Early game

[SlipBall]

I was just fooling around with an early vershion of the game. This graph is of a simple take off/land mission...ugly huh





and this graph is of the game now, two missions Black death track on the left...and the same simple take off land mission on the right.

[zapatista]

so if i read this comparison right between the old CoD gfx engine and the current one, with your nice new 3gb gfx card the more recent CoD version is only using about 1.5 gb of the 3 GB vram available ? (good news for us on lower gfx cards, indicating smaller ram cards might be ok). but the GPU unit is now continuously running at maximum clock speed (motivating us with lower level gpu's to get a faster/better beast) . this could be interpreted as, the coding of the game engine is now more efficient in using all available in GPU grunt (and will run better if it can), but it still doesnt use all VRAM available to preload textures ( leading to potential performance "problem" with a game that has such high amount of detail and scenery maps to display ?)

do you have any issues with the "visibility bubble" and ground object popup issue with your new setup ? if there is still over 1 gb available on your gfx card in unused ram, future coding improvements have potentially a significant amount of room to reduce that visibility bubble problem. might be hard for ATAG coder to deal with that part, since their limited access might not be sufficient to access the code that deeply

[Stublerone]

Interesting bench.

@ zapatista: it is still popping up due to lods. If lods are popping earlier you will again have a rising vram usage in general. So I think, that the engine was tweaked for lower vram. The popups are in its nature and it would use more than 3 gb vram to solve that problem down to a sufficient or not seeable level.

Hickups could still rise up, as the vram frequently get new data. So hickups could be caused by every storage part: hdd too slow, bad ram usage profile and vram interface insufficient. All problems are still there and the vram issue is noticable on nvidia cards, as they still use a bad vram interface. And especially in that game, this is a con! In most other games you do not need a bigger interface, except you have modded texture sets. There u can see again, that an engine like clod or cry engine could use huge amount of vram, but also needs the power of the interface. That is, why ati cards are quite good performing in cry engine (especially with texture mods), streaming engines (arma, clod) and in higher resolutions.

So I think, that they tweaked the engine to reach better playability with all cards, getting lower vram usage. And that is done with some essential rewritings of the engine (i have no doubt, that they tried to rewrite some parts), but also lowering lod, effects, visuals, etc...

[SlipBall]

Originally Posted by zapatista

so if i read this comparison right between the old CoD gfx engine and the current one, with your nice new 3gb gfx card the more recent CoD version is only using about 1.5 gb of the 3 GB vram available ? (good news for us on lower gfx cards, indicating smaller ram cards might be ok). but the GPU unit is now continuously running at maximum clock speed (motivating us with lower level gpu's to get a faster/better beast) . this could be interpreted as, the coding of the game engine is now more efficient in using all available in GPU grunt (and will run better if it can), but it still doesnt use all VRAM available to preload textures ( leading to potential performance "problem" with a game that has such high amount of detail and scenery maps to display ?)
do you have any issues with the "visibility bubble" and ground object popup issue with your new setup ? if there is still over 1 gb available on your gfx card in unused ram, future coding improvements have potentially a significant amount of room to reduce that visibility bubble problem. might be hard for ATAG coder to deal with that part, since their limited access might not be sufficient to access the code that deeply

Trees and buildings do pop up as I get closer to them. I'm not sure what the "visibility bubble" is, but I hear it mentioned now and then, I may have it too.

Originally Posted by Stublerone

Interesting bench.

@ zapatista: it is still popping up due to lods. If lods are popping earlier you will again have a rising vram usage in general. So I think, that the engine was tweaked for lower vram. The popups are in its nature and it would use more than 3 gb vram to solve that problem down to a sufficient or not seeable level.

Hickups could still rise up, as the vram frequently get new data. So hickups could be caused by every storage part: hdd too slow, bad ram usage profile and vram interface insufficient. All problems are still there and the vram issue is noticable on nvidia cards, as they still use a bad vram interface. And especially in that game, this is a con! In most other games you do not need a bigger interface, except you have modded texture sets. There u can see again, that an engine like clod or cry engine could use huge amount of vram, but also needs the power of the interface. That is, why ati cards are quite good performing in cry engine (especially with texture mods), streaming engines (arma, clod) and in higher resolutions.

So I think, that they tweaked the engine to reach better playability with all cards, getting lower vram usage. And that is done with some essential rewritings of the engine (i have no doubt, that they tried to rewrite some parts), but also lowering lod, effects, visuals, etc...

The memory used are quite similar in each example here. I wish that I had a AMD of similar specs with monitor, just to run an comparison

bubble?

[SlipBall]

Originally Posted by zapatista

so if i read this comparison right between the old CoD gfx engine and the current one, with your nice new 3gb gfx card the more recent CoD version is only using about 1.5 gb of the 3 GB vram available ? (good news for us on lower gfx cards, indicating smaller ram cards might be ok). but the GPU unit is now continuously running at maximum clock speed (motivating us with lower level gpu's to get a faster/better beast) . this could be interpreted as, the coding of the game engine is now more efficient in using all available in GPU grunt (and will run better if it can), but it still doesnt use all VRAM available to preload textures ( leading to potential performance "problem" with a game that has such high amount of detail and scenery maps to display ?)

do you have any issues with the "visibility bubble" and ground object popup issue with your new setup ? if there is still over 1 gb available on your gfx card in unused ram, future coding improvements have potentially a significant amount of room to reduce that visibility bubble problem. might be hard for ATAG coder to deal with that part, since their limited access might not be sufficient to access the code that deeply

Down low, I see what you mean by the bubble, bad deal

[zapatista]

this is the visibility "bubble" i was talking about,

some experience it less then others. it is basically different amount of detail in zones/sectors further away from the viewer. as you fly around, this "bubble" moves with you, and is for ex what makes it hard for high altitude bombers to find their targets (the target building/airfields are not modeled in sufficient detail to be visible from that far distance, making their identification/locating difficult)



it is probably the biggest detractor from the game currently, but some experience it less then others

[SlipBall]

but some experience it less then others"


I wonder if being red/green color blind is a factor...now I understand and can see how thats a huge problem with the game