Can we please have 60FPS and increased draw distance in the PC version?

[Atomic_Skull]

Why hasn't 60FPS been implemented yet? Seems like it would be relatively simple to add this and increase the limit on the draw distance slider.

Also can we please have an option to turn off geometry LOD? There's no need for this on any graphics card made in the last 10 years. Objects popping from low to high detail geometry is annoying.

EDIT: Apparently 60FPS is already supported by FFXI but not enabled :confused:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npr80uZ7vyw

[Arbalest]

Tons of complications rise up on the PC version at 60fps.

[Atomic_Skull]

Tons of complications rise up on the PC version at 60fps.

No reason they couldn't fix those though. From what I have read on the subject they "unhooked" the core game processes from the screen FPS when they did the fishing fix a few years back.

Increasing draw distance and a toggle to turn off geometry LODs should be trivial to implement.

[Crevox]

Game is poorly optimized. Even if they unlock the frame rate to 60 FPS, it will struggle to even maintain that in the majority of scenarios, regardless of how good your computer is.

[Byrth]

Not in the majority of scenarios, but when loading a large number of characters (for instance, near the Western Adoulin MH) and when a lot of animations are going off at once (for instance, in alliance Incursion).

But yeah, FFXI handles being pushed below its current maximum FPS very poorly. You can think of it like this:
* Animations will have a set number of frames that depend on your current FPS.
** If you're at <15 FPS, it generates 15 frames.
** If you're at 16-30 FPS, it generates 30 frames.
** If you're at 31-60 FPS, it generates 60 frames.
* If you're at 31 FPS and the animation has 60 frames generated, it will take almost twice as long as it would have taken at 60 FPS. Everything looks like it's moving slowly.
* This even applies to things like menus opening.

[Alhanelem]

Why hasn't 60FPS been implemented yet? Seems like it would be relatively simple to add this and increase the limit on the draw distance slider.

Also can we please have an option to turn off geometry LOD? There's no need for this on any graphics card made in the last 10 years. Objects popping from low to high detail geometry is annoying.

EDIT: Apparently 60FPS is already supported by FFXI but not enabled :confused:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npr80uZ7vyw
The model animations are recorded at 60FPS; however the game doesn't "really" support it- A lot of core functions in the game are tied to the frame rate, and thus an increase in the frame rate speeds up certain things in the game and, as I recall, was exploited in the past for speedhacking. So, it's not as simple as you think because internally, a lot of things are tied to the FPS.

I agree about the LOD issue though. users have found ways to increase the draw distance but there's one drawback, increasing it also pushes the fog plane back, and it makes things in the distance look a bit uglier. If they can seperate the fog distance from the draw distance too, that would be nice.

[Atomic_Skull]

The model animations are recorded at 60FPS; however the game doesn't "really" support it- A lot of core functions in the game are tied to the frame rate, and thus an increase in the frame rate speeds up certain things in the game and, as I recall, was exploited in the past for speedhacking. So, it's not as simple as you think because internally, a lot of things are tied to the FPS.

As I said earlier when they did the fishing fix a while back they unhooked a lot (most but not all) of the core game processes from FPS. No reason they couldn't completely unhook everything. The fishing change showed that this is in fact possible to do.

From what I have read on the subject when you increase the FPS models and zones actually load faster. Apparently this is being bottlenecked by the 30FPS cap.

[Byrth]

I'm pretty sure that they didn't unhook them. They capped FPS to 15, which was already a value that worked with their system.

[Alhanelem]

I'm pretty sure that they didn't unhook them. They capped FPS to 15, which was already a value that worked with their system.
This- the fishing fix was to LOWER frame rates during fishing to a level that all versions of the game could maintain for the sake of fairness.

[Atomic_Skull]

This- the fishing fix was to LOWER frame rates during fishing to a level that all versions of the game could maintain for the sake of fairness.

If fishing was capped at 15FPS then it would be obvious, the framerate would cut in half every time you whipped out a fishing rod, which it doesn't. My understanding from reading on the subject is that they unhooked a lot of the core processes from screen FPS and run them on an internal timer now instead.

[Byrth]

As explained above, their system could already handle 15 FPS (it just generates fewer frames for animations). They didn't have to change anything. The issue they were addressing was the slow-down between 16 and 30 FPS that some console users experienced. 25 FPS or so was fine, because that's just a little slower and they could still beat the minigame. 20 FPS? Now their minigame is 33% slower than everyone else's and they maybe don't get enough rod twitches to win.

[Dragoy]

They actually reverted the FPS-limit reduction during the renovation of the system, but it was indeed limited to 15 for a while before that.

[Pixela]

FFXI 60fps video (use chrome browser)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1uguYIVrXU

[Raydeus]

Maybe one day.

Raydeus's Hoping skill raises .1 points.

[Alhanelem]

If fishing was capped at 15FPS then it would be obvious, the framerate would cut in half every time you whipped out a fishing rod, which it doesn't. My understanding from reading on the subject is that they unhooked a lot of the core processes from screen FPS and run them on an internal timer now instead.
I think the change was reverted when they implemented the updated fishing system. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong)

[BobbinT]

I support this idea.

Btw, what's fishing system?

[Alhanelem]

It has these arrows that appear on screen, and instead of holding down the arrow keys / dpad you only have to tap them at the right times.

[Dragoy]

FFXI 60fps video (use chrome browser)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1uguYIVrXU
That does not mean the game is running 60 FPS. ^^;

(And no, I will not use the Chrome browser. °—°)


I think the change was reverted when they implemented the updated fishing system. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong)

As I already mentioned before, yes, they indeed did revert it at that time.


I personally don't see the fuss about 60 FPS (puns not intended), and it probably would mean quite a lot of work for them to implement such a change for this game (as others have hinted as well).

I don't think it will happen at least any time soon, but time will tell. ^^

[Raydeus]

That does not mean the game is running 60 FPS. ^^;

Yes it does.

[Raydeus]

The why is that your graphics card is probably optimized for DirectX 10 or 11, and this game is DirectX 8 or 9, which is now run in emulation, instead of natively on the graphics cards, so performance is worse than on a properly optimized card. This game also strains the CPU more than the GPU.

Yeah, it's DX8 (used to be 7 I think) and is extremely heavily dependent on your CPU speed. Not to mention it doesn't seem to have multicore support either, so yeah... even if you have a good graphics card it will make little difference. A DX9 client upgrade would do so much for the game I can only hope they will actually do it once they drop the PS2 support for good (if the game survives that long that is.)


PS > It really annoys me because a client upgrade would cost only a fraction of all the money they completely wasted while developing and re-developing WoWclone XIV. :mad:

[Atomic_Skull]

Yeah, it's DX8 (used to be 7 I think)

No it's always been DirectX 8.

[quote[ A DX9 client upgrade would do so much for the game I can only hope they will actually do it once they drop the PS2 support for good (if the game survives that long that is.)[/quote]


DirectX 8 on modern versions of windows runs by wrapping DirectX 8 calls into the equivalent DirectX 9 ones. On Windows Vista and onward D3D8.dll is a wrapper that calls D3D9.dll.

Updating to DirectX 9 wouldn't require dropping PS2 support. There's really not that much difference between DirectX 8 and Directx 9. 9 is just an enhanced version of the fixed rendering pipeline used in DirextX 8 unlike DirectX 10 and onward which use a programmable pipeline (DirectX 10 was a fundamental change in how both 3D APIs and the underlying hardware function)

Most directX 8 calls have direct equivalents in directX 9 and updating an application to be a "native" directx 9 application is mostly just a matter of substitution. You just have it use D3D9.dll instead of D3D8.dll and change the function call to the D3D9 equivalent (usually, some obsolete stuff was removed from D3D9).

[Dragoy]

Yes it does.

Apologies.

Perhaps I wasn't too clear there. My comment was mostly about the 60 FPS youtube videos in general, not a comment on if a player has or has not modified the FFXI client or its parts in the memory.

[Crevox]

Apologies.

Perhaps I wasn't too clear there. My comment was mostly about the 60 FPS youtube videos in general, not a comment on if a player has or has not modified the FFXI client or its parts in the memory.

If the video is running at 60 FPS (which you can see in the player info in the context menu on youtube) and the game looks like it's 60 FPS, then the game is running at 60 FPS.

[Dragoy]

If the video is running at 60 FPS (which you can see in the player info in the context menu on youtube) and the game looks like it's 60 FPS, then the game is running at 60 FPS.

Perhaps I still wasn't being clear enough. Sorry about that! ^^;

My point is that the video can be running at 60 FPS while the game is not. I'm not saying it isn't in that particular video; it may well be, though I don't see what it proves other than it is possible to do it via unsupported means.

[Diraco]

Most directX 8 calls have direct equivalents in directX 9 and updating an application to be a "native" directx 9 application is mostly just a matter of substitution. You just have it use D3D9.dll instead of D3D8.dll and change the function call to the D3D9 equivalent (usually, some obsolete stuff was removed from D3D9).


Last time I checked (a few years ago), they were using DrawPrimitiveUP which as far as I could tell was added for d3d7 compatability to d3d8, but it's still supported in d3d9. When I did some tests after SE announced the end of XP support I found that with 50 characters onscreen, windows7 is about 30% slower than XP (both 32 and 64 bit 7). It seems that it should be possible to maintain 60fps at all times using a 5GHz Haswell and windows XP on a GTX780 (with shadows turned off). Newer cards no longer have XP drivers, and AMD cards are slower than Nvidia cards with XI.

Why do shadows cause such severe slowdown?

[oliveira]

Why do shadows cause such severe slowdown?

Only on modern graphics cards. If you use a older card/driver you can still keep shadows on and have decent perfomance. I believe that has to do with newer cards moving on to full DX10/11 specs and delegating earlier stuff to software implementations.

Then on that scenario of modern video card + heavily CPU bound old game you have the game competing with the display driver and the "older directX back compatibility wrapper" for CPU time. Not really pretty, eh ?

[Alhanelem]

Yeah, it's really perplexing how such an old game can slow down so much even on today's high end CPUs/GPUs. There has to be some major efficiency issue in the game's rendering subsystem or something. It may well be what Oliveira said, though it feels like it has to be more than just that.

It's worth noting that I can run other 3D intensive applications at the same time and FFXI performs exactly the same regardless.

[Diraco]

Only on modern graphics cards. If you use a older card/driver you can still keep shadows on and have decent perfomance. I believe that has to do with newer cards moving on to full DX10/11 specs and delegating earlier stuff to software implementations.

Then on that scenario of modern video card + heavily CPU bound old game you have the game competing with the display driver and the "older directX back compatibility wrapper" for CPU time. Not really pretty, eh ?

I actually tried with older cards along with the appropriate old drivers, and I found that all nvidia cards/drivers before driver version 175 are very slow (tested as old as a 7800gtx) -- nvidia added a fix specifically for XI at that point. It's too bad the fix also broke anisotropic filtering. Cards slower than GTX280 don't have enough fillrate for 2048x2048 background resolution to hold 60fps with a lot of transparent textures. Any ATI card that has enough fillrate (hd2900xt or faster) has drivers that use too much CPU. The sweet spot with AMD drivers was version 7.10 if I rememeber right.

[Ritsuka]

Game is poorly optimized. Even if they unlock the frame rate to 60 FPS, it will struggle to even maintain that in the majority of scenarios, regardless of how good your computer is.

The game is not poorly optimized god you people always ask the same damn question. The damn game was build for the PlayStation 2 period it was not build for PC! They cant increase the FPS cause of the PlayStation cant handle it. It is a MMORPG build off a game console and not a PC.

[Ritsuka]

I actually tried with older cards along with the appropriate old drivers, and I found that all nvidia cards/drivers before driver version 175 are very slow (tested as old as a 7800gtx) -- nvidia added a fix specifically for XI at that point. It's too bad the fix also broke anisotropic filtering. Cards slower than GTX280 don't have enough fillrate for 2048x2048 background resolution to hold 60fps with a lot of transparent textures. Any ATI card that has enough fillrate (hd2900xt or faster) has drivers that use too much CPU. The sweet spot with AMD drivers was version 7.10 if I rememeber right.

9600 GT runs this game with out lag in the macro system.

[oliveira]

9600 GT runs this game with out lag in the macro system.

It's as I said. The game is for DirectX8.1

On nvidia case any GPU on the "TESLA" (GTxxx) range or older is going to work good with FFXI. Fermi GPUs is where it started to go downhill for FFXI with nvidia.

Keep in mind that this regards the actual chip hardware, not the drivers as these will change their behavior completely based on the graphics card you have installed on the system.
It should make no difference if you have something like a 9x00 series Geforce (Which are TESLA core based) and the current driver or something older like a 7x00 series Geforce with the same driver as both cards will deal with DirectX8 directives in hardware.

A Fermi (GF100), Kepler (GK100) or anything newer than thay will leave you with poor FFXI performance regardless of the driver version you have.

[Diraco]

It's as I said. The game is for DirectX8.1

On nvidia case any GPU on the "TESLA" (GTxxx) range or older is going to work good with FFXI. Fermi GPUs is where it started to go downhill for FFXI with nvidia.

Keep in mind that this regards the actual chip hardware, not the drivers as these will change their behavior completely based on the graphics card you have installed on the system.
It should make no difference if you have something like a 9x00 series Geforce (Which are TESLA core based) and the current driver or something older like a 7x00 series Geforce with the same driver as both cards will deal with DirectX8 directives in hardware.

A Fermi (GF100), Kepler (GK100) or anything newer than thay will leave you with poor FFXI performance regardless of the driver version you have.

It's true that at low resolutions, any old nvidia card will do. The card's speed does make a difference once background resolution is set to 2048x2048 though. With my testing, a GTX780 kept capped framerate in more situations than a GTX280 or a 7900GTX at 2kX2k.

[oliveira]

It's true that at low resolutions, any old nvidia card will do. The card's speed does make a difference once background resolution is set to 2048x2048 though. With my testing, a GTX780 kept capped framerate in more situations than a GTX280 or a 7900GTX at 2kX2k.

Actually changing the rendering buffer will increase CPU load mostly. If you are noticing any benefits on the GTX780 (288GB/s) over a GTX280(177GB/s) it's mostly due to faster burst transfers (CPU RAM to GPU RAM) on the GTX780.