Mysterious Cities of Lag...

[DTWD]

Does anyone know if the sea/cities slow down issues from FC is still present in BS? I am hoping the new DX9 shaddowing has improved things a little.

 

I am worried because we are going to a lot lower than in FC and so more prone to the FPS hit that cities tend to give us. Then again we are also a lot slower so it might not be as apparant, but still I would be interested to know.

 

Regards

Paul

[CrashEd]

I am worried because we are going to a lot lower than in FC and so more prone to the FPS hit that cities tend to give us. Then again we are also a lot slower so it might not be as apparant, but still I would be interested to know.

 

+1

 

Good question (Like the thread title too ;):D ).

[DTWD]

Hey whenever I can pun a cartoon from my childhood I will do it :D

 

So from the lack of responses can we take it that either no one knows, people have there heads in the sand and don't want to know, or in fact it's still slow?

 

Regards

Paul

[deviletk]

Good question.

 

+1

[Rikus]

A friend told me that there are water still under cities.

 

Greetings

[DTWD]

Water still being under the cities may not be the end of the story though. If the "new" shadow engine that someone mentioned works in DX9 (apparantly the only part of the new code that does, the rest still works in DX8 ) there is a good chance that it's off loaded onto the GPU and not the CPU. This may not sound like much, but it would mean the CPU doesn't have to work as hard and the GPU can do what it was made to do.

 

In theory this *could* bring up the FPS by a significant amount as apparantly one of the biggest problems with the cities is the shadows (and reflections in some cases) of all those buildings being mapped onto the sea, even though it's not visible.

 

Regards

Paul

[Kuky]

so DTWD, you saying water was rendered in DirectX8 by the CPU ant not GPU and in DirectX9 it's the GPU?

[drafz]

so DTWD, you saying water was rendered in DirectX8 by the CPU ant not GPU and in DirectX9 it's the GPU?

 

 

Personnaly , i think selfshadow feature is useless actually. you don't see it while you are flying. it's barely viewable.

AMHA, they should concentrate their effort on sound api (still bugged), editor lacking (like copy past per exemple) , and don't forget the most important feature .... ground rendering .

We haven't got any single info on that. actually , it might sitll be unplayable. at 10K object visible , with FC , my framerate crawl to 13fps (core2 4MB 3.3ghz). i remember some demo showcasing rendering demo reaching 25 to 30K objects visible , via instancing.

on checksix , someone report an us carrier firing on destroyer with cannon make few hundred of bullet simultaneously , making game .... unplayable. (ala X3 reunion). another thing about ground is tree.

 

Aren't they collideable ? if so , they need to . you can't call you product "simulator" if a tree can't stop your chopper.

Edited October 29, 2008 by drafz

[DTWD]

so DTWD, you saying water was rendered in DirectX8 by the CPU ant not GPU and in DirectX9 it's the GPU?

 

It's not so much the water and the shadowing I was talking about.

 

Dx 8 is old, very old in relative terms. Since it's release the DX libraries have moved on and newer graphics cards, and the more powerfull GPU's that have come out, can take advantage of these features on card.

 

I am not a games programmer so I can't say what's changed in the back end, but from a point of view of a games player I can tell you what I see on screen.

 

Playing FC on my machine seemingly doesn't seem to hamper my graphics card too much, but my CPU is hammered (well one core is), and when I am flying around and the game is rendering buildings (cities, towns etc) the CPU use goes up and the whole game slows down where as the GPU seems to be just ticking over. I am assuming that at the point in time when DX8 came out the libraries for shadowing tended to rely on the CPU as GPU's weren't that great at the time. Now GPU's are storming ahead on the pure calculating power front and so more modern games take advantage of that (and probably with a bit of help from the DX libraries).

 

You can see any number of modern day games that seem to take shadows in there stride, even dynamic ones that are being produced from individual leafs on a tree, but yet FC seems to have problems with a square shadow with only basic lighting going on. This to me suggests that the old method of doing shadows is the biggest problem over the cities, this coupled with the reflections/shadowing onto the sea.

 

I am assuming DX 9 has improved things a little and if the shadowing is the only thing done in DX 9 (and there must be a reason for this!) in BS AND if it's offloading it onto the GPU completely then that leaves the CPU to do other things.

 

This isn't a critisim at ED, FC is an oldish game based on an ageing engine, yes it still looks good today but that isn't what we are talking about.

 

As GPU's get more powerfull, and graphics cards handle more DX effects without any need for external processing then the CPU load can be reduced, or re-distributed to do other things like more simulation modeling.

 

The new DCS engine, when it comes out, I would hope would be brand spanking new and take advantage of all the new fancy things that can be done, as well as any speed improvements that can be made by giving the GPU the graphics job and leaving the CPU to other things. I would also hope it's modular and can be upgraded as the DCS modules come out to take advantage of new ways of doing things and new graphics card features.

 

But the question remains, does the DX9 handing of shadows improve FPS over towns and cities?

 

Regards

Paul

[33rd_bratpfanne.]

Would like to have info on that subject too.

 

I have a C2D 8600 (Grafik: 8800 GT ideling around at 1920x1200) and at stock speeds, i drop as low as 11 !!!!! fps over cities on a clean BS install. It is only when i oced it to 4 GHz that i get playable FPS in the lower Twenties. (settings all maxed out except water @ HIGH)

 

S~

 

Brati

[Heatseeker2K3]

Would like to have info on that subject too.

 

I have a C2D 8600 (Grafik: 8800 GT ideling around at 1920x1200) and at stock speeds, i drop as low as 11 !!!!! fps over cities on a clean BS install. It is only when i oced it to 4 GHz that i get playable FPS in the lower Twenties. (settings all maxed out except water @ HIGH)

 

S~

 

Brati

 

Uh oh, thats not good at all :( .

[EvilBivol-1]

I'm not technically inclined, but I believe the FPS hit over cities is less a shadow issue (although that's part of it), but a parsing issue, as each building is an independent object. As such, flying over populated cities in Black Shark does impact performance, although the extent will depend on hardware, settings and mission content.

[Heatseeker2K3]

I'm not technically inclined, but I believe the FPS hit over cities is less a shadow issue (although that's part of it), but a parsing issue, as each building is an independent object. As such, flying over populated cities in Black Shark does impact performance, although the extent will depend on hardware, settings and mission content.

 

On the previous page someone mentioned that the sea, even if not visible (bellow the terrain) still draws reflections of objects wich are obviously abundant in the cities.

Maybe it wouldnt hit so bad if the engine relied less on CPU to do these things, the buildings and textures dont appear to be very taxing/demanding from what i've seen (in the pics only).

[qrazi]

Thank god I still have an old 17"CRT which doesn't go beyond 1280 x 1024 pixels.... :)

[Kuky]

On the previous page someone mentioned that the sea, even if not visible (bellow the terrain) still draws reflections of objects wich are obviously abundant in the cities.

Maybe it wouldnt hit so bad if the engine relied less on CPU to do these things, the buildings and textures dont appear to be very taxing/demanding from what i've seen (in the pics only).

 

this one is no biggie as shaddows on water are only reflected when water setting is on Very High. For me water on Medium is fine enough :)

[RvETito]

My experience indicates that flying over cities or other areas with high density of ground objects doesn't hit frame rates that much like in FC. In general FPS are more fluent now, there is no such thing like 70FPS over sea and 20 over city peaks like in FC.

[DTWD]

Ah good to hear.

 

On what kind of hardware is that?

 

Regards

Paul

[RvETito]

Dual core AMD X2 4200+ (2.21GHz), 3GB RAM, 7800GT video.

[DTWD]

That's great, I should be in a good position to play it at a decent FPS.

 

Many thanks.

 

Regards

Paul

[leonsilver]

A friend told me that there are water still under cities.

 

Greetings

 

Yes.

 

[Kaptein_Damli]

Would like to have info on that subject too.

 

I have a C2D 8600 (Grafik: 8800 GT ideling around at 1920x1200) and at stock speeds, i drop as low as 11 !!!!! fps over cities on a clean BS install. It is only when i oced it to 4 GHz that i get playable FPS in the lower Twenties. (settings all maxed out except water @ HIGH)

 

S~

 

Brati

 

That does not sound good...I was hoping ED had learned from Lock On FC about the coding and optimizing of the sim. I was hoping BS was more GPU dependent than CPU dependent as FC is very CPU dependent. This may be because of the older engine they use in BS is almost the same as it was in FC. Hoping their new engine will be better optimized.

[Kaptein_Damli]

Yes.

 

 

You kidding my right? Why do they do the same mistake again? Hmm...I think I will wait untill BS comes with the new engine...This is very 2003´ish...

[mc_smile]

Well, the FPS drop is not so big as it was in FC. Reducing water quality will also increase performance. Still the cities are Insmout-like with their underground water, prepared for Chtulhu rising i think)

[Focha]

Jesus!!! Some comments here are really harsh! If you need so bad the top notch graphics go fly FSX! I am sure if you do not put the things to the maximum detail it will be ok. Why having shadows that are not viewable and hit FPS? (so go to settings and disable it) Why having reflections on water if it makes the same thing as the water without reflections? (disable it!) In my humble opinion the graphics are important for a flight sim but only a bit! Flight model, systems, it´s much more important to me. For example FSX has the ultimate graphics but it´s a unstable sim with a lot of bugs (this goes all for the rotary side) and it does not simulate what a helicopter do! I don´t fly FSX anymore and I´ll not do it. If you ever looked at a professional helicopter simulator you will see that the more important things are not the visual but are the systems and flight model. So just put down your settings it won´t bite you.

 

Some guys here are requesting graphics or worry about graphics someone even questioned the helicopter hitting the trees... Or you guys are blind or you don´t read the threads neither FAQ! DCS: BS it will be the best combat helicopter sim and if it was civil it would be the best too! Now... Don´t worry so much with the graphics and FPS there is always a way of putting the FPS stable and high (for me high it´s constant at 30+).

 

Regards.

Edited November 16, 2008 by Focha

[Kuky]

some people ... :disgust: