Unofficial : Significant performance loss when panning camera [any angle, any arc]

[Ranebow]

Have made this thread in hopes it gets treated as an official issue that is intended to be addressed or is currently being addressed already.

What this post is NOT about:

-Overall performance
-Bragging
-How you fixed your 'problems' by buying a new cooler or fan
-People's supposed knowledge of DirectX APIs
-Why Windows is bad

What this post IS about:

A performance issue where panning the camera causes significant frame speed loss.


How does it happen?: We don't know, it's what we're here to try and find out and get support from Square.

How does it manifest itself? What are the symptoms?: Anytime you pan the camera, there may be a noticeable drop in performance and frames per second. The panning itself does not need to cover an arc of any particular spread, i.e. 90 degrees, 45 degrees etc. It happens when making even minute adjustments to the camera. However it does not happen when strafing side to side, or in motion forward and backward.

Where does it happen?: For some people, everywhere in the game. For others (most with the issue), it happens in the vicinity of hot spots. 'Hot spots,' are areas in the game where when facing them physically, your performance lowers because of strain on the CPU and/or GPU. A simple example would be standing at an Aetheryte camp with lots of other players around. This is not uncommon and is treated as an 'overall performance' issue (which as mentioned above is not the purpose of this thread). What is not common, is that panning the camera creates even more performance loss of a noticeable degree. One to three frames per second MIGHT be within an error margin, however ten to fifteen frames per second is not normal.

Where does it happen that it shouldn't happen?: Unlike above when in a hot spot area, this can happen anywhere in the game. For most though it appears when you are facing a hot spot location yet are not actually within local proximity. Currently if you face a hot spot as described above, then run the opposite direction until you are unable to see the hot spot with the naked eye, you will still suffer the same performance degradation when panning the camera. Even despite the fact that the hot spot is not being rendered on screen.

Is it possible that the Occlusion Culling feature in the game's System Configuration is not working?: Depends on what defines "not working." If you disable the option, you lose performance. On that merit, it is working. Whether it functions properly to it's full extent is unknown - though this problem did not exist in BETA III or prior.

Could this be a two pronged issue, where a bad Culling system can cause the camera panning problem?: Possibly, though it doesn't explain why some people have the issue everywhere, even when not facing or near hot spots.

Is there any official response or word about it so far from Square?: To my knowledge no.

Does it affect all users?: No, it's not universal though it happens to enough people that it involves hardware from all companies Nvidia, AMD, Intel and all third party vendors in any non specific combination.

Do I have any idea what's causing it?: I am confident that it has a lot to do with player character rendering(PCs, not NPCs) and strain on the CPU. While this is a natural performance degrader, the panning issue is the anomaly that exacerbates the poor organic performance. The anomaly then manifests itself further when you are outside of hot spots yet still suffer performance loss - as if it has a residual effect that cannot be purged.

What has been tried to work around or fix it?:

Disabled SLI/Crossfire [GTX670s, 680s, Radeon 7950s, 7970s and others]
Physically removing one card
Swapping card positions (and repeating above)
New/old drivers
New/old modified drivers
Separate Windows install
Compatibility modes for FFXIV client
Fullscreen/Borderless/Window client
Multitude of manual adjustments in Nvidia Inspector/Radeon Pro (including no Vsync, adaptive Vsync, frame limiter, frame limiter 58/60hz etc)
Disabled overclock
Disabled memory overclock
Affinity combinations
Task priority (high/realtime)
Disabled/reduced motion blur(radial blur) in-game



What can I do about it?: If the knowledge was available, you'd be the first to know! In the meantime you can help with a generous first step by taking the time to /sign or post here that you understand what's been written and you experience this issue(s). Additionally you can fill out the template that was provided by Kittra and we'll see about identifying a common denominator. Please avoid commenting otherwise and refer to the comments above about the thread's purpose.

If anyone is experiencing this issue, I'd ask if you would please post your setup in the format of:

CPU: xxxxx @ x.xxghz (include any overclock information in the speed)
Motherboard: xxxxxxxxx
Memory: xxxxxxxx xxGB @ speed here
Hard Drive: xxxxxxx (This is the HDD the game is installed on, not windows)
Video Card: xxxxxxx xGB (include any overclock information)
Power Supply: xxxxxxx (include the wattage)

Driver Information
nVidia or AMD/Radeon driver information should go here along with whether or not you did a clean install or just over wrote the previous drivers.