tomchk wrote: ↑Fri, 4. Oct 19, 16:55
However, I wonder if somehow DirectX would provide higher FPS for X4. My reasoning: I have a GTX 1070 and i5-4590, and I frequently experience choppy FPS in combat where otherwise the FPS is fine.
Vulkan is already an extremely optimized top of the range graphics API. Both AMD, NVidia and Intel offer very good support for it on most OSes (except Apple OSes...). There is no way that D3D11 or older can compete with it. D3D12 may reach parity, at best.
tomchk wrote: ↑Fri, 4. Oct 19, 16:55
I have a GTX 1070 and i5-4590
The i5-4590 is likely the bottleneck. Someone reported that moving from a first generation Ryzen to a third generation Ryzen gave them 100-200% more frames per second despite the actual performance boost being only ~28%. The choppy frame rate in combat could be caused by the low free processor margin not coping well with the increased simulation complexity that combat requires. It seems that with X4 once frame rate starts to fall it falls off fast.
tomchk wrote: ↑Fri, 4. Oct 19, 16:55
I also wonder if we might be able to get back a lot of the awesome "flashy" effects from XR much more easily with a DirectX implementation.
Not likely. DX is even more limiting than Vulkan.
tomchk wrote: ↑Fri, 4. Oct 19, 17:24
One other question about Vulkan: X4 appears to use v1.1, so I'm wondering if it's worth us trying this feature of using both discrete GPU and integrated GPU together, described here. Any thoughts or confirmation this works with X4? How does one activate it if the integrated GPU is enabled?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)#Vulkan_1.1
This requires the application be programmed to allocate work loads to both devices. The performance gain will almost certainly be negative as the CPU memory bandwidth will be hammered by the integrated GPU and hence reduce single thread performance which is most often the performance bottleneck. Even GPU performance might not be improved due to synchronization overhead.
This is one of those features which in theory is possible, but chances are getting a working or useful implementation is not. One would have to be majorly GPU bottlenecked for it to make a difference, the maximum difference is a few percent better at most (as most integrated GPUs are very weak compared to discrete GPUs) and it is highly prone to reducing performance due to the integrated GPU sharing resources with the CPU. The integrated GPU would need to use an additional 4GB of system memory as well.
The concept works better when one has 2 ore more discrete GPUs. However this still requires that performance be GPU bottlenecked to start with which is mostly not the case for X4.
radcapricorn wrote: ↑Fri, 4. Oct 19, 18:31
The GPU won't suddenly start working any faster if you switch to DirectX.
Actually this used to be the case with OpenGL vs Direct3D with some drivers. The actual performance of the API is determined by the driver and with the more complex to implement older APIs this was especially the case and one of the reasons game developers prefer to use Direct3D over OpenGL. One could easily create a very poorly optimized Vulkan driver if one desired, even if it makes no commercial sense to do so.
radcapricorn wrote: ↑Fri, 4. Oct 19, 18:31
if your GPU takes 'n' milliseconds to draw a given scene, it will take exactly the same time for that scene no matter if you're using DirectX, OpenGL or Vulkan.
This depends on if the executed shaders result in the GPU performing exactly the same sequence of operations to produce the frame. D3D and OpenGL, especially older versions, might be limited by how expressive the shader API is and so prevent some potential optimizations being implemented that can be implemented in Vulkan. These optimizations might result in the GPU generating a similarly looking frame in less time by using operations or data formats which one cannot use with the other APIs.
tomchk wrote: ↑Fri, 4. Oct 19, 18:41
Have you noticed a graphical performance decrease between XR and X4 on the same machine, such as in combat? Any thoughts on what causes this? I know X4 simulates *far* more in the economy, but it's combat effects where I see choppy FPS (feels like a slideshow sometimes, with lots of weapon fire), so it seems unrelated to "economic simulation".
It can be that free processor time margins were eaten away by the more complex economy and supporting scripts. Once the longest path is taking up 100% of CPU time then even little changes in game complexity could have large impacts on frame rate as the engine drops frames to maintain game speed.
radcapricorn wrote: ↑Fri, 4. Oct 19, 21:08
Entering a transporter room on any station is insta-drop to 30FPS and below for me. Four walls and a door, when it can be 40-60FPS outside that room. Sometimes ships crossing the dock force field cause a noticeable stutter. In some sectors, being 200-300km away from any station, and simply looking in the direction where stations are also easily cuts a third off of the FPS.
The frame pacing issues are often caused by dynamic loading of assets. It is especially bad if running off a mechanical drive, to the point it can be annoying to play.
Low frame rate can be caused by collisions. For example flying a L Destroyer inside a Xenon Defence platform, like in the demonstration save I provided in the beta forum, causes a huge FPS drop even on my new Ryzen 3900X, although it is now still playable.
tomchk wrote: ↑Sat, 5. Oct 19, 00:20
Should we be okay with a noticeable step backwards in effects quality compared to the last game released years ago? (At least some more explanation about why this was/is needed would be much appreciated. I know 3.0 will help, but it still looks worse than XR effects in previews I've seen.)
Is it a fair solution to disable effects on systems that should be able to handle them without any trouble?
A lot of this is subjective. Some people may find the X4 effects are improved over XR because they prefer them. In any case Vulkan API is not limiting what effects can be used as it is a cutting edge top of the range graphics API.
radcapricorn wrote: ↑Sat, 5. Oct 19, 00:37
We as players? I don't think we should be OK with that. Honestly, some of the effects X4's got nothing on Rebirth. Weapon and damage effects in Rebirth looked absolutely gorgeous, still do. Explosions in 4 look barely better than in DOOM. The '93 DOOM.
I honestly do not notice much of a difference. Most of the effects are still very much the same.
The only effect which was majorly downgraded was the destruction explosions. This was likely done for gameplay reasons as having an L ships exploding every 1-2 seconds in a big battle would clutter the screen too much with black holes and shockwaves.