Full Updates Issue.

[Plawranc]

I can run every single setting maxed out no worries at 60FPS solid.

But the moment I up the "Full updates" to max I drop down to 30.

Now if this was any other PC or time I would say that its just too hard....

but my new PC is a 4.6 GHZ I7 3770K overclocked. Radeon 7970 Gigabyte, OCed to 1100, 16 GB of ram and all the latest drivers etc etc the list goes on.

I can run pretty much anything max at 60 FPS solid.


So I'm curious as to what the issue could be.

[Bizman]

Well, my best guess is that it's just too hard, despite your current PC and time.

Although computers develop fast in a year or so, I believe this is still valid:

Just a blurb about real-time environment mapping.

Basically, it requires 6 additional passes per frame to obtain the "environment map".  This is the view of the world from your current position in the game world.  Then the GPU takes that map and projects onto the surfaces of the objects as reflections.

I cannot think of any 3D graphic operation, which is more intense than real-time environment mapping.

30 fps isn't bad with those settings.

 

[Skuzzy]

No issue at all.  Real time environment mapping is THE most demanding graphic operation there is.

[LCADolby]

Would be nice if we could set the resolution of the mapping so we could better balance our graphics options

[Myg]

No issue at all.  Real time environment mapping is THE most demanding graphic operation there is.

Yea, isn't that what they use to make those ultra-realistic rendered scenes with 3dsmax and such?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Yea, isn't that what they use to make those ultra-realistic rendered scenes with 3dsmax and such?

Even if I set the option to 'full updates' I don't really see any difference in image quality. I've always wondered what it's supposed to do.

[FLS]

Even if I set the option to 'full updates' I don't really see any difference in image quality. I've always wondered what it's supposed to do.

I believe full updates just updates the reflections more often, the visual quality is the same.

[Skuzzy]

"Environmental mapping" maps the reflections to the shiny surfaces in the game.

At "full" updates, it is done for each frame.

[Debrody]

Skuzzy, it might be off-topic, but would it be possible to adjust the rendered image quality?

I mean, full updates gives a smooth movement on the reflections, but results in a huge frame rate drop. The mid-ranges on the slider doesnt really hurt my FPS but the reflections are "jumping", updating in a low frequency that isnt fancy to my eye, kills the impression. My wish is, make not only the reflection refresh rate but the reflection resolution or image quality to be user-adjustable - i would like to enjoy the reflections in a decent refresh rate, but my puter cant handle it, so in a bit reduced quality.

Or going even further, that would be also nice if there was an algorithm what could "smoothen" the picture, wash out its details a bit, making it to look less like a mirror or polished chrome and more like a steel plate. I feel it a bit too sharp, but thats just me. Also a geeky question, what is more demanding for a graphical chip, to render it in (lets say) 2048 and leave it as it is or in 1024 and smoothen it?

[Skuzzy]

There is no good way to approach this.  To reduce the load, a smaller texture size for the map would be effective, but it would introduce a lot of aliasing in the reflections.  Doing any anti-alias passes would eliminate any performance gains in the texture reduction.

I am certain that changing the texture size, in an effort to speed up the process, would result in texture mapping issues for the reflections as they use the same texture mapping as the original texture does.  There may be a way around it, but I do not now what the performance ramifications would be.  I'll bring it up to HiTech.