Found some replicable performance issues

[EventHorizon]

As the title says I have found some interesting, and easily replicable, performance issues. Some of these have a shocking impact for what they are. Obviously these are all on my system, YMWV. All of these observations were performed in empty space, at least 250KM from the nearest Zone. Tested in Devries, with no suns, planets, gas clouds, or rocks in view for a "base line" FPS of 81 (1920*1200 all options enabled) - exception with the light sources for obvious reasons.

I am not counting the stutter that is caused by the engine loading a new model - that has and always will effect every game that loads textures/models in a JIT method.

I am trying to get some video footage to back all of this up, but recording also takes a performance hit - FYI I am using the Microsoft Game Bar (comes with Windows 10).

Dust trails when moving

Ok, this one really surprised me. I first noticed this when I had been sitting still while eating, when I was done I started moving and FPS dropped! This happens no matter where you are, but is most obvious in empty space. FPS seems to drop by 5 most of the time, but can be as much as 8. Restored when you stop. This was in a straight line, it drops by another 1-2 FPS if banking.

Boosting

Similar to the dust trails, this one really hits the performance. Boosting removes 10-15 FPS, restored once you come to a stand still. This was in a straight line, it drops by another 5-8 FPS if banking.

Trade window message - with animated portrait

When you get the comms window popup from one of your traders saying deal done/upload/unload there is a 10 FPS performance drop, as soon as the window closes FPS is restored.

Light sources through defused surfaces like dust/gas and the fish tanks

This is impossible to quantify as the performance impact is very varied, depends on where you are. Can be as much as 30 FPS when inside a station! Seems to be even more in OL and HoL. However if an active light source (a star, an interior light) passes through a diffused surface it can cripple the performance - however as soon as you look away FPS is fully restored.

Viewing zone map with player owned ship/structure present

This one does sort of make sense, but the impact is quite significant. With no combat, only one of my ships unloading wares to my station, I was seeing anything from 8 to 15 FPS impact.

Planet with an atmospheric shell

Only confirmed this in Devries so far, but there is a planet that has an orange atmospheric shell that glows - when looking at said planet I was saying goodbye to 15 FPS.

***************************************

Ok, so far the above is what I have found and reliably replicated - all of the above were done individually, but the situation is far worse when the effects combine and when you are in "normal" space. I will update when I have been able to get footage of acceptable quality (with an FPS counter that is easy to see).

Of course if anybody has any ideas how to fix any of the above (without requiring an Egosoft provided patch) then I am all ears![/list]

[Nanook]

I don't see the problem here. You expect your computer system to not have to work harder the more things start happening? You generate a smoke trail when you start moving and the computer has to work a bit harder. You start a video chat with an NPC and the computer has to do a little more work. It's not reasonable to not expect some minor hits to performance. I don't think these are performances "issues". I think it's just normal, expected behaviour. Now if these things create major performance problems, you'd have something to worry about.

[EventHorizon]

Nanook, I have no idea of your professional background - maybe your a technical guy (IE programmer, technician, engineer etc) or not - you could be a brick layer (a vastly under-rated skill in this day and age) for all I know. So in order to try and show just how much of an impact these items have individually I will show the % impact of each item, please try to keep in mind that these are all done in isolation to show the individual impact and all from inside the cockpit of the Skunk:

Dust trails (the little white lines you see in the HUD that all previous X games have had - not the exhaust from the Skunk): 6.3% (best case), 10% (worst case) - for such a tiny graphical effect, it should not be having such an effect.

Boosting: 18.75% (worst case), 12.5% (best case) - One fifth of the performance just to use boosters? This is certainly not "normal".

Video: 12.5% - Considering that these also freeze input controls (as reported by other elsewhere) this is also not "normal". There is NO WAY these should have such an impact.

Light/Dust: 37.5% - in some cases (Home of Light for example, I get around 26 FPS when stationary) this can be as much as 67.5%

Map: 18.75% (worst case), 10% (best case) - The map is not rendering 3D objects, the positions of the items are already being calculated in the background. So should displaying the map contribute to potentially ~20% degrade in performance?

Planet: 18.75% - considering you cannot interact with said planet (as far as I know, I haven't yet tried flying 100,000 KM into "Empty Space" let alone further) and it is only the planets with the glowing atmosphere that have this, there is no way this is "normal".

******************

So what about if I roam through HoL, actually moving and trying to play the game? Well, in the zone "The Quarry" I drop down to 15 FPS if I am lucky. In the entire "Home of Light" sector I drop down to 22 FPS, though I can find a few spots (away from any traffic) that jump up to ~50 FPS. Even "Fields of Opportunity" kills my frame rate - "Verdant Profit" is fine (75 FPS) if I look at the main Teladi station, but if I look at the gate...27 FPS!

And what do all of these, heavy hitting, areas have in common? Dust/Gas Clouds and diffused light.

So is this my system? Well, my CPU only has physical cores so there is no chance of any logical under performance (game thinking a "hyper" core is able to perform as a "normal" core) and it only gets as much as 58% on any one core. So what about the GPU? Most of the time it's under around 70% load - with the occasional spike to 100%. Hmmmm, probably not the hardware then - at least not as a root cause.

So what if I change resolution? Or from full screen to bordered windowed, or non bordered windowed? NO CHANGE - as others (and myself) have also reported from day 1! Yes, even at 1024*768 (the minimum the game seems to support) I can't go above 81 FPS (82.734 if you want to be overly exact) and I see the exact same performance impact and the above situations.

The bottom line is that these are not normal, there is something within X Rebirth that is still causing significant performance issues. If these kind of issues can be improved then the game (and potentially the engine, depending on what/where is causing these) will receive a nice boost for everybody.

Also, based on your statement of "I don't think these are performances "issues". I think it's just normal, expected behaviour" (my emphasis added) - I am deeply concerned that due to misunderstanding/bias/apathy these issues will simply be ignored and as a result the situation will just not improve. I don't know what is in the code, you (probably) don't know what is in the code, so please don't lump everything together as "I think it's normal" - it doesn't help!

PLEASE pass these onto the development team to take a look.

[EventHorizon]

I promised some videos, and these are the first ones. Recorded with Microsoft Game Bar, FRAPS was used to display FPS (Steam FPS is too small).

FPS effect by standard thrust: https://youtu.be/v-MIejDkhhM

FPS effect by boosters: https://youtu.be/Cxy2vSwPCns

FPS effect in cloud and transition out of cloud: https://youtu.be/xlvXoxLA9WY

All of these were recorded in Cold Star/Ode Monumenti - first time I've been to this sector, it was great as it's very empty (for the most part). The last video is in Alberts Theory - starts inside the gas cloud and goes out of said cloud. At around 3:40 the FPS jumps significantly, and then at around 3:50 it goes through the roof!

Yup - there is a problem. None of this is unique to this location, it just happens that I was there and was able to capture the issues "in the flesh" so to speak. Standard thrust and booster issue is clearly the same thing - could actually hit 105 FPS (recording does take a hit) and it would always drop by 20 FPS when boosting, in the middle of nowhere.

[CBJ]

Nanook may not have access to the code, but what he said above is largely correct.

What you describe as "video" is not video. It's an additional scene being rendered in real time, including characters which, unfortunately, do come at quite a significant performance cost. Whether controls are "locked out" is neither here nor there as far as performance is concerned. So this particular case is definitely to be expected.

Similarly with the map; your assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, the game is processing and rendering 3D objects for the map, quite a few of them in the case of the zone map, so yes, it can indeed be expected to have a noticeable effect on performance.

Scenes involving a lot of transparency and distortion do also affect performance. I can't comment on the degree to which the specific performance impact you are reporting is reasonable with your specific hardware, but there will definitely be some.

Since "stardust" is always present in the game while you're in space, I don't fully understand how you are coming up with your result for this one. I suspect that the performance drop you have interpreted as being a result of this is actually caused by something completely different related to your movement.

The only item on your list that I'm not sure about is boosting, and that's something that could be looked into at some point. Again, it could turn out not to be directly related to boosting.

[EventHorizon]

Hi CBJ,

Ok, so the "video" its not a video - it's worse then that! Can we at least get an option to disable? If this is to be expected then I am sorry, but it shows a total lack of regard for optimisation - especially for an item that, subjectively, does not add a great to the game. Of course, to each his own with regards to the value of said feature.

I will also accept the map is rendering 3D objects - though once again the "value" of that is very debatable. Maybe an option to reduce the quality of the map like the radar (which you can turn off and gain some performance) could be added so that this processing can be reduced?

I am not the only person to have reported the issue with transparency, especially with v4.0 and Home of Light specifically. But if you watch the 3rd video you can see a jump from 45 FPS to 60 FPS, then to 90 FPS when you exit. So can we please get this looked into?

I am pretty sure that "stardust" and boosting are one and the same - you get a similar drop if in external view on a cap ship boosting. Your right it might not be the "stardust", it could be the system calculating your position, it could be a fluffy unicorn. I do not have the tools to figure out the exact cause, I can only point out what can be observed - if it looks like a strawberry, and tastes like a strawberry, it probably is a strawberry.


Yes, any additional effect will cause additional load. But not by the amounts that can be seen here. Highways (the main method of travel in this game) often cause significant performance drops, to the point where it is almost impossible to navigate the traffic. I don't think the transparency has anything to do with the performance issues in the highways as when they are empty there does not seem to be an issue - of course this is difficult to prove as an empty highway is never in the same zone as a full one.

I take it you remember the flaw in X2 with regards to the HUD causing a massive FPS issue - it was reported by a customer on this forum. Did they know it was the HUD? No, they only knew that if you switched it off you got faultless performance - they suspected it was the HUD because they saw the performance improve when it was switched off. Egosoft listened, and within a couple of weeks (less if you count the "beta" that was put out) it was fixed and X2 was lovely and playable! Is that Egosoft gone? Have you given up on Rebirth in favour of the next project? Have these already been looked at and decided it wasn't improvable or worth the time?

I just want this game to be really enjoyable, I can live with the poor and inconsistent UI, I can live with the sometimes dodgy AI, but when the game starts to crawl because "reasons" it just sucks the enjoyment away. At launch this game was abysmal, now it is OK. Can we get it into the "good" or "very good" category?

Or how about this, can Egosoft please post a hardware/software specification that will allow us to play the game at (lets set a nice low target) a minimum of 30 FPS @ 1080p? I mean, at the end of the day the developers must play the game - even if they only play it while testing - so there must be a known good configuration? Unless the devs think that 20 FPS in a real time, 1st person space sim is acceptable? In which case we are all screwed

[Nanook]

Isn't there a bit of overexageration here? I mean, you say your 'baseline' is 81 fps, and in your last post you're postulating something about 20 fps. I don't see anything close to a 60 fps drop in any of your reports, even added all together which would probably never happen in normal play. I think you're getting a bit too hung up on the numbers. Most players probably wouldn't notice much of a difference between 60 and 80 fps, and would consider even lower fps values to be quite playable. Perhaps you're just a bit more sensitive to frame rates than the average player.

[EventHorizon]

I think this will be the last time I bother with this forum for a while, I am simply amazed at the levels of ignorance that are displayed by those wanting to defend the poor quality of development (and you can read into that whatever the hell you want). So please, try to understand, what I posted above - as I made VERY clear - was done as far from ANY other object/event to prevent them from interfering. This is called "testing" - if I can now being myself to do it I will post a video showing exactly how bad the flipping frame rate gets when you ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME. But I am, quite frankly, getting rather bored and irritated by the protectionism that is going on - which is probably the goal anyway.

Again, all of the above were done in ISOLATION to show that INDIVIDUAL aspects of this game do not perform as well as THEY COULD. I also stated, once again very clearly, that if you then go and play when these effects combine ALONG with other effects (traffic, stations, battles, highways etc) that the CUMULATIVE result can be (and frequently is) far worse. I have changed my opinion about one thing slightly, you are clearly not a "technical" person (IE, developer or software tester) - if you were you would understand the importance of testing software aspects in isolation, as well as in a more complex environment. I can both forgive and understand the ignorance regarding this, but please do not try and place that back on me.

As for your "I don't see anything close to a 60 FPS drop" comment - really! I guess the gas cloud (or whatever it is supposed to be) that STARTS at 35-37 FPS and then jumps to 90+ (actually I stopped recording but by going a little further out the rest of it just to the right of the cockpit vanishes and it goes to 105 FPS). That's EXACTLY a 60 FPS (increase in this case, and yes the reverse is true) change! Just watch the videos! There is proof right there, from this game, in easy to digest visual form, showing that your statement is FLAT WRONG!

Try taking a cold hard look at things, maybe even take Honda's stance. A little improvement here, a little there - and it all adds up! Yes, Honda's ethos is related to weight - but I would like to think you (read Egosoft) can expand on that and change "weight" to "performance".

And I am still waiting for that hardware/software spec that can play at 30 FPS @ 1080p consistently - but I think we know that will not happen because this game simply cannot achieve that! And once AGAIN - even with ALL graphical settings at lowest, view distance, LOD, shadows off, radar off, 1024*768, effect distance etc etc etc etc - you GET THE SAME BLEEDING RESULT! This is NOT hardware that is at fault, this is the SOFTWARE. Something in this game, maybe some shader code, maybe some calculation that is doing more then it needs to, I don't know because I don't have the right access to the code. Maybe Egosoft could just tell me (or the community as a whole) exactly how to debug these various things and we'll fix it for them for free. Wouldn't be the first time (in this industry).

There is no exaggeration of any kind, I am reporting facts - but I guess the Egosoft of old really is dead and this product will never reach the potential that it clearly has.

However, I did forget one thing. CBJ, thank you for acknowledging the boosting (whatever it is that really causes this) might be looked into. That is the only ray of light in this entire fubar situation.

[donzi]

I may have missed it, but what resolution do you have XR set for? (derp, I see it now 1920x1200)

I have a so-so i5 system, not as nice as what you have but to be playable I can't use the native 1920x1080.

While it may not be the best answer, a single compromise could make the game able to provide the FPS you seek.

[CBJ]

Try taking a cold hard look at things, maybe even take Honda's stance. A little improvement here, a little there - and it all adds up!

Please take a look at the release notes. The notes for pretty much every single patch includes an item about performance improvements. This is not just spin; I write those notes and I don't include that entry unless work has been done that improves performance in one area or another.

And I am still waiting for that hardware/software spec that can play at 30 FPS @ 1080p consistently - but I think we know that will not happen because this game simply cannot achieve that!

No, you are right, you won't, and for good reasons that have been explained many times over the years. In a game with a large living, breathing universe, and no artificial limits on what can be happening in any one place at any one time, it is impossible to provide framerate guarantees. The more that is happening on-screen, the lower the framerate will get; that is a simple statement of fact. When we find things we can improve on to reduce the impact of something being on screen, we do so. Not everything can be magically optimised away, however, and some things simply do slow down the framerate. That doesn't stop us trying and that process never stops, and that's why the entry about performance improvements appears in almost every set of patch notes.

In another post recently you complained of a lack of communication, yet the moment someone does try to provide relevant information, you immediately leap on them with accusations of ignorance, protectionism and incompetence. You are not the only one who wonders why they bother posting sometimes.

[EventHorizon]

Hi donzi,

Yeah I did post that info but it's cool, small details hidden away. Unfortunately changing the resolution makes no difference at all - well, with one exception. If I enable "Virtual Super Resolution" and try to run the game at 4K my video card (R9 380 - not the best on the market, but far from a slouch) s***s kittens! To be fair, no single GPU can do 4K yet (it's on almost every wish list in every comment about nVidia's and AMD's new cards - don't think it will happen myself), so I wasn't expecting much when trying.

Hi CBJ,

Your right, the performance in 4.0 is several times better than the release version - I have stated that in other places, the proof is even in my Steam stats. Prior to 4.0 less than 20 hours (because the game was not playable), since 4.0 I've logged over 110 hours! Why? Because the game is a lot more playable than it was - it's far from perfect, but in the "normal" sectors (IE, the ones before any DLC) performance does, just about, stay within acceptable tolerance. The same, sadly, can't be said for Home of Light or the large asteroid in Fields of Opportunity (look towards the jump gate and the FPS plummets). Home of Light is the more "disappointing" of these - as I paid good money (maybe not a huge amount) for what appears to be a very untested visual sector, and am am not the only one to mention this. As I have also stated, and accepted, some things will add load - but it should not be by the amounts that can, and are, seen. Especially as there is nothing (short of getting a video card with more power than currently exists?) I can do to improve it.

With regards to the accusations, I will stand by ignorance and protectionism (please, allow me to fully explain why below - hidden in spoiler as it's not really publicly relevant). But I am rather hurt that you feel I have in any way made an accusation of incompetence (at least in this thread, if your referring to the UI mess - I stand by that one too, as I explained in the other thread - buts that a different conversation and if you feel I crossed the line please PM me and we can have that conversation privately). I certainly never made such an accusation about yourself or Nanook, if you feel differently then I apologise.

Spoiler

Show

The very definition of ignorance is "lack of knowledge, information, or education;" - the word in and of itself cannot be used without context (vital in every language, subtly different in many). In this instance I provided, what I thought, was very clear reasoning for the "testing" being where it was and why it was done in said location. It is true that most players aren't going to notice a different between 60 and 80 FPS, but that statement threw all context of the testing right out of the window - something I was at great pains to provide and justify. In addition the comment about the lack of a 60 FPS drop indicates that either my posts were, at best, misunderstood - I did, after all, go to the effort of actually recording and uploading in situ proof of this specific issue. Which then leads me on to the protectionism, I have been told that this is all completely normal (one specific exception not withstanding) - in many other threads it has been stated that the game is CPU bound/heavy. I only glossed over my CPU usage, but I am not suffering in that regard thankfully (X3 can drop to 1 FPS - but we all know why that is and nothing can be done about it, accept some LN2, balls of steel, and a lot of luck?). It's been stated that these drops are both normal and expected, to an extent I can agree with that. But not to the extent that happens, and the implication from those statements can easily be interpreted as "live with it".

Look I really want this game to be better so that it is more enjoyable, progress has been, frankly, slow. I don't have any visibility of Egosoft's internals, this is something they really should try and be more open on - a great example of a developer keeping it's customers informed is Subterranean Games (they made War for the Overworld, no idea if you know of it, great game though). Every 2 weeks we got updates on development (I pre-ordered/funded), the forum is updated almost every week now with updates on the expansion. They are smaller than Egosoft! As it stands, we (Egosoft's customers) have no idea what is going on. Is work ongoing on Rebirth or not? We can only speculate - based on some comments it is possible to infer that it is, but the last official update was back in February - it's now May 2 1/2 months later.

I really do feel that Egosoft is just ignoring user feedback at this point - that may not be the case, but it does feel like it. As I said, I really want this game to be better - and if you would like to have a separate conversation about all of this please PM me and we can take this "offline" - so to speak.

Back on topic...

I just spent the last 4 hours getting some performance data from Home of Light, I do have videos but they will have to wait till tomorrow evening (it's far too late and I need to go to bed).

I am currently doing (well, trying at least) the "Map section beyond the gate mission" - it's proving quite frustrating, partly because the mission doesn't provide a great deal of guidance (I think I need to get most station in all HoL zone to 100% - but I am not sure) but also because of a lack of performance in this section.

Please see the link below that is a line chart of FPS over time, really I need the videos as well to provide more context but this will have to do for now.

A little background:

This is a run through the highway system (I actually like the way this is done in HoL, much better than the other sectors IMHO). The game was saved next to the super highway entrance to "District 1" so I could always start from the same "situation" - this is as close as I can get to a "same each time" run.

3 separate runs, each at 1920*1200.

Max settings: FXAA - Highest, all options enabled and sliders to 100
Max settings no radar: Same as max settings, but radar turned off
Min settings: Everything turned down as far as possible. No AA, No shadows, No radar etc. Sliders all at 0 - this caused other problems with me not seeing my exit point till it was almost too late, but that is to be expected.

FPS/Settings graph

The radar (I assume this is rendered in the same manner as the map? They look similar), had more of an impact that I expected. Obviously each run was a little different in timing, if I could script this I would. Ignore the sudden drop at the end for max and max no radar - the total number of frames and time taken was a little different so there was no data. I really should shift the chart so it lines up better.

As you can see, regardless of the settings (whilst there was some difference in FPS) they do, for the most part, follow the same trend and are generally within margin of error. If I could capture this in a more reliable way I would - you ever wonder why it takes people like hardocp weeks to do their performance testing reviews, I can tell you about it

Right, I am off to bed.

[donzi]

I failed to mention that I also run a 'game tuned' instance win7 ult x64 which can make a noticable difference with games.

EG: from basic settings (keeping svchost in check, wupdate, etc) to disabling services and running no software which isn't game essential (av, firewall, etc).


I have not experienced w10 personally but have listened to friends tell me about some of the out-of-box traits of the OS and sounds as if there is plenty of room to optimize it for specific tasks.

Also, due to the fact my i5 'desktop' also is plagued with mobile components, not built or sold even wispering performance in the pitch -- I have had to compromise on settings for a lot of games.

Additional stuff in XR I've set are quite workable in a majority of situations within the game, but that is with no-frills and at 1280x720.

IIRC the distance settings in XR can have profound impact, fwiw my settings 100/100/100 for related game options I've been okay with.


It kind of boils down to my decision to do what I can in order to have acceptable XR play on my poor computer. I have no choice really other than not play since a better computer is out of the question for the time being.

Luckily settings I've made and compromise on my part have allowed me to play XR, and have a lot of fun.

Given my system being surly way less capable than yours, I'll just suggest that if fun is what your after you may be able to find it with XR 4.00.

I've frankly choosen 'fun' and try to limit my gripes to things which seem to have some possibility of being fixed within the context of my limited understanding about what XR is, and isn't likely to be at the end of the day/next patch cycle.

[Nanook]

...I have changed my opinion about one thing slightly, you are clearly not a "technical" person (IE, developer or software tester)...

What I'm not is an Egosoft employee of any sort. What I am is a player, same as you, and I simply don't have your issues with the game. Of course, I do have a relatively high end system, so maybe that's part of it.

As for your attempt to be insulting and rather condescending, we'll let that slide for this one time. I wouldn't advise carrying it any further, though.

[Simoom]

No offense, but I find the attitude displayed by the moderators toward someone who clearly is putting in a lot of effort into analysing this game's performance issues somewhat disrespectful and off-putting.

I know you guys are not formal employees, but you do represent the face of the studio in the community when you carry a moderator tag. Try not to be so dismissive of what the OP is trying to say.

What I'm not is an Egosoft employee of any sort. What I am is a player, same as you, and I simply don't have your issues with the game. Of course, I do have a relatively high end system, so maybe that's part of it.

As for your attempt to be insulting and rather condescending, we'll let that slide for this one time. I wouldn't advise carrying it any further, though.

Even on a "high-end" system, XR's performance is a lot more sluggish and inconsistent than other modern titles. To say otherwise is to be in plain willful denial.

My rig can handle extremely gorgeous titles like Witcher 3 at a stable 50-60fps. This is an open-world game with no zone-loading, and much higher-resolution textures/bumpmaps,shadows than XR. In the meantime XR chugs along in populated sectors, and frequently stutters (with minor things the OP mentioned). Everything from boosting to opening the detail monitor leads to very tangible slowdowns.

I know XR is a much more CPU-bound title than average, but even then things like boosting shouldn't drop performance that much (that sounds more GPU-related than CPU; what complex calculations are done here exactly?)

Now, I tolerate it, because I respect Egosoft's vision, and I enjoy their games. It does not mean the game engine is optimized... far from it.

[EventHorizon]

That's it - I'm done. Egosoft, you have just lost a long time customer (got all the X games and expansions).

Simoon, thank you. You are right regarding the attitude - hell it was there from day one with ReBirth and it's only getting worse (damage control maybe)?

Donzi, I tip my hat to you regarding the use (either by choice or requirement) of mobile components - and again for being able to put up with the resulting reduced performance. Not my personal choice, but I can respect someone that goes into that with their eyes open :thumbs-up:

Nanook, your (not so veiled) threat is simply pathetic. You have a "relatively high end system", good for you! So do I! WAY beyond what is still listed as the "recommended specification" on Steam. It's not my system, it's this game. If I can play Crysis 3 and Just Cause 3 at maximum settings (far more graphically demanding games, and not exactly CPU frugal either) at my monitors native resolution, then I should be able to play a game that doesn't have the same level of graphical complexity. And as I have stated, more than once, my CPU never hits more than 58% usage on ANY SINGLE CORE.

But I really can not be bothered with this, and particularly you, any more.

CBJ, as I understand it you are an Egosoft employee (one of the few on these forums)

Please consider this is a formal request under European Data Protection laws to remove ALL of my details (financial transaction data is not counted of course) from ALL of your systems, and inform me (email address is in forum profile) when this has been done. If required please PM me the email address of your "Data Officer" for this request.

Farewell to everybody else, I really hope that Egosoft improves this game for you and the any future title (there may not be any if Egosoft decides to keep releasing such poorly performing products) doesn't have the same issues. Many of you on here are decent, honourable, individuals - to those people, good luck, I wish you all a fond farewell.

[pref]

I simply don't have your issues with the game. Of course, I do have a relatively high end system, so maybe that's part of it.

Not sure what game you are playing..
Enough to leave skunk in an average zone with a player station for some time, performance will drop in time (below 15 fps).

Or just visit a minefield, i get 1 fps in no time while out of 8 cores 2 are loaded 50%, another 2 about 15-30%, rest unused (save available since 4.0 beta started).
Same happens with extended fights, just takes longer to reproduce..

The engine dies on its own after a while, if you spend enough time in one zone.

[Nanook]

No offense, but I find the attitude displayed by the moderators toward someone who clearly is putting in a lot of effort into analysing this game's performance issues somewhat disrespectful and off-putting.

You find disagreeing with another posters opinions " disrespectful and off-putting"? Good grief! Sorry, dude, but I'm a gamer same as you and the OP, and I do have a right to my opinions, too.

I know you guys are not formal employees, but you do represent the face of the studio in the community when you carry a moderator tag. Try not to be so dismissive of what the OP is trying to say.

What I'm not is an Egosoft employee of any sort. What I am is a player, same as you, and I simply don't have your issues with the game. Of course, I do have a relatively high end system, so maybe that's part of it.

As for your attempt to be insulting and rather condescending, we'll let that slide for this one time. I wouldn't advise carrying it any further, though.

Even on a "high-end" system, XR's performance is a lot more sluggish and inconsistent than other modern titles. To say otherwise is to be in plain willful denial....

I'm not in denial about anything. And I'm not saying I don't have low fps at times. I do. The point I'm making is that I don't have the kinds of issues the OP seems to want to point out. Those, in my opinion, are a bit nitpicky when the real issues are the massive amounts of debris in lots of systems, and the overuse of 'nebula gas'. Those are the things that cause the real fps drops, at least on my system, not the minor annoyances listed in the first post. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that from the start.

I guess I just don't understand why the OP and others here have gone into attack mode just because the OP was disagreed with. Isn't that what forums are for? Someone who makes a controversial post needs to expect a bit of discussion and disagreement. Taking it personally, going off in a huff, and then having others piling on seems a bit much, don't you think?

[CBJ]

I'm bringing this thread to a close.