Hi Guys, How much of a performance hit is expected with PIP enabled? Is there any setting to play with to modify PIP quality? Thanks
It will drop your fps by approximately 50%, as you are technically rendering the game twice. As far as I know, there is not PiP quality modifier.
It was talked about before and is somewhere on the list of things that at least somebody at Uber *wants* to implement. Though I'd guess currently more basic features have higher priority.
Id love if the pip was like supcoms wire net thing, so the game only has to render things of strategic importance.
I think it reduces the framerate perhaps 5-10. I used to never use it but it is more efficient now and love it. Especially for linking teleporters.
Right now, it adds about 30-40% cpu overhead to frame time, since it doubles draw count (approximately). I have some zany ideas to cut that overhead significantly, though. I'll get to it soon with any luck.
Sadly, no. OpenGL doesn't support advanced features like deferred contexts (like d3d on Xbox one does), so draws and state can only be submitted on the primary thread.
PIP is one of the most useful features in the game right now! Are there plans to allow more then 1 pip after the optimization is done? In addition to this question, can we expect bigger planet size limit? Thanx =)
There's a lot of "we'll have to see how it goes" in any answers to those questions. But potentially yes to all of those.
I'm am reluctant to ask this question, because I don't want to upset anyone, especially varrak who is doing an awesome job by the way!, but I'm going to ask it anyway... @varrak Would you guys choose to use OpenGL again? I know it has allowed you to make the game cross-platform, but in all honesty, is the Linux user base for this game big enough to warrant the inconveniences it has caused?
It depends. D3D is a better API, but then it limits you to Windows only. So to be realistic, I'd say yes, we'd go OpenGL (or stay that way). I've actually grown to quite like it as an API (or at least, I don't loathe it nearly as much as I used to). That said, if I ever get some downtime, I'd love to create a Direct3D 12 rasterizer on our engine. It's architected in such a way that it would be possible to do without rewriting the high level logic. It would be about a month's work, I think. I'm not sure the maintenance cost of keeping two APIs current (and optimal) would be worth it though.
And that question doesn't upset me at all. I was a seasoned Direct3D developer before I came onboard at Uber. I still prefer it as an API. It would be pretty cool to have a D3D and OpenGL version of the game and compare them side-by-side. One day... one day...
One thing I was wondering... (and probably one of those 'if we can' type answers), any possibility that the PIP window could be floated as a second full window for those of us with dual screens? I'm assuming that wouldn't change the cpu overhead compared to rendering the small PIP (although it would increase GPU load, however I think many of us have capacity in this regard)... It would be a really nice feature and on the face of it looks like something that should be possible with the current system (although I could be way off)?
Hello, I agree with the one above me, i think it should be great to have the same function as supcom had.....hability to split the screen in 2 and keep the minimap.....it was pretty good for those who do not have dual screen (people with dual screen was able to split both screen as well) maybe great when you need to check multiple planets for multiple invasion...... I dont know if it can be done but as supcom was able to do it i don t see why we can t have that on PA... PS: sorry for my english!
cola_colin made an n-screen mod back in beta. You had to put in some work to configure it for your own display setup, but it worked pretty well. He stopped updating it because there were some pip bugs that are most likely gone now and game performance was not in a place where you could really make use of it. As a proof of concept though, it showed that multi-monitor is indeed possible.
