Different performance hits in different sectors

[Tamina]

It would be nice if the LOD and effect distance settings would automatically adjust to the framerate. Some sectors are so dense with asteroids or nebulas that my framerate drops veeeery low, which is easily adjusted with the rendering distance settings. However, in less dense sectors I would like to experience maximum view distance.
Idk if this is a feasible option, I only know it is a chore to go into the options menu everytime so I stopped visiting the central sectors which is also an option I guess.

Of course this option would need some kind of a slider in order for the user to decide if he/she rather plays with 60 fps and less render distance or 30 fps and further render distance. Or it just remembers the fps the last time the render distance slider was set by the user and use this as an orientation.

Just dropping this random idea here in public, maybe someone is catching it up.

[Kadatherion]

I usually never like such systems, for two reasons: one is personal taste, I prefer to find a middle ground that works fine for me in most average situations, even if that means "wasting" headroom in less demanding environments/situations or - on the other hand - still having the odd environment being a bit choppy but still playable with not too much of a visual loss. But that's just me. The other is that it's not so unusual for such systems to actually be detrimental to that very performance and/or experience: the very process of monitoring the fps and adjusting graphics settings in real time can sometimes lead to some stuttering loops as the game loads/unloads different LOD levels, texture/mipmaps levels or whatever. Also, seeing the LOD or other details change in front of your eyes as you play to adapt to the framerate can break your immersion a bit. I'd rather take a reasonable fps hit than seeing that station in front of me suddenly become invisible/less detailed just because a couple destroyers close to me have begun exchanging fire and the battle has lowered my framerate a bit.

But, mind me, as an *optional* thing that the player could turn on or off at his leisure, then I'd have nothing to complain about.

[Axeface]

I think that there is a specific texture causing the performance problems. There are sectors with lots of traffic, asteroids and nebula/fog that run at 60 fps for me, and others that dont. And the one common denominator for my terrible performance is that gritty fog texture that is sometimes used around asteroid fields. Not the smooth 'cloud' one, that runs very well (60 fps in sectors full of it, with traffic and roids), the one that tries to look like thousands of tiny specs. I think its overdraw, but what do I know, its a guess.
The game definately needs optimisation, Rebirth had one specific section of space that run like garbage until a later patch, IIRC (gate to devries in albion).

Theres newer technology for doing this kind of stuff that isnt a transparent texture on a plane, isnt there?

[Buzz2005]

I think that there is a specific texture causing the performance problems. There are sectors with lots of traffic, asteroids and nebula/fog that run at 60 fps for me, and others that dont. And the one common denominator for my terrible performance is that gritty fog texture that is sometimes used around asteroid fields. Not the smooth 'cloud' one, that runs very well (60 fps in sectors full of it, with traffic and roids), the one that tries to look like thousands of tiny specs. I think its overdraw, but what do I know, its a guess.
The game definately needs optimisation, Rebirth had one specific section of space that run like garbage until a later patch, IIRC (gate to devries in albion).

Theres newer technology for doing this kind of stuff that isnt a transparent texture on a plane, isnt there?

that is why there is a No Fog mod, and that fog looks very awful anyway
Im just waiting for one that cuts the number of asteroids in half

[Imperial Good]

I think that there is a specific texture causing the performance problems.

Unless the texture is using some driver emulated encoding (no possible reason for this), this is not possible. Not even texture dimensions effect performance unless GPU memory amount is a bottleneck. A GPU will draw a 16x16 texture across the screen in about the same time as it would a 2048x2048 or even larger.

Technically larger textures can decrease performance due to increased GPU memory bandwidth usage. However in reality this is not really a concern since most games are not memory bandwidth bottlenecked and due to logical reasons the more memory a GPU has (allowing more or larger textures), the higher the memory bandwidth is.

The bottleneck is more likely CPU related. For example due to physics (gravity fields of asteroids) or Vulkan API calls to draw the graphics.

[Tamina]

... or the amount of rendered objects. I have to add this proposition would probably mostly benefit older or weaker hardware.

[Artean]

Sectorts combining asteroids with gas clouds tanks my GPU and cuts fps in half. Gran Exchange IV is a good example.

My gut feeling is that there's a lot of room for optimization when it comes to the gas clouds/asteroid combo.

[Axeface]

I think that there is a specific texture causing the performance problems.

Unless the texture is using some driver emulated encoding (no possible reason for this), this is not possible. Not even texture dimensions effect performance unless GPU memory amount is a bottleneck. A GPU will draw a 16x16 texture across the screen in about the same time as it would a 2048x2048 or even larger.

Technically larger textures can decrease performance due to increased GPU memory bandwidth usage. However in reality this is not really a concern since most games are not memory bandwidth bottlenecked and due to logical reasons the more memory a GPU has (allowing more or larger textures), the higher the memory bandwidth is.

The bottleneck is more likely CPU related. For example due to physics (gravity fields of asteroids) or Vulkan API calls to draw the graphics.

Well like I said im just guessing. What about 'overdraw'? If seen the problem in other games, where a transparent texture bleeds off the edge of the screen and causes massive performance drops, especially when you get the camera close. This is a problem in a lot of games with spell effects and things like that, for example in wow some smoky effects absolutely tank fps if you zoom into your character because of this overdraw phenomenon.

[phrozen1]

I you use the "no-fog"-mod and since then i noticed a pretty big performance gain.
Funny thing is the fog was also a huge fps-drain in X2 and it still is....

[Imperial Good]

Well like I said im just guessing. What about 'overdraw'? If seen the problem in other games, where a transparent texture bleeds off the edge of the screen and causes massive performance drops, especially when you get the camera close. This is a problem in a lot of games with spell effects and things like that, for example in wow some smoky effects absolutely tank fps if you zoom into your character because of this overdraw phenomenon.

All offscreen geometry is culled before the scene is rasterized so "overdraw" is not really an issue.

The issue described is something observed in Warcraft III and I am familiar with it. What causes it is unclear. At the very least the larger a piece of transparent geometry is the more output pixels that require being blended. This was a big problem in the past because of legacy graphic pipeline constraints. However with programmable shaders and custom pipelines it should not really happen anymore and I have not really observed it in more recent games such as StarCraft II.