Performance Suggestions

For new and upcoming OpenMW branches and ports; move fast and break things!
mikjames
Posts: 22
Joined: 08 Dec 2016, 06:00

Performance Suggestions

Post by mikjames »

Now that much of the port is playable I think a few things could be implemented that would significantly improve performance for many users. I noticed that there is a draw distance slider which certainly helped improve performance on my A5, but does the standard version of Morrowind/OpenMW feature sliders for individual assets as Oblivion did? It's been awhile since I've played Morrowind and I don't remember if it had more than one render distance slider. The main problem with Morrowind and performance is the open cities approach, right now the port seems to handle the graphics quite well, but the octa core chips powering ai seem to be lagging behind a bit. An ai distance slider would help with this without sacrificing overall draw distance.

I also noticed there is currently no options to set resolution and scale the rendered image. While it looks great a 1080p on my a5, I'm not sure the phone is quite capable of it. Performance may be significantly improved with a basic scaling system, even if it just allows me to cut the res in half (540p). Just a few suggestions to the dev to possibly improve performance, it's entirely possible that none of this is feasible, so make of it what you will and thank you for making my daily commute a little less mundane :)
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akortunov
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Location: Samara, Russian Federation

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by akortunov »

mikjames wrote: 21 Sep 2018, 00:13 but the octa core chips powering ai seem to be lagging behind a bit.
AI almost does not affect performance at all (excluding cases of mass battles). The main issue is physics. Also animations ("skinning") can take a lot of time with HD-meshes. Since we update physics only for actors inside AI processing distance, "AI distance" slider name is misleading.
mikjames wrote: 21 Sep 2018, 00:13 but does the standard version of Morrowind/OpenMW feature sliders for individual assets as Oblivion did? It's been awhile since I've played Morrowind and I don't remember if it had more than one render distance slider. The main problem with Morrowind and performance is the open cities approach, right now the port seems to handle the graphics quite well, but the octa core chips powering ai seem to be lagging behind a bit.
No, there is no such thing in Morrowind/OpenMW, and I see not point to implement such sliders without "smooth appearing/disappearing" effect.
For now there is only a "small feature culling" option which removes small nodes from scene and allows to improve performance a bit.
These sliders may not give much effect because of this feature.
mikjames
Posts: 22
Joined: 08 Dec 2016, 06:00

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by mikjames »

akortunov wrote: 21 Sep 2018, 06:18 AI almost does not affect performance at all (excluding cases of mass battles). The main issue is physics. Also animations ("skinning") can take a lot of time with HD-meshes. Since we update physics only for actors inside AI processing distance, "AI distance" slider name is misleading.
Well you say that, but what I and other players are going to be concerned with is the observable end result. Right now the observable end result is that cities tank performance, whether that's due to ai scripting or the physics attached to npcs isn't really relevant to the end user. Perhaps AI distance is a misleading term, but the effect is what is important, would reducing the number of npcs rendered not also reduce the physics processing? As an end user I'm not looking to argue semantics and terminology, I just want the best performance and practical solutions to get there. I've reduced physics rendering from 60 to 30, and honestly I can't tell the difference.
mikjames wrote: 21 Sep 2018, 00:13 but does the standard version of Morrowind/OpenMW feature sliders for individual assets as Oblivion did? It's been awhile since I've played Morrowind and I don't remember if it had more than one render distance slider. The main problem with Morrowind and performance is the open cities approach, right now the port seems to handle the graphics quite well, but the octa core chips powering ai seem to be lagging behind a bit.
No, there is no such thing in Morrowind/OpenMW, and I see not point to implement such sliders without "smooth appearing/disappearing" effect.
For now there is only a "small feature culling" option which removes small nodes from scene and allows to improve performance a bit.
These sliders may not give much effect because of this feature.
I mean yeah that'd be awesome, Oblivion's system was garbage, particularly with distant rendering enabled. I still can't play Oblivion to this day without garrish object pop in. Still, you've got to start somewhere, surely something is better than nothing. I wouldn't bother playing Oblivion and Morroblivion at all if it didn't provide an individual ai/npc slider to deal with the drawbacks of open cities.
mikjames
Posts: 22
Joined: 08 Dec 2016, 06:00

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by mikjames »

Alternatively, rather than adding more complexity user side, perhaps you could take a page out of Oblivion Reloaded's book. Keep the single slider as it is, and create a system to dynamically adjust draw distance based on frame rate. Then 2 variables could be provided to the player, the minimum and maximum dynamic draw distance.
mojoswagger1980
Posts: 193
Joined: 04 May 2018, 05:16

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by mojoswagger1980 »

stock samsung firmware is the absolute worst for any kind of resolution modification which would improve the games resolution as it has to be done globally at the moment. that is whats killing it for you, your devices resolution is set way higher than it possibly needs to be. samsung is notorious for setting it higher than there gpus are capable of adequantly rendering. i have a note 5. it is rooted running a custom rom so when i tell you changing the resolution from its rediculous stock 2560X1440 to 960X540 gave me my biggest fps gain. short of that you can play with settings.cfg. disable preload instances (doesnt do much anyway imo) limit the framerate to 60. not having view distance at max is helpful. but even then not having control of resolution is going to burn you. its present in the .cfg but it doesnt have any effect on tue resolution. i know how to change you4 resolution but wouldnt recommend it unless you are familiar with adb because your most likely going to need to be to fix the problems that occur from touchwiz not liking the change .
mojoswagger1980
Posts: 193
Joined: 04 May 2018, 05:16

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by mojoswagger1980 »

akortunov wrote: 21 Sep 2018, 06:18
mikjames wrote: 21 Sep 2018, 00:13 but the octa core chips powering ai seem to be lagging behind a bit.
AI almost does not affect performance at all (excluding cases of mass battles). The main issue is physics. Also animations ("skinning") can take a lot of time with HD-meshes. Since we update physics only for actors inside AI processing distance, "AI distance" slider name is misleading.
mikjames wrote: 21 Sep 2018, 00:13 but does the standard version of Morrowind/OpenMW feature sliders for individual assets as Oblivion did? It's been awhile since I've played Morrowind and I don't remember if it had more than one render distance slider. The main problem with Morrowind and performance is the open cities approach, right now the port seems to handle the graphics quite well, but the octa core chips powering ai seem to be lagging behind a bit.
No, there is no such thing in Morrowind/OpenMW, and I see not point to implement such sliders without "smooth appearing/disappearing" effect.
For now there is only a "small feature culling" option which removes small nodes from scene and allows to improve performance a bit.
These sliders may not give much effect because of this feature.
small is kind of deceptive bud. its on a scale or 40 (i think thats the highest it goes)and at 40 i can watch npcs become floating torsos as they walk away...wouldnt call that a small node, but its variable, if your resolution were say 4k, 40 pixels isnt very noticable, but it makes a huge difference at 960x540 ;p
mikjames
Posts: 22
Joined: 08 Dec 2016, 06:00

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by mikjames »

mojoswagger1980 wrote: 26 Sep 2018, 19:43 stock samsung firmware is the absolute worst for any kind of resolution modification which would improve the games resolution as it has to be done globally at the moment. that is whats killing it for you, your devices resolution is set way higher than it possibly needs to be. samsung is notorious for setting it higher than there gpus are capable of adequantly rendering. i have a note 5. it is rooted running a custom rom so when i tell you changing the resolution from its rediculous stock 2560X1440 to 960X540 gave me my biggest fps gain. short of that you can play with settings.cfg. disable preload instances (doesnt do much anyway imo) limit the framerate to 60. not having view distance at max is helpful. but even then not having control of resolution is going to burn you. its present in the .cfg but it doesnt have any effect on tue resolution. i know how to change you4 resolution but wouldnt recommend it unless you are familiar with adb because your most likely going to need to be to fix the problems that occur from touchwiz not liking the change .
Nah, I'm not messing with the firmware on my new phone. The devs will no doubt figure out a way to implement resolution options in time, and it doesn't really fix the underlying issue of cities tanking performance. This thread is just a place to post suggestions to the dev, not a guide to hack your device for a lower display resolution.
mojoswagger1980
Posts: 193
Joined: 04 May 2018, 05:16

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by mojoswagger1980 »

mikjames wrote: 30 Sep 2018, 18:25
mojoswagger1980 wrote: 26 Sep 2018, 19:43 stock samsung firmware is the absolute worst for any kind of resolution modification which would improve the games resolution as it has to be done globally at the moment. that is whats killing it for you, your devices resolution is set way higher than it possibly needs to be. samsung is notorious for setting it higher than there gpus are capable of adequantly rendering. i have a note 5. it is rooted running a custom rom so when i tell you changing the resolution from its rediculous stock 2560X1440 to 960X540 gave me my biggest fps gain. short of that you can play with settings.cfg. disable preload instances (doesnt do much anyway imo) limit the framerate to 60. not having view distance at max is helpful. but even then not having control of resolution is going to burn you. its present in the .cfg but it doesnt have any effect on tue resolution. i know how to change you4 resolution but wouldnt recommend it unless you are familiar with adb because your most likely going to need to be to fix the problems that occur from touchwiz not liking the change .
Nah, I'm not messing with the firmware on my new phone. The devs will no doubt figure out a way to implement resolution options in time, and it doesn't really fix the underlying issue of cities tanking performance. This thread is just a place to post suggestions to the dev, not a guide to hack your device for a lower display resolution.
Sure hope so, but on his issue tracking page he has "this is useless" noted under lower resolution. Im not 100% sure, but rendering in a resolution that wasnt meant for the display may be less than desirable anyway. I would think trying to use a resolution meant for a 4:3 display wouldnt be able to use all the pixels on a 16:9 display but theres probably some work around.
Hmmmmm. You know what ? lol i have been looking at those two aspect ratios for god knows how long and it is just this second occuring to me that 16:9 is 4:3 squared . So maybe all you would need to do would be double pixel size and maybe this is where pixel density comes into play as the third dimension invovled in the area of the 16:9 aspect ratio. Omfg now i feel dumb .
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wareya
Posts: 338
Joined: 09 May 2015, 13:07

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by wareya »

There's nothing weird about a game engine rendering the 3d world at a different resolution than it presents to the window/screen with, if that's what you guys are talking about.
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Zanarkan
Posts: 31
Joined: 21 Apr 2018, 22:07

Re: Performance Suggestions

Post by Zanarkan »

Try this settings ⬇

small feature culling = true
small feature culling pixel size = 16.0
exterior cell load distance = 1
preload instances = true
preload cell cache min = 7
preload cell cache max = 7
preload cell expiry delay = 5
prediction time = 1
cache expiry delay = 5
target framerate = 30
pointers cache size = 40
anisotropy = 0
texture mag filter = nearest
texture min filter = nearest
texture mipmap = nearest
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