Improving your FPS

[BeWee]

Hi
I read a guide on Steam from a player named "randomhan" for improving your FPS in Combat Mission BS, i think it works for any of the CM games. It worked for me in BS and SF2, now i can run big maps with nice FPS and few FPS spikes/dips. 

I use following settings. 

value in "dispaly size.txt" -  4096 2160 144
3D Model quality -  Improved
Texture quality - Best

I did copy the guide from steam Guides and all creds to "randomhan"

-----BEFORE YOU TRY THIS OUT------

This only applies to you if you have horsepower to spare in your GPU

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

basically this games can only utilize 32bit ram & like one or two cores of CPU. Its prehistoric.
However....VRAM? & GPU no limits.
BUT, they put a limiter on this in order to protect your PC from blowing up.

So naturally, the game 'thinks' your beefy monstrosity NASA Spec PC (in like 04 standards)
just can't handle the intense operation of allocating 4-5GB of graphics RAM

To cut to the case,
before trying this out
- vsync: off
- 3D model quality: fast -> uses CPU
- 3D model texture: Best -> VRAM is not the bottle neck
- Shaders : OFF -> uses CPU, if you miss the shaders just use Reshade.

-VERY IMPORTANT!: turn off in-game shadows / shaders with: ALT + W . the game engine can't handle shadow rendering.
-> seems to use CPU for shadows.

now for the fun part:
(1) find or make a "dispaly size.txt" file in your steam\steamapps\common\Combat Mission Black Sea folder

(2) open it, put in some crazy value like: " 7680 4320 144 " (8k) or " 4096 2160 144 "(4k)
- 3 numerical value separated by space bar : horizontal screen resolution (space) vertical screen resolution (space) refresh rate

(4) if your graphics card can run modern AAA titles just go nuts with 7680 4320 60
- NEVER-EVER lower your screen resolution b/c the UI shrinking. It's counter- intuitive but you gotta increase the resolution!

(5) by some black wizardry, the game is forced to load all the textures, and doesn't ♥♥♥♥♥ out on allocating more v-ram

(6) ???

(7) = more FPS/ Much better graphics

My computer with Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB RAM, Radeon TX 6700XT was running like 15-30 FPS before.
Choppy as Hell.

with this optimization? While running in 8K(!) now the FPS never goes below 45. with like 30 visual enhancement mods.
won't lie: Stil a bit of stuttering exists while in pre-deployment phase and zooming through the battlefield.

BUT consider this: amazing 8K graphics compared to Un-optimized settings + much better FPS

one drawback: it takes like 10min to start a battle. but hey ho, willing to make a sacrifice.

Hope this helps!

 

 

[Erwin]

Presumably, one has to have a monitor that will run at the higher resolutions.

[BeWee]

48 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Presumably, one has to have a monitor that will run at the higher resolutions.

No, you fake a higher resolution to get more use of the GPU instead of the CPU. i set the resolution to  7680 4320 144 " (8k) instead of 0 0 0 in the "dispaly size.txt" and it still works at any monitor. Try it out, its simple and quick. 

[rocketman]

25 minutes ago, BeWee said:

No, you fake a higher resolution to get more use of the GPU instead of the CPU. i set the resolution to  7680 4320 144 " (8k) instead of 0 0 0 in the "dispaly size.txt" and it still works at any monitor. Try it out, its simple and quick. 

Seems worth a try for sure - but is that the only setting you change and not all of it as described in the first post?

[Bufo]

If I put "4096 2160 144" in that file, CM just crashes for me. (Ryzen 3600X + Radeon RX 5700XT + 32GB DDR4)

Edited September 19, 2021 by Bufo

[Artkin]

2 minutes ago, Bufo said:

If I put in 4096 2160 144 in that file, CM just crashes for me. (Ryzen 3600X + Radeon RX 5700XT + 32GB DDR4)

Try setting 144 to 60. 

[Bufo]

Just now, Artkin said:

Try setting 144 to 60. 

But I have a 144Hz monitor. I don't want 60Hz.

[Artkin]

Just now, Bufo said:

But I have a 144Hz monitor. I don't want 60Hz.

Strange. The 8k at 60hz worked fine for me. 

[Bufo]

7 minutes ago, Artkin said:

Try setting 144 to 60. 

4096 2160 60 also crashes. It looks like if I put anything higher than my monitors native resolution (2560x1440), it will crash.

[Redwolf]

So this person is saying that this procedure forces all textures to be loaded into the graphics card, which implies that they do not when running normally.

If this trick works for anybody it would be verifiable by looking at the total amount of VRAM used in both situations.

[Erwin]

I tried 7680 4320 144 on my 2760 x 1600 monitor.  Loaded a large CMBN (1-2 battalions per side on a 2.5 Km x 2.5 Km map) scenario am playing H2H and it still took about 3 minutes to load as before.

Was hoping that movement of units was be smoother but movement is still juddery.  Camera movement around the map seemed about the same.  ie: had brief freezes when I tried to move the camera. 

Curious to know what everyone else experiences.  It would be nice to see improvement.  

(Am playing on an older but upgraded Win 7 with 24GB RAM.  I run everything set to the highest/best quality settings.)

Will leave the 7680 4320 144 on for a while and see if it looks worse when I revert to 0 0 0 later.  

 

Edited September 19, 2021 by Erwin

[Codreanu]

I tried it up to 8k and VRAM usage didn't budge a bit compared to regular but my FPS didn't change at all either so I'm guessing it just does nothing. I think the unfortunate truth is nothing is going to change how the game runs until there is some serious optimization work done. 10% CPU usage and 20% GPU usage on a huge map with a full battalion of units and can still only manage 20 or so FPS with improved models, more like 15 FPS with it set to best.

[Artkin]

I noticed the higher resolution made my game studder slightly when flying across the map at low elevation, and when adjusting 3d model quality ingame I now see no visual difference between any of the settings at all. 

[Jace11]

Is the typo in the file name we are told to use deliberate? Should it be display size.txt or dispaly size.txt?

[Artkin]

Not deliberate of course. 

[Erwin]

4 minutes ago, Jace11 said:

display size.txt

 

[Jace11]

Thanks,

actually I just checked in the exe's and there is a string "display size.txt"

[Lucky_Strike]

Smoke'n'mirrors ...

Just tried this on both my Mac and PC game rig.

On the Mac (3.1 GHz i5; 40GB DDR4 Ram; Radeon Pro 575X 4GB)  - which does 4K natively (actually does 5K natively as well) it just wasn't having any of it. No matter what I set the display.txt to it just defaults to whatever real resolution I'm running at. So running at real 4K to see what effect the rest has - yep things are snappier and scudding around a map is easy. But the UI is unusable small. So experimenting and ONLY changing 3D model quality: fast has about the same impact on speed. Turning off shaders, shadows etc is minimal, plus I like me shadows on a sunny day. V-Syn off causes noticeable screen tearing artefacts for me at least, YMMV.

All of the above at my normal usable resolution, about 2K I guess, and options to my regular set up excepting 3D model quality: fast gives easy performance and a sensible sized GUI - that is to say, not really worth bothering with ...

Moving on to the PC (Intel i3-9350KF 4.00GHz turbo 4.6GHz I think; 32GB DDR4 Ram; NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6GB) - here things get a bit strange, though whether it's better is very subjective and not at all scientific (my OS suggested the Petri dish emoji ...).

So applying all the options as suggested then editing the display.txt to 7680 4320 144 did seem to make everything run quicker though with some tearing artefacts (probably the V-Sync being off), FPS overall was slightly improved, but nothing radical, and everything seemed to work okay. Caveats, no shadows looks like s%*t on a sunny day; tearing is not nice; scudding around the battlefield really fast is probably useful for real-time playing, but for WeGo I don't see much benefit. Tried the same at 4K - same deal.

Now here are my very unscientific (personal) observations (background - I do a lot of very heavy duty modding, lots of high res and silly 3D models that are not ever going to give anyone nice fast FPS): 

1. The engine is doing something with the settings for the display, but whatever it is it's not running at the higher resolution supplied - if it was one couldn't read the GUI - at real 4K or 8K you would need a magnifying glass to read it; my opinion it's ignoring it ...

2. Just switching off V-Sync increases your speed, notice it says Off (speed) as the off setting

3. Changing 3D model quality: fast is probably the biggest boost to your speed that any setting will give you YMMV; again notice it's called Fast.

4. I like shadows/shaders on sunny days and shaders on not sunny days, there is no way for anything ReShade or otherwise to add shadows or shading as provided by the ingame shadows/shaders. The old maxim applies when using ReShade - s*#t in, s*#t out - ReShade is a fantastic piece of software but it does what it says on the tin, it takes whatever images the game produces and adds effects to them afterwards, it cannot add content ie shadows. At best you can mess with the existing fake shadows as drawn in the graphics the game uses, but this is not dynamically generated shadows as produced by the game engine with shadows switched on. I know the game shadows are not the best and have real issues but they are all that we have.

5. I noticed no perceptible increase in load times which says to me the game is not preloading the graphics as it loads the game, but rather it caches them as it goes along, this results in choppy play to begin but then it gets smoother as one moves about, that is - it behaves as it does normally by design.

6. My GPU was not apparently being used anymore than normal, temps seemed normal, couldn't tell you what VRAM useage was but if temps are stable it's probably not struggling; ReShade makes it work way harder.

7. My CPU was behaving as normal, temps were stable and no throttling was noticed.

8. RAM useage was about 5.8GB running the game as opposed to 4.6-5.1GB idle, pretty much normal.

Make of this what you will, for my part just changing the 3D model quality: fast is about as much as I might do. I'd suggest if one wants good speeds then change 3D model quality: fast, turn off V-Sync, and don't run any mods, or at least only run mods that are the same resolution as original game graphics; the rest is smoke'n'mirrors ...

YMMV

 

Edited September 19, 2021 by Lucky_Strike
Stupidity; God has nothing to do with this

[Lucky_Strike]

43 minutes ago, Codreanu said:

I think the unfortunate truth is nothing is going to change how the game runs until there is some serious optimization work done.

Fo'sure ...

[Centurian52]

This sounds like it will be a nice hack to have on hand as a work around for a little while. I haven't tried it to see if it will work for me yet (sounds like it works well for some people, and does squat for others). With any luck it won't be necessary for long. I recall reading somewhere that the next engine upgrade is going to focus on performance rather than features, so we should soon be able to make use of more cores and more graphics RAM. 

[Lucky_Strike]

7 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

This sounds like it will be a nice hack to have on hand as a work around for a little while. I haven't tried it to see if it will work for me yet (sounds like it works well for some people, and does squat for others). With any luck it won't be necessary for long. I recall reading somewhere that the next engine upgrade is going to focus on performance rather than features, so we should soon be able to make use of more cores and more graphics RAM. 

I don't think it'll be more cores, though happy to be proved wrong. I reckon more VRAM and removing some arcane limits imposed to make sure that game ran on circa 2011 PCs. Heck just letting me cache more graphics into VRAM would help, I think my web browsers are a heavier load on my GPU than CM!

[Sgt Joch]

Best way to optimise FPS is to just use the BALANCED setting for model and texture. The game will then automatically optimise graphics based on the FPS, although in fact that only decides what level of LOD model to use. On BEST, you are forcing the game to always use the highest LOD model, while on BALANCED, you will switch to higher LOD models depending on the FPS.

If you have a decent rig, units will pretty much always be at the highest LOD model when you zoom in on them, but you wont get the choppinees on large map/scenarios when you zoom out.

I did a test over the weekend in a medium size scenario using the in game model setting and there was no perceptible difference between BALANCED and BEST when zoomed in and even when at a medium zoom at level 4, the difference was small, mostly in the LOD models used for trees.

[hm_stanley]

Thanks for posting this.. one thing many of us Mac users don't know about is a tool called RDM (Retina Display Manager).  You can get the M1 version here > https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM/pull/51 or you can get the x86 one here > http://avi.alkalay.net/software/RDM/. Good news is you can force your machine into really high resolutions and set the game to use "Desktop" and it will greatly increase real estate for your game.  Here is my problem, I really don't see any improvement over using it under the standard macOS resolution (which is big enough).  The screen certainly seems to be snappy, but again, I don't see any improvement over gaining more real estate to view and look at.  It's already pretty snappy on an M1 with settings set to the highest.. So, not sure if anyone wants to experiment here, but it can work.

On 9/19/2021 at 12:42 PM, Lucky_Strike said:

Smoke'n'mirrors ...

Just tried this on both my Mac and PC game rig.

On the Mac (3.1 GHz i5; 40GB DDR4 Ram; Radeon Pro 575X 4GB)  - which does 4K natively (actually does 5K natively as well) it just wasn't having any of it. No matter what I set the display.txt to it just defaults to whatever real resolution I'm running at. So running at real 4K to see what effect the rest has - yep things are snappier and scudding around a map is easy. But the UI is unusable small. So experimenting and ONLY changing 3D model quality: fast has about the same impact on speed. Turning off shaders, shadows etc is minimal, plus I like me shadows on a sunny day. V-Syn off causes noticeable screen tearing artefacts for me at least, YMMV.

All of the above at my normal usable resolution, about 2K I guess, and options to my regular set up excepting 3D model quality: fast gives easy performance and a sensible sized GUI - that is to say, not really worth bothering with ...

Moving on to the PC (Intel i3-9350KF 4.00GHz turbo 4.6GHz I think; 32GB DDR4 Ram; NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6GB) - here things get a bit strange, though whether it's better is very subjective and not at all scientific (my OS suggested the Petri dish emoji ...).

So applying all the options as suggested then editing the display.txt to 7680 4320 144 did seem to make everything run quicker though with some tearing artefacts (probably the V-Sync being off), FPS overall was slightly improved, but nothing radical, and everything seemed to work okay. Caveats, no shadows looks like s%*t on a sunny day; tearing is not nice; scudding around the battlefield really fast is probably useful for real-time playing, but for WeGo I don't see much benefit. Tried the same at 4K - same deal.

Now here are my very unscientific (personal) observations (background - I do a lot of very heavy duty modding, lots of high res and silly 3D models that are not ever going to give anyone nice fast FPS): 

1. The engine is doing something with the settings for the display, but whatever it is it's not running at the higher resolution supplied - if it was one couldn't read the GUI - at real 4K or 8K you would need a magnifying glass to read it; my opinion it's ignoring it ...

2. Just switching off V-Sync increases your speed, notice it says Off (speed) as the off setting

3. Changing 3D model quality: fast is probably the biggest boost to your speed that any setting will give you YMMV; again notice it's called Fast.

4. I like shadows/shaders on sunny days and shaders on not sunny days, there is no way for anything ReShade or otherwise to add shadows or shading as provided by the ingame shadows/shaders. The old maxim applies when using ReShade - s*#t in, s*#t out - ReShade is a fantastic piece of software but it does what it says on the tin, it takes whatever images the game produces and adds effects to them afterwards, it cannot add content ie shadows. At best you can mess with the existing fake shadows as drawn in the graphics the game uses, but this is not dynamically generated shadows as produced by the game engine with shadows switched on. I know the game shadows are not the best and have real issues but they are all that we have.

5. I noticed no perceptible increase in load times which says to me the game is not preloading the graphics as it loads the game, but rather it caches them as it goes along, this results in choppy play to begin but then it gets smoother as one moves about, that is - it behaves as it does normally by design.

6. My GPU was not apparently being used anymore than normal, temps seemed normal, couldn't tell you what VRAM useage was but if temps are stable it's probably not struggling; ReShade makes it work way harder.

7. My CPU was behaving as normal, temps were stable and no throttling was noticed.

8. RAM useage was about 5.8GB running the game as opposed to 4.6-5.1GB idle, pretty much normal.

Make of this what you will, for my part just changing the 3D model quality: fast is about as much as I might do. I'd suggest if one wants good speeds then change 3D model quality: fast, turn off V-Sync, and don't run any mods, or at least only run mods that are the same resolution as original game graphics; the rest is smoke'n'mirrors ...

YMMV