1.10 LAG 2GB Graphic card texture issues - Graphics card below minimum spec

[Sicario]

I am aware these cards are on the brink of recommended and isn't technically speaking recommended. But I have a GTX 770 and most of the time I can play the game without much trouble so I feel there is hope to solve the texture issues if we can help narrow down where the problems occur. I have played it over 11h and I've noticed the issue happens 99% of the time while visiting stations. More than half of the time it happens when riding the transport capsule inside the stations. A lot of the texture doesn't load in which gives me a sneak peek around the station which do spawn high-quality textures and not LOD:s around the station that you won't see from the inside. Like the main hull and different exterior modules attached to the station.

May it perhaps be solvable with a decrease in quality of LODs in stations that are far away and perhaps despawn textures outside of the station that is out of view when walking around? which could reduce the overload that 2gb GPU:s are experiencing while inside the stations.

PS: I run the game on lowest settings, No AA and reduced the LOD and effects distance. Also if anyone has a similar card, it would be great if you could post if you experiencing this issue in stations specifically or if you can reproduce the problem outside in space without having visited stations.

[CBJ]

It's not that a 2GB card doesn't meet the recommended requirements; it doesn't meet the minimum requirements for the game. Those are there for a reason.

The things that really use video memory are textures and anti-aliasing. Turning the former to low and the latter off should give you the fewest problems, but I'm afraid there are limits and we can't guarantee you'll be able to play without some glitches on a system that doesn't meet the minimum requirements.

[Sicario]

It's not that a 2GB card doesn't meet the recommended requirements; it doesn't meet the minimum requirements for the game. Those are there for a reason.

The things that really use video memory are textures and anti-aliasing. Turning the former to low and the latter off should give you the fewest problems, but I'm afraid there are limits and we can't guarantee you'll be able to play without some glitches on a system that doesn't meet the minimum requirements.

Yes, I am aware. But currently, people with gtx 1080 are experiencing massive lag issues while strolling around in stations and occasionally during flight, so it's safe to say that there is some optimization work needed to be done to relieve even those stellar cards. So it's equally safe to assume that the problems that are being experienced on lesser cards will also profit from said optimization patches. If you can't fix it we always have a great modding community who will do their best at making the game even greater.

It would be in your interest to focus on optimization after the critical CTD issues people are experiencing are under control since most gamers don't have 4-8 gb vram.

[CBJ]

Sorry, but these two issues are almost certainly unrelated. Performance drops on platforms and close to stations seems are not being experienced by the majority of players, even those with graphics cards that are identical to those who are. It therefore almost certainly has nothing to do with graphics card memory; in fact a lot of the current evidence points to the likelihood that it may actually be caused by NVIDIA sound hardware being unable to handle the large numbers of sounds in those locations.

There are many things that we can and will work on, but while we may be able to make some improvements in the area of graphics card memory usage, there are no guarantees. The minimum requirements are there for a reason, and while being able to reduce those requirements would be great for us as well as player's who don't currently meet those requirements, it cannot be our top priority.

[Leob70]

I've seen some back and forth on this but I have to say it all feels really odd, I get why some limitations could exist but im not sure why graphics card memory would specifically be the bottleneck, the issues i've noticed always occur after a decent amount of playtime and after exposure to a large variety of textures, some odd things i've noticed are the discrepancies between how much the UI, the shipbuilding ship viewer, and the general game degrade. Now my graphics card a 750Ti has taken me through alot, it can handle any other AAA thats been thrown at it and as for the sounds issue while i've definitely noticed some sounds cutting out it seems specific to this game because i've been in plenty of massive battles with hundreds of sounds without issue, and not only that but it's a degredational problem that is fixed upon game restart so there must be something that can be emptied to return to the previous fully loaded texture state especially since the settings i have are at minimum and the frames are solid.

I understand it can be difficult to deal with the large variety of hardware that people have but it feels very disheartening to be told that you are below the bar for entry when it looks like a solution is at least possible, the game slowly degrades until huge chunks of things are missing and the map just about stops showing you anything but before then there is a 30 minute glimpse of beautifully rendered textures and amazing backgrounds and it's almost more melancholic than just not being able to run the thing at all.

[CBJ]

What happens in other games is neither here nor there, I'm afraid. We set the minimum requirements for a reason, and if you choose to ignore those then I'm afraid we cannot guarantee that it will work. The graphical symptoms you are seeing are exactly what would be expected in that situation.

Sound issues are another matter, and may be related to using NVIDIA sound hardware with drivers that seem to struggle with the game for some reason. Disabling this hardware in Device Manager and using your on-board sound may help with this.

[Leob70]

I was thinking for a while and my guess is that the memory cache on the graphics card gets too full for it's own good and wondered if there is anything from the game's end that can possibly clear the graphics card memory cache, I looked around a bit and unfortunately was unable to find anything that does it from the user's end but if it can be done then perhaps a setting could be added to clear it when it gets problematically full.

(Also let me know if such a discussion about possible solution should be had elsewhere since the problem technically has already been identified)