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

[Kittra]

I understand what you're saying Ranebow, but that drop isn't very different from what I experience in other games while panning, especially First Person Shooters like Planetside 2 (an online FPS).

The drop is fairly consistent and happens in the majority of Direct3D games I have so that's why I didn't believe I was experiencing the same drop that others were reporting.

I was under the impressing that the drop was from 120 or 60 fps down to 55 or 25 fps just from panning the camera. This scenario I could understand as a drop that large is definitely a problem.

[Ranebow]

I understand what you're saying Ranebow, but that drop isn't very different from what I experience in other games while panning, especially First Person Shooters like Planetside 2 (an online FPS).

The drop is fairly consistent and happens in the majority of Direct3D games I have so that's why I didn't believe I was experiencing the same drop that others were reporting.

I was under the impressing that the drop was from 120 or 60 fps down to 55 or 25 fps just from panning the camera. This scenario I could understand as a drop that large is definitely a problem.

Yes, you are correct, frames are being lost to wild amounts between twenty to thirty at times. As an example I have posted pictures standing in Gridania facing the Chocobo porter.
First shot is camera stationary, second shot is camera with a quick flick left (towards the Inn) and back resulting in the drop to 41.




Interestingly, and I may update this on the front page - I disabled occlusion culling so that it was rendering things 'off screen,' and my performance dropped as expected to right around the same speed that I get when panning the camera.
More and more I am convinced now it's something to do with the culling system.

[Noxaru]

Hi Noxaru, we haven't had any progress nor an update from our various support tickets.

Other systems tested included an old Core 2 E6600 with a 4870X2 card on an old EVGA board using drivers Kittra listed below (And some others).
Unfortunately the problem persisted.

I am going to work on an AMD system next.

I see, thank you for the response.

[Skies]

Hrm... I had the mind to add one thing here, mentioning that when I updated my drivers (using an AMD card) the issue here vanished (the particular 'graphics lag when panning' issue). Howevre, Ranebow, what you just said made me think...
That updated improved my FPS as a whole, and now that you mention occlusion culling I think I might know WHY the panning suddenly drops your FPS and it's quite... Logical.

Occlusion culling doesn't renders things which are offscreen, that saves you on processing power and memory but it ALSO requires you to suddenly load and render everything outside your view range when you pan your screen.
Which means that when that is on you are causing a sudden spike in processing/memory requirements by asking a lot of new things to be rendered suddenly, causing a huge drop in FPS temporarily. Notice how your issue is worse the more things are there around you? (try that in Revenant's Toll, then try that in, say... Urth's Gift? Or, hum... Nym? Somewhere that is kinda barren playerwise)

[Ranebow]

Hrm... I had the mind to add one thing here, mentioning that when I updated my drivers (using an AMD card) the issue here vanished (the particular 'graphics lag when panning' issue). Howevre, Ranebow, what you just said made me think...
That updated improved my FPS as a whole, and now that you mention occlusion culling I think I might know WHY the panning suddenly drops your FPS and it's quite... Logical.

Occlusion culling doesn't renders things which are offscreen, that saves you on processing power and memory but it ALSO requires you to suddenly load and render everything outside your view range when you pan your screen.
Which means that when that is on you are causing a sudden spike in processing/memory requirements by asking a lot of new things to be rendered suddenly, causing a huge drop in FPS temporarily. Notice how your issue is worse the more things are there around you? (try that in Revenant's Toll, then try that in, say... Urth's Gift? Or, hum... Nym? Somewhere that is kinda barren playerwise)

Logical though several rebuttals:

A) If anyone plays without Occlusion culling disabled(which you won't find a lot as it eats performance badly), then every time they moved the camera, they'd have performance loss. Though we know this isn't the case as it doesn't affect everyone - occlusion or not.
B) Have to remember that ANY motion would induce this issue, not just panning the camera and in most games character movement as a whole will cause some performance degradation but standing still and turning the camera will not.
C) Memory is not exhausted so why the stutter?

As for player and object density, yes I do think there's a correlation. The other side of this coin though is that even when those things are not being drawn physically, you still lose the performance when facing that direction but ONLY when panning the camera, not when simply standing still or moving your character.

[Raist]

one important thing needs to be taken into consideration when testing for this, and that is to avoid the "hotspots" when panning. For instance, an earlier post mentioned a high FPS drop when the inn was snapped into focus. That inn might be one of the spots where there is a rendering issue in general that causes a major drop in FPS regardless if the view is snapped there or you move casually that way as you walk. I've only confirmed this to be an issue with Hawthorne Hut so far (it's where I tested my graphics settings), but I'm sure there are other locations on other maps that also cause a significant drop in frame rate when your camera angle is aimed towards it. If your panning angle cuts across such a location, it is going to make your frame rate dive suddenly because that location has come into the potential viewing angle--not just because you are panning.

[Ranebow]

one important thing needs to be taken into consideration when testing for this, and that is to avoid the "hotspots" when panning. For instance, an earlier post mentioned a high FPS drop when the inn was snapped into focus. That inn might be one of the spots where there is a rendering issue in general that causes a major drop in FPS regardless if the view is snapped there or you move casually that way as you walk. I've only confirmed this to be an issue with Hawthorne Hut so far (it's where I tested my graphics settings), but I'm sure there are other locations on other maps that also cause a significant drop in frame rate when your camera angle is aimed towards it. If your panning angle cuts across such a location, it is going to make your frame rate dive suddenly because that location has come into the potential viewing angle--not just because you are panning.

I have been through various high density areas where the frame rate is 60fps solid and established :

A) No camera movement and no character movement results in 60fps
B) No camera movement but with character movement results in 60fps
C) Camera movement results in XX reduced amount of frames.
D) Camera movement and character movement results in same amount of reduced frames.

Now in high density hot spot areas where performance is down simply due to strain, let's say around 45fps the following may happen :

A) No camera movement and no character movement results in 45 fps (no change)
B) No camera movement but with character movement results in 45 fps (no change)
C) Camera movement results in XX reduced amount of frames, but to a lesser degree.
D) Camera movement and character movement results in same amount of reduced frames.

In this second scenario where the performance was already degraded, the frame loss frame panning is not as significant.

Furthermore as per second to last post of mine, the disabling of Occlusion Culling drops the frames down to the same level equal to that of when panning the camera.
If my fps is 42 with it disabled, my fps will dip no lower than 42 when panning. This cannot be coincidence.


Lastly, there's been reports and claims that it affects some players anywhere in the game, even when staring at a wall that's bordering a zone line with nothing beyond it.

[Raist]

yeah.. was just more a thought about people who may be mixing in the hotspots when they are panning, and mistaking the major dip for being just because they panned their camera. The whole importance of isolation, consistency, and control so you can more accurately test if changing settings is affecting your panning problem or not.

[Ranebow]

yeah.. was just more a thought about people who may be mixing in the hotspots when they are panning, and mistaking the major dip for being just because they panned their camera. The whole importance of isolation, consistency, and control so you can more accurately test if changing settings is affecting your panning problem or not.

It's a plenty welcome suggestion and should be considered of course.

I *mostly* have this problem on two systems when facing the hot spots. Interestingly though are where some of the hot spots are. For instance, my screenshot is in relation to the camera pan towards the Adventurer's guild in Gridania ; yes at times there's a good amount of players in there causing an overall performance loss, but it doesn't have the same affect from all angles. If I am running from the Badger gate towards the opening to the Adventurer's guild, I get no resistance or performance loss until I reach the portion where the path forks onwards to the building or up towards the Aetheryte. However once I step inside the building at the first tables on the right, panning no longer results in fps loss.
Which means there is literally a X meters by X meters box of sorts where this happens if you stand in it. And like above, similarly when near the Chocobo porter, if I move down the ramp and do the same it doesn't happen.

I moved away from thinking this was a driver issue early on, when I confirmed that it doesn't happen in all areas of the game and it doesn't happen equally when facing the same hot spot e.g. standing on one side of the spot can result in something different.

[Boretalith]

It seems that there have not been any further posts about this concern being an ongoing issue. Because of this, we are considering it to be resolved. If this does continue to be a concern, please create another thread to further discuss resolutions or contact the Support Center at support.na.square-enix.com for assistance.