Montanaa Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) hey guys, like many others ive been having gamebreaking fps issues in warzones. i fiddled arround last night and discovered that my fps in wz jumps from 20 to 60 when i turn off the interface with ctrl + u. is this a new thing? how do we figure this out? p.s. posted this on customer support already but more ppl might be looking into this forum section Edited January 6, 2015 by Montanaa
jedip_enguin Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 It's not surprising that you saw a gain in FPS (less to render) but going from 20 to 60 does seem a tad disproportionate. Might be worth submitting an ingame ticket too.
OwenBrooks Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) Actually was mentioned here a few hours ago as well - http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7926190#post7926190 I am not surprised he see's that increase, performance difference seen will change depending on system specs Edited January 6, 2015 by OwenBrooks
Montanaa Posted January 6, 2015 Author Posted January 6, 2015 It's not surprising that you saw a gain in FPS (less to render) but going from 20 to 60 does seem a tad disproportionate. Might be worth submitting an ingame ticket too. if the game apparently bottlenecks cpu how does not having to render UI improve fps
jedip_enguin Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 if the game apparently bottlenecks cpu how does not having to render UI improve fps Are you trolling here? The ui overlay uses resources like any other part of the game (whether that is GPU/GPU whatever) not having to render it and update its cooldown text/animations/proc effects means less drain on whatever part of the system is uses to do that job freeing up those resources to be used elsewhere. That the FPS gain would be 200% is egregious and implies that the 2D UI (which should be one of the lower impacting graphical features in a fully 3d game) is apparently using a disproportionate amount of resources and is throttling the performance of other aspects of the game as a result.
Montanaa Posted January 6, 2015 Author Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) Are you trolling here? The ui overlay uses resources like any other part of the game (whether that is GPU/GPU whatever) not having to render it and update its cooldown text/animations/proc effects means less drain on whatever part of the system is uses to do that job freeing up those resources to be used elsewhere. That the FPS gain would be 200% is egregious and implies that the 2D UI (which should be one of the lower impacting graphical features in a fully 3d game) is apparently using a disproportionate amount of resources and is throttling the performance of other aspects of the game as a result. not trolling....wasnt meant to be disrespectfull of any kind. heres the thing: i can disable ui with ctrl z where abilities are usable but my UI dissapears. if i use that command my fps doesnt increase however using ctrl u does the trick. with ctrl u my abilities are not usable. Im not very good at computers so there might be a simple solution to that one Edited January 6, 2015 by Montanaa
Kurin Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 This suggests that the source of the FPS issues stem from the change to buffs/debuffs/dot tracking in the UI, as that was the significant change made for 3.0.
jedip_enguin Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 not trolling....wasnt meant to be disrespectfull of any kind. I didnt sleep much the last few days, sorry. heres the thing: i can disable ui with ctrl z where abilities are usable but my UI dissapears. if i use that command my fps doesnt increase however using ctrl u does the trick. with ctrl u my abilities are not usable. Im not very good at computers so there might be a simple solution to that one Ctrl+Z (Alt+Z on my machine for whatever reason) command only hides the UI its still doing whatever it does, you just dont see it, Ctrl+U unloads it completely so the game no longer needs to allocate it any resources. Kurin makes an excellent point about it possibly being related to buff tracking, as that was the only significant UI change in 3.0 (other than undocking the buff frame from the user frame)
EnkiduNineEight Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 The interface for this game and many others is an additional application. Its not built into the game engine itself. As such, the interface does take up resources and does cause problems because it needs to link to the game engine. I would wager that the various 'improvements' they made to make the game easier are the source of many of the issues as the UI now communicates both ways in more instances so as to put flashy things around abilities etc. I have also noted that video card driver related crashes that had been gone for a long time for me have returned with the new UI coding, so the code is likely not very well optimized in general. It makes perfect sense then that Cntl+U which gets rid of the ui completely (not just obscures it for screenshots) results in a significant performance boost.
EnkiduNineEight Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 40 FPS jumps seems a lot... Yeah, which is mostly telling of the poor coding in the UI engine. Rendering the overlay it represents is obviously inefficient.
Montanaa Posted January 6, 2015 Author Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) The interface for this game and many others is an additional application. Its not built into the game engine itself. As such, the interface does take up resources and does cause problems because it needs to link to the game engine. I would wager that the various 'improvements' they made to make the game easier are the source of many of the issues as the UI now communicates both ways in more instances so as to put flashy things around abilities etc. I have also noted that video card driver related crashes that had been gone for a long time for me have returned with the new UI coding, so the code is likely not very well optimized in general. It makes perfect sense then that Cntl+U which gets rid of the ui completely (not just obscures it for screenshots) results in a significant performance boost. is there a way to hand over some of the systems performance to the UI application? prioritize it or smth? Edited January 6, 2015 by Montanaa
EnkiduNineEight Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 I have no clue. I'm not a programmer, though I understand a lot of the basics. I would wager there is something that could be done, it seems to me that most of their budget for employees though is not on software engineers but asset/content creators. I could be completely wrong here, but it seems like they believe the development work is done, as we get this same sort of issue every time they make any sort of major change to the underpinnings of the game. It then takes awhile to get worked out.
ForceWelder Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 Buff tracking ... That might be something to definately consider. But there are times when I have had hardly any buffs or debuffs and I still see odd FPS issues. But like others have said it only seems to show up in PVP. I have also been in matches where people have three tiers of buffs and debuffs going on at any given time on their characters. I can only imagine the FPS those guys are seeing if this is indeed the root cause.
Arkerus Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) I am confirming what this man says is real. While I didn't see 40 FPS I was able to play a WZ again. Problem is... no UI. My increase was about 20-25. I hope they know about this. Edited January 6, 2015 by Arkerus
Arkerus Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) Buff tracking ... That might be something to definately consider. But there are times when I have had hardly any buffs or debuffs and I still see odd FPS issues. But like others have said it only seems to show up in PVP. I have also been in matches where people have three tiers of buffs and debuffs going on at any given time on their characters. I can only imagine the FPS those guys are seeing if this is indeed the root cause. The way these things work, having a buff or debuff doesn't matter. The CPU cycles dedicated to the UI are still there. Actually having the buff or rebuff doesn't matter. I am curious... If I go back into my UI settings and disable all the crazy new UI sorting, will it help? Edited January 6, 2015 by Arkerus
Khevar Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 The way these things work, having a buff or debuff doesn't matter. The CPU cycles dedicated to the UI are still there. Actually having the buff or rebuff doesn't matter. Just spitballing here, but what if there were network traffic in relaying buff tracking data between the client and server? To keep things in sync? It reminds me of something that happened on a project I was working on a few years ago. Someone made a mistake in code that resulted in an event being fired too many times. It wasn't noticeable in a dev environment, but when it went live, the excess traffic resulted in a significant slowdown. Once the errant logic was fixed, things went back to normal.
Arkerus Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 Just spitballing here, but what if there were network traffic in relaying buff tracking data between the client and server? To keep things in sync? It reminds me of something that happened on a project I was working on a few years ago. Someone made a mistake in code that resulted in an event being fired too many times. It wasn't noticeable in a dev environment, but when it went live, the excess traffic resulted in a significant slowdown. Once the errant logic was fixed, things went back to normal. Really, its possible. Its also possible its just a client issue (in that they overloaded the UI).
Arkerus Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) OK Everyone, here is some experimental data: I took my character and jammed him into a wall so things on the outside would not interfere with my FPS: BUFF and DEBUFF Tray turned on: 44-60 FPS BUFF and DEBUFF Tray turned off: 65-88 FPS Does that seem a bit large to anyone? Is it really possible those two trays are using a ton of resources? Now, I am NOT drawing conclusions and you would do your own research. There are also environmental factors to consider so this is certainly not conclusive but does lend evidence to the hypothesis. Edited January 6, 2015 by Arkerus
Montanaa Posted January 6, 2015 Author Posted January 6, 2015 OK Everyone, here is some experimental data: I took my character and jammed him into a wall so things on the outside would not interfere with my FPS: BUFF and DEBUFF Tray turned on: 44-60 FPS BUFF and DEBUFF Tray turned off: 65-88 FPS Does that seem a bit large to anyone? Is it really possible those two trays are using a ton of resources? Now, I am NOT drawing conclusions and you would do your own research. There are also environmental factors to consider so this is certainly not conclusive but does lend evidence to the hypothesis. thanks for sharing, have you tried this in wz?
Arkerus Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 thanks for sharing, have you tried this in wz? I am about to. I have both turned off.
Montanaa Posted January 6, 2015 Author Posted January 6, 2015 besides, thats an increase of 20fps which seems alot to me
Arkerus Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) So I just got out of a Novare coast. The bad news is that simply turning off the buff bars saved me, maybe, two or three frames. It really made no appreciable difference. So here is what I did next: Reload all assets and start over with a full UI : about 12 - 15 FPS as my baseline. 1. I turned off my UI completely (ctrl-u). Result: MASSIVE frame increase. I couldn't press any buttons but I sure as well could run around with enemies on the screen and the game was actually keeping up. It was a huge difference. I'm talking 40-50 FPS here. 2. I turned my UI back but disabled about half of the quick bars and other miss frames like companion frames Result: I was able to "play" the WZ at around 25 - 30 FPS and it was much better than a full UI. 3. I re-enabled all of my UI elements. Result: Surprisingly my FPS stayed hop around 25-30 but I suspect it was because I had not re-engaged combat. The WZ ended but I suspect the moment I got back into combat my FPS would have dropped as the CPU cycles would not be dedicated to all the UI functions. I must have looked my a fool in this WZ because I was just running around, jumping and doing nothing to help. Edited January 6, 2015 by Arkerus
Montanaa Posted January 6, 2015 Author Posted January 6, 2015 yeah just tried myself, disabeling the trays didnt do much for me. same as alt + z gives me like 3-5 frames in combat reloading UI with ctrl U is what does the job.
Recommended Posts