CM Performance

[Blazing 88's]

I hate to do this because its a game that should not be named, but Mius Front was just released and its a good comparison to CM.

Mius Front tracks individual soldier spotting in and out of vehicles, models maps up to at least 8x8 km at a time with up to entire regiments on either side. Enhanced smoke effects, ballistics tracking, vehicles interact with terrain (bogeys go up and down, shell holes created by artillery during game are crossed in a realistic fashion) and can become immobilized. Armor penmetration data and shell ballistics are tracked and can be viewed after the game to see exactly what hit it and where it penetrated and says what system it damaged. While all of this is going on I get a constant 50-60FPS, if Combat Mission has a few dense forests it crashes to 5fps frequently unless I disable tree trunks while maneuvering the camera. Does this make Combat Mission a bad game? nope, will I still play Combat Mission even though this game performs better? absolutely, but we need to acknowledge that there is a problem instead of saying "CM isn't a normal game FPS and stutters are too be expected because its doing things no other games do" that excuse just doesn't work anymore with a game like this out now, infact that excuse shouldn't be said in today's industry. Lets acknowledge that the games performance is lacking due poor optimization brought about by an aging engine.

Let me head off the inevitable here too-

* No I don't think BFC is evil and isn't working on it because they don't care, they have one programmer I understand completely.

 

 

Wow and operational /tactical level game combined!  I only wish CM had that already... soon from what I have seen however (dogsofwarvu.com). 

What turns me away from your unmentionable game is it's RTS... not my thing.  Can't stand mouse click fests even with a pause button.  The other issue I have with this game, no replay feature.  Looks really well done however, the operation integration is the most intriguing.

[AstroCat]

This again... CM performance even on very high end systems is, putting it lightly not very good. I've been through this with them, and according to them it's not going to change in any meaningful way, unless they invest more money and they have their reasons they are not willing to do this (I think Speedtree would have been worth it, then again I think the game should be on Steam too, so I'm obviously of a very different mindset). In my opinion the graphics fidelty and performance for CMx2 is very subpar by any kind of "modern" standard. I still overall like the games (I've been around since CMBO) but the performance and graphics are often a real bummer for me these days and I find my self playing less and less. I don't think I'm "done" with CM, but I'm reaching my frustration tipping point, so it could be coming soon.

I think I will finally check out Mius Front at this point.

Edited March 6, 2016 by AstroCat

[Ghesthar]

I made an account just to contribute this.

Performance is the only thing keeping me from spending money on these games.

I don't care about graphics fidelity, these look perfectly reasonable. The gameplay is good (always 'quality of life' and UI improvements, but completely managable), the features are great.. but my computer is not ancient, and I get massive control lag, framerate drops to basically nothing, and more than enough other performance and performance-related quality of life issues that I am find these too frustrating to stick with.

I want to love these games, I want to buy them, but I can't convince myself to spend the money only because of performance. This is compounded by reading other comments in this thread which say that the developers don't think performance is an issue.

I don't want hundreds of frames per second, I don't want anything out of line, I just want a smooth(er) experience.

Just know that there is at least one person who would be converted to a sale if this was improved.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Ghesthar

[Childress]

I estimate that my new PC is at least 8x more powerful than the old one which now sits around as a backup. Performance has improved by 10% at best. Surprising to say the least. It is what it is. But if it's just a matter of optimization BF would have done that long ago. They may be locked into an aging architecture.

Since this post I've fired up the game a few times, including loading a large, rather graphically demanding scenario. In the interest of fairness I need to revise the 10% improvement to about 50%. The 3d quality enhancement isn't much in evidence but draw distance improved dramatically and the battles do load faster, say 45 seconds instead of two minutes. One assumes an SSD drive would cure that issue, an important factor for PBEM players who load the same battle 60-120 times.

 

Edited March 12, 2016 by Childress

[sandman2575]

I recently bought a G-Sync monitor -- and had in the back of my mind the idea that maybe, just maybe, this might improve things with CM's terribly laggy performance.

In short, for anyone contemplating a similar purchase for similar reasons -- it does not. In fact, I now disable G-Sync and use the Adaptive V-Sync (half refresh rate) setting when playing CM.

I have tweaked CM's settings and the settings in my Nvidia Control Panel a million different ways in a vain attempt to find the 'sweet spot' for good performance. I'm convinced it doesn't exist -- EXCEPT for one setting:

3D Model Quality.  Set this to "Fastest", and your game will suddenly perform as you might expect it should. No more dipping into 12-15 FPS for simply panning your camera. Changes to 3D Texture Quality seem to make no difference -- I keep it at "Best." But for whatever reason, 3D Model Quality dropped to lowest setting, Fastest, makes a very big difference. And I honestly cannot see any difference in visual quality between higher settings and Fastest. Vehicles and troops look the same.

It seems like 3D Model Quality at lowest setting is disabling some graphics feature that (A) is *intensely* demanding and (B) makes almost no visual difference in the game. I don't know what it's supposed to be doing, but whatever it is, it's not worth the literally 20-30 FPS cost of keeping it on.

The only other intensive graphics setting is Shadows -- turning shadows off generally yields a 5-15 FPS benefit. But I can't disable shadows -- it makes the game look considerably flatter and worse. So setting 3D Model Quality to Fastest has for me been the best solution.

For anyone interested -- here are my settings in Nvidia CP. I have a fairly robust PC:  i7 3770k oc'd to 4.6 GHz; Nvidia GTX 780 Ti; 16 GB RAM, Windows 7 x64. With these specs I can easily run other graphics intensive games at high or ultra settings. For example, by contrast, I can run Graviteam Tactics at a constant 100 FPS --

INGAME SETTINGS:

Vertical Synchronisation: On
Antialias/Multisample: On
High Priority Process: On

3D Model Quality:  Fastest
3D Texture Quality: Best

Nvidia CP:

Anisotropic filtering: 16x
Antialiasing - FXAA: Off
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On
Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting
Antialiasing - Setting: 16xCSAA
Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisample  8X
Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: 4
Power Management: Maximum performance
Texture Filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Allow
Texture Filtering - Quality: High quality
Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On
Threaded Optimization: Auto
Triple Buffering: Off
Texture Filtering Anisotropic Filter Optimization: Off
VERTICAL SYNC:  ADAPTIVE (HALF REFRESH RATE)

[Bulletpoint]

 

3D Model Quality.  Set this to "Fastest", and your game will suddenly perform as you might expect it should. No more dipping into 12-15 FPS for simply panning your camera. Changes to 3D Texture Quality seem to make no difference -- I keep it at "Best." But for whatever reason, 3D Model Quality dropped to lowest setting, Fastest, makes a very big difference. And I honestly cannot see any difference in visual quality between higher settings and Fastest. Vehicles and troops look the same.

 

Vehicles and troops only look the same when you drop the camera to ground level and very close. Troops and vehicles that are farther from the camera will be low detail, and also the "blur line" in fields and crops moves closer to the camera when using low detail settings. No such thing as a free lunch unfortunately..

Edited March 14, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[Bulletpoint]

Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: 4
 

Try setting this to 1. I find it helps decrease the "floatiness" when panning the camera. But still some remains when using 1.

[sandman2575]

Thanks for clarifying, Bulletpoint. Still, given how 'expensive' 3d Model Quality is in terms of FPS vs. the actual graphics benefit it confers (which to me seems negligible), I see no reason to crank this to anything above "Fastest." Even one click up "Faster" takes a noticeable hit on performance.  Setting to Fastest gives me around 45-60 FPS on average (with V-Sync Adaptive, Half refresh rate) -- on Faster this dips down to around 30-50.

The real question though is, why on earth should 3D Model Quality be so extremely taxing on your system? As I said, I have a reasonably powerful PC, and playing at 1920x1080, it handles other graphics-intensive games at highest settings with ease. In fact it's safe to say that in my library, CM is the worst-performing game that I regularly play. Shadow rendering in CM is also pretty abysmal, but 3D Model Quality takes the prize as the most unreasonably demanding graphics setting in the game.

Look, I'm not someone who needs all games to hit the magical 60 FPS or better mark. I'd be perfectly happy if CM could run completely consistently at around 35-40 FPS (this compared to Graviteam Tactics, where I get 100 FPS with ease). But if I set things like 3D Model Quality to "Balanced", CM routinely bogs down to the 15-20 FPS range, which is just unacceptable. The  lag is very noticeable and distracting.

 

[Bulletpoint]

 

The real question though is, why on earth should 3D Model Quality be so extremely taxing on your system? As I said, I have a reasonably powerful PC, and playing at 1920x1080, it handles other graphics-intensive games at highest settings with ease. In fact it's safe to say that in my library, CM is the worst-performing game that I regularly play. Shadow rendering in CM is also pretty abysmal, but 3D Model Quality takes the prize as the most unreasonably demanding graphics setting in the game.

Look, I'm not someone who needs all games to hit the magical 60 FPS or better mark. I'd be perfectly happy if CM could run completely consistently at around 35-40 FPS (this compared to Graviteam Tactics, where I get 100 FPS with ease). But if I set things like 3D Model Quality to "Balanced", CM routinely bogs down to the 15-20 FPS range, which is just unacceptable. The  lag is very noticeable and distracting.

 

Lots of people have asked the same question, including myself. You might try searching around for many other CM performance threads, but the bottom line basically seems to be that while lots of people are frustrated with it, nobody knows for sure why it's running so slowly. There's a group on the forum who believes it's because CM does a lot of calculation work behind the scenes, others argue that the game engine is poorly optimised.

[Thewood1]

I am a little skeptical that its all related to the calculations on the fly.  For one, it seems to make no difference in realtime or wego play.  Most of the calcs should have already done for a replay, but I see no difference in fps.  For the second, in wego, I run tests where I have not moved a single unit just to see what happens.  No perceptible impact on FPS.  

I am sure the calcs plays some role, but I am not sure how significant it is  

[Ghesthar]

I would be surprised if this was calculation, given the performance gain from lowering model quality all the way.

Changing model render distance should have literally no impact on any sort of 'simulation-end' calculations - none of the visual effects should. In my opinion, there is either some incredible lack of optimization in the visual engine, or a complete failure to offload to the GPU.

[Bulletpoint]

I am a little skeptical that its all related to the calculations on the fly.  For one, it seems to make no difference in realtime or wego play.  Most of the calcs should have already done for a replay, but I see no difference in fps.  For the second, in wego, I run tests where I have not moved a single unit just to see what happens.  No perceptible impact on FPS.  

I am sure the calcs plays some role, but I am not sure how significant it is  

I would be surprised if this was calculation, given the performance gain from lowering model quality all the way.

Changing model render distance should have literally no impact on any sort of 'simulation-end' calculations - none of the visual effects should. In my opinion, there is either some incredible lack of optimization in the visual engine, or a complete failure to offload to the GPU.

I fully agree with you, I just wanted to give you a brief overview of the previous discussions about the performance issues.

My view is that it has to do with the number of polygons being rendered, and that there's a CPU bottleneck somewhere that makes the computer work harder, not smarter. Like a general that has to give personal orders to each and every soldier under his command. 

But we won't know the truth unless we hear from one of the engine programmers (if there are more than one).

[rocketman]

My new laptop and nVidia settings miss the Adaptive Vertical Sync (Half refresh rate) which I found before to be of great help. Why is that? It is a GTX 970M card.

Also, for you who play on a laptop hooked up to a monitor, do you also find it runs better than without the monitor?

Edited March 16, 2016 by rocketman
Addition

[Bulletpoint]

My new laptop and nVidia settings miss the Adaptive Vertical Sync (Half refresh rate) which I found before to be of great help. Why is that? It is a GTX 970M card.

Is it a G-sync screen? If so, I think there's another setting where you need to set monitor tech to "fixed refresh" before the V-sync option becomes available.

[rocketman]

I really don't know if the monitor supports G-sync, but I highly doubt it as it is a few years old. The graphics card does. Maybe that option then only becomes availabe when unplugged?

[shift8]

A Gtx 960M is not a high end card. Even its desktop "equivalent" which is quite a bit faster is not high end.