Is FB more optimized than the others?

[Battlefront.com]

I think it's expectations... I'm pretty sure I'm seeing the "correct" fps for my settings/hardware it's just I might have higher expectations for performance.

No doubt about it... you definitely have higher expectations.  I saw that pretty clearly several pages ago because you argue like someone who has higher expectations.  I've debated issues like this for almost 2 decades and it's pretty easy for me to spot where people sit on the spectrum of whatever the topic is.

 

I know it's mostly apples to oranges... but when I can run AAA games with everything max with graphics that "wow" even this old jaded gamer I come back to CMx2 and it's a bit jarring. I understand the reasons but that doesn't make the game experience any less real. It just seems with graphics at the CMx2 level a higher end system shouldn't even break a sweat, even on larger maps or ones with lot's of buildings but it does, comes to a crawl often.

Putting aside the possibility that you've somehow never managed to have a system that can run the game as smoothly as others, you have chosen what to be jaded about.  Here's a question for you... if you feel so down in the dumps when you play CM after a AAA game, why do you bother playing CM?  I am sure I know the answer, so I'll help you out... because CM offers you gameplay opportunities that those AAA games do not.  So here's another question for you... when you play a AAA game after CM, do you feel the gameplay to be uninteresting and rather empty compared to CM?  I doubt it.  Instead you find the two gameplay experiences different.  What you seem to fail to grasp is if we tried to make CM graphically as good as a AAA game at a minimum you would lose whatever gameplay value you currently enjoy with CMx2.  Because there is no way, no how, at all that Combat Mission can be as graphically amazing as a AAA title without the same gameplay as those same AAA titles.  Likewise, there is no AAA game out there that could ever be like CM.  Which is why neither one of us is going to try to be what the other is.

I'm still geting CMFB of course, and probably whatever else comes out I am just hoping for some legit performance improvements along the way. And... 2 more pet peeves, the shadows are still pretty rough/jagged and "flickery", and I still not a fan of the "floating world" game space... couldn't we have a fake level horizon that looks connected? I think that would up the "immersion" factor a bit, I remember CMx1 had this.

I don't like the "floating world" aspect of CMx2 either, but at the time we made the engine there was no choice except to neuter the playable space in major ways to free up polies and processor power to simulate unplayable space.  Now?  It could probably be done with major work to the game engine.  And that gets us right back to where we always land... what would you guys be willing to sacrifice to make that happen?  1 year with no new games and no new features other than that?  If it came to a vote and voted for that you would be out voted.

As for shadows, that's a great example of OpenGL not getting the sort of support it should by video card makers.  We gave up on trying to work around the bugs and bad behavior a while ago because the card companies showed little interest in making it work as advertised.  Which means on some systems shadows are beautiful and as expected, on others they have one or more problems in some or all situations.

At the end of the day, we are at the mercy of the video card companies as much as you, the customer, are.

Steve

[MikeyD]

There's nothing 'wrong' with a game just because you're able to break it if you try hard enough. I could break this chair I'm sitting on no problem if I wanted to, that doesn't mean the chair is 'fundamentally flawed'. When you go to a car dealership for a test drive you wouldn't steer the car into oncoming traffic, would you? So why would you deliberately steer a 3-D high CPU load wargame into oncoming traffic just to get a crash?. You got low frame rate? Turn off trees blowing in in the wind under options and turn off antialiasing. And avoid overly-huge maps, you're probably waging your battle in just one corner of it anyway. There. Problem solved. Its really not all that difficult to get a decent frame rate.

[womble]

Trees. Trees are an absolute killer of framerate, for my (ancient, wheezing, decrepit and in need of update) rig, and always have been. It's the foliage. Turn the trees off, and everything's peachy (once it actually loads) even on pretty large urban maps. I'm not suggesting "turn off the trees" as a solution for low framerates, but mention it as an illustration that one element that can vary hugely between maps can bias perceptions: if you tend to prefer open maps with few trees, your casual perception of your experience might vary from that of someone who likes playing on densely forested maps on the very same hardware. 

[Kieme(ITA)]

Trees. Trees are an absolute killer of framerate, for my (ancient, wheezing, decrepit and in need of update) rig, and always have been. It's the foliage. Turn the trees off, and everything's peachy (once it actually loads) even on pretty large urban maps. I'm not suggesting "turn off the trees" as a solution for low framerates, but mention it as an illustration that one element that can vary hugely between maps can bias perceptions: if you tend to prefer open maps with few trees, your casual perception of your experience might vary from that of someone who likes playing on densely forested maps on the very same hardware. 

 

I belive that scenario makers might (and should) help on this matter. As you all know there are three option of thickness when it comes to making a game square of trees... a single tree, a small Group or a large Group... I have seen some maps where a thick forest is made of a large number of squares entirely filled with the thickest possible option for tree brush. While I understand that in some cases a scenario maker would want a thick forest in a given place, at the same time I have recognized that the same effect can be achieved by deleting a few squares Worth of trees, reduce the thickness of some Others, and there you get a very similar thick forest but with half the number of effective trees you'd get with the simple use of a single maximum thickness brush.

There are other "tricks" I have exprimented that could improve framerate when it comes down to scenario making, for example:

-select only some building textures (don't use all 8 -or more- of them within the single map)

-reduce the number of flavour objects (both in types and quantity, concentrate them where they will be most probably seen by players)

-reduce the number of extreme slopes on the terrain

 

Edited January 11, 2016 by Kieme(ITA)

[AstroCat]

@AstroCat I think to make it fit to your rant you are making things up I did not say.

But a picture says more than thousand words.

I searched for the biggest savegames on my HD. I wont say from which the screenshots are to prevent spoilers, but they are from CMRT (game engine 3). That's the position, where I achieved the absolutely lowest framerate according to FRAPS on that map. I could not get into the single digits and usually the game runs around 30 fps.

 

Movie lighting with customized shaders enabled:

 

As I said: Big map. Several battalions. Best settings. Even very long shadows. Full HD resolution.

Sorry, but I am very satisfied that this great game/sim runs so well and can look so good on an already very affordable mid-class gaming notebook.

I see the 22fps. You want to send me the save game file I can try it here? I also notice a lot of open space on that map, I've found the less objects and farther away from them you are the better the fps which makes obvious sense, trees are pretty bad in this regard. Also the reason you get the same or similar performance compared to someone with a higher end system is part of the actual problem. Someone with a 980 GTX I believe should see considerably better performance than you are showing but in my experience they are not.

Edited January 11, 2016 by AstroCat

[AstroCat]

No doubt about it... you definitely have higher expectations.  I saw that pretty clearly several pages ago because you argue like someone who has higher expectations.  I've debated issues like this for almost 2 decades and it's pretty easy for me to spot where people sit on the spectrum of whatever the topic is.

 

Putting aside the possibility that you've somehow never managed to have a system that can run the game as smoothly as others, you have chosen what to be jaded about.  Here's a question for you... if you feel so down in the dumps when you play CM after a AAA game, why do you bother playing CM?  I am sure I know the answer, so I'll help you out... because CM offers you gameplay opportunities that those AAA games do not.  So here's another question for you... when you play a AAA game after CM, do you feel the gameplay to be uninteresting and rather empty compared to CM?  I doubt it.  Instead you find the two gameplay experiences different.  What you seem to fail to grasp is if we tried to make CM graphically as good as a AAA game at a minimum you would lose whatever gameplay value you currently enjoy with CMx2.  Because there is no way, no how, at all that Combat Mission can be as graphically amazing as a AAA title without the same gameplay as those same AAA titles.  Likewise, there is no AAA game out there that could ever be like CM.  Which is why neither one of us is going to try to be what the other is.

I don't like the "floating world" aspect of CMx2 either, but at the time we made the engine there was no choice except to neuter the playable space in major ways to free up polies and processor power to simulate unplayable space.  Now?  It could probably be done with major work to the game engine.  And that gets us right back to where we always land... what would you guys be willing to sacrifice to make that happen?  1 year with no new games and no new features other than that?  If it came to a vote and voted for that you would be out voted.

As for shadows, that's a great example of OpenGL not getting the sort of support it should by video card makers.  We gave up on trying to work around the bugs and bad behavior a while ago because the card companies showed little interest in making it work as advertised.  Which means on some systems shadows are beautiful and as expected, on others they have one or more problems in some or all situations.

At the end of the day, we are at the mercy of the video card companies as much as you, the customer, are.

Steve

I know why I like the CM  series, it's for all the reasons that make sense (long list) and I don't need/expect it to look like War Thunder, Witcher 3, Battlefield 4, etc... But I am still not convinced there is not something "lacking" within the game where it is not taking full or considerable advantage of the hardware people have. Whether that is the drivers, OpenGL version, engine coding, combo of all of them, etc. For example how switching from a mid range to high end graphics card essential makes no change in fps on the same system. I still believe it is mostly on the game side, not the user side. 

At this point I've pretty much explained my experience with the game's performance and I've found some collaboration with other users  so I feel I am not alone in that experience. There is not much more I can say other than I will continue to play and support the games and hope for better performance and technical graphic fidelity as the new releases and patches come out. 

[RockinHarry]

 

I belive that scenario makers might (and should) help on this matter. As you all know there are three option of thickness when it comes to making a game square of trees... a single tree, a small Group or a large Group... I have seen some maps where a thick forest is made of a large number of squares entirely filled with the thickest possible option for tree brush. While I understand that in some cases a scenario maker would want a thick forest in a given place, at the same time I have recognized that the same effect can be achieved by deleting a few squares Worth of trees, reduce the thickness of some Others, and there you get a very similar thick forest but with half the number of effective trees you'd get with the simple use of a single maximum thickness brush.

There are other "tricks" I have exprimented that could improve framerate when it comes down to scenario making, for example:

-select only some building textures (don't use all 8 -or more- of them within the single map)

-reduce the number of flavour objects (both in types and quantity, concentrate them where they will be most probably seen by players)

-reduce the number of extreme slopes on the terrain

 

Absolutely agree with you. Similar to forests it ain´t necessary to have every AS in a wheat field to be filled with full wheat (crop) doodads. A good number of ploughed interspersed in irregular patterns can also save on memory load for large fields (or many of them) I think. Beside that it also looks more realistic and natural. There´s lots more to consider for map optimizations, but that is something for a different thread and rather OT here.

[Battlefront.com]

I know why I like the CM  series, it's for all the reasons that make sense (long list) and I don't need/expect it to look like War Thunder, Witcher 3, Battlefield 4, etc... But I am still not convinced there is not something "lacking" within the game where it is not taking full or considerable advantage of the hardware people have. Whether that is the drivers, OpenGL version, engine coding, combo of all of them, etc. For example how switching from a mid range to high end graphics card essential makes no change in fps on the same system. I still believe it is mostly on the game side, not the user side. 

For sure it is mostly on the game side.  I've been saying that since I entered this thread many pages ago.  The games you are comparing us to have teams of programmers who spend all their time eeking out every last frame they can from a wide range of very specific hardware options.  If they those games didn't run significantly better than CM then someone has wasted a few million Dollars and should promptly close their doors due to incompetency. 

Which means this constantly comes back around to the same point... resources.  The AAA games have them in abundance, we do not.  That means we have to be very careful about what we do and do not do.

At this point I've pretty much explained my experience with the game's performance and I've found some collaboration with other users  so I feel I am not alone in that experience.

And that's been acknowledged by me and others since the very first time you made that point, so there's never been a disagreement.  Where we've had a disagreement is about how universal your observations are and how important getting over that 30fps hump is to the majority of CM customers WHEN faced with the sacrifices that will be necessary to radically improve CM's performance.

There is not much more I can say other than I will continue to play and support the games and hope for better performance and technical graphic fidelity as the new releases and patches come out. 

Because I haven't said it directly, I'll say it now... thank you.  You have made your position known in a way that is both strong and respectful, not to mention supportive.  Far, far, far, FAR too often this is now how discussions like this go.  Which is stupid because I listen very carefully to what guys like you have to say and make notes (I have, I'm not kidding).  The ones that tell us that our mothers smell like elderberries are a waste of my time and are largely ignored.

We will continue to improve CM's performance over time.  We've shown that it is possible to do this and keep the game portion moving forward as well.  However, we can not move either the performance of the game content forward as fast as anybody, including us, wants.  That's just the reality of having a very expensive game system (our peers are 2D and usually hex based) for a rather small audience relative to costs.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Trees are definitely one of the biggest problems for the framerate.  It's been the bane of outdoor environments since the beginning of 3D gaming.  The AAA games use extremely expensive solutions to these problems.  We've looked into them in the past and ruled them out due to cost.  However, it's possible the equation might change at some point and we can afford to switch our trees over to one of those systems.  If we can, for sure framerates would get a big boost.

A few years ago we were all fired up to license/implement one of the more popular solutions.  Then we saw what they charged and how much work it was to implement   The primary reason is the company has fixed prices that were geared towards the AAA games.  The price to one of those 8 digit Dollar budget games would be a rounding error to a rounding error, but for us it was a significant percentage of sales.  Obviously we stopped pursuing that option.

Steve

Edited January 11, 2016 by Battlefront.com

[Vencini]

Just bringing this forward again as I would like to see this guide also. Thanks.

 

This one ?

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/118849-amd-gpu-try-this/

Regards

[LukeFF]

A few years ago we were all fired up to license/implement one of the more popular solutions.  Then we saw what they charged and how much work it was to implement   The primary reason is the company has fixed prices that were geared towards the AAA games.  The price to one of those 8 digit Dollar budget games would be a rounding error to a rounding error, but for us it was a significant percentage of sales.  Obviously we stopped pursuing that option.

Speedtree?

[CarlWAW]

@AstroCat

you have a PM.

[BarbaricCo]

However, it's possible the equation might change at some point and we can afford to switch our trees over to one of those systems.  If we can, for sure framerates would get a big boost.

Don't touch those trees!!!  

They are beautiful. Even if not perfect or optimized, they (and foliage) add lot to the unique look and feel of CM. In all other games they look similar, probably because everyone is using same systems.

And trees are not that large performance killer.

Again, on Mac real culprit is looking at group of vehicles (Panzers especially). Can you open up the hood and look what's so scary in those panzers.

And for CM sake spend few more hours tweaking brightness, saturation, contrast  

[Vanir Ausf B]

And trees are not that large performance killer.

I have a fairly low-end system and I agree. Trees have some effect but shadows and 3D model detail level are much more important on my system. I always cringe a little when I see calls for trees to be paired down since those affects are more than cosmetic.

[Doug Williams]

Meh, works fine for me, with everything set to "Best" quality, tree detail high and shaders on. This is with a desktop I built two or three years ago, using components that were not top of the line at the time.

[Thewood1]

My own experience and reading experiences here leads me to believe that Its not that CM2 isn't optimized, but that its not optimized to take advantage of PC hardware developed over the last 2-3 years...maybe longer.  I also think performance expectations have changed since 2010.

[Battlefront.com]

My own experience and reading experiences here leads me to believe that Its not that CM2 isn't optimized, but that its not optimized to take advantage of PC hardware developed over the last 2-3 years...maybe longer.  I also think performance expectations have changed since 2010.

That is all true.  We do not have the resources to keep recoding the game's core functions every few years to keep up with technology improvements which require specific support (i.e. not features that are automatically sped up as is).  Likewise, customer expectations are often based on the products which can afford to keep up with the latest technologies or.  Remember it took almost 4 years for us to go from the last CMx1 game to the first CMx2 game.  We can't afford a cycle of 4 years of no new revenue for every 2 years of game development.  Our costs are too high compared to the audience size.  If we had the same audience size and a 2D game, well now... we'd be talking a whole 'nother thing completely.  Or not, because I might be retired already

That said, it is also true that CMx2 has never been, nor will it ever be, as fine tuned to specific hardware combos as a AAA product.  We simply do not have the resources to custom coding game variables/functions specifically so WackyKoolKard FU3000XXX running under Win8 64bit runs shadows as fast as possible.  If the card has a lame driver or some bizarre implementation of a common OpenGL call then those people are going to be out of luck to the extent there's a performance hit from the card company not following best practices for that API feature.  A big company would definitely have someone coding things special provided the card had a significant enough footprint.  *OR* they would get the card company to update it's drivers to work better with their game.  We have no such clout.

Steve

[c3k]

I'll know BFC has made it into the big-leagues when Nvidia releases a new driver the week before a CM game publicly launches...and then a patched video driver the week after.

[LukeFF]

I've fiddled a bit with nVidia Inspector over the last couple of days, and it seems like capping the frame rates to 60 has had a positive effect on my system's performance. That said, on maps with a large number of buildings, performance is still not that great (such as the CMBS American campaign mission that takes place inside a large factory complex). That, for me, has always been puzzling - why buildings with a relatively basic polygon count have such a negative effect on system performance.

[Doug Williams]

Steve, thanks. Keep on keeping on with what BFC is doing. We appreciate it.

[Macisle]

...That said, on maps with a large number of buildings, performance is still not that great (such as the CMBS American campaign mission that takes place inside a large factory complex). That, for me, has always been puzzling - why buildings with a relatively basic polygon count have such a negative effect on system performance.

I was going to mention this, but haven't had time to go back and test. A few months ago, I took a crack at taking a stock QB map and making it into more of a realistic city map. By "realistic" I mean more dense, with taller buildings. So, I started pumping up the buildings to level 5 and there was a noticeable increase in lag seemingly per building. I think I gave up at 6 buildings total because I would have had to drop my settings too low to facilitate the map I had in my head.

So, if my recollection is correct, I'd say that having modular buildings of 5+ levels in height has perhaps the largest impact on frame rate that I have seen and very much outweighs the impact of having a large number of lower buildings. The impact of building height is certainly much more than that of trees -- which aren't really that bad on my system. I guess it makes sense in that each level adds LOS work for the CPU, and that work is likely more complex than with trees themselves.

I know that scenario in CMBS and it's the only CMx2 scenario where I had to drop my settings WAY down.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Macisle

[LukeFF]

The impact of building height is certainly much more than that of trees -- which aren't really that bad on my system. I guess it makes sense in that each level adds LOS work for the CPU, and that work is likely more complex than with trees themselves.

I know that scenario in CMBS and it's the only CMx2 scenario where I had to drop my settings WAY down.

That's been my general experience as well. I can play scenarios like CW The Mace (which has acres upon acres of trees) with zero slowdown, but scenarios with even moderate building density drag my system's performance way down. If I had to pinpoint one area for code optimization, I would start by looking at the buildings.

[Battlefront.com]

Speedtree?

Yup, that was the leading contender.  We could have hired a programmer for most of a year for the amount that would have cost us (including code integration and artwork).  Think of how much we do in a year and you'll see why we are careful with how we prioritize

Foliage is one of those things which seems to be more of a hit to some than others.  But for sure everybody's FPS would go up if we used something like SpeedTree.  Those of you who play foliage heavy scenarios at reasonable framerates would free up speed for other things.  Like...

That's been my general experience as well. I can play scenarios like CW The Mace (which has acres upon acres of trees) with zero slowdown, but scenarios with even moderate building density drag my system's performance way down. If I had to pinpoint one area for code optimization, I would start by looking at the buildings.

Buildings are nasty things for the virtual environment.  They contain more polygons than you think because of the windows, doors, floors, roofs, and need to make them appear 3D (i.e. there are interior walls too).  For sure there's all kinds of tricks with these things in terms of what is hitting the CPU/GPU at one time, but there's still more going on there than you might think.  I also suspect, though am not sure, that the visual blocking nature of tall buildings has an impact on redrawing speeds.

However, buildings are nasty for another reason... LOS.  Think of how different and more complicated a 5 story building with a couple dozen windows is compared to a rock or a bunch of trees in terms of LOS.  Then think of the poor CPU and RAM having to deal with that difference.

I've made a note of the building factor, though it's probably like trees in that some people are fine and others are hammered by them.

Steve

[Macisle]

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was that the buildings I pumped up to 5 levels were all quite close together in the same city block.

My guess is that you could have a peppering of rather tall buildings spread out around the map with much less of a frame hit than trying to have city block type groups of level 5+ buildings. That would totally jive with what Steve just said (and what I alluded to earlier) about LOS complexity. Also, that CMBS scenario has the tall buildings fairly close together.

[Kieme(ITA)]

Again, map makers can give a hand. If the buildings indeed have a strong impact on the framerates, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make urban maps smaller than rural ones, if not just for that also because buildings increase the effective size of the map expanding it vertically.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Kieme(ITA)