Graphic anomolies

[Chilli]

GTX 745 1G\4G
RAM - DDR3
Data Paths - 128bit
Band Width - 28.8 Gbyte sec.

GTX 465 1G
RAM - GDDR5
Data Paths - 256bit
Band Width - 102.5 Gbyte sec.

Thanks Bustr and Bizman, also NatCigg.  This is the kind of information that the gpu shopper for AH3 should have a grasp on.  Also, I wonder if anyone can tell me of video card AH3 worthy that will most likely fit into portable desktop for another player?  I will look into the specifics later on, but he at least has room for single slot gpu, and will update if it can use a dual slot, length and and psu rating, when we can confirm model information.

Thanks Challenge, from another thread, with good advice on something else to help tweak the existing gpu!

Don't forget the texture sizes should probably be set to minimum values, and keep AA low.

Thanks 

[bustr]

Up to now the FPS problems posted over nearly a year. I'm seeing a pattern that may eventually go away since Graphics has not been optimized for the end user yet.

Here seems to lay the current problem for players.

RAM - DDR3\GDDR3
Band Width - Less than 70 Gbyte sec.

GTX 9800 512
RAM - GDDR3
Band Width - 70.4 Gbyte sec.

Several Players have GDDR3 RAM and higher Band Width than 70.4 but poor FPS in the alpha.

The GDDR3 RAM spec in the GTX 9800 as the games minimum video card makes me sure Hitech has some more adjusting of the graphics to go. But, Skuzzy warns it will still be with everything turned down and probably in 512 Mode.

[Skuzzy]

Waffle's machine has a 9800GTX in it and plays the game all the time.  Frame rates are not uber-doober, but playable, with everything disabled/turned off/turned down.

[bustr]

Skuzzy,

In past open betas the FPS was always everyone's biggest anxiety and reason for declaring they would be unable to play the new version and the sky was falling. No one seemed to care when you explained the FPS was low because Hitech still had to tweek for that. He had bigger concerns and needed us testing to help debug them.

Then when the finished product was released, most of the sky is falling crew were playing with usable FPS.

The current code and how it plays on their machines is the only tangible reality they either are willing to measure the future by. Or it looks like many are confused about how to judge the results they are getting. None seem to be reading anything you or Hitech have posted that this code is not what they think it is. And there is much more tweeking to go. He needs a broader gene pool of PC's to continue working the code which the open alpha gives him access to.

They should have all been here in the closed alpha since last August with us. I can imagine Waffle's 9800 is giving him better results now versus then, within your stated limitations.   

[NatCigg]

With my system frame rates were in the 30s with texture at 500 and in the 30s with 4000. Go figure.

[Chilli]

NatCigg,

You may be right.  In the past some features were turned off, even though the menu item was there.  Textures could be frozen, only the developers know for sure.  Anyhow, I had smooth gameplay for months now with lower fps than that.  That does not mean that your experience will not differ, only that if your only problem so far is seeing stutters and flickering shadows, don't worry, we all do (or the majority of us do).

[DREDIOCK]

To be clear. My initial post was simply intended to be a report of what I was seeing.

Which BTW is what I was seeing at all settings I had used to date. The ones in the snapshots I took used just happened to be the settings I was at when I took those shots.

I put them out thee in hopes of being helpful not knowing if those are the types of things HTC wants to know about or not but figuring that feedback from the largest array of computer configurations might be beneficial.

Now. I do appreciate the feedback Hitech,Skuzzy, and HTC as a whole provides and has provided as it lets me/us know what problems I/we may have and what we can do on our end to tweak things so that we may continue to put the game through its paces in this  stage of development.

[DREDIOCK]

You could be running out of video RAM.  Windows XP is going to be more sensitive to that as it does not allow video cards to use any system RAM at all.

Try using the default field of view.  Set "Environment mapping" to "None".  check the option to disable post lighting and shadows as well.  That will reduce the video RAM requirements.

Tried all of that with pretty much the same results. See pictures attached.

Seems to effect more online then offline. Offline I can near max things out and not see the blocks in the water though I do have framerates in the low 20s

Attached shots are from online arenas

I left the clipboard up so it can be seen what I had it set at. Seems to be plenty of video memory available

[DREDIOCK]

Had two attachments. for some reason it didnt want to post the second

[Chilli]

Drediock,

Very much understood your intentions in posting.  Very much appreciate the screen shots.  I have seen the field blue square at low res before, but the water rendering shots are new to me.

Did you try this?

qoute from Natcigg, "i left video res alone at 1680 x 1050"

answer from Skuzzy, "That is why your memory usage is less"

 

You and I have almost identical motherboards.  Ignoring any hardware changes (ie Windows or GPU upgrade) I found marked improvement in FPS just by doing this today:  I reduced my resolution from 1920 x 1080 down to 1280 x 768, and the result was a jump of 20 to 40 FPS 

Let me post a couple of screen shots and point out that Nvidia has a couple of smoothing features that I played with to obtain this with absolutely NO Anti Aliasing at all enabled.

Both of your files didn't attach prior, due to maximum size limit is my guess.  To get around that, change from bmp format to png or jpg.  I also reduce the size to optimize the amount of space on disc and on screen.

[Meatwad]

Yet another thing worth knowing about video card model numbers: In the nVidia GTX### cards the first digit (hundreds) tells the generation, the second (tens) tells the relative performance level within that generation.

A new generation mostly means support for new protocols, new ways of doing things. Some of the new ideas may never make their way to any games. That means that games that don't use the latest graphical gimmicks don't benefit much from a newer GPU of the same performance level.

A comparison of NatCigg's GTX 745 and Chilli's GTX 465 show that the latter is a better performer despite of being almost four years older.

The same numbering idea can be found in AMD Radeon cards, too. Look at the "tens".

I didnt know that

[DarkHawk]

Chilli   I just tested what you did. went from 1920-1080 to 1280-768
          in the tower frame rate went from 27 to 45 fps
thank you
Dhawk

[hitech]

Water in particular. Doesnt seem to matter what the video settings are, whats enabled/disabled etc
5 and 6 are offline screenshots
1 and 2 are online beta arena

Drediock.On the water issue, it appears to me that mip maps are not being generated properly on the waves.  This is done every frame , and AH does it directly.

My guess is you are seen a driver issue. But I have also put in a bunch of debug trapping code in the next patch, for any texture creation failure. I normally do not point at drivers, but you case seem to be very unique.

It could also be a timing issue so make sure you have VSync enabled. (once again may be a driver issue).

_______________

On the issue of the trees showing over beach lines, it could be a few diffrent things.

First the Lines what you see are normal. That is what is actually drawn under the land before the land is drawn. What you are seeing is missing polygons of land that are some how not being drawn. And hence why you see the trees on top.

It could be a cull issue bug in AH or once again a driver. If you can recreate it, and send me a cmepos.txt file with .psave , it would help me a lot.

Thanks for the report

HiTech

[DREDIOCK]

Drediock.On the water issue, it appears to me that mip maps are not being generated properly on the waves.  This is done every frame , and AH does it directly.

My guess is you are seen a driver issue. But I have also put in a bunch of debug trapping code in the next patch, for any texture creation failure. I normally do not point at drivers, but you case seem to be very unique.

It could also be a timing issue so make sure you have VSync enabled. (once again may be a driver issue).

_______________

On the issue of the trees showing over beach lines, it could be a few diffrent things.

First the Lines what you see are normal. That is what is actually drawn under the land before the land is drawn. What you are seeing is missing polygons of land that are some how not being drawn. And hence why you see the trees on top.

It could be a cull issue bug in AH or once again a driver. If you can recreate it, and send me a cmepos.txt file with .psave , it would help me a lot.

Thanks for the report

HiTech

Very welcome

"cmepos.txt file with .psave"

Would be more then happy to. And realizing I probably sound like an idiot here. What is it and how do I do that?

[DREDIOCK]

nevermind. I think I figured out what to do. keyboard command to save in flight