BS2: Rendering engine seems to be rather poorly optimized

[ShuRugal]

as per title. Been fiddling around with settings in BS2 trying to get better performance and noticing some odd things.

 

Running the sim with resource monitor open on second screen, and i noticed an interesting phenomenon: on low settings with medium scenes selected (selecting low scenes make no appreciable difference, only flattens buildings) and framerate forced to cap at 12 (averaging 14-18 uncapped, but was stuttering badly) the the DCS.exe average 30% CPU usage and peaked around 40% (60-80% of the single core that DCS uses). Using the same settings but with framerate uncapped, cpu usage ran 40-50% (80 to 100% of a single core)

 

Based on this observation, it seems that BS2 is not actually processor-choking, but rather is bottlenecked on graphics processing. This strikes me as very odd, since i have run the game with the settings as low as possible and as high as possible and witnessed no significant performance changes except under cloudy/rainy weather.

 

At my current graphics settings, the game is less visually impressive than a number of first-person shooters i have that run considerably better framerates. (crysis comes to mind, as does force unleashed and halo 2, all of which do run a considerably greater quantity of lighting and particle effects than the settings i have enabled in BS2).

 

I can only conclude that the graphics engine of DCS itself is what is at fault.

 

 

Also, when are we going to get a multicore update? it is absolutely mind boggling to me that an engine released in 2008, and a high-performance simulation engine at that, would not make use of all available processors.

[pacotito]

Pc specs? The first thing I would check would be you video card configuration program. Make sure you use in game aa and af not forced at driver level.

[EtherealN]

Also, when are we going to get a multicore update? it is absolutely mind boggling to me that an engine released in 2008, and a high-performance simulation engine at that, would not make use of all available processors.

 

This isn't too different to the general market. It's still a lot of computer games that don't do it, it took a long time even for the mainstream, big-business, engines to implement it. (Though arguably in their case it was because they didn't need it, being console-neutered and all, although multithreading was important for the UE3 updates on PS3.)

 

However, I do wonder how you would believe it helps in this case? You just established that it is not the CPU that's bottlenecking on your system?

 

Anyway, as for "when", there is no answer. When those components are ready. Making something multithreaded isn't a simple thing - it's essentially a complete redesign of the entire software. I'm sure you can appreciate that this isn't something you do very fast, since this is typically something you want to have planned before you even write a single line of code - that is, when the engine in question is just a flowchart on a wall in the planning office. You can't just apply a different compiler flag and be done with it. :)

 

The topic has been discussed extensively in the Wish List section.

 

To help you with your specific performance issues we will need more details about your system though.

[ShuRugal]

HP DV7t-1000

Core2Duo 2.0

nVidia 9800mGT W/512

4GB DDR2

Win764

 

Ram usage hovers around 2GB for the game. I've been 'round the gamut of checking driver-forced options, all are set to "off" or "application preferred". All downclocking functions are turned off, resource monitor showed CPU frequency never dips below 90% and usually stays in the 95-99% range.

Don't know what the GPU is doing, but it does not act as if it is getting worked out: it is located under the left palmrest, and i can feel it get hot when it is under a hard load.

 

been 'round all the recommendations on going into lua files and settings things down to 1 or 0 that don't show up in the launcher options list. Only thing that did was make it crash.

 

There are two changes i have made that had a useful effect, one has been to run in a window (big WTF moment there, but i get about 4 fps better, and the other has been to reduce resolution below native (1440x900), again for a roughly 4-8 fps gain..

 

There has got to be more going on here than meets the eye. I can't run any of them on max settings, but this computer handles Deadspace 1/2, Crysis, Halo-2, Force Unleashed, and several other graphics-intensive games on medium or low options without choking up, and still displaying better perceived quality than in BS2.

 

Have also tried BS1 again recently, and i get similar framerates from that as well.

 

Delved a little into A10, and while i have not had a chance to learn the aircraft yet, i get considerably better framerate out of it.

[ShuRugal]

also, it seems i mis-filed this thread. can it be moved?

[pacotito]

You are at the minimum specs for bs2. BS2 and A10 are more cpu intensive than gpu. So there is more of an impact from cpu power than gpu power. Dcs from what I've read on the forums isn't very laptop friendly. Sure it will run but no where near as well as on a desktop. On my system running on a 1080p monitor I average about 40-45 fps.As for getting better framerate in A10 that I can't answer...as far as I know both BS2 and A10 use the exact same engine.

Edited May 12, 2012 by pacotito

[ShuRugal]

yes, i keep being told this, and i would agree with that assessment if it were not for the fact that i can open my resource monitor and clearly see that i am not maxing out my system capabilities running the simulator.

[pacotito]

What is you cpu usage on each core? The sim runs on one core and the sound on a second core. So I'm guessing one core is maxed and the other is not being maxed out which would be why the resource monitor is reporting your cpu not being fully utilized. For example if you running a single thread program one core is being used at 100% and the second core at 0% the total cpu usage reported by the resource monitor would be 50%

[ShuRugal]

What is you cpu usage on each core? The sim runs on one core and the sound on a second core. So I'm guessing one core is maxed and the other is not being maxed out which would be why the resource monitor is reporting your cpu not being fully utilized. For example if you running a single thread program one core is being used at 100% and the second core at 0% the total cpu usage reported by the resource monitor would be 50%

 

cpu usage hovers around 80% for core0, and 50-60% for core1

[hitman]

yes, i keep being told this, and i would agree with that assessment if it were not for the fact that i can open my resource monitor and clearly see that i am not maxing out my system capabilities running the simulator.

Theres a lot more to resources than what the task manager shows you. Your video card for starters barely meets minimum requirements. Your hard drive is slower than usual desktop hard drives (5200rpm vs 7200rpm). Your laptop is bound to run hotter than a desktop, and that right there is the biggest performance killer for laptop gaming. Not only that, but your cpu cycles are lower than a regular desktop simply because they arent designed to use up even HALF of those desktops were made for. For example: An INtel laptop quad core wont even touch the speed and performance of a Q6600 Intel quad core because the power consumption is around 54w for the laptop, while the desktop will use 90+w. Not only that, but BF3 and MW3 type games have small maps, and dont have to draw every single building, tree, clouds, water, etc etc... within a 100km radius.

 

You just cant look at your system resources and say hey, Im only using 80% of the computer, somethings not right. I had a laptop for a grand total of 1 week prior to getting this desktop, and it was an Intel i7 with 4gbs of ddr3 1600 ram and an AMD 67xx video card and this SSD I have on this computer. It ran slower than fossilized dino turd. Not even Alienware laptops are worth getting for these sims.

Edited May 12, 2012 by hitman

[ShuRugal]

Not only that, but BF3 and MW3 type games have small maps, and dont have to draw every single building, tree, clouds, water, etc etc... within a 100km radius.

that is part what i mean by optimization: There is no reason for the engine to be drawing that many objects. In most regions, line of sight is only 5-10km tops, and even when line of sight is not an issue, anything smaller than a football stadium is not going to be visible on a computer display beyond 5k.

 

I have also observed that even with buildings turned off, my framerate falls through the floor if i have LoS on a city. Why is this? With buildings off, the "city" is nothing more than a splotch of differently-coloured terrain texture. This is another example of optimization problems: the engine acts like it is trying to draw buildings which are not there.

 

Now, don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to sound like i'm dissing on the game or on ED: the DCS series is an astoundingly good simulation engine. I don't even mind having to run on minimalist settings to get useable performance. I am aware that my system specs are at the bottom end of the range for DCS, but as my system specs do meet the advertised requirements, i feel i have some right to expect consistent, reliable performance.

 

 

I have just updated my chipset and GPU drivers, so we will see if that makes a difference. I also intend to keep digging at the config files and see if i can't find a way to manually force draw distances down.

[hitman]

Do you have shadows active planer or full? Civilian traffic turned off? Water texture to medium? The biggest issue with this sim are these 3 things. How many polys does a building have? 6? The trees are just sprites and only 2 dimensional, and Ive noticed in DCS series the light blob takes a huge chunk of resources as well. Its the eye candy, not the rest of the stuff. Another performance killer in these sims is that they are designed for single core use. A-10C uses multi-cores, but its not exactly on-par.

[213]

there's a thread here that contains .lod fixes so object rendering cuts off at a certain range.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=88171

 

i made an optimized version of the same wip fix with shorter draw ranges, i've also included the later obj fix and some more .lod files for models that didn't have them:

 

extract to \Bazar\World\Shapes

shapes.zip

[EtherealN]

HP DV7t-1000

Core2Duo 2.0

nVidia 9800mGT W/512

4GB DDR2

Win764

 

Which _exact_ processor is that "Core 2 Duo"? There are several in the product line with a 2GHz clock speed. Quite a few of them have a quite tiny L2 cache. This can cause your processor to have to request data from RAM more often and in greater quantity, flipping these back and forth, often enough that the computation resources often end up starved for in-data. In this case, you'll be unable to "max" the processor. Computers are, as always, very complex things and there's a lot more that goes into computer performance than clock speeds.

 

Regarding drawing objects - even when it doesn't draw objects, the game engine still needs to know where terrain etcetera actually are. This includes things far away from you. The reason for this is obvious if you think about it: it needs to be prepared to handle AI actions that take place over there, surveill any trigger zones and so on.

 

Again, you simply cannot compare to regular shooters. The requirements on the program are so different you may as well compare it to a web browser or Starcraft 2.

 

Basically though, yes, you are pretty much at the extreme low region of the minimum requirements.

[EtherealN]

213, that file was made for World Beta. Have you ensured that the file is compatible with the release version of BS2?

[213]

yeah, i'm using it on bs2 and a-10

[ZaltysZ]

Which _exact_ processor is that "Core 2 Duo"? There are several in the product line with a 2GHz clock speed. Quite a few of them have a quite tiny L2 cache. This can cause your processor to have to request data from RAM more often and in greater quantity, flipping these back and forth, often enough that the computation resources often end up starved for in-data. In this case, you'll be unable to "max" the processor.

 

In addition, he has only 512 MB VRAM. Under Windows 7 WDDM, VRAM is virtualized and can be swapped to system RAM. This means, that if there is not enough VRAM left, some unused parts can be paged out to system RAM for later use. This is very costly, because RAM is slower than VRAM and data needs to be moved via bus. It is also a good candidate for increasing the count of CPU cache misses.

[ShuRugal]

processor model is T5800.

 

Even with BS2 running, i almost never see my system pagefile exceed 70% of physical ram capacity. It has been as high as 80%, but only very rarely.

 

Really, if the astonishing FPS drop in/around a city could be solved, i'd be satisfied. i can get 14-18 elsewhere, which is sufficient, if not ideal.

 

What is interesting is that the in-city FPS drop is not consistent: in the second medved mission (inserting the snake eaters near tskhinvali) i have severe FPS drop while sitting on the pad, and over the first 2 towns crossed en-route. However, the town near the drop zone does not cause a drop in framerate, and i do not experience a matching drop when returning and landing.

Edited May 13, 2012 by ShuRugal

[ShuRugal]

and i have verified that the bottleneck is graphics, not CPU. using nvidia inspector, i can see that my GPU maxes out, while both processor cores stay in the high-60 to mid-80 percent range.