performance issue and edge update/info? z-culling, lod for animations.

[betatrash]

hey, one thing i noticed that could use a MAJOR improvement is z-culling. all those shaders are basically visible through mountains and the cockpit (even when the cockpit covers the entire viewport)...

 

basically, nothing is being culled even 50-100km out. i tested with smoke. the fps drops even through mountains and cockpit floor. no gains to be had there.

 

is z-culling in EDGE?... basically...

 

also, i don't think those animations have proper lod applied, since they cause the same amount of fps drop even at 50km, when zoomed out.

 

get about 30-40 fps normally looking at planes, buildings and clutter, about 50-80 at the sky. about 15-20 when looking at a mass of explosions and planes and buildings.

 

this seems to be the cause of the performance issues imo. thread locking aside... (due to video+logic being on the same thread)... cpu stay at 60-70%, gpu fan barely hits 40-50%, some 60% load as well. no dpc latency issues either.

 

tried disabling smoke/explosions, but apparently that doesn't work.

 

btw, i found this in the 'edge' files.. lol? ;p - {"SmallShit2.0", "Land"};

 

win7-64, i5-3570k @3.4, z77, 8gb ram, radeon 7850 (ghz ed). almost like a 7870 except less shader units so less gtexels.

Edited April 7, 2014 by betatrash

[betatrash]

well, found this in some of the shader files, not sure how relevant it is.

 

technique PFXSmoke2Material{

technique PFXSmoke2MaterialOP{

CULLMODE = NONE;

//STENCILENABLE = FALSE;

ZWRITEENABLE = FALSE;

 

they're all like that btw. seems z-culling was never implemented? or is being implemented?

[betatrash]

did some further testing and this low fps is not cpu-related def.

 

find a spot to floor your fps, then pause the game.

 

theoretically/technically, all processing will stop, all animations cease, etc.. fps remains the the same. in several instances i've seen the fps jump up slightly, but it's rare, and only a minimal 5fps.

 

so, basically the graphics engine is not optimized to handle dx9, let alone dx11. not the other way around (dx9 is not optimized for the engine).

 

was able to get a more acceptable 20-30 fps instead of 15-20 in more general areas, still dips to 15-20 in engagements however, of a terrestrial nature.

 

this is after tweaking some more settings in options.lua, like lights, fog, haze, etc...

[BIGNEWY]

Hi you are late to the party,

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=80468&page=470 edge thread

 

and

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2037047#post2037047 official updates

 

latest update

 

With the completion of the airbase lights at Nellis and Creech, all major art and geometry components of the NTTR map are now complete. We are now waiting for the integration of EDGE and the new map data system into DCS to allow the importing of new maps such as the NTTR.

[betatrash]

Hi you are late to the party,

 

yea, i've seen those threads lol. not the page count tho. 470 :D

 

attached screenshots show this isn't a performance issue, but more of an optimization issue.

 

keep in mind, this is when it's running at 15-20fps. (i max out at 60-90 in some areas), but otherwise = 30-50, with battles at 15-20.

 

pausing it has no effect on cpu/gpu usage.

 

my guess as to why nvidia might work slightly better: more pixel shader units as opposed to ati's vertex shaders... dcs makes some use of pixel shaders, probably unoptimized. still, leaves 40-50% of your cpu/unused (dunno, would need to see some nvidia reports). meaning you need a card twice as powerful than what is stated in the minimum/recommended requirements. :\

 

the engine looks REALLY nice btw, but no word on specific optimizations, which is what we really wanna hear :\ ie: z-culling

 

another thing that irks me is some objects are WAY more complex than they need to be. some radio towers, etc have full-poly models... a simple light (12 polys) can be represented as a flat surface or a sprite. a tower is at least 50-100+ polys... could just simplify them, make them brushes with alpha and turn a 100-poly tower into 10 :\ or lights can be triangualr instead of rectangular. currently 12 polys, triangular = 8... 50% polygon savings per light fixture ;o flood lights can just be a sprite... currently it looks like a set of those is also 50-100 polys...

 

edit: in the screenshot 31.69% average cpu usage on DCS.exe is actually 62%, since it's only using 2 of 4 cores.

 

also, found a partial answer to this here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=1850004

 

So on Modern GPUs, DX9c Uses some shaders for Vertex and Pixel Drawing and some shaders to apply shader effects,

When a Particular Scene requires extremes of one and not the other, the GPU Cores Idle and wait for work.

 

i'm guessing dcs is in the former category (pixel shaders), which is indicative of the 1990s period, and would explain slightly better performance (maybe 15-20%) on nvidia gpus perfectly.

Edited April 8, 2014 by betatrash

[BIGNEWY]

All we can hope is that EDGE makes a difference.

 

I was running a ATI 7850 2gb but eventually made the switch to NVIDIA as at the time seemed to run better with DCS. I am glad I made the switch as I saw a huge performance increase.

[betatrash]

I was running a ATI 7850 2gb but eventually made the switch to NVIDIA as at the time seemed to run better with DCS. I am glad I made the switch as I saw a huge performance increase.

 

honestly, this isn't a user or hardware problem. inb4; this is an optimization problem.

 

but when everything looks like a nail... use a bigger hammer? <- close enough.

 

i don't have 150$ for a trackir + 300$ for a gpu + 250$ for a hotas stick currently... i also don't see the need to buy another gpu as the 7850 works fine on med-high settings 60+ fps in every single game ;\

 

meh, i don't mean to turn this into a rant.

 

i'll just leave it at where i left it at before: specs on EDGE optimizations please, thanks. :helpsmilie:

 

sorry, us developers are very demanding people.

 

edit: here's some vtune data. only other thing i can think of is some bandwidth bottleneck either ram/vram, or threading issues (most likely).

 

for some reason that i can't explain either (shows in the vtune data) is that lua.dll will consume 40% cpu when the game is alt-tabbed to desktop... it basically saturates the 4th core, while the 3rd goes idle.

Edited April 8, 2014 by betatrash

[Godzila]

also, i don't think those animations have proper lod applied, since they cause the same amount of fps drop even at 50km, when zoomed out.

 

I don`t have your knowledge, frankly I don`t even understand half of what you are talking about, but I and some others also found unoptimised probmlems. Fps loss is definitely not caused by demanding avionics and radar systems as some say in defence. Fps are simply wasted on unneeded stuff. I also don`t want to be negative or bashing this product, but I think that repairing current problems is a priority. EDGE or anything is not going to repair broken models on old map.

 

 

Lods are big problem. I think most errors came when models were converted from older format and lod data got corrupted on some. My findings are in this topic. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=109005&page=4

 

 

Some more similar topics:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=103664

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=101491

 

 

 

[betatrash]

Lods are big problem. I think most errors came when models were converted from older format and lod data got corrupted on some.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=101491

 

hmm yea, this was a good read.

 

it seems that indeed there are optimizations/errors with the models.

 

A. too many objects, way more complexity than is needed

B. bad lod data / no lod / max lod at all distances

C. animations lack lod for their framecount i think

D. no z-culling, or it's broken for whatever reason

 

dx11 might help alleviate some of them but not all. the files need to be optimized, and core optimizations made.

[Callmesimple]

Hey guys I can't if is the update for my Nvidia 660Ti or DCS 1.2.8 When i'm flying the plane would stick but i can still here what's going on in the back ground like for e.g if i press for the air brakes I'm going hear them working but I can't look and see be cause the plane would be still freeze and if if I press Ctrl Alt Delete it makes it funny sound like it crash(best e.g I can give) then I have press back on the game before I crash then I'll fly till it happens again then or the game would just crash. what should I do? I rolled back the drivers and the same thing is happening and I'm getting up to 60-70 Frames

[BigfootMSR]

The thing to keep in mind is that EDGE has not been released yet. They are still working on integration so theses are issues are with the current engine and not the new one.

[Godzila]

I am desperately waiting for EDGE. If it will solve anything I will probably update my hardware if needed and start enjoying this sim, otherwise I will have to give up.