[3.20 release] Performance issues in large battles since 3.20 - Devs on the case.

[raUlo]

Just upgraded to 3.20 and I noticed some stuttering during large battles. It's freezing every like 5 seconds and the more ships there are in the area (IS combat), the more often it freezes and the longer the duration of each freeze is

DxDiag

I can provide a save with a specific combat situation where I encountered the issue

[CBJ]

Yes, we'd need a savegame to have any chance of tracking down why this is happening for you. Please don't wait to be asked before including one in reports.

[raUlo]

Here you are

The battle is happening right at the Paranid Wharf in Holy Vision

[CBJ]

I loaded up your savegame. The framerate at the start position was 60+ and smooth. When I got into the midst of the battle it was 20+ but still smooth. I didn't last long before getting destroyed, but we'll skim over that.

Anyway, that suggests that the stutter you're seeing is a local issue. Are you, by any chance, running the game from an SSD drive, perhaps a Samsung SSD with Magician and Rapid mode or a Crucial SSD with Momentum Cache enabled?

[raUlo]

I didn't necessarily get into the battle, but rather maintained my position and monitored the battle using the external camera set on the Wharf, if this helps. But I think I get the same results if I get into battle myself

The issue didn't occur in 3.1, only after the upgrade. And yes, I am indeed running the game from a Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I don't have Samsung Magician installed

[CBJ]

Taking an external view of the Wharf (ABE-844) I get a great view of the (huge!) battle. Performance is lower there, yes, and I do see some occasional stutters, but they are a fraction of a second long and if anything get shorter over time rather than longer.

[raUlo]

The time interval between each stutter in my case is between 5-10 seconds. It's not necessarily the same every time, but seems to indicate that "something" is happening repeatedly in that scenario

The duration of each stutter on my machine is probably around 1 second. What I can see is that the time interval between stutters and the duration of each stutter seems to be proportional to how busy the area is (number of ships, number of projectiles flying around, number of ships actually engaging in combat and not just flying around)

[CBJ]

Yes, "something" will indeed be happening; in a battle that big there are quite a few candidates, and with the framerate already quite low because of the sheer amount going on, it's likely to be have more effect and therefore be more noticeable. I'm not seeing the stutter duration you are, or it getting worse, but there's definitely something there.

Working out what is actually causing could take a while, and I can't promise we'll be able to make it disappear completely, but at least we have a good scenario to test from, so thanks.

[raUlo]

Sure, I would say the game is well into the "playable" zone nevertheless

Thank you too

[Skeeter]

Tried it on my comp, seemed 60 i think when it loaded, went to the battle in the ship u were in and dropped to 20, didnt stutter i think but was just about playable fps wise (not enjoyable to play properly tho but "technically" playable lol, audio kept cutting out i think tho probs due to all the firing going on, thought sound cards could handle that many sounds but maybe not.

Didnt do external view or anything.

I played 1440p
high textures, high shadows, no soft shadows, no ssao, glow normal, no distortion, no chromatic thing, no ssr, vsync probs was on.

Whats weird tho is that the game on main menu after moving my saves out for urs, the main menu was 60fps instead of 75 which it normally is as my monitor does up to 75hz and i get that in the main menu and when i fly in empty space, not sure why its locked to 60 now grr.