Can I pay for a FPS DLC?

[Blitz4]

I got all of these DLC that I won't play because the fps is too low. It's my choice. Until I can get a stable 60 fps there's no need for me to play when so many other games are out there.

The fastest cpu in the consumer world with a 3060 shows being cpu bottlenecked in the following video. This is because the fps when running the game on minimal settings vs slightly higher settings were compared and there's little difference in the framerate. These benchmarks. They weren't even in combat, just flying around some static meshes that don't move. Something is going on with the sim. There's too much going on. It's not the clipping panes so much as it's the sim of all of the ships in the sector.

What is trying to be simulated? This is a 3D FPS. Not a 2D game like Dwarf Fortress where it's explainable that they are intentionally trying to simulate every little part of reality, right down to the blinking of eyelids coating the eyes with fluid which reduce the dryness of the eyes over time.

I'd gladly pay for a FPS DLC, that way I'd be able to play all of these other amazing DLC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj8L3xHuyUE

[af_2017]

My concern here is even if the game will use all CPU cores that will improve things but performance issues still be postponed till some another huge universe size (which is obviously larger than current one).

For example, on one CPU I have one huge station and performance is 5 fps.
Ok, the game started using 12 cores of your CPU, everything is 12 times faster (roughly).
Now lets build yet another 11 huge stations, and guess what? 5 fps is back.

There should be another approach.
Just do not allow build unlimited amount of staff, there's no way to make "unlimited amount of objects" work.
Some games have limits on total units amount (for example in $tarcraft you have only 200 units, they could be different, but amount is 200, you can think about them as a balancing but in case of X4 this can address performance as well).

Also applying the limits to players owned staff makes some game mechanics/solution useless and thus makes the game code more simple.
For example devs no need to care about limiting raw resources logic because player won't have 10k miners.

[Alan Phipps]

Actually it's a galaxy-wide economy and encounter simulation in which the player can act as if it is an FPS if they so wish. Others play the game differently such as being relatively hands-off asset managers, trading moguls, invading imperial forces, or parasitic pirate clans. Some players try and mix a bit of everything.

The devs have said repeatedly that a steady 60 fps + will never be guaranteed in all gameplay situations whatever the system hardware. There will almost certainly never be a pure fps or FPS DLC, although there might be a future game update (not a DLC) that improves fps for many players in some or most gameplay situations. That is called game optimisation which is an ongoing development process.

As af_2017 says above, players will still find ways to stress the game to the limits, whatever the devs do.

[Duncaroos]

I don't think a game optimization DLC would ever be a thing....then they'd have to manage two versions of game code at a time.

Plus, as I understand Egosoft is still working on X4 as a game anyways (each major version they always add more features to the base game, as well as new DLCs), so they would be wasting time and resources doing major optimizations that may/will break optimizations later.

Now say there finally the time where X4 will no longer be expanded or have new features added. Will Egosoft change gears and go full-tilt optimizing? Maybe to an extent, but not likely to what OP is asking for. If Egosoft then decided to open a funding pool, would people be open to donating money for major optimizations?

[Caedes91]

They need to program some sort of occlusion into the game and optimize AI script in general. I think programming better multi-core utilization is not possible anymore at this stage.

For example In sector you can look into eack ship's cockpit and see an NPC pilot with F2 or F3, meaning they do get rendered. Make the models less detailed when not piloted by player or inside of them and mask this fact with an "opaque" cockpit glass (not see through). Or remodel the ships to less detail altogether. The ships themselves have too much going on. Make them have less things "sticking out" while still "attractive" by remodiling shapes to be more "fluid" to reduce poly number. Kind of how fighter jets and ships tend to look IRL now.

^sorry for wording it so poorly. I hope you can still understand, what I mean.

Same goes for stations and captital ships. Try to reduce model detail without sacrificing design philosophy. Any kind of Civilian traffic is completely unnecessary IMO.

[Blitz4]

Actually it's a galaxy-wide economy and encounter simulation in which the player can act as if it is an FPS if they so wish. Others play the game differently such as being relatively hands-off asset managers, trading moguls, invading imperial forces, or parasitic pirate clans. Some players try and mix a bit of everything.

The devs have said repeatedly that a steady 60 fps + will never be guaranteed in all gameplay situations whatever the system hardware. There will almost certainly never be a pure fps or FPS DLC, although there might be a future game update (not a DLC) that improves fps for many players in some or most gameplay situations. That is called game optimisation which is an ongoing development process.

As af_2017 says above, players will still find ways to stress the game to the limits, whatever the devs do.

Thank you. Do you believe the next X4, as this is the "Foundations", it's a good one as it's based on Vulkan, that the next X4 in the series would allow a smooth 60fps + gameplay or is that something the devs haven't commented on yet?

Now say there finally the time where X4 will no longer be expanded or have new features added. Will Egosoft change gears and go full-tilt optimizing? Maybe to an extent, but not likely to what OP is asking for. If Egosoft then decided to open a funding pool, would people be open to donating money for major optimizations?

Yes. In this case it might not be Egosoft but fans. Look at Litcube's universe which improved performance, among a number of other mods that did the same.

Speaking of which. In other games. When modders create content that is loved by the community and creates a massive change in how the game is played. Sometimes, those modders are hired on to help.

They need to program some sort of occlusion into the game and optimize AI script in general. I think programming better multi-core utilization is not possible anymore at this stage.

For example In sector you can look into eack ship's cockpit and see an NPC pilot with F2 or F3, meaning they do get rendered. Make the models less detailed when not piloted by player or inside of them and mask this fact with an "opaque" cockpit glass (not see through). Or remodel the ships to less detail altogether. The ships themselves have too much going on. Make them have less things "sticking out" while still "attractive" by remodiling shapes to be more "fluid" to reduce poly number. Kind of how fighter jets and ships tend to look IRL now.

^sorry for wording it so poorly. I hope you can still understand, what I mean.

Same goes for stations and captital ships. Try to reduce model detail without sacrificing design philosophy. Any kind of Civilian traffic is completely unnecessary IMO.

Optimize AI perhaps. I don't believe it's occlusion. As I mentioned with clipping planes. It's something todo with the number of ships in that sector, but I'm grasping at straws as I haven't tested anything. Now clipping planes when you're landed on a station, that might be a thing, but I don't know. I haven't played this game to test it enough. There's much that can be done just by players to answer these questions. For example, a screen I took of this game to show a potential performance issue really early on in development using Special K.

https://i.imgur.com/HEzg8GP.jpg

[CBJ]

Thank you. Do you believe the next X4, as this is the "Foundations", it's a good one as it's based on Vulkan, that the next X4 in the series would allow a smooth 60fps + gameplay or is that something the devs haven't commented on yet?

You said in your first post that this is a "3D FPS" and, as Alan explained, that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the core nature of the game. The game is a simulation, like all the others in the X series before it. Like those games, it doesn't have "levels" or artificial limits on the number of objects, either in the game universe as a whole, or close to the player. There is no hand-waving magic "optimisation" that will ever make it possible for a game like this to guarantee that it will play at a "smooth 60fps" in all situations. We never stop working on performance, but players will always find situations where it cannot keep up. Paying for a "DLC" isn't going to change that.

Speaking of which. In other games. When modders create content that is loved by the community and creates a massive change in how the game is played. Sometimes, those modders are hired on to help.

In other games? We have been doing this for years; I can think of at least 4 people on the team currently who came to us from the modding community.

For example In sector you can look into eack ship's cockpit and see an NPC pilot with F2 or F3, meaning they do get rendered. Make the models less detailed when not piloted by player or inside of them and mask this fact with an "opaque" cockpit glass (not see through).

Your "proof" is fundamentally flawed. Those NPC pilots are only rendered because you are looking into the cockpit; if you were further away, they wouldn't be rendered at all. We do all kinds of culling, including frustum culling, LOD management, and all the other basic graphics optimisation techniques that you've mentioned, along with a whole lot more that you've probably not even thought of. Those optimisations help with the render performance, but that's not normally the limiting factor in a game like this.

[-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-]

I wonder when will users understand that a "software" like X4 is not similar to ANY other product on the market?

When will you realize that the number of calculations in this game is impressive?

When will you understand that if the computers we have today did not exist, this "software" would not even have been conceivable?

Maybe never

And there will never be a respite for poor developers

[Duncaroos]

Now say there finally the time where X4 will no longer be expanded or have new features added. Will Egosoft change gears and go full-tilt optimizing? Maybe to an extent, but not likely to what OP is asking for. If Egosoft then decided to open a funding pool, would people be open to donating money for major optimizations?

Yes. In this case it might not be Egosoft but fans. Look at Litcube's universe which improved performance, among a number of other mods that did the same.

Here lies the problem though. What if funding isn't enough OR the funding is too great? If the former, Egosoft would have to scrap the whole idea and either spend time refunding or dealing with explaining why donations aren't being returned (maybe at first it was enough, but updating caused more bugs that needing to be fixed and now the money is spent but new problems are there). If the latter, then you get into Star Citizen level of craziness that devs just make these outlandish improvements just to spend the money lol. I think Egosoft has more sense and would put a stop to it before it got THAT far, but still.

Maybe that's why I'm using the term "donation" ....you're just donating to Egosoft without wanting anything back and maybe they'll use the donations for the truth behind said donations!

I have to agree that any major optimization once X4 is said to be complete will likely be done via mods by the community. We can only dream of said optimizations in the future

[af_2017]

When will you realize that the number of calculations in this game is impressive?

It's not a surprise, right?
Quite predictable and expected, right?
You need to write zero lines of code and predict at a design phase, right?
And despite to this the game runs on single core.
Epic.

I wonder when will users understand that a "software" like X4 is not similar to ANY other product on the market?

Real life limitations against ambitions.
Creating perfect game with such scale is not possible on any hardware.
Perfect means: no OOS, all npcs are smart, no intermediate solutions, no simplifications on view distance, no excuses "well, we are a small team with limited resources, so we will not do that"
Not every product manager will decide to make product with somewhat "acceptable" quality keeping in mind available resources.

The features of the game must be aligned with available resources.
One thing is OOS, ok, let it be, but satellites as they are must be changed.
No need to re-create real picture of what happens in OOS. Let them show schematic info only: as simple as "in this area N ships". If ship is in combat " show "combat" icon. Want to see closer? teleport/travel there.
Players ships should show as much as the satellite : stats only, no realtime picture, that is, exactly what happens in OOS.
With this only the map will become much easier for visualization.

I do understand the scale.
Sometimes I find myself in question if it is really required feature for the game.
The simulation is good: i like when things do not disappear behind corners. It could be part of the game to fill background. But I am not sure it should be main goal of the game.

People can say "wow!" at a first glance.
Huge universe, all alive.
But dive deeper, play more, and ask yourself does things run OK?..

[-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-]

When will you realize that the number of calculations in this game is impressive?

It's not a surprise, right?
Quite predictable and expected, right?
You need to write zero lines of code and predict at a design phase, right?
And despite to this the game runs on single core.
Epic.

I wonder when will users understand that a "software" like X4 is not similar to ANY other product on the market?

Real life limitations against ambitions.
Creating perfect game with such scale is not possible on any hardware.
Perfect means: no OOS, all npcs are smart, no intermediate solutions, no simplifications on view distance, no excuses "well, we are a small team with limited resources, so we will not do that"
Not every product manager will decide to make product with somewhat "acceptable" quality keeping in mind available resources.

I do understand the scale.
Sometimes I find myself in question if it is really required feature for the game.
The simulation is good: i like when things do not disappear behind corners. It could be part of the game to fill background. But I am not sure it should be main goal of the game.

People can say "wow!" at a first glance.
Huge universe, all alive.
But dive deeper, play more, and ask yourself does things run OK?..

After 3000 hours I can guarantee you that things are going well, otherwise I would not have played 3000 hours. I have never used mods and I have accelerated time very few times via SETA.

The point is that this game was born due to the complaints of another great game called X Rebirth and the development of this one was born many years ago.
Probably at the time it was not to be designed like this, on this I give you reason, but it is very likely that the cause of these errors, coincidentally, was always and only caused by the complaints of the communities.

I hope that over time the powerful hardware will become standard and later this game will most likely have no more performance issues.

That said, what I would have in the design phase would have been a reduction in the number of things. Reduce the number of ships by 10x and increase their cargo by 10x for example.
Same proportion for combat ships, for the number of stations, etc. etc. But then someone would complain about the low number of elements in the universe

There will always be a push and pull on this product. But now the game is done and it is impossible to resort to repairs without designing one from scratch.

[Lord Dakier]

These type of threads are always dragged up and attract the people who don't realise that literally every object they add makes the situation worse. Yes, there needs to be a focus on optimisation, but if it was so simple, it'd have been done already. Players can make their life easier by using L's miners instead of M's, not throwing on hundreds of modules or spamming thousands of fighters.

[Blitz4]

Thanks CBJ.
You taught me a lesson and made me smile just thinking about it.

These type of threads are always dragged up and attract the people who don't realise that literally every object they add makes the situation worse. Yes, there needs to be a focus on optimisation, but if it was so simple, it'd have been done already. Players can make their life easier by using L's miners instead of M's, not throwing on hundreds of modules or spamming thousands of fighters.

I agree with this, to an extent. A game will never be fully optimized just as the design of a game will never be fully completed. I don't have a clue what is going on behind the scenes. It's tough right. Right when I jump into the game, walking around the very first station, a 3900x 2080 sn850 is not hitting 60fps walking around on low settings. The sim is going on already and I'm just becoming part of that sim.

Take Dwarf Fortress, where you start with 7 dorfs and maybe some animals, then you create some intricate ant colony underground that tallies up to 200 some dorfs and animals, all with their own life. This is something I can understand, all of the variables and calculations needed to explain how to sim a dwarf colony, then how it goes haywire when a force of 50+ goblins attack.

In X4. I just don't understand why I'm getting sub-60 fps before I've even started the game, then I heard it may get slower over time as the universe develops. Compared to Rebirth and X3, it wasn't like this. Perhaps I should start in space, or maybe docked to some fighter carrier vessel that I detach from, as in space, the frame rate is a bit better than when docked and walking around on the station.

EVE Online. In that game the entire sim is run on a server that clients connect to and every single client is a ship, that is simulated in X4. Sometimes I wonder if games would benefit in performance if the CPU overhead was delegated to a server, typically I wonder this in order to increase security of multiplayer peer to peer connections, but in the case of X4, I dunno. It's just a thought.

[CBJ]

In X4. I just don't understand why I'm getting sub-60 fps before I've even started the game, then I heard it may get slower over time as the universe develops. Compared to Rebirth and X3, it wasn't like this. Perhaps I should start in space, or maybe docked to some fighter carrier vessel that I detach from, as in space, the frame rate is a bit better than when docked and walking around on the station.

Post your DXDiag. At least that way we can identify whether the performance you are seeing is to be expected from your hardware or not. If it's not then we can try and identify what's wrong.

EVE Online. In that game the entire sim is run on a server that clients connect to and every single client is a ship, that is simulated in X4. Sometimes I wonder if games would benefit in performance if the CPU overhead was delegated to a server, typically I wonder this in order to increase security of multiplayer peer to peer connections, but in the case of X4, I dunno. It's just a thought.

EVE is very, very different kind of game, in more ways than are immediately obvious. Aside from the fact that it's multi-player with a server making most of the decisions, there is no universe simulation, only what each player sees, and the local simulation is tick-based, i.e. what you see on screen running "smoothly" at 60 fps is just a visual representation of something that actually only updates once per second. You can't run a game that plays in first-person like this, and we already use tick-like optimisations (and in some cases optimisations which are even more efficient than that) for activities that the player can't see.

[af_2017]

The point is that this game was born due to the complaints of another great game called X Rebirth and the development of this one was born many years ago.
Probably at the time it was not to be designed like this, on this I give you reason, but it is very likely that the cause of these errors, coincidentally, was always and only caused by the complaints of the communities.

I find it is good listening for community.
What bothers me here is acceptance criteria for product quality.
It is obvious at design time that some feature requests are just not achievable or will bring compromises in solutions; that is, trade-offs, not exactly what requested, let's say, with some flaws/drawbacks.
Not sure if in such cases some discussions are need with the community who asked features before implementing them.
Like "guys, you want full production running on your PC? build giant station? are you ready to buy top PCs to run this stuff and still run this at 1fps?".
Not sure how many will be happy with this. Well, at least now not everybody is.

Let's have a look at another thing is analogy of developing game and writing books or making films.
Each type of producers knows how to do it. Because each of them is a professional, with required knowledge and experience.
Can you imagine giving advices to a writer how he must write a book?..

From this point of view the game looks like a grand experiment in a manner "ok, let's do it and will see how it will go".

[wrmiller]

Actually it's a galaxy-wide economy and encounter simulation in which the player can act as if it is an FPS if they so wish. Others play the game differently such as being relatively hands-off asset managers, trading moguls, invading imperial forces, or parasitic pirate clans. Some players try and mix a bit of everything.

The devs have said repeatedly that a steady 60 fps + will never be guaranteed in all gameplay situations whatever the system hardware. There will almost certainly never be a pure fps or FPS DLC, although there might be a future game update (not a DLC) that improves fps for many players in some or most gameplay situations. That is called game optimisation which is an ongoing development process.

As af_2017 says above, players will still find ways to stress the game to the limits, whatever the devs do.

So I'm reading where FPS is 'frames per second' and other posts where FPS means 'first person shooter'? Or am I suddenly incapable of reading English correctly?

Sorry, couldn't resist that.

Regarding your comments about the game: I play X4 ToA very similarly to how I put thousands of hours in ED Horizons (in single-player mode). But now I no longer play ED since they ruined it IMO. In this game it's mostly just me and my ship against the universe, and I love it.

I do have a few stations, but they are small and only do what I need of them, like making ships or producing parts I may need.

But I have a question if I may?

This game stresses my computer unlike my other games like FC6, MS flight sim 2020, even when run at 3440x1440 with ultra graphics settings. I have a relatively decent gamer system, an Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition 5800 with 128 GB of system RAM, and a Radeon RX 6800 XT video card. I do not suffer from low frame rates, but rather excessive CPU temps when the day here in the South West United States get hot. But it's only with this game.

This system is even water cooled. So why is the game (apparently) so CPU intensive? Is the game engine distributed across multiple cores or single core only? (I designed multi-tasking embedded OSes for decades, so just technically curious).

Is the CPU intensive nature of this game fixable within the current code design? Or do we have to wait for a new game?

Thanks.

[CBJ]

So I'm reading where FPS is 'frames per second' and other posts where FPS means 'first person shooter'? Or am I suddenly incapable of reading English correctly?

Both are in common usage. Personally, I'd generally write "FPS" to mean first person shooter, and "fps" for frames per second.

So why is the game (apparently) so CPU intensive? Is the game engine distributed across multiple cores or single core only? (I designed multi-tasking embedded OSes for decades, so just technically curious).

Is the CPU intensive nature of this game fixable within the current code design? Or do we have to wait for a new game?

It's CPU intensive because, unlike most games, it's simulating the entire game universe. This is a fundamental feature of the entire game series, what makes it different, and what most people who have been playing the X series for many years play it for. As has been explained on many occasions, the core simulation uses a single thread, largely because the very high level of interaction between the objects in the game universe makes it extremely difficult to do efficiently any other way. The engine as a whole, however, uses more threads, with things like rendering, physics, pathing calculations, file access, and so on all using other cores to some degree or another.

The idea that the CPU-intensive nature of the game is something that can, or should, be "fixed" is completely anathema to the game's design. The whole point is that it performs the best simulation it can using the available, usable CPU resources. Any improvements to the simulation in future games would likely increase that utilisation, not decrease it.

[wrmiller]

So I'm reading where FPS is 'frames per second' and other posts where FPS means 'first person shooter'? Or am I suddenly incapable of reading English correctly?

Both are in common usage. Personally, I'd generally write "FPS" to mean first person shooter, and "fps" for frames per second.

So why is the game (apparently) so CPU intensive? Is the game engine distributed across multiple cores or single core only? (I designed multi-tasking embedded OSes for decades, so just technically curious).

Is the CPU intensive nature of this game fixable within the current code design? Or do we have to wait for a new game?

It's CPU intensive because, unlike most games, it's simulating the entire game universe. This is a fundamental feature of the entire game series, what makes it different, and what most people who have been playing the X series for many years play it for. As has been explained on many occasions, the core simulation uses a single thread, largely because the very high level of interaction between the objects in the game universe makes it extremely difficult to do efficiently any other way. The engine as a whole, however, uses more threads, with things like rendering, physics, pathing calculations, file access, and so on all using other cores to some degree or another.

The idea that the CPU-intensive nature of the game is something that can, or should, be "fixed" is completely anathema to the game's design. The whole point is that it performs the best simulation it can using the available, usable CPU resources. Any improvements to the simulation in future games would likely increase that utilisation, not decrease it.

Thank you for replying. I am relatively new to the game, and have only recently started reading this forum, so forgive my ignorance and questions if possible. I'm learning.

Sounds like I need a cryo cooled, single core CPU running at about 12 GHz. Know where I can find one?

[-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-]

The point is that this game was born due to the complaints of another great game called X Rebirth and the development of this one was born many years ago.
Probably at the time it was not to be designed like this, on this I give you reason, but it is very likely that the cause of these errors, coincidentally, was always and only caused by the complaints of the communities.

I find it is good listening for community.
What bothers me here is acceptance criteria for product quality.
It is obvious at design time that some feature requests are just not achievable or will bring compromises in solutions; that is, trade-offs, not exactly what requested, let's say, with some flaws/drawbacks.
Not sure if in such cases some discussions are need with the community who asked features before implementing them.
Like "guys, you want full production running on your PC? build giant station? are you ready to buy top PCs to run this stuff and still run this at 1fps?".
Not sure how many will be happy with this. Well, at least now not everybody is.

Let's have a look at another thing is analogy of developing game and writing books or making films.
Each type of producers knows how to do it. Because each of them is a professional, with required knowledge and experience.
Can you imagine giving advices to a writer how he must write a book?..

From this point of view the game looks like a grand experiment in a manner "ok, let's do it and will see how it will go".

Even Star Citizen has taken the path of the "impossible product". And despite $ 500 million and 300 employees working on it, it's still nowhere near complete. Why this?
Because certain products, with such high details, require 20, 30 years of development by megagalactic teams that by comparison the design of the Space Webb Telescope is a breeze.

Now, imagine that X4 is exactly like SC, but instead of conceiving it in the form of "almost reality" it was conceived in the form of "billions of calculations per second". Yet the EG boys wanted to dive headfirst into this impossible undertaking.
What is not understood is this, the complexity of developing products like this, which is not like the others, cannot be developed like the others nor can it be compared to others.

If we want the X of our dreams "unfortunately" we have to be patient, because making all those things work together takes time, a LOT of time to be realized properly. And the fact that we are a team of 20, when in reality we would need at least 100, certainly does not help. And we don't say "it could have been done like this" because X MUST be as it is now, with its complexity, with its hidden options, with its few guides, because otherwise it would NOT be X.

The current level reached in this game, four years combined with the previous ones of development, are nothing compared to what would be necessary to make it masterfully.
Indeed, the current state of the game demonstrates how these 20 guys are programming monsters with incredible development experiences.
Then the fact that there are any of them that develop "reverse logic", with an excel-style UI vision, or with an "accounting software" vision, is another matter.
Many programmers have their own logic, which is given by the individual experience of the jobs they have done in their life as a programmer. Perhaps some of them are linked to "old styles of development", which may lead to less innovative designs.
But personally I prefer a proprietary and unique development even if it takes longer and looks a little "ugly", rather than a "copy and paste" development as happens now in 99% of the games released.

And let's always remember that you don't get up in the morning, snap your fingers, and fix a thousand problems in one go. Everything takes time, especially when you develop a video game like X.

Fewer complaints, more patience.

This is my useless opinion as a user who has been playing video games for 30 years and who has seen video games born, grow and unfortunately "die".

[af_2017]

Sounds like I need a cryo cooled, single core CPU running at about 12 GHz. Know where I can find one?

not sure. When you stuck at 5 fps on modern CPU, this one will produce about 12 fps...
Nonetheless, I like the answer where to find this one: you can save, work 3 jobs but will never find it