4K resolution, native or upscale, Xbox controller and UI scaling

[Perkel]

I've said it before but I guess I will have to say it again: with X series games, the CPU is usually the limiting factor, not the GPU

Thanks for the answer and i can provide some evidence for people interested below.
Also i have two question for you since you are part of dev team :

1. Did move from DX9 to vulcan improved CPU situation ?
2. Will game use more cores than 4 ? Steam page reqs in recommended point out to 4 core cpu not 4+

I ask this because i am thinking about upgrading to "better" cpu with more cores for X4 but if game will use only 4 cores then it will be actually downgrade as usually more cores = less performance from each core.

Also bonus questions:
What CPU do you recommend for X4 ?
Is it possible to reach high minimal framerates (60+,100+) on current existing hardware or should we expect similar performance to X:R aka ~60fps on average in busy sectors with dips to 30fps on good cpus.

Worth noting is that a lot of initial bad reviews for X:rebirth was from people

For people interested i have:
i5-3570K @ 4,5Ghz which is basically top of the line 4 core cpu
980 - which is way more than mid end gpu

X rebirth:
- @1080p@Ultra i get around 50fps in Steady Mole (cpu is at 85% use and GPU is at 35-40% use)
- @4k@Ultra same sector i get around 50fps (cpu is at 85% use and GPU is at 70-75% use)

Which means that my top of the line CPU despite 85% mark actually is running at max it can for this game and without CPU bottleneck game should run about 100fps @1080p which is proven when i switch to 4k and my FPS is exactly the same despite the fact that i just increase 4 times pixel count to render.

Also you can hit PAUSE and CPU % drops by about 15-20% which seems to be simulation part.

[CBJ]

Question 1 - past bugs. When the XR came out, there was a serious bug, where game developed a memory leak, when asteroids would start popping in and using game and PC resources, which made game exec process to swell to like 7GB and game would eventually freeze. I don't remember the fix any longer, but I was hoping that these past bugs were taken in account while developing X4 so we wouldn't suffer from game freezes and crashes.

This is both easy and difficult to answer. The easy part is that from the very start of the development of X4, any fixes and optimisations that were applied to XR in patches were automatically also applied to X4 code, if they were still applicable, so X4 almost certainly won't suffer from those specific issues. In fact the reverse is also true; during the development of X4, a number of fixes and improvements were found which could also benefit XR, and these were back-ported and released in some of the later patches. However, it would be a brave (and foolish) developer who tried to claim their game couldn't possibly suffer from crashes, freezes, slowdowns, or memory leaks because they had been fixed in a previous game, because these are very general symptoms which can occur for a huge variety of reasons. It is true to say, though, that X4 does benefit from the experience gained with the underlying technology.

1. Did move from DX9 to vulcan improved CPU situation ?

Maybe a little. As I've explained before, the CPU is mainly busy with simulation, and that includes preparing data to send to the graphics API. Differences at this level between different graphics APIs are only of marginal relevance. There may well be differences within the API itself, but since those will often run on a different CPU thread anyway, it has little or no impact on overall performance if the game is CPU-bound by the simulation.

2. Will game use more cores than 4 ? Steam page reqs in recommended point out to 4 core cpu not 4+

I've answered this one before too. The game has a similar threading model to XR. It will use two cores pretty heavily, for its core activities, and a few others more variably for other tasks. There is no fixed limit to how many it will use for those other tasks, but at the same time just increasing the number of cores won't necessarily improve performance beyond a certain point.

What CPU do you recommend for X4 ?

As I've said before, it would be neither appropriate nor wise for me to make hardware recommendations. What I can say is that with current-generation CPUs, which can usually run at least 8 threads on 4 cores, you will probably gain more from a higher core speed than from adding more cores.

Is it possible to reach high minimal framerates (60+,100+) on current existing hardware or should we expect similar performance to X:R aka ~60fps on average in busy sectors with dips to 30fps on good cpus.

As I've said many times, "minimum framerate" in this kind of game is completely meaningless. Put yourself in a situation where there is enough going on and it will start to slow down, because we don't artificially limit how much can happen in once place at one time, and of course the universe simulation will be going on in the background regardless. So it's safe to assume that there will be some variation in framerate in X4, depending on where you are in the game and what you are doing.

Worth noting is that a lot of initial bad reviews for X:rebirth was from people

That's a relief. I was beginning to think that they were all from bots.

[Perkel]

Maybe a little. As I've explained before, the CPU is mainly busy with simulation

We can test that though easily by going to busy and empty region. Pause button also should stop simulation without interrupting graphics (thought it might stop animations but that should be minimal impact)
- 100fps empty region - 122fps paused (70% gpu used)
- 30fps very busy region - 35fps paused (30% gpu used)
Rule of thumb is that the more objects on screen the less performance which shouldn't be really any surprise.
What surprising is small impact of economy simulation and GPU low use.
The more things on screen the lower GPU usage and the lower frame-rate.

We can further test that with changing resolution like i did before.
- @1080p - 30fps in busy sector - 30% gpu use
- @4k - 30fps in busy sector - 70% gpu use
So the limiting factor here is obviously CPU like you mentioned.
In this case changing resolution doesn't add draw calls which means GPU% increases with res.

Which pretty much means CPU is hammered by mentioned draw calls.
Simulation does have impact but not that much.
And this is where i don't quite understand second part about Vulcan which is why i asked about it.

Main reason low level API like Vulcan or DX12 was made was to solve draw calls issue + other things.
Pretty much any FPS improvements for games that changed to those new low level APIs was precisely draw calls batching which basically reduced massively draw calls in various ways like batching and basically made removed need for fast CPUs to run GPU fast.

Obviously engine developement is ongoing thing and just by moving from DX9 to Vulcan doesn't mean anything improved as that move right now could be just move to start working on new API and then piece by piece improve engine.

Either way. I hope you will manage in future resolve draw calls issues Cheers.

Worth noting is that a lot of initial bad reviews for X:rebirth was from people

That's a relief. I was beginning to think that they were all from bots.

lol. I didn't finish sentence for some reason.

My point was that by reading your and other ego posts i get that performance won't be improved much from X:R and i think a lot of early reviews you got were about very poor performance on top end rigs or that performance contributed a lot to initial feelings people got from other flaws.

So imho as developers you should inform clearly people about expected performance because it would have a lot to do with reviews you will get just like in case of X:R where a lot of people expected at minimum average performance like 60fps on top end rigs and got 20-30fps with dips to 15-20fps for period of time in busy sectors. I myself back then had q9300 which was at the time pretty good cpu + hd7970 also v.good gpu and i basically had to play at 30fps average.

So by setting up expectations properly you might lose some buyers but you will get better reviews.

For example adding to specs:
minimal spec: 900p- medium - 30fps average
recommended 1080p- ultra - 60fps average (or whatever your prediction is)
Would give you a lot of goodwill when people will have game in their hands and when they will start to write reviews.

Other idea is to create FPS profiles. If you for example expect similar performance to X:R then maybe setting up 30FPS limit cap as default setting (which could be changed in options) would limit people bed experience with varied framerate at 60fps cap or Vsync cap which could give people a lot of bad time with very varied framerate.

[reanor]

Question 1 - past bugs. When the XR came out, there was a serious bug, where game developed a memory leak, when asteroids would start popping in and using game and PC resources, which made game exec process to swell to like 7GB and game would eventually freeze. I don't remember the fix any longer, but I was hoping that these past bugs were taken in account while developing X4 so we wouldn't suffer from game freezes and crashes.

This is both easy and difficult to answer. The easy part is that from the very start of the development of X4, any fixes and optimisations that were applied to XR in patches were automatically also applied to X4 code, if they were still applicable, so X4 almost certainly won't suffer from those specific issues. In fact the reverse is also true; during the development of X4, a number of fixes and improvements were found which could also benefit XR, and these were back-ported and released in some of the later patches. However, it would be a brave (and foolish) developer who tried to claim their game couldn't possibly suffer from crashes, freezes, slowdowns, or memory leaks because they had been fixed in a previous game, because these are very general symptoms which can occur for a huge variety of reasons. It is true to say, though, that X4 does benefit from the experience gained with the underlying technology.

1. Did move from DX9 to vulcan improved CPU situation ?

Maybe a little. As I've explained before, the CPU is mainly busy with simulation, and that includes preparing data to send to the graphics API. Differences at this level between different graphics APIs are only of marginal relevance. There may well be differences within the API itself, but since those will often run on a different CPU thread anyway, it has little or no impact on overall performance if the game is CPU-bound by the simulation.

2. Will game use more cores than 4 ? Steam page reqs in recommended point out to 4 core cpu not 4+

I've answered this one before too. The game has a similar threading model to XR. It will use two cores pretty heavily, for its core activities, and a few others more variably for other tasks. There is no fixed limit to how many it will use for those other tasks, but at the same time just increasing the number of cores won't necessarily improve performance beyond a certain point.

What CPU do you recommend for X4 ?

As I've said before, it would be neither appropriate nor wise for me to make hardware recommendations. What I can say is that with current-generation CPUs, which can usually run at least 8 threads on 4 cores, you will probably gain more from a higher core speed than from adding more cores.

Is it possible to reach high minimal framerates (60+,100+) on current existing hardware or should we expect similar performance to X:R aka ~60fps on average in busy sectors with dips to 30fps on good cpus.

As I've said many times, "minimum framerate" in this kind of game is completely meaningless. Put yourself in a situation where there is enough going on and it will start to slow down, because we don't artificially limit how much can happen in once place at one time, and of course the universe simulation will be going on in the background regardless. So it's safe to assume that there will be some variation in framerate in X4, depending on where you are in the game and what you are doing.

Worth noting is that a lot of initial bad reviews for X:rebirth was from people

That's a relief. I was beginning to think that they were all from bots.

Thank you CBJ for tuning in again. Can you also please comment if you know the reason why you guys decided to step away from the established tradition and decided not to do any kind of campaign in X4. If I am not mistaken, every previous game had a campaign. Was it due to the time constraints on release of X4? I understand there will be a "main plot" in X4, but to my understanding the plots are just series of missions you run without any kind of animations, cutscenes or voiceovers.

[atavistuk]

Neither X3: Terran Conflict, nor X3: Albion Prelude has a 'Main Campaign', and those two games are way more popular than X3: Reunion and X: Rebirth.

People seem way more interested in making their own story in the sandbox, so why shouldn't Egosoft cater to the majority? Seems like a no-brainer decision to be honest.

[Alan Phipps]

In XR, many players considered the main plot as being the in-game tutorial for first-time players. It gave a few free assets to get one started as well as showing the gameplay aspects in relatively easy to follow sequential steps - something that was rather lacking in later X3 games in some players' opinions. I think X4 may be of a different experimental early game style.

That said, I'm not sure what that has to do with 4k or upscaling!