F P S

#21 You can email it directly to me if you like, and I can host it for you for a few weeks. If you would, change your settings in TGE to "save as .jpg" (options menu I think)--.png files are huge when it comes to screenshots.

#22 I have just seen this article on the web, detailing that if i soft-mod the SE it becomes a PRO!! - anyone shed any light on this?

#23 Cool - Stephen , thanx. What is your addy please?

#24 It's in my public profile (click on my name).

#25 Here are the images Stevie is working with:

#26 Btw, to fall back a step in the troubleshooting process.

I seem to remember in the other post (maybe this one) that you found that your fps was at/near 14-20 or so even without all the trees/foilage? In other words, even with a very basic scene? IIRC, that was what pointed me originally to your video card drivers. If you can confirm this is the case (maybe run the FPS demo or something from the installer package), it would go a long way to troubleshooting your performance issue.

#27 I loaded the FPS demo. Added so many instances of the trees that came with it, also the player model too - and moved the camera away from the scene, until the poly count came to 50,000 or near. The frame dropped to similar - 16,17 fps

Please could u try the same test and see what u get

Thanx

#28 Check the fps with no changes whatsoever---just what the demo kit comes with. I'm trying to isolate what the fps is in a purely 'stock' scene with no changes/additions at all. That will tell us if there is an outside issue (not related to your models/foilage).

#29 Loaded the demo, untouched, turning the camera around - 25,000 polys was getting rendered, fps fell to 40approx. So this kinda works out the same to my game....

double the polys, fps in mine drop to 17, 18. So the figures are the same for my level, or the start fps. Can u please check this out on your system. Load it up - see what u get, then add so many objects and see what happens

Cheers

Steve

#30 Machine: Alienware Area 51: 3.2G/1Gig Mem, GeForce 6800/256M, pretty high end machine overall.

I get in excess of 200 fps in most cases with the starter.FPS stronghold mission (stock installation of TGE), min is 160 and max is 300+. I added about 10 trees, and manuevered all around them, at all angles and perspectives, and the lowest I could ever drop my fps was 120-ish.

#31 Yeah but check your poly count on that picture - thats why!!

The count is 8.10 polys.

Add enough trees, so that count goes to 50,000 - and see what u get

Steve

#32 Heh..unfortunately I don't have the time to do all that manual editing :( If metrics(fps) was working in my current project, I'd give you that info, but the "feel" for having 200 RTS units (each of 500-ish polygons, for a unit total (not counting terrain, trees, buildings, etc.) is easily acceptable.

#33 Greetings!

Actually, the 8.10 on Stephen's picture is 8.1 milliseconds per frame (MSPF), not a polygon count. It's how long it takes to render each individual frame on average. If it were 50,000, that would be 50 seconds per frame. :o)

- LightWave Dave

#34 Thanks for that info David--I was wondering how in the hell he had 50k polys in his scenes above--just a visual scan and I can't see any way it was that many polys.

#35 Hmmmm.. my error then.. WOnder what the poly count is. Rememebr all those objects have LODs, plus the camera is rendering the scene in the distance which u cant see, cos i need a long FOV for my camera to give a long shoreline.... hmmm..

I have just installed the new card... time to see if any changes

Steve

#36 Greetings!

If you're interested in the triangle and primitive count, you could try this in the console:

metrics("video");
glenablemetrics(1);

For DTS objects, you'll be interested in the TS_T and TS_P values for the number of triangles and primitives, respectively. Triangles are what the video card will render, and the primitives are the "lumps" of data that have been transferred over the bus to the video card.

The other values represent terrain stats (T_*) and interior stats (I_*). I believe the ?_* stats are for uncategorized triangles and primitives. Maybe from the GUI...I haven't looked into it.

TC is the total triangle count across all object types, and PC is the primitive count. So, TC are the total number of triangles being rendered to the scene (as accounted for by DTS, DIF and terrain and the misc. '?' category) and PC is essentially how many calls it takes to transfer this data (which depends on how it is organized).

Hope that helps!

- LightWave Dave

#37 An update from my side:

With the metrics script call David gave, I went ahead and tested some pretty hefty conditions:

1) I experimented with using a 2k-ish poly model as one of my units, and loaded in 250 of 'em for a whopping number of TC >400k.

This dropped my frame rate to roughly 9 fps, but the screen was definitely choppy while moving the RTSCamera, in addition to having a very annoying "jitter"--very similar to the old days when you tried to render a desktop resolution in windoze higher than your refresh rate for your monitor could handle. I'm not quite sure where the jitter came from to be honest.

2) With the same model, and selectively moving units out of the rendered scene, I established a loose 'acceptable performance and appearance' threshold of TC <200k. That gave me about 15-18 fps, and toned down the jitter enough so that it didn't give me a headache over time.

3) With low poly models, I was able to render 300 units easily, at all zooms and perspectives, with consistent 25+ fps, very acceptable client performance, and no jitter.
That was around 100k TC.