600 GT

I just tested something slightly different but to the same effect.

There is another bug I reported some time ago about the new pine trees being clippable...using this bug I walked up to 1 of them and step inside of it and looked straight up.

Now I only have sky and branches and leaves in my view. 1 tree and sky and it drops my fps down to 9.

Normally i have 60 fps (v-sync limited) walking around areas with few or almost no trees.

With this I can say with almost 100% certainty that it has something to do with rendering the new leaves/branches on the new pine trees and/or new bushes etc...

OS: Win7 64bit

CPU: E8500 3.4Ghz dual core

RAM: 4GB

GPU: 8800 GTS 640mb

[specterx]

I am just really not seeing this on my rig. (9800GT)

Sure I get some reduced frames from looking at high res trees with all the bells and whistles turned on. It does seem more pronounced through binos than if I walked right up to the tree but nothing bringing me to teens fps numbers.

Ticketed anyway for a look. #3782

FYI I have this problem in the current live version (1.30) as well. Looking through gunsights and bonics causes an enormous amount of lag/stuttering/choppiness/FPS reduction. Looking at trees and buildings is definitely an aggravating factor, but the zoom itself seems to be the main culprit. Looking at a town or a forest or something through the zoom basically makes the game unplayable, while I can be close to a town or forest in non-zoom view and my FPS will be no worse than normal.

It seems that the more "black circle" there is in a gunsight view, the worse the effect becomes. The very worst piece of equipment for me (that I've tried so far) is the Pak36. Basically can't use the thing. On the other hand, zooming in on aircraft gunsights doesn't cause this effect at all (if anything it improves FPS), and it's much less noticeable in the "wide angle" commander views - that is, the TC zoom with a row of tick marks at the bottom and a wide zoomed view, rather than the spyglass style. Ditto for infantry sights, not really a problem.

Vid card: nVidia Quadro NVS 140M (laptop card, sounds ghetto but performance is generally OK).

Edited March 16, 2010 by specterx

[calwatta]

8600 GTS dual GPU's same thing going on.

[Bacon55]

At the crossroads E of Sedan today, looking N, I get 70 FPS.

With the M10 sight - 22.

With Binocs - 16.

Increasing zoom decreases frame rate proportionally.

[Bacon55]

Further refined, my FPS goes up a LOT when I zoom in on regular "line" speed trees, even lots of them and far away.

Look at the new bushes, and the forest speed trees, and the framerate drops dramatically.

[peegee77]

I will do some tests and add my results to all the others, but I have to make one important point.

As far back as I can remember, I have ALWAYS had this issue with WWIIOL. I've posted about it in the past and the answer was always along the lines of "speedtrees - learn to live with it".

I am currently using an nVidia 9500GT, before that an ATI X1650, before that an ATI X800 Pro. I have always had a massive FPS drop when using binos, and also most types of magnified optics.

[monsjoex]

I will do some tests and add my results to all the others, but I have to make one important point.

As far back as I can remember, I have ALWAYS had this issue with WWIIOL. I've posted about it in the past and the answer was always along the lines of "speedtrees - learn to live with it".

I am currently using an nVidia 9500GT, before that an ATI X1650, before that an ATI X800 Pro. I have always had a massive FPS drop when using binos, and also most types of magnified optics.

yeah but now me with a Q6600+8800gt its unplayable as a tanker.

Its a game breaking thing this.

[peegee77]

I wasn't trying to ignore the problem or suggest anyone else should ignore it. It has always been, to an extent, "game breaking" for me. For example, if I want to use AAA I have to push or tow the gun into a totally clear area. If I don't and I am tracking an aircraft when some speedtrees come into my FOV it goes to slide-show and aiming is impossible.

Maybe, finally, in 1.31 we will get the focus on this problem to fix it.

[Bacon55]

I just did another test, 1.31.30 clean driver install from safe mode with driver cleaner, latest Nvidia beta drivers, no change.

I sure hope this problem is fixed before launch, because we know it isn't a result of pure hardware power such as fillrate.

[hick]

Just a thought after seeing some other things recently

The drop in FPS is directly related to the level of zoom (i.e. more zoom = less FPS)

The zoomed view through most sights (as opposed to the zoomed view for pilots and drivers) applies a mask to give the appearance of looking through a sight.

This mask is applied overtop a full-screen zoom view.

I have a feeling the the drop in FPS is caused by the CPU having to render an entire view of higher detail almost instantaneously and then render the mask overtop of that new view. The higher the zoom level, the higher the LOD of the rendered image. The more objects in the image, the more detail is required to be rendered.

Not sure if this is really the culprit, but it makes total sense to me if it was. And short of redoing all the sight views to only draw what is visible through the sight, I don't see a fix for it.

[lutorm]

Just a thought after seeing some other things recently

The drop in FPS is directly related to the level of zoom (i.e. more zoom = less FPS)

The zoomed view through most sights (as opposed to the zoomed view for pilots and drivers) applies a mask to give the appearance of looking through a sight.

This mask is applied overtop a full-screen zoom view.

I have a feeling the the drop in FPS is caused by the CPU having to render an entire view of higher detail almost instantaneously and then render the mask overtop of that new view. The higher the zoom level, the higher the LOD of the rendered image. The more objects in the image, the more detail is required to be rendered.

Not sure if this is really the culprit, but it makes total sense to me if it was. And short of redoing all the sight views to only draw what is visible through the sight, I don't see a fix for it.

Yeah, that picture of the 3-screen eyefinity with the gunsight really did seem to indicate that you are right. Of course, unless you have a really-wide setup, there isn't that much wasted rendering since the circle aperture is as large as can fit on the screen. For the multi-monitor setups it certainly seems like it would hurt, though.

I don't know how the engine works, of course, so it may not be feasible, but from an OpenGL view, you can definitely change the view frustum to only cover the smallest square containing the aperture.

[munchkin]

Tested now with 1.31.0.30 and the latest 10.3a drivers and the difference is even higher now.

75 FPS normal and 105 FPS with binos.

To bad I can't always play looking through binos!

[hick]

Yeah, that picture of the 3-screen eyefinity with the gunsight really did seem to indicate that you are right. Of course, unless you have a really-wide setup, there isn't that much wasted rendering since the circle aperture is as large as can fit on the screen. For the multi-monitor setups it certainly seems like it would hurt, though.

I don't know how the engine works, of course, so it may not be feasible, but from an OpenGL view, you can definitely change the view frustum to only cover the smallest square containing the aperture.

The circle aperture is as tall as can fit on the screen (Some have an additional zoom level but this doesn't seem to impact FPS nearly as much as the initial zoom).

Anyhoo, yea, those TH2G screenies really were eye-opening with regards to what is happening when zoomed in through a sight.

[Bacon55]

Tested now with 1.31.0.30 and the latest 10.3a drivers and the difference is even higher now.

75 FPS normal and 105 FPS with binos.

To bad I can't always play looking through binos!

This is how it should work.

Something is terribly wrong with how Nvidia drivers are interacting with the game.

[Bacon55]

Could CRS submit the game to Nvidia for testing?

I think they have a program for this, all CRS has to do then is slap an Nvidia logo on the splash screen.