Grass performance?

[AstroCat]

I am gain 40-50fps by turning grass off, is that correct?!

Q9650@3.6Ghz
Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6
G.SKILL 4GB
EVGA 580 GTX SSC
SB X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro
Vista 64-XP

[Erik Rutins]

That's an extreme performance difference given those system specs. Please see my other reply. Let's start with a DxDiag and a screenshot of your driver's 3D settings and ideally a screenshot of your current game configuration screen as well.

Regards,

- Erik

[AstroCat]

In Game Settings

[AstroCat]

Driver Settings

[AstroCat]

DxDiag

[Erik Rutins]

Thanks. What kind of FPS are you seeing in-game with grass turned on and off? You can use the F1 key to check that.

System-wise, I would check for newer sound and chipset drivers. Checking for newer video drivers may be worthwhile as well, as it will reduce the variables as far as Panzer Command disagreeing with a specific driver version.

Spec-wise, your system should be running Panzer Command very quickly with those game settings.

Driver-wise, if you have some time to test (you'll need to restart the game after each settings change), try increasing the pre-rendered frames, try turning off power management, try turning off threaded optimization and tripe buffering and turn VSync off to see if any of those make a noticeable difference.

Regards,

- Erik

[AstroCat]

Yeah I know the whole tweak routine, been doing it since the 80s. I will mess around but when I am going from 60 fps down to 20 with turning on grass in this game I know something is wrong.

And of course I have to add in that all other games I am playing work fine and have no graphics performance expectation issues, including all the Total War games, CMSF, lots of FPS games, etc... so this feels like a PC:O only related issue. I have a feeling several others are gonna see this problem.

[Erik Rutins]

Agreed - we don't have a system with your exact configuration though and grass "costs" us about 10-15 fps on much slower systems, so if you want to pursue this we'll have to work together. Right now it could be at the software or hardware level, it could be a bug in the game that disagrees with a particular nVidia card or driver, but we're not sure yet.

Regards,

- Erik

[AstroCat]

I'll bounce up to the latest Nvidia drivers and let you know how that goes.

[AstroCat]

Ok, tried latest Nvidia drivers (270.61), and messed around with all the driver and in game settings, no change in grass performance. Something is definitely up. 

[Stridor]

AC,

This is probably normal. I just checked your system specs and game settings and I see something very similar with my rig (i7 @ 4.0ghz, GTX 295).

The PCO grass render system is very CPU and GFX intensive. My original stab at the render only got 2 fps on my rig, and so I optimized it a lot from then to now [;)]

Unlike other grass render systems, the PCO system:

1. Renders out a long way (distance based on the graphics quality settting and remember you are on "ultra")
2. Each clump of grass is unique (although based on the same sprite, they are all scaled, rotated and alphaed slightly differently so the grass doesn't look like a bunch of clones)
3. Each clump of grass has sight ray checks for LOS.

The N-R map is the WORST map for grass performance because the map designer put so god-damn much of it on! So this is the worst *grass* performance you will ever see!

In the end what I did was optimize it as much as could for my system so that I could run at a min 30fps with grass on and then set the render distances for that, allowing the ability to turn grass off and adjust for more performance in the graphic options screen if necessary.

Remember too that grass is nice for up close screen shots, but in reality most people don't actually play at the grass level. Once the camera pans up above the grass line, the grass render will return CPU/GFX cycles and FPS will return to a higher value.

After I left the project I added more grass render improvements, but sadly they didn't make it into the source which got released to Matrix. Unless I make a "rebel" release along with other game improvements, they probably never will.

Regards

S.

[AstroCat]

Ahhh, thanks for the insight. Well I was getting close to 50fps drop on that N-R map! It would drop from 60-70fps down to 20, which I though was rather extreme. Any chance of an "unofficial" patch?

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Astrocat,

The project has a new developer and we have some performance improvements planned for the future as well. I'll be discussing grass with him tomorrow.

Regards,

- Erik

[benpark]

I made the demo map, and I think the amount of grass works for showing the potential of the graphic side of things (for the demo particularly). It also allows better infantry game play.

I really pushed to improve the graphics in the game, and lots of those things I asked for were incorporated, and a lot could be done without additional code (new trees, etc). You would see the old PzCommand Kharkov billiard table maps if it weren't for these additions, and then we would really have had an earful from the critics. Better to show the top range of what's possible than the bottom.

If you think Novvy Rizady is bad as far as the amount of grass displayed, try "Merefa" when the game is released- it is chock full of greenery. My philosophy has always been to test the limits of something, and stop when I get to the point at which I can run it smoothly. My computer runs it fine, but others may not- There are plenty of options to turn things down if needed as well.

[AstroCat]

So you are saying when you enable grass you are not getting 40-50fps drop on the demo map?

[benpark]

There is certainly a drop, but I'd rather play with the grass than without. 50fps seems plenty. It's never been enough for me to need to turn it off and the other testers and devs are able to run it with the various quality options.

Improvements will no doubt be sought. I'm just one of the art guys- this is a code thing to improve- or we could just do without the grass when it slows the map down.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: AstroCat

So you are saying when you enable grass you are not getting 40-50fps drop on the demo map?

I checked on my two systems after I saw your post and a couple of others. On my older laptop, I saw a drop of 1-2 FPS (of course that was a 25% drop I have a pretty wimpy laptop). I checked my desktop and was surprised to see a 20-30 fps drop, which brought the fps down to around 20. I was satisfied with performance at the 20 fps. naturally, it's always nice if Matrix can improve it more.

Thanks
rick

[Erik Rutins]

The drop we're seeing on our test systems here is not as severe, though that was tested across many scenarios with grass. However, we usually do test with the "High" setting rather than the "Ultra" setting, which may make all the difference.

Regards,

- Erik

[AstroCat]

Yeah, the High Setting is not as bad but still pretty big, dropping like from 60 down to 30... etc... I think what I am seeing is "correct" given the current game engine and not something "weird" on my system. I am curious to see what kind of further performance optimizations you an put into the grass rendering in PCO.

[Redmarkus5]

I get a big FPS increase just by zooming out to the level where the grass is no longer rendered, although playing in max zoom in with grass on works fine for me.

Maybe some experiments with that - zooming in for orders and to assess unit positioning, etc, then zoom out a bit to watch the replay, might allow some players to keep grass on?