Performance at this moment. Seconds thoughts!

Some time ago I have said the game was almost perfect here but after playing much more I notice these things.

Local play: If I put "Texture stream pool" on low I can notices some loss of performance, but not exactly microstutter, just some fps lowering sometimes. Using texture pool on Hight the performance is practically perfect.

Online multiplayer: Im still having some microstutter either with the texture streaming pool set on low or high. Online it seems acturally that using it on low is better here.

I also have some random and not frequent crashes.

I hope we can get a little bit of performance increase until the game release!

last edited by Shadoware

@shadoware said in Performance at this moment. Seconds thoughts!:

Using texture pool on Hight the performance is practically perfect.

I still get a lot of this microstuttering or frame tearing constantly even with my streaming pool on high with 16 gb of ram.

Hey, I got an idea. Let's constantly talk past each other and open new threads concerning the same old problem!

@banani2804

Provide a link to appropriate thread please. The whole forum is a disorganized mess, so its not slightly strange that people open new ones=)

I finally moved the game from my HDD to my SDD. It gave me a slightly better performance but dont solve the stuttering issue completely! 😞

I believe there isn't much more NWI can do to improve performance. Maybe a bit, don't know, but the size of the maps and the way UE4 works this might be what we get. Reducing the clutter might help i guess, and maybe they'll add some more LOD models to lighten the load. So far though performance was roughly the same for me from Alpha to now.

Oddly enough, when i increase the texture streaming pool my stuttering increases. I'd appreciate if anybody with knowledge on how this works and influences performance could give us a hint.

@Feuerholz
Theres a million things they can do of course - this is limited by knowledge not software, at least on the minimum requirements end, but it is also probably difficult to swap engine like they did knowledge wise, making an official system requirements list where the game should be running smooth on highest settings and also a minimum system requirements list is something we should expect at least by release as the unofficial lists are just gibberish.

Here is just a few of the things they probably already look at:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Performance

I hate to say it, but they're gonna have to figure it out. I know nothing about programming and I'm sure its complicated, but the baseline is that you just can't deliver a product like this in its current state.

When I ask my friends why they haven't bought into the beta yet the most common answer I get is "because I heard it runs like shit" ... and they're not wrong lmao.

@thehappybub

Making a quite barebone minimum system requirement setting available in game without making those settings giving too much advantage in pvp (being able to not see grass where ppl would normally hide on higher settings) and also making sure the game is still playable without making it a disadvantage, would go a long way I believe. There is a lot of players not too concerned about eye candy, and by making the game accessible to billions would probably make it sell a bunch of copies, as I think the gameplay is quite unique and fun.

I believe their best bet is delivering on stability/performance, and if that makes many players needing to lower ingame settings - so be it. This could be still improved upon post release without the stressful urgency on the devs shoulders, and the high end rigs they showcase the game on would still make for excellent marketing=)

Texture streaming uses video memory. Not your RAM. Basically, when it's on low, objects will use low quality textures until you come within a certain distance. This is why you'll visibly notice textures loading in. If you put it on high, the higher res textures will load in from the start, and it wont become a proximity based/FOV based issue.

Also, as a side note, i found a great trick on the steam forums that many have enjoyed:
Click the "Low" preset button.
Turn Texture Streaming on "High".
Make sure anisotropic filtering, Anti-aliasing, and motion blur are all off.
Turn Super Sampling on 2x.

Enjoy this simple workaround until they optimize the game properly.

If you want to start adding in detail, slowly bumping up the anisotropic filtering will make a better improvement than anything else.

You can see my rig's specs below, and i still have to use this method to get a stable 144 frames. Even then, it's mostly in the 120-144 range.

It's weird though because setting my pool to high causes a lot of loading in textures for fairly long times (1 to 2 seconds) but its just exactly the same if not longer on low.

@thehappybub: It doesn't matter on my system too. Texture streaming on high OR on low, the textures still need a lot of time to stream in.
@lordsiggi: unforfunately I guess your workaround only works for people with high end GPUs.
All in all: even with settings all on low, I struggle to get constant 60 frames. Texture streaming on low gets me heavy frame drops while on texture streaming on high the frame drops are still there but at least the game is more or less playable.
I am seriously beginning to lose all hope for this game.

(And I didn't say anything about poor map variety; op'ed air strikes; poor animations; focus on customization while not even having the performance straight; poor weapon choice for insurgents; wrong decisions concerning weapon's damage; the overall senseless implementation of vehicles; bad communication with the community --> but looking at Twitter I am glad that the PR machine is working like a charme...)

@banani2804

I reinstalled game yesterday to try it out. On a MSI GE70, it is not possible to play it as a fps game should play even on lowest settings and texture streaming high.

This pc is of course not state of the art, but currently ins2 looks both better in graphics and run very smooth - So I get no incentive to reinstall again unless I either buy a new rig or some extremely effective update gets released.

I mean there's a lot of games that are ue4 games which run normally, like the very comprable rising storm 2. I mean games like Bioshock Infinite run this engine, I wonder why its so hard to just make it run normally for normal people.

@Pacalis: My thoughts exactly. Ins2 looks better than Sandstorm right now, maybe minus the decals.
@thehappybub: both the games you mentioned are UE3. But nonetheless I am on your side. And there are (some) games out there running just fine on UE4.

@Pacalis: I saw your laptop components in another thread. You should definitely be able to play a FPS like Sandstorm, at least on Low settings. I mean, I played Ins2 on a Intel HD4000 and a 1,7Ghz dual core CPU and it was just fine. All in all I wish there was a new Source engine (plus HL3 obviously).

last edited by banani2804

@banani2804 Wikipedia has it listed under ue4 lmao

I don't think it is the game engine that is the challenge in itself as I said earlier, at least not the game engines limitations. I looked at search results from google from the sentence "game engine or developers to blame for performance issues", to look at some perspectives, and a few articles stood out to me,

Especially this one from 2009 that looks very relevant in 2018, which would probably give some insight into the process NWI is finding themselves in (would probably be a good read for NWI as well if not familiar with the content already, as it deals with challenges NWI is facing, and mapping some useful ways of thinking about it):
PDF download also available,

THE ONLY ARTICLE I STRONGLY BELIEVE NWI COULD BENEFIT FROM READING IN MY POST HERE IF NOT FAMILIAR WITH ALL CONTENT @Jonny-Higgins , @Iyagovos :
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220686446_What_went_wrong_A_survey_of_problems_in_game_development

When it comes to engine or developer at fault, we know at least Fortnite and PUBG is made with versions of Unreal 4, and performs not too bad, video about optimizing UE4 for Fortnite 55mins:

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/events/gdc2018/optimizing-unreal-engine-for-fortnite-battle-royale

An article about how devs deal with bugs, not too interesting for NWI I would guess, but cool for gamers like me:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-07-19-a-devs-eye-view-of-bugs

Here is an article that deals with the question game developer or game engine to blame, though I would say this article may be a bit shallow:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/dont-blame-game-engines-for-bad-games-developers-say/

And lastly if you wish for HL3 which we know might never happen, this mod is really impressive if you have not played it already, at least I enjoyed it a lot (It is a small game in itself within the HL universe. I actually bought Half-Life 2 episode 1, just to play it ( a requirement) as Adam Foster peeked my interest some time ago, expect about 3 hours worth of playtime @banani2804 :

https://store.steampowered.com/app/235780/MINERVA/

@thehappybub: On English Wikiepedia it is everything like I said. Or what do you mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Unreal_Engine_4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Unreal_Engine_3

@Pacalis: Well, thank you mate. Very good research you did there. It is actually good we get scientific, at least I was just before populism, voting right wing and "blame all"-attitude.
Regarding HL2: it was more or less a joke, I did love the Source enginge but never really enjoyed HL2 for some reasons I cannot really clarify. With a new laptop and shit I thought about giving it a new try with Cinematic Mod but then I thought: meh, there is Ins:Sandstorm, there is BFV and I still haven't finished the Witcher 3.

last edited by banani2804

What's funny is that before the Nov update, I could run Sandstorm just fine. Now I can't. And it's really getting to me. I played 100+ hours and now I can't even stand it because the FPS is just so low, and I'm a guy whose comfortable at playing at 27 FPS. (Talk about low standards LOL).

At this point, I'm seriously considering refunding the game. This is the first, and probably last, time I've participated in a beta test. Unless Ready or Not opens a beta program of course. :face_with_stuck-out_tongue: Maybe I'm just impatient? I don't know. But I feel like I'm done with Sandstorm for good. I'd rather just play insurgency.

last edited by Rover