Annoying stuttering

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psi29a
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Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by psi29a »

When it's done. (tm)

We have one feature that needs to land: lighting.
There are a few regressions that need to be taken care of too. Then we can get about our RC phase.
Calibration
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Joined: 20 Dec 2016, 18:38

Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by Calibration »

I thought I'd append a comment/observation here even though it is a different type of "stuttering"

I have been playing around with MacOS 0.47 development versions and they are great! Really think this is a massive incremental step. Well done to everyone involved. Can really consider now combining advanced graphical features (ground cover, distant land, shadows) and maintaining a playable FPS. NPCs moving aside...brilliant :)

However, moving around the landscape, whenever the (quite frequent) "initialising data" pops up the screen shudders, movement freezes, and it can take several seconds to pass. Especially if "loading data" comes after the combined wait is a bit immersive breaking. Just an observation as this is on the latest development version.
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psi29a
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Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by psi29a »

How fast are you going when you're moving around cells? Normal walking shouldn't produce this behaviour as we have cell preloading to prevent that.
SSD or HDD?
Have you taken into account some of the other CPU consuming processes going on like navmesh generation?
Have you tried turning async physics on?

Hard to tell what is going on without having your settings and hardware readout.
Calibration
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Joined: 20 Dec 2016, 18:38

Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by Calibration »

psi29a wrote: 16 Mar 2021, 19:14 How fast are you going when you're moving around cells? Normal walking shouldn't produce this behaviour as we have cell preloading to prevent that.
SSD or HDD?
Have you taken into account some of the other CPU consuming processes going on like navmesh generation?
Have you tried turning async physics on?

Hard to tell what is going on without having your settings and hardware readout.
Hi. I am walking around. I am testing this by generating a test character at Seyda Neen then walking along the coast to Vivec. The initialising data hangups occur at the same point in the landscapes.

I have an iMac with 3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 processor, 500 GB Flash Storage and 24 GB 2400 Mhz DDR4 memory.

I currently have distant land and ground cover enabled (I am using the Aesthesia ground cover mod). As I walk on my test route I am getting around 55 FPS. My settings that seem relevant are...

[Camera]
viewing distance = 23552.0
small feature culling = true
small feature culling size = 8
field of view = 55

[Terrain]
distant terrain = true
vertex lod mod = -3
composite map resolution = 124
object paging active grid = true
object page min size = 0.02

[Groundcover]
enabled = true
density = 0.5
min chunk size = 0.5

[Physics]
async num threads = 1

I have played around with these values to get decent FPS. I don't really notice any difference having async num threads = 0 with respect to the problem reported and larger values are not supported.

Nothing seems obviously out of whack in the profiler but I can post a screenshot if helpful.
Calibration
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Joined: 20 Dec 2016, 18:38

Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by Calibration »

With further experimentation the main thing influencing the length of these initialisation/load data intervals/stutters is having ground cover enabled. Same for two different types (Remiros and Aethesia). If I don't have ground cover the stutters are there but not so noticeable. With ground cover everything freezes for a second or so whenever the initialisation/load data occurs. I am using density = 0.4 and min chunk size = 0.5. Its a little better having distance = 1 rather than distance = 2 but not much.

Per my previous post I reduced the viewing distance to 15360.0. Maybe helped a little, but ground cover seems the dominant influence. I think have installed it correctly (using groundcover= rather than content= etc.)

Does anyone else see this behaviour? Any comments?

Cheers.
Calibration
Posts: 36
Joined: 20 Dec 2016, 18:38

Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by Calibration »

Thought I'd resurrect this as it didn't reach a conclusion last time and I thought I'd post a screenshot.

Image

What you see are two types of "event" for a better word which cause my screen to temporarily freeze as I move through the landscape. One where only the "white" activity stutters and one where all activity stutters. The latter is associated with a Loading data message to the screen which I have not captured here. I guess this is probably at cell boundaries. The first type is more frequent but also tends to happen at the same places in the landscape.

My observation is that the severity of the stutters is roughly proportional to the number of mods I have (no one mod is the culprit) and as previously mentioned is also worse if I have ground cover enabled (which I don't in this instance). If I have no mods at all the stutters are still there but hardly noticeable.

This has been happening since at least version 0.46 (I had fewer mods before) and currently I have the latest 0.47 RC. My iMac details are posted earlier.

Currently I have no issues with FPS (I have limited it to 60). Some explanation for the two types behaviour would be helpful and whether they are modifiable by the settings. At the moment the stutters prevent me adding anything further to the game (e.g. ground cover) because they are just liveable with at the moment.

Cheers
Calibration
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Joined: 20 Dec 2016, 18:38

Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by Calibration »

trying a new image link

Image
elsid
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Joined: 01 Aug 2017, 08:20

Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by elsid »

psi29a wrote: 04 Mar 2021, 09:03 This is going to happen as the asset is not yet cached in memory, especially from a HDD. There have been some improvements in this area in the upcoming 0.47 release.
Not sure what kind of improvements you mean, but I don't think there are any because https://github.com/OpenMW/openmw/pull/2928 wasn't merged. All refactoring done in preparation for it doesn't bring any impovements. And there are no any other functional changes in sound loading.
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psi29a
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Re: Annoying stuttering

Post by psi29a »

That was written in march... ;)
Things might have changed since then.
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