openmw.org

Hi, first post:)

I'm working on yet another Morrowind setup. I've used STEP+Rebirth on the original engine, but the performance was unsatisfactory. I've swapped STEP for Watercolor with some mesh improvements, but Rebirth was still too big of a hit for my taste - distant NPC's in the cities were moving with visible microdelays, so it had to be below 24 FPS, which defied the purpose of improving the graphics. Thus, I've started experimenting with OpenMW, which is known for it performance. Here comes the question: Is it really that good at the moment? Have anyone compared it against Vanilla WITH Morrowind Code Patch, which improves performance significantly? My initial findings suggest that a patched Vanilla without effects which are unavailable for OpenMW runs similarly. Might be the case of my good laptop, thoug.

After experimenting with OpenMW, I've tuned down MGEXE settings significantly, so the comparison could be fair. It turns out that without the most demanding settings, vanilla Morrowind can run demanding setup very efficiently. Two screenshots follow, one from OpenMW, second from Vanilla. Performance is satisfactory for both, but see the differnce in the visuals:
Specs:
-GTX 960M
-8 GB RAM
-Intel Core i7-4720HQ 2.60GHz

TL;DR Looking for a benchmark. Willing to do one in case there isn't any. In the thread on this forum OpenMW is benchmarked against pure vanilla without MCP, so it's not satisfactory.

EDIT: I mean MCP and exe optimizer. When writing OP i thought that exe optimizer is included in MCP

Morrowind Code Patch, which improves performance significantly

Did I miss something? IIRC, MCP is aimed to fix bugs in Morrowind engine, not to improve performance.

akortunov wrote: ↑

04 Aug 2017, 13:45

Morrowind Code Patch, which improves performance significantly

Did I miss something? IIRC, MCP is aimed to fix bugs in Morrowind engine, not to improve performance.

Same here, I thought it was the 4GB patch and the .exe optimizer that was used to improve performance.

MCP has the 4GB patch integrated since 2.3 version. Nothing about the exe optimizer, though.
http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods ... w%3D&pUp=1

About the Morrowind pic, I think MGE is used. The sky scattering and the trees on the horizon are a good clue.

I might have made a mistake - when I've run the exe optimizer on my game it showed that there's nothing left to improve, so I've assumed it's included in MCP. However, I might have used it in the past and forgotten about it.

Regarding the MGE - yes, it is. The point is to show one setting of OpenMW and one setting of modded Morrowind in which I'm getting comparable performance in difficult places(Balmora with Rebirth certainly is one) and show what can I get from Vanilla which I can't from the OpenMW. It really makes me wonder is there a point to using OpenMW at the moment if you don't aim for multiplayer or weaker computer. Maybe I should edit the OP? I might have made my point obsfucated.

Cell preloading is one hell of a feature to use OpenMW for IMO.

Well, the OpenMW distant land is brutal. But most people don't see the point of playing with the vanilla range of view, so they'd rather cut down on other features of Morrowind, but use the MGE just for that - me included. That's why I'm wondering if OpenMW is indeed that fast in a practical and typical environment - unless you've got some really old, but still multicore rig which has trouble with modded Morrowind, but can use modded OpenMW

EDIT: I'm beginning to see, that my first post has lot of words, but I still failed to express myself XD. Sorry, guys: <

The 4GB patch doesn't affect performance directly, as far as I know. It just allows the exe to use more memory so it doesn't crash as often with a lot of graphics mods.

Especially Rebirth works pretty bad with my OpenMW setup.
If i stand on the silt strider port and look over Balmora with only Rebirth activated i get:

~29fps - OpenMW without water shaders (how i normally play OpenMW because the shaders make it unplayable)
~18fps - OpenMW + water shaders
~42fps - Vanilla + MCP + MGXE (with other mods and Distant Land and so on it sits at ~38fps)

Distant land was deactivated in both setups.

I guess it is that bad because of AMD's poor OpenGL performance but it is really annoying that i can fluently play Vanilla Morrowind with Shaders and Distand Land activated while OpenMW drops deep into unpleasant fps-areas without all the eyecandy.

Is there any possibility of a performance boost for AMD cards in the future (Vulkan maybe?) or do i really need an NVIDIA card to enjoy OpenMW properly? (which would be bad)

Specs:
- R9 290
- 20GB RAM
- X5650 @ 4.2GHz
- Windows 7

Apart from the whining i've got to say that i love this project and that it is the only reason i discovered Morrowind not too long ago!

Just means that we still have a bit of work on our hands.