Smoother cell transitions

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Gramblosh
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by Gramblosh »

That will depend on more that just the hardware. What assets do you use? Which version of OpenMW?

I compared OpenMW 0.32 to the original engine + MGE-XE using the same hardware and assets (actually, exactly the same data folder which is pretty far from Vanilla), OpenMW wins the exterior -> interior change, is a tad better but still not very good on interior -> exterior and fails miserably on exterior -> exterior compared to the original engine. OpenMW also wins the startup and save game load times by far (while the save times are only good in the beginning but get much worse after some playing, I am at roughly 7 seconds now compared to about 4 seconds with a character that is much further).

Some days ago I did a test running from Seyda Neen over the Odai Plateau to Balmora and back taking the Pelagiad road. The original engine with about twice the amount of plugins loaded (but nothing that should have a positive influence) plus the latest MGE-XE beta with 8 cells distant land, refections at max, shadows (except for the bugged high detail actors shadows), Vurt's grass, vtastek's water shader, SSAO, sunshafts, etc. and I saw one loading bar and very few stutters at a frame rate constantly at 30 or above (I capped it there, so I cannot say what's max). OpenMW 0.32 with shadows off (on makes the game unplayable), reflections on but at rather low quality took roughly 2 to 3 seconds for every cell change along the way until it crashed somewhere on the way back between Fort Moonmoth and Pelagiad with frame rates being more in the 20s range but varying between something like below 10 to almost 50.

So, that might have changed since the release of 0.32 which I haven't tested yet but really looking forward to it, unfortunately, the nightlies are not available at the moment.
Tinker
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by Tinker »

I cannot compare OpenMW with vanilla as I have not had a windows system for 12 years and installing a VM or wine seems a bit pointless to me especially as OpenMW already runs fine before the code is optimised.

I am running 0.32 with shadows and reflection all on and the longest loading time has been the 0.2 seconds noted earlier, I have never had a crash on transitioning, in fact the only crashes I have had in the last 15 or so versions have been when I am testing mods for compatibility.
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Gramblosh
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by Gramblosh »

I believe you but it doesn't change the fact that on other systems under other circumstances it does not. Or do you think I am lying?
Tinker
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by Tinker »

Of course I do not think you are lying, all I am saying is I do not see the same problems you do.

If you cannot run 0.32 with shadows on and I can then there is a big difference to start with, it seems at first not to be 0.32 as it works for me which leaves us with hardware, OS or drivers that are different. As you can run Morrowind I assume you have a windows system, if you are running OpenMW on windows there mat be a difference in the way 0.32 was compiled that affects performance, it seems unlikely but is a possibility. It could just be that windows does not operate well with unoptimised code.
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Gramblosh
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by Gramblosh »

And still that is OpenMWs problem and not a problem of the system since the original old and shabby Morrowind engine with some hackish tools on top runs the same data just fine with almost as much eye candy activated as possible. And if the code isn't optimized to run on Windows systems it still is a problem of the code at least if it wants to be a cross-platfrom engine. That the problem doesn't exist on other system doesn't change the fact it is there on others. And I think that is something that should be discussed or at least mentioned.
onionland
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by onionland »

Gramblosh wrote:And still that is OpenMWs problem and not a problem of the system since the original old and shabby Morrowind engine with some hackish tools on top runs the same data just fine with almost as much eye candy activated as possible. And if the code isn't optimized to run on Windows systems it still is a problem of the code at least if it wants to be a cross-platfrom engine. That the problem doesn't exist on other system doesn't change the fact it is there on others. And I think that is something that should be discussed or at least mentioned.

Not to be rude, but if you feel that it has not been discussed sufficiently there is nothing stopping you from doing some performance testing on a dual-boot system and then making a thread highlighting those issues.

I'm not sure how unoptimized the windows build is, but since most of the team members are working on some sort of linux system I can imagine that it may be significant, but do also keep in mind that very little focus is directed towards optimization at this stage of development, that goes for all supported systems and not only the windows build.
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Gramblosh
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by Gramblosh »

onionland wrote:Not to be rude, but if you feel that it has not been discussed sufficiently there is nothing stopping you from doing some performance testing on a dual-boot system and then making a thread highlighting those issues.
Not to be rude but... uhm, to see exactly what? That it runs better on Linux than on Windows? Well, that is something I can figure out from this thread already.
I'm not sure how unoptimized the windows build is, but since most of the team members are working on some sort of linux system I can imagine that it may be significant, but do also keep in mind that very little focus is directed towards optimization at this stage of development, that goes for all supported systems and not only the windows build.
And that is a reason not to mention, that it has performance problems? I think OpenMW 1.0 wants to perform well on all supported systems. So it might be useful to know where it still has problems, right?
Tinker
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by Tinker »

The important part of Onionlands answer was you could test on the same hardware a windows install and a Linux install and discuss specific points of difference, or even a bug report if the difference is great enough to warrant it. Windows tester are in short supply and that may be another reason for differences in performance, more feedback from windows users would be most helpful.

I am not sure if optimisation is planned as pre or post 1.0, some is waiting on an Ogre update which should bring some better performance as well as fix some bugs like dead cliff racers. You should not forget though that 1.0 is not the end of the road, it is the beginning, by version 1.0 all features of Morrowind should be included in OpenMW. There will still be (many) months of work improving things and incorporating in the engine the, needed by windows, patches and extensions.
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Gramblosh
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by Gramblosh »

Yes, I could run it on my Linux partition but I won't do it cause Linux is not for gaming in my house, helps keeping things separated. Also I am not that tech-savvy concerning Linux that I could track down any differences.

And third, I am really not able to test OpenMW on more than one system, I have played it for almost two weeks, every evening, finished a bunch of quests and reported the bugs I observed, that's all I can do. But that hanging on cell change and subsequent crashes are really getting annoying (plus the long time it takes to save) after some time and it is really just that which stops me from testing it further. And all I did was mentioning the problem since it might exist for other user.
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psi29a
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Re: Smoother cell transitions

Post by psi29a »

Thank you for testing! :) Could you post your save games so that we can have a look at them?

Trimming down save/load times and size are always important.
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