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Issues, Workarounds & Localization

 
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Dust Clouds Kill Framerate

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Anu Kratar
Twelve Trashcan Farters Walk Into a Bar
#1 - 2017-01-14 21:17:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Anu Kratar
Looks like this issue has been going on for years... I understand that I can disable the 'Effects' graphics option and that disables the clouds and fixes this performance issue, but it also disables a ton of other visual effects.

The rest of the visual effects governed by this graphics option do not cause this same sharp drop in performance. Many of these other effects are related to module effects on ships so completely losing this visual feedback both reduces my situational awareness and needlessly makes the game less enjoyable.

If a fix is not up for discussion could I get a few recommendations for affordable gfx cards that are not effected by this crippling but obscure performance issue??


PasteBin for DxDiag
CCP Savior
C C P
C C P Alliance
#2 - 2017-01-17 10:08:43 UTC
Hi,

Just to give everyone a heads up, we are aware of the performance costs of the clouds and are currently exploring ways of either improving the tech behind them, or looking at how they are distributed within a site. We aren't happy with how they are and know that we are actively looking to correct them in the near future.

I took a look through your DxDiag and saw that both your CPU and GPU look like they might need an upgrade soon. While the GPU is incredibly important in the rending of the graphics on screen, but the CPU shouldn't be forgotten about. Looking at your CPU, that particular model is closing in on being 10 years old. My suggestion would be to start there if you wanted to upgrade.

Graphical QA Analyst | EVE Quality Assurance | Team TriLambda
Sophs Monster
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#3 - 2017-01-17 16:27:12 UTC
CCP Savior wrote:
Hi,

Just to give everyone a heads up, we are aware of the performance costs of the clouds and are currently exploring ways of either improving the tech behind them, or looking at how they are distributed within a site. We aren't happy with how they are and know that we are actively looking to correct them in the near future.

I took a look through your DxDiag and saw that both your CPU and GPU look like they might need an upgrade soon. While the GPU is incredibly important in the rending of the graphics on screen, but the CPU shouldn't be forgotten about. Looking at your CPU, that particular model is closing in on being 10 years old. My suggestion would be to start there if you wanted to upgrade.


I'm noticing sound stuttering issues since the last patch.
Anu Kratar
Twelve Trashcan Farters Walk Into a Bar
#4 - 2017-01-17 18:04:09 UTC
Thank very much for the information CCP Savior!

I'm sorry if this information has already been posted. I did try to find recent topics on it for work-arounds and/or confirmation that it wasn't only effecting me.
Anu Kratar
Twelve Trashcan Farters Walk Into a Bar
#5 - 2017-01-17 18:07:13 UTC
Sophs Monster wrote:

I'm noticing sound stuttering issues since the last patch.


You might want to comment about that in a thread related to that issue.
CCP Savior
C C P
C C P Alliance
#6 - 2017-01-18 14:53:46 UTC
Sound stuttering is pretty strange. Please send a bug report in, feel free to attach my name to it and we'll be able to start digging into the cause of the problem. But, yeah that's quite concerning.

Graphical QA Analyst | EVE Quality Assurance | Team TriLambda
Sylvia Kildare
Kinetic Fury
#7 - 2017-01-20 19:50:16 UTC
Anu Kratar wrote:
Looks like this issue has been going on for years... I understand that I can disable the 'Effects' graphics option and that disables the clouds and fixes this performance issue, but it also disables a ton of other visual effects.

The rest of the visual effects governed by this graphics option do not cause this same sharp drop in performance. Many of these other effects are related to module effects on ships so completely losing this visual feedback both reduces my situational awareness and needlessly makes the game less enjoyable.


Agreed. I and others have been noticing this for months, if not 1-2 years at this point. Many combat sites and missions with gas or dust clouds are laggy to complete compared to the ones with few (or none).

And yes, definitely need a separate toggle for just the clouds, we shouldn't have to turn off so many effects at once just to remove the one troublesome one that is taking away way more from the gaming experience than it adds (they are indeed pretty).
DooDoo Gum
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2017-01-21 03:00:16 UTC
CCP Savior wrote:
Hi,

Just to give everyone a heads up, we are aware of the performance costs of the clouds and are currently exploring ways of either improving the tech behind them, or looking at how they are distributed within a site. We aren't happy with how they are and know that we are actively looking to correct them in the near future.

I took a look through your DxDiag and saw that both your CPU and GPU look like they might need an upgrade soon. While the GPU is incredibly important in the rending of the graphics on screen, but the CPU shouldn't be forgotten about. Looking at your CPU, that particular model is closing in on being 10 years old. My suggestion would be to start there if you wanted to upgrade.


I have a GTX 950 and have the same shockingly unplayable framerate whenever dust clouds are on grid. I have posted a bug report regarding this, with details on the specific area it has happened. This card should be able to handle it, but sadly I too have to play with reduced graphics. a fix for this cant come too soon.
Paula Myok
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#9 - 2017-01-21 11:31:52 UTC
All the dust in the systems make them look like they are experiencing a smog alert !!!
Would love to look toward the stars and see BLACK not a brown soup!

Sandbox: An enclosed area filled with sand for children engaged in open-ended, unstructured, imaginative play. Also a place for cats to urinate and defecate...
Neovenator
Xynodyne
The Initiative.
#10 - 2017-01-22 16:20:11 UTC
Simply invent an option to switch off the Clouds only. I really love the FX within EVE but one thing i can easily skip for good is the Clouds.

Groetjes, Neo.

Mein EVE Online Blog: KLICK
Dvametragluposti Umobolus
Apotheosis.
#11 - 2017-01-30 01:42:26 UTC
Anu Kratar wrote:
Looks like this issue has been going on for years... I understand that I can disable the 'Effects' graphics option and that disables the clouds and fixes this performance issue, but it also disables a ton of other visual effects.

The rest of the visual effects governed by this graphics option do not cause this same sharp drop in performance. Many of these other effects are related to module effects on ships so completely losing this visual feedback both reduces my situational awareness and needlessly makes the game less enjoyable.

If a fix is not up for discussion could I get a few recommendations for affordable gfx cards that are not effected by this crippling but obscure performance issue??


PasteBin for DxDiag


Shaders on Low turn them off, but the game looks like it's 2003 again...
Cyrina Manto
RBS Inc.
#12 - 2017-02-01 00:49:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Cyrina Manto
DooDoo Gum wrote:
CCP Savior wrote:
Hi,

Just to give everyone a heads up, we are aware of the performance costs of the clouds and are currently exploring ways of either improving the tech behind them, or looking at how they are distributed within a site. We aren't happy with how they are and know that we are actively looking to correct them in the near future.

I took a look through your DxDiag and saw that both your CPU and GPU look like they might need an upgrade soon. While the GPU is incredibly important in the rending of the graphics on screen, but the CPU shouldn't be forgotten about. Looking at your CPU, that particular model is closing in on being 10 years old. My suggestion would be to start there if you wanted to upgrade.


I have a GTX 950 and have the same shockingly unplayable framerate whenever dust clouds are on grid. I have posted a bug report regarding this, with details on the specific area it has happened. This card should be able to handle it, but sadly I too have to play with reduced graphics. a fix for this cant come too soon.


AFAIK, dust clouds are simple alpha tested/blended polygons and as such they multiply the fill rate requirement for the area they cover by the number of overlapping polygons. GTX 950 has a relatively weak fillrate and will be hit hard by that kind of effect.

Honestly, its an ancient way of doing smoke/clouds and should be updated to some sort of true volumetric effect. Which is probably what CCP is going to do sometime in the near future.
CCP Darwin
C C P
C C P Alliance
#13 - 2017-02-02 22:58:09 UTC
Cyrina Manto wrote:
AFAIK, dust clouds are simple alpha tested/blended polygons

The previous cloud system (prior to December, 2015) was sprite-based. The current is volumetric. Single volumetric clouds are faster to render than the old clouds were, but unfortunately they don't scale as well when there are numbers of clouds in the scene.

Our practice when sites have been bug reported as causing slowdowns has been to reduce cloud count in affected sites, but this is a process that must be done by hand because it affects the look of the sites.

We understand that this is annoying, particularly for players on older machines, and we're working through affected sites to review them to see what we can do to improve performance.

You might ask: "Why not roll back to the old cloud system?" The answer is that this change touched enough of our graphics systems that it's not really feasible to roll back, and we feel that updating sites with poorer performance will get to a decent place faster.

CCP Darwin  •  Senior Software Engineer, Art & Graphics, EVE Online  •  @mark_wilkins
Nana Skalski
Taisaanat Kotei
EDENCOM DEFENSIVE INITIATIVE
#14 - 2017-02-04 07:40:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Nana Skalski
CCP Darwin wrote:
Cyrina Manto wrote:
AFAIK, dust clouds are simple alpha tested/blended polygons

The previous cloud system (prior to December, 2015) was sprite-based. The current is volumetric. Single volumetric clouds are faster to render than the old clouds were, but unfortunately they don't scale as well when there are numbers of clouds in the scene.

Our practice when sites have been bug reported as causing slowdowns has been to reduce cloud count in affected sites, but this is a process that must be done by hand because it affects the look of the sites.

We understand that this is annoying, particularly for players on older machines, and we're working through affected sites to review them to see what we can do to improve performance.

You might ask: "Why not roll back to the old cloud system?" The answer is that this change touched enough of our graphics systems that it's not really feasible to roll back, and we feel that updating sites with poorer performance will get to a decent place faster.

You should resign from those clouds that look like this. In my opinion they are ugly. Repeatable texture, their orientation is not fixed but they rotate with every rotation of camera that makes them look fake. Yellow volumetric fog proportions are not pretty, the clouds are squished and look like gaseous pancakes. I think when you would replace all those multiple clouds with one type, add more color types and unsquish them, it would make a good look, very realistic.

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ᴏsᴘʀᴇʏ 🚀

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CCP Darwin
C C P
C C P Alliance
#15 - 2017-02-04 18:08:17 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Darwin
Nana Skalski wrote:
You should resign from those clouds that look like this.

I am resigned to pointing out to you that the element that image calls out is not part of a volumetric cloud.

When you see something in the game that you feel doesn't meet a modern quality standard, remember that Eve has ten years of artwork, much of which was built to work well with the systems of five or ten years ago. Your best bet is to open a thread in the Player Features and Ideas Discussion forum and ask that we make a redesign pass on the types of sites you enjoy running.

(Our efforts to address cloud performance in sites are focused primarily on reducing the frame render times of the sites rather than make them look better, so if that's something you want, you should ask for it separately in the appropriate forum.)

CCP Darwin  •  Senior Software Engineer, Art & Graphics, EVE Online  •  @mark_wilkins
Sentenced 1989
#16 - 2017-02-28 13:49:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Sentenced 1989
Also having issues... I was helping out friend to do Blockade l4, what a mistake that was... from my usuall 40-50 fps went down to 10-15 fps. Turning off antialising went to 15-20 fps.

CCP, stop making clouds happen. There was some talk that clouds are disabled on dx9 clients, I will look into that when I get home and see what happens. But yea, just give us checkbox for clouds specific. I really don't want to turn off all effect just to avoid clouds.

Even undocking in Amarr drops me 15-20fps from base one. Incursions are also affected, forcing me to have camera rotated in specific angle so cloud is off screen... It's really annoying.

As for specs, you can't tell me it needs upgrades, especially if I can run 40-50 fps without issues as long as there is no cloud, even watching 30 bombs blowing up ships doesn't put that much strain on my system

Intel® Core™ i7 4720HQ Processor,
8GB DDR3L 1600 MHz SDRAM,
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M 4G GDDR5,
Samsung 256GB SSD

The Incursion Guild

Epic Arc Guide
Andrew Xadi
TerraTroopers
Get Off My Lawn
#17 - 2017-02-28 17:42:35 UTC
CCP Darwin wrote:

The previous cloud system (prior to December, 2015) was sprite-based. The current is volumetric. Single volumetric clouds are faster to render than the old clouds were, but unfortunately they don't scale as well when there are numbers of clouds in the scene.

Our practice when sites have been bug reported as causing slowdowns has been to reduce cloud count in affected sites, but this is a process that must be done by hand because it affects the look of the sites.

We understand that this is annoying, particularly for players on older machines, and we're working through affected sites to review them to see what we can do to improve performance.

You might ask: "Why not roll back to the old cloud system?" The answer is that this change touched enough of our graphics systems that it's not really feasible to roll back, and we feel that updating sites with poorer performance will get to a decent place faster.



is there any reason for not having "clouds" check box in settings tho? it'd allow us to disable clouds and keep rest of the effects and it's probably just adding a checkbox and moving "clouds_enabled = checkbox.isSelected()" to that checkbox from effects
Sentenced 1989
#18 - 2017-02-28 18:43:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Sentenced 1989
Andrew Xadi wrote:

is there any reason for not having "clouds" check box in settings tho? it'd allow us to disable clouds and keep rest of the effects and it's probably just adding a checkbox and moving "clouds_enabled = checkbox.isSelected()" to that checkbox from effects


I guess vanity, prolly clouds were idea from somebody high in management and now they don't want to back down :D

The Incursion Guild

Epic Arc Guide