data folder order causing physics stutter

Support for running, installing or compiling OpenMW

Before you submit a bug report for the first time, please read: Bug reporting guidelines
smokeyninja
Posts: 19
Joined: 26 Oct 2018, 07:51

data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by smokeyninja »

I'm not sure how to find the exact source of the problem, but as long as Vanilla remastered is plugged in I'll get major hitching every few seconds. Without it I have buttery smooth play. I used the 1k textures with the combined maps mentioned in the usage notes.... messed with the data file order a bit and it disappeared, grouped data directories based on the mod categories on the modding-openmw site. Issue present with data folders in order below.
openmw.log with issue
Spoiler: Show
Just rearranged again after getting the issue to reemerge and it doesn't seem to care where I put it now... any ideas/help appreciated
Spoiler: Show
Openmw.log without issue
Spoiler: Show
User avatar
akortunov
Posts: 899
Joined: 13 Mar 2017, 13:49
Location: Samara, Russian Federation

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by akortunov »

In theory, the issue can be not with physic itself since the mentioned mod affects only textures.
It is hard to tell something without hardware specs and profiler output.
If you use a slow GPU (an integral Intel one, for example) there is a possibility that it just is not fast enough to handle normal maps.
User avatar
psi29a
Posts: 5355
Joined: 29 Sep 2011, 10:13
Location: Belgium
Gitlab profile: https://gitlab.com/psi29a/
Contact:

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by psi29a »

Are the 1K textures dds files or tga files? If tga, then they can't be directly loaded into the GPU and they are usually larger files than compressed dds anyway, so it could be that there is a lot of data being copied, sent to CPU then to GPU instead of just being copied to RAM to then to the GPU.

Updated: just checked, they are dds files. I haven't yet checked to see if they are compressed. Lots of files are the same file-size which hint at uncompressed...
User avatar
AnyOldName3
Posts: 2667
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by AnyOldName3 »

Lots of files are the same file-size which hint at uncompressed...
All the compression formats supported by DDS are fixed-size. GPUs don't like variable-size compression formats as you can't work out exactly where in memory the data for a given pixel lives without scanning all of memory up to that point. That means that all 1024x1024 DXT5 images with mip maps are the same size, so seeing files that are the same size doesn't tell you anything.

Even if they aren't compressed, anything that a DDS file can hold should be copyable straight onto a modern GPU.
User avatar
psi29a
Posts: 5355
Joined: 29 Sep 2011, 10:13
Location: Belgium
Gitlab profile: https://gitlab.com/psi29a/
Contact:

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by psi29a »

Could it be that the GPU doesn't have enough memory to hold all the 1K dds textures in the scene?
smokeyninja
Posts: 19
Joined: 26 Oct 2018, 07:51

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by smokeyninja »

akortunov wrote: 05 Nov 2018, 10:29 It is hard to tell something without hardware specs and profiler output.
If you use a slow GPU (an integral Intel one, for example) there is a possibility that it just is not fast enough to handle normal maps.
playing with a 7700k and an rx560, msi afterburner doesn't show signs that the gpu is even breaking a sweat, and using the f3 overlay physics is showing crazy numbers during the stuttering. MSI afterburner also shows one core pretty much pegged at 100% when the game is acting appropriately but during the issues it drops, I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure my cpu shouldn't have problems with the game :lol: Also OpenMW 0.44.0 on windows 10 since that's kinda important I guess. If there's any other ideas let me know
User avatar
cc9cii
Posts: 523
Joined: 28 Mar 2013, 04:01

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by cc9cii »

Just a guess, but I suspect the data folder causing trouble has more complicated NIF meshes (either too many triangles or duplicated or something else).

EDIT: wait, the mod is textures only? If so there should be no mesh changes... No idea then.
i30817
Posts: 58
Joined: 07 Nov 2018, 05:56

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by i30817 »

I quite like that mod but my computer is complete shit so i won't really use it (but i'm only really seeing a drop of about 3-5 fps with it).

Thing is, if you really want to increase graphical performance in morrowind or openmw (and have a completely ancient and already bad gpu at the time like me) your most effective route is dropping resolution, followed by turning off the water shader, followed by lowering view distance, followed by lowering the npc active radius.

In your case i'd suggest dropping one rung in the resolution ladder.

Be aware that if you're in linux wayland, wayland completely controls resolution and doesn't allow other apps to 'see' other resolutions than the desktop one, much less change them. In order to make games in Wayland run under lower or higher resolutions you have to change the desktop resolution (a magnificent self-goal on their idea of preventing games corrupting the desktop resolution).

This is supposedly going to get better (Wayland will report 'other' lower resolutions but under the hood will just scale the image up on the GPU to the desktop rez) but that's not going to make your game faster (probably... maybe it will, but not as fast as it could be).
User avatar
wareya
Posts: 338
Joined: 09 May 2015, 13:07

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by wareya »

There's a chance that you just don't have enough VRAM for the mod and the graphics driver is doing some CPU thrashing when paging out to CPU RAM that's screwing with the CPU-bottlenecked parts of OpenMW or something. Maybe.
smokeyninja
Posts: 19
Joined: 26 Oct 2018, 07:51

Re: data folder order causing physics stutter

Post by smokeyninja »

wareya wrote: 12 Nov 2018, 03:41 There's a chance that you just don't have enough VRAM for the mod and the graphics driver is doing some CPU thrashing when paging out to CPU RAM that's screwing with the CPU-bottlenecked parts of OpenMW or something. Maybe.
I have a meager graphics card by todays standards, but it doesn't see heavy loads unless I turn on distant rendering, even then I have plenty of vram, it's the gpu core that struggles to keep up.
i30817 wrote: 11 Nov 2018, 00:50 In your case i'd suggest dropping one rung in the resolution ladder.
I'm on windows 10, dropped resolution all the way down to 640x480, problem persists no improvement
Post Reply