Well, the question is very simple: Planetarry Annihilation Beta already includes many awesome features, but all of them are totally annihilated due to the not-so-optimal-framerates. So: What performance level do you aim at? More something like a GTX 650 would be able to handle Max Settings +150% @30 MinFPS in a small system; or more something like Max Settings@ GTX 650/ HD 7770, 150% Supersampling@ 660/ 7870, 200% Super@ 680/ 7970 and 300%@ Titan/ 780 TI/ 290X ? Or maybe even worse? I´m just asking, I´m not very sure how far optimizing this engine could improve Framerate, as I don´t know how much impact the size of planets and other factors actually have...
Hard to answer, but Devs have confirmed major optimizations are in progress. None of them are implemented in the current beta build. And you'll have to wait a few or more weeks to have them in a build. They basically have a senior graphic engineer working on all of this. I've had an opportunity to exchange with him about a performance issue i had reported, he's the man
I doubt supersampling ever designed for playing. If there some options in settings it's doesn't mean that you have to turn it's on. You'll always able to kill your PC with super large planet or system, so just deal with it and not use them.
If they manage to get a constant 60 fps on lowest settings on my hd7970 ill be happy. But unless i start seeing something soon i really doubt that. Barely hitting peaks of 20 fps at max and it fluctuates like hell sometimes only a few fps. Paid 400 euro's for this card....If this card cant run this game i consider the game a complete failure.
@ssx: Well, I don´t think that SuperSampling actually only was implemented for usage in far future: As many games of the last few years, for example nearly every Unreal Engine III-game, is able to be run fluently @8xSGSSAA. And, as Planetarry Annihilation got lots of flickering (shadows, trees and many hard Aliasing-Artifacts) SSAA would definitvly be a nice pick for this game. Espascially if you think about the texture filtering effect and LOD-Bias, this really enhances games grafics. But, of course, in future it will be way more practical use! I´d already be fine with 30MinFPS @ 1080P@ 1xAA! @rick There you have it! Even my GTX 660m (~650 Desktop) can get ~50 FPS on lowest settings! So, in other words, we as users don´t have any hint at the moment how final performance will be like...
The game is in beta. There will be many improvements. In the FAQ, the tentative system requirements are: • Dual core processor • Shader 3.0 • A decent OpenGL driver – if your card doesn’t come with one you might want to look at some of the 3rd party OpenGL drivers out there. • At Alpha Start, the following are also required: - 64-bit operation system - An internet connection We'll see if they end up changing. Performance optimizations are some of the last things to be done in game development. So we have a long way to go.
It's just because the rendering code which is running on your PC is currently cpu bound : For each single unit in game, a function to render it is called, and thus uses many cpu cycles. The more units to render, the more cpu cycles are used. And it finally ends in the cpu being exhausted. In the mean time your graphic card is idle because it's built for processing large arrays of 3d objects. This means that instead of processing many single calls, a single call with a large array of 3d objects to render can be done, saving lots of cpu cycles on your PC and taking advantage of your graphic card capabilities. I have 3 different systems equiped with quad/octo cores. The 3 different systems are running 1g 650TI, 2g 660TI, 4g 770. While it's obvious 770 makes the game running smoother, the difference between 770, 660TI, 650TI is not that significant. It allways ends in low FPS when having a few hundreds of units in game. Which perfectly correlates with cpu being exhausted. Your graphic card is hungry, but the client code currently does not feed it efficiently. I can confirm my 770 is allways 50% idle. So we simply have to wait for these optimizations to be in place, which of course requires some time. But, working in the performance area (oracle databases which are also optimized for batching) i can guarantee that when batching is in place, the improvement is just terrific. So no need to rush for a high end graphic card, it will not make your game runs better. It's all about code optimization, and this will come.
I never managed to get hundreds of units since i get at low fps (which fluctuates between 1-20 fps) at the start of a game. Thats how crappy the fps in this game is. Fps will go below 1 fps when you make more units. Running a overclocked i5 760 @3.81ghz so its not like i have a weak cpu either.
1) This is why before you consider reporting a performance issue, you should clearly think about which information you're going to provide : "at the start of a game" : this is an additional information you did not even consider to provide in your original statement. Don't get me wrong, but when it comes to performance issue, the very first thing to consider is clarifying the issue as much as possible. Even "FPS fluctuates between 1-20 fps at the start of a game" is not meaningfull at all. I'm not going to post here all the stuff i've sent to Uber when investigating what i thought to be a performance issue, but definitly, i did not simply claim "it's slow". I clearly mentionned my configuration, my OS (version, 32 or 64bits), my gfx exact specs and drivers version, The exact solar system i was playing on (planet type, planet size, number of planets). I took lots of screenshots to show evidence of the performance issue. When you say "FPS fluctuates between 1-20", sorry but it's not meaningfull either. You must be doing something when it fluctuates (Zoomin in, Zooming out) ? What are you doing when you're at 1FPS ? what are you doing when you're at 20FPS ? This will help to correlate low FPS and high FPS with a specific in game condition. And here again, snapshots are to provided. 2) Not because your cpu is overclocked means it cannot be exhausted. The rendering task is currently single threaded. And my i7 3770K gets exhausted at some point. Performance is not about deciding that something cannot happen. Performance is about observing what's happening and trying to fix it. Here again, if you want to find some help you'll have to show evidence that you might be facing an unexpected performance issue. This is a Beta version, which means, either you do not complain about performance (because this kind of issue is likely to occure when in beta) or if you complain then you provide meaningfull information to help the troubleshooting.
actually this should be called code "re-factoring" not just "optimization!", but i also hope the GPU and the CPU will end-up handle what each one should handle and don't leave any of those wasting power by doing nothing!
I'm not sure this is refactoring (well, based on wikipedia definition ) : Code refactoring is a "disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior",[1] undertaken in order to improve some of the nonfunctional attributes of the software. Advantages include improved code readabilityand reduced complexity to improve the maintainability of the source code, as well as a more expressive internal architecture or object model to improve extensibility.
yeah, my mistake wrong use of the term, i was aiming for something stronger to point out the process of actual re-coding, but my "clever" T9 suggested that and i took it without a second thought . i stand corrected on the Term, but you got my point. As a software developer I am ashamed for that mistake thought. still wrong Word or not the game engine needs a LOT of work, i want all my resources to be put into a good use and not have processes like "rendering units" been single tread...
