Most complaint about performance and possible solution

alsteralster Join Date: 2003-08-06 Member: 19124Members
There are way to many complaints of "frame rates really bad during combat".

Possible solution that may not have been tried yet:

When 2 enemies get close enough dynamically or statically reduce graphics.
Find center of group of players in combat and dynamically or statically reduce graphics.
If possible base reduction in graphics by max number of players in group.
Take into account the number of structures in group combat area for graphics reduction.
High poly models such as exos, cc, hives, onos have more counts if they are near.
If possible players with gls, jps, flamethrowers reduce graphics.
If possible count cysts, mines, infestation for graphics reduction.

Of course revert graphics to each original player setting when not in combat.

If possible this should make huge improvements in fps during combat.

Comments

  • KazterKazter Join Date: 2003-08-12 Member: 19481Members, Constellation
    edited December 2012
    After recent digging it appears that a player (I cannot remember who to give credit to, I will edit with a link to the thread) has discovered that a single cyst uses 10,000 vertices or roughly 3,000 polygons. After this discovery it makes you wonder what other asininely high amount of resources and rendering the engine is having to do for other rather "simple" objects. If the engine were given a once-over and a drastic reduction in overall polygon count, I feel most of the problems players are having would go away.

    Found the other post: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=125951" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=125951</a>
  • AzaralAzaral Join Date: 2012-11-19 Member: 172408Members
    Polygons really aren't that bad, it's draw calls.

    Gforce GTX 580 can do 2 billion triangles a second, which is 3,333,333.3333..... triangles every frame at 60 frames a second. <a href="http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-580/features" target="_blank">http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gp...tx-580/features</a>

    In terms of cysts, that's 11,111 cysts a frame.

    Draw calls are the heaviest operation, which is the CPU telling the GPU what to draw.
  • KazterKazter Join Date: 2003-08-12 Member: 19481Members, Constellation
    Copy that, I am in no way a Graphic Designer or Engineer, I was just regurgitating information wrong as it may be.
  • CrushaKCrushaK Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167195Members, NS2 Playtester
    edited December 2012
    All those calculations in the OP would make the issue rather worse than helping it. "Finding" stuff at runtime involves iterating over a list of entities to find those that are affected, which can be a heavy operation on the CPU. I actually doubt that the GPU is the bottleneck on grapcis but rather the CPU, so you don't want to put even more strain on the CPU just to ease the GPU a bit.

    A far easier way to determine if automated performance optimization should kick in:
    <!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->var bool bDropDetail;

    event Tick(float DeltaTime)
    {
        bDropDetail = CurrentFPS < 25;        
    }

    […]

    simulated function SpawnFancyEyeCandyParticleEffects()
    {
        if (bDropDetail)
            return;

        […]
    }<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->

    Or in other words: check if the frame rate is below a certain threshold. If it is, please for the love of god stop spawning any more expensive particle effects that we don't need!
  • l3lessedl3lessed Join Date: 2010-06-07 Member: 71977Members
    Well, they're still optimizing it every patch. Last patch, I got a large frame rate boost. Now I'm able to run at max res; I do have to turn all the graphics down pretty much, but in most situations I can keep around 30 fps. However, there is still far more work, as I do get massive drops in infested areas and in very large battles. Also, for some reason high and medium res textures cause my computer to begin a kind of chocking affect anytime anything loads. I'm not a graphic designer myself, so I'm speaking from a position of ignorance on the subject, but is this normal reaction? I can stand in one area and get my standard 30 fps plus, but the moment anything new loads, my computer literally stops for like a second, while I assume it draws the object. I haven't experienced this with any other games, and I have a decent graphics card and cpu, Radeon HD 4800, overclocked to 825mhz, and a intel DUO core 3.0 overclocked to 4.2 with watercooling.
  • DghelneshiDghelneshi Aims to surpass Fana in post edits. Join Date: 2011-11-01 Member: 130634Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
    @CrushaK: I agree, but the risk here is that this may cause players to bind keys to "maxfps 24" to clear their screen of particle effects if they see them as more of a hindrance than the low fps (like in a room with lots of umbra and spores where you actually can't see anything so even 500fps won't help you). You would need to be very careful when implementing this about how much you actually turn off.
  • CrushaKCrushaK Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167195Members, NS2 Playtester
    edited December 2012
    I wrote "fancy eye candy particle effects". ;)

    Stuff that is supposed to block view would not be affected. But you could probably ignore a big part of muzzle flash effects (like those of Exos) if they would be nagging too much on the frame rate.
    And it also assumes that effects are not all put into a single particle system but instead into multiple ones with different complexity, so you could leave out some of them and just keep the essential ones.
  • alsteralster Join Date: 2003-08-06 Member: 19124Members
    Particle and any kind of flash are graphics. UW has always been doing non graphics and level of detail graphics optimization for better framerates
    What I am suggesting is a further LOD level of detail during combat. There are already many conditions being checked for that enemy on radar, motion tracking, footstep sounds, line of sight, etc. Any of those can be checked for combat condition. If an enemy is standing still fps won't drop too much and therefore graphics don't need to take a hit. There's not much more "calculating" the server or client has to do.
  • DestherDesther Join Date: 2012-10-31 Member: 165195Members
    I don't think NS2 implemented any model LoDs where model quality is reduced with distance. Maybe that would help.

    The only thing I noticed is that the Occlusion Culling changes with view direction(?) and seems to "leak" sometimes as you change direction but not position. Q3 had Hint brushes which you could use to manually split up the PVS portals to help simplify them and position the boundaries where you wanted.

    Some maps might also benefit from simplified Occlusion Geometry like removing Pillars from the OG group.
  • PodPod Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 5745Members
    edited December 2012
    I think one of the problems is that all the options in the options menu are to do with fill rate and the game is simply sending too many polygons.

    I think, at least on my computer with a ATI HD 4850, that the engine is vertex/polygon bound, rather than fill rate or CPU bound. According to r_stats I'm GPU bound, not CPU bound, as it's always 'waiting on CPU'. I have everything set to minimum, and reducing the resolution doesn't do anything further. I can reduce right down to 1024x768 and it hardly makes a difference, which implies that the hold up is in the vertex shaders? The biggest 2 improvements I got were from infestation and from texture quality. Lowering infestation I assumed would help, but tex quality suprised me. I suspect they're using the same 'quality' for color textures sampled from the pixel shader as they are for bump maps and other textures sampled from the vertex shader? I think that lowering that further reduces the quality of the infestation.

    I also don't think that it's doing <b>too many</b> draw calls, though reducing the number is an obvious improvement. The max amount of draw calls I've seen is 2500 ish, which whilst seeming high, isn't that bad compared to other fancy things. (I think FC2 does about 2000+ or so -- I haven't checked in a few years).

    I can't be arsed checking in PIX or anything to see, but does the game have LOD models, or indeed any lower quality models and prefabs for maps we could use? I think that'd really, really help.
  • CsaeCsae Join Date: 2012-11-17 Member: 172145Members
    Not sure how effective or possible it is, but utilizing the GPU more, alleviating some of the CPU loads would go alot to improve performance across the board.

    Across the board most players are suffering from performance issues from CPU loads, not GPU.
  • PodPod Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 5745Members
    <!--quoteo(post=2048337:date=Dec 20 2012, 01:38 AM:name=Csae)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Csae @ Dec 20 2012, 01:38 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2048337"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Across the board most players are suffering from performance issues from CPU loads, not GPU.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    Really? I only have a Quad Core Q9550. No i7 business etc. I wonder why I'm GPU limited :(
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