FPS impact of Grass quality and Shadows

[chiliwili69]

I have been always wondering how the settings affects the CPU and/or GPU load. My general thinking is that all of them affects mostly the CPU load, which normally is fully load.

I have done a series of test of the default benchmark with 3.006 version (5 in total) and then 3 runs with just GRAS QUALITY at ULTRA (only touching grass from defaults) and also 3 runs with just SHADOWS at ULTRA (only touching shadows from deafult).

In all of them I was also running MSI Afterburner to trend the GPU load.

The tests are:

 

3.006 version Benchmark settings
2018-09-29 07:18:44 - Il-2
Frames: 6711 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 55.925 - Min: 43 - Max: 91
Frames: 6663 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 55.525 - Min: 43 - Max: 91
Frames: 6549 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 54.575 - Min: 43 - Max: 91
Frames: 6536 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 54.467 - Min: 42 - Max: 91
Frames: 6314 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 52.617 - Min: 42 - Max: 83 Discarded
Frames avg: 6615
Avg fps: 55.123

 

Benchmark settings with Grass Quality Ultra
Frames: 6677 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 55.642 - Min: 43 - Max: 89 Discarded
Frames: 6060 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 50.500 - Min: 42 - Max: 88
Frames: 6199 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 51.658 - Min: 42 - Max: 86
Frams avg: 6129
Avg fps: 51.079

 

Benchmark settings with Shadows Ultra
Frames: 5621 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 46.842 - Min: 42 - Max: 84
Frames: 5611 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 46.758 - Min: 42 - Max: 82
Frames: 5632 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 46.933 - Min: 42 - Max: 84
Frames avg: 5621
Avg fps: 46.844

 

So the fps impact is:

GRASS QUALITY: from Medium to Ultra is 4 fps less. At ground level the influence could be bigger, about 10 fps less.

SHADOWS: from Medium to Ultra is about 8 fps less. EDIT: Well the real difference is when the 45 or 90 limits are not hit, so it is about 20-30 fps less

 

Regarding the GPU LOAD:

GRASS QUALITY: it seems that the GPU load is almost the same

SHADOWS: it seems that GPU load is a bit higher in average (about 5% more) but with less peaks (about 15% less in peaks!!??).

 

 

Edited March 22, 2019 by chiliwili69

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

Thanks. Nice findings

[peregrine7]

Have you tried turning grass off via startup.cfg? Grass distance = 0. 

I found it really helped performance when I was taxiing around and taking off as I was often sub 45 fps in those situations.

[JonRedcorn]

Good work. With the latest patch I have further been disheartened with VR performance as all can see with my recent posts. It's not worth trying to engage in competitive online combat at such a great disadvantage. Even for trying to have fun the disparity is far too large. Not only can I not see as well but I cant even maintain a playable framerate on a top of the line rig. The effects such as smoke and anything that produces particles is causing these incredible slowdowns, I get 90 fps flying to the action but once debris starts flying and smoke starts pouring from engines the framerate halves. It's just not playable now.

 

Also want to thank you for your dedicated work in logging VR performance on this sim. It's much appreciated as I know how much of a pain in the butt running all these tests and logging these results can be.

Edited September 29, 2018 by 15th_JonRedcorn

[Alonzo]

Does anyone know if there's a particular developer who handles VR for IL-2, or a particular way for us (the community) to raise concerns or give feedback in a structured way? I'm sure it would be a lot of work for them to read all the forum posts, but it sure would be nice to get the sense that someone at least is hearing the major concerns.

 

For me right now I guess the concerns are that performance went *down* in 3.006 even though the patch notes suggested it would improve, and that the forthcoming Oculus ASW 2.0 is going to be a life saver for running IL-2 in VR, but the game really needs to supply a depth buffer in its VR rendering for ASW 2.0 to work best.

 

(It would be amazing if ASW 2.0 basically 'fixed' the performance problems with IL-2. The main thread is so hungry that even on my 5.0ghz 8086k the CPU frame time is edging upwards of 10ms and there's no overhead left for 90fps rendering at that point. ASW 2.0 would allow 45fps and therefore almost twice the CPU frame time, which would help IL-2's engine immensely).

[JonRedcorn]

27 minutes ago, Alonzo said:

Does anyone know if there's a particular developer who handles VR for IL-2, or a particular way for us (the community) to raise concerns or give feedback in a structured way? I'm sure it would be a lot of work for them to read all the forum posts, but it sure would be nice to get the sense that someone at least is hearing the major concerns.

 

For me right now I guess the concerns are that performance went *down* in 3.006 even though the patch notes suggested it would improve, and that the forthcoming Oculus ASW 2.0 is going to be a life saver for running IL-2 in VR, but the game really needs to supply a depth buffer in its VR rendering for ASW 2.0 to work best.

 

(It would be amazing if ASW 2.0 basically 'fixed' the performance problems with IL-2. The main thread is so hungry that even on my 5.0ghz 8086k the CPU frame time is edging upwards of 10ms and there's no overhead left for 90fps rendering at that point. ASW 2.0 would allow 45fps and therefore almost twice the CPU frame time, which would help IL-2's engine immensely).

If they implement asw 2.0 we could basically max the game out and run it just fine, I'm really hoping they do. The prop artifacts are the biggest issue right now and I just won't run without the prop turned on, feels like you are flying a jet.

[A_radek]

Alonzo you could try contacting Jason regarding this. Though his latest responses to the Vr-crowds performance issues  have been sympathetic, I got the impression catering to a minority they already spent much time on probably is the exact opposite of their plans now. 

 

Chili with a rather potent rig experienced an almost 10% decrease in performance. Such a performance hit probably won’t go unnoticed among the 2d crowd either considering many seem to run this game on older hardware. 

[peregrine7]

5 hours ago, 15th_JonRedcorn said:

If they implement asw 2.0 we could basically max the game out and run it just fine, I'm really hoping they do. The prop artifacts are the biggest issue right now and I just won't run without the prop turned on, feels like you are flying a jet.

 

Oh, and consider me cheered up again. Yeah, ASW good bud

 

I'll take the removed prop any day of the week.

Edited September 29, 2018 by peregrine7

[dburne]

I always fly with ASW disabled. Gets rid of the prop sight anomaly, and the blurring of the planes as they fly past. I use a profile I set in Oculus Tray Tool to disable ASW on a per game basis.

 

I can not explain why , but I always have a smooth  experience doing this. I use a profile to turn it off for both IL-2 and DCS. Works nicely for me in both.

[Alonzo]

2 hours ago, SvAF/F16_radek said:

Alonzo you could try contacting Jason regarding this. Though his latest responses to the Vr-crowds performance issues  have been sympathetic, I got the impression catering to a minority they already spent much time on probably is the exact opposite of their plans now.

 

I absolutely understand their focus -- they're running a business, they need to focus on the things that keeps a healthy balance sheet. That might well be headline new features such as BoBP which brings in entirely new money rather than tweaks to keep a small community of VR users happy. That said, implementing a depth buffer such that ASW 2.0 can be effective might be only a small amount of work, and might have a big payoff for one of the headline features of the sim. Remember that VR users have thousand+ dollar rigs with $500 HMDs and god-knows-what spent on sticks, throttles and pedals (not that this is exclusive to VR enthusiasts!) and so ought to be pretty good purchasers of the IL-2 series. I know I went from zero to $200 spent in about two weeks when getting into the game...

[SCG_motoadve]

12 hours ago, 15th_JonRedcorn said:

Good work. With the latest patch I have further been disheartened with VR performance as all can see with my recent posts. It's not worth trying to engage in competitive online combat at such a great disadvantage. Even for trying to have fun the disparity is far too large. Not only can I not see as well but I cant even maintain a playable framerate on a top of the line rig. The effects such as smoke and anything that produces particles is causing these incredible slowdowns, I get 90 fps flying to the action but once debris starts flying and smoke starts pouring from engines the framerate halves. It's just not playable now.

 

Also want to thank you for your dedicated work in logging VR performance on this sim. It's much appreciated as I know how much of a pain in the butt running all these tests and logging these results can be.

 

Have not seen a decrease in performance, but not seen an improvement either (And performance increase was meant to be the case after this upgrade?)

Before VR I was playing IL2 BOS maybe once a week, so so PC, good joystick, track IR, so so pedals.(Been flight simming since late 1990s)

 

After VR, PC upgrade M.2 drive, 1080 ti, 8700K, case, memory everything, Joystick Virpyl with extensions, Crosswind pedals,Warthog throttle.

If possible I  fly it every day.

Became a real hobby, and will upgrade to a Pimax as soon as possible and a 2080 Ti.

 

Only problem, I wont use another sim or game if its not in VR.

[A_radek]

On 9/29/2018 at 10:43 PM, Alonzo said:

 

I absolutely understand their focus -- they're running a business, they need to focus on the things that keeps a healthy balance sheet. That might well be headline new features such as BoBP which brings in entirely new money rather than tweaks to keep a small community of VR users happy. That said, implementing a depth buffer such that ASW 2.0 can be effective might be only a small amount of work, and might have a big payoff for one of the headline features of the sim. Remember that VR users have thousand+ dollar rigs with $500 HMDs and god-knows-what spent on sticks, throttles and pedals (not that this is exclusive to VR enthusiasts!) and so ought to be pretty good purchasers of the IL-2 series. I know I went from zero to $200 spent in about two weeks when getting into the game...

I Agree. If asw 2.0 really is all that and a viable alternative to 90fps it would greatly help if not solve our performance issues. Well, ours as in the rift users only 

[dburne]

It certainly would be nice to be able to use Oculus ASW without worry of the artifacts.

[Alonzo]

On 9/29/2018 at 7:33 PM, II./JG77_motoadve said:

Only problem, I wont use another sim or game if its not in VR.

 

This is my main problem currently, I just don't play 'flat' games anymore. VR has really spoiled me.