Frame rates in different arenas

[Crash Orange]

Any idea why my frame rates vary radically between arenas? In the dueling arena this morning I can get 60 fps with 2048 textures and almost everything on and all the sliders to the right except the Environment Map Sides Per Frame at 1 (what exactly does that do, anyway? The description isn't clear.) Went over to Open Melee and my frame rate dropped below 30. I changed to 1024 textures, turned all the options off, and moved all the sliders all the way to the left except the Environment Map Sides Per Frame which was off, and I still got between 40 and 45 fps. I even turned off skin downloading and flew around for a little bit to see if it would go up but it's maxed in the upper 40s. Went back to the DA, maxed out the sliders again, and I'm back to 60 fps. What gives? 

[Dobs]

Appears to me that the object count is much higher in the current Melee map than the previous one.

Had my first fps "spike" yesterday....buddy on TS with me had it at same time...FPS dropped below 20...not sure what caused it, but overall holding above 60 for the most part.  In the previous map it was up in the 100s (yes I'm vsynch off for now).

[Tracerfi]

I heard that you need to put Environment Map Sides Per Frame to none as it seems it can kill frame rates

[ImADot]

The Environment Map setting controls the environment reflections on shiny and glass surfaces. Setting it to All will kill some rigs because it updates the reflected environment for every frame of video, so you get real-time reflections. Setting it to None disables the reflections so the video card doesn't have so much work to do.

As far as differing frame rates across arenas, it's most likely a factor of terrain detail and object count, like what Dobs said.

[Crash Orange]

The funny thing is it remains true even in the hangar.

[Dobs]

If you run two monitors, try to open up Resource Monitor (CNTRL-ALT-DEL>Performance tab>Open Resource Monitor at bottom ....this is for Win 10 to get to the Resource monitor) in the secondary monitor (the one you don't run AH in).

With Resource Monitor open and CPU tab selected, run the game and see what the CPU cores are doing....if one of them is pegged out, and the rest are sitting around idling, its CPU related and no GPU related. 

Attached is my CPU hit from the game....it pegs CPU 0 out to the max in the hanger.... I get pretty solid FR...like 100+, and 120 most of the time...in the hanger it goes down to 95.  So something is happening there to cause it (proximity of drawn structures is my guess).

[Bizman]

The funny thing is it remains true even in the hangar.

The Hangar is a killer! There's a gazillion of polygons, just count the roof window panes and their shadows to get an idea.

[Crash Orange]

If you run two monitors, try to open up Resource Monitor (CNTRL-ALT-DEL>Performance tab>Open Resource Monitor at bottom ....this is for Win 10 to get to the Resource monitor) in the secondary monitor (the one you don't run AH in).

With Resource Monitor open and CPU tab selected, run the game and see what the CPU cores are doing....if one of them is pegged out, and the rest are sitting around idling, its CPU related and no GPU related. 

Attached is my CPU hit from the game....it pegs CPU 0 out to the max in the hanger.... I get pretty solid FR...like 100+, and 120 most of the time...in the hanger it goes down to 95.  So something is happening there to cause it (proximity of drawn structures is my guess).

Thakns. They're all running. In any case in ndisles I'm back up to 60 fps. I guess for some maps I'll just have to scale things back.

[Chalenge]

It only makes sense that the hangar should be an area where frame rates are at their lowest. You can even change the result by changing to a higher poly count view, say by choosing the goon and watching the troops dance. The Graphics details sliders on the clipboard will make a big difference too. The more detail you apply then the more polygons and vertices will be drawn, and the same is true of the other sliders as well. The environment map does change the frequency of the reflection map updates from 1 per second, to 2 per second, or all frames (I think that's how Hitech explained it). Environment offers nothing to the game really, but it does make pretty videos and screenshots.

The biggest heavy hitters on the left side of the clipboard are Shadows, and Reflections. You can make adjustments to any part of the clipboard from anywhere in the game, but those areas of the map that adversely affect you are of special interest because you can tweak your settings to prevent radical frame dropouts. Probably the hangar is one area to start with. I haven't found too many areas of any map, even in dense foliage, that will hit frames any harder than the hangar does. If you do, then share with us all where that is.