AstroCat Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 How is the engine performance of Normandy compared to SF? I know for several of us with "higher" end systems SF never really has performed like we expected. Any chance of an improvement with Normandy? I noticed the model, tree and shadow rendering the biggest killers. Resolution, AA and others factors don't really move the fps dramatically in either direction. Thanks and really looking forward to the Normandy release! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZPB II Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 I have a faint recollection of maybe reading something that might have been Steve's post that just perhaps hinted that there was some enhancements being done. Perhaps it suggested the machine being used was quite a few years old and the battle being run was somewhat complex yet ran smoothly on some devilish debug code that slows things down? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Springelkamp Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 Tree modelling has been changed to make it faster (and they look good). Trenches have been removed in the old form for performance reasons (and for FOW of course). Other than that I haven't heard of much rendering differences with CMSF. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroCat Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 Trees seem to be the biggest hit so that is good to hear. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gryphonne Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 From my experience the game is VERY fluid compared to CMSF. I've complained about CMSFs performance from day one, and even after all the enhancements it still felt quite choppy. I was really surprised with CMBN however. I've played it on a 3 year old laptop and it was smoother than anything i've seen with CMSF, even with the details way up. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFCElvis Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 From my experience the game is VERY fluid compared to CMSF. I've complained about CMSFs performance from day one, and even after all the enhancements it still felt quite choppy. I was really surprised with CMBN however. I've played it on a 3 year old laptop and it was smoother than anything i've seen with CMSF, even with the details way up. I never really had a performance problem with either of them but the tree rendering is massively improved. With CMSF most distant trees don't even appear on the screen. With CMBN not only do all the trees appear but they are very rich and full looking. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sakai007 Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 This is good to hear. I just fried my laptop and went out to get a replacement. I got a desktop with more HD space, a slightly faster dual core CPU, and an NVidia 6340 graphics card. I have never had adequate performance for CMSF, but love it so I play anyway. On this new rig, CMSF runs smooth as butter, no joke, with setting close to max. I don't really get it myself, but I sure am happy about it. I am now even more eager for CMBN to come out, since I know I will be able to really enjoy playing it!!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Tree rendering was an early target for CM:BN for two reasons: 1. We knew it was a significant bottleneck in CM:SF 2. We knew the average map would be choked full of them! I just completed a fairly big map with tons of bocage and probably several hundred trees. Framerate is very good, though with my sub-standard laptop chip set and debug build (about 20% slower than a release Build) I have to keep it on Balanced. If I turn it up more than that the framerate is acceptable, but it's not liquid. Oh, and I'm using the Mac version and we suspect we might have to do some OS specific rendering improvements too. As one of the people most concerned about going to a temperate environment, I'm pretty pleased with how it's working out with real scenarios built without a care about framerate. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeatEtr Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 This is great to hear, thanks. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LJFHutch Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 That's definitely good to hear, right now with CMSF and CMA I'm running balanced with <30fps on a standard scenario using an ATI 4890 and an X4 AM3@3.2GHz On the larger ones I run at fastest and usually don't get above 40fps. I'm dying to get my hands on this game 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Note that 30fps is considered very good for any game. Faster is better, of course, but as I understand it as you go over 30fps you get diminishing returns in terms of benefit for what your brain processes as motion. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonny(FGM) Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 i may be wrong, but i believe its actually 60fps but you can get away with it at 30 if you interlace the image Mind you if CMSF ran at 30fps at all views i'd be happy, bring on my new computer lol 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkEzra Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 30 FPS is normal movie speed isn't it? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanzfeld Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 I think movies are 24 FPS. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroCat Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 There is a definite and very noticeable difference between 30fps and 60fps in gaming. Been discussed to death on other graphics and games forums. But, for Combat Mission it is not as important, I'll take constant above 30 in CM and be happy. Analog movies are 24fps. Digital video 29.97, and from there it gets a little bit more complicated. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LJFHutch Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 I consider 60 fps and above to be smooth, below that you can notice the "lag". It is true though that as an RTT a lower framerate is playable, but 60 is still desirable. I just tested "Halt! Hammerzeit" and got 30 fps on Fastest and 9 on Best running at 1920x1080. Edit: Tested at 1024x768 and got 31 and 12 fps on Fastest/Best so I don't think the resolution has much of an effect. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroCat Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 Yeah, resolution has very little effect, it seems to be all about model rendering for the CM engine that hits the fps hard. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Oh, and I'm using the Mac version and we suspect we might have to do some OS specific rendering improvements too. *clap, clap, clap, clap* :) Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Analog movies are 24fps. Digital video 29.97, and from there it gets a little bit more complicated. I think back around 30 years ago there was some experimentation with shooting and playing movie film at 70 fps. The report was that you don't actually notice the increase in speed, but that the whole visual experience seemed somehow "realer". Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroCat Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 Not the best but a basic start to see. Search and you can find tons more examples. In game though 30 to 60 is very, very noticeble. http://www.boallen.com/fps-compare.html 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 You can't really compare fps in a computer game to fps in something shot on a camera or pre-rendered animation (in either case, whether it be digital or analog). Most computer games render each frame as a distinct crisp image without motion blurring or anything similar (there are some exceptions to this). For this type of animation, very high frame rate is indeed important, because the illusion of movement is created by framerate and framerate alone. With pre-rendered images, such as those in a film, the cinematographer/animator has much more control over how the illusion of movement is created. For example, shooting/rendering in way that rapid motion is blurred in the individual frames can create an overall "smoother" feel than a succession of distinct, sharp images does. Due to the way our eyes work and our brains interpret the images sent by the eye, a moving image presented in 30fps of "motion blurred" images can actually seem more "real" than 60fps of totally sharp, crisp images. I'm vastly oversimplifying here, but I trust the basic idea is clear. Basically, there's a lot more to it than just frame rate, and you can't assume that a video game running at 30fps will create the same perceived quality of movement as an action film being projected at 30fps. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Okay, I can accept that. Let me say though that seven or eight years ago I would have been pleased to accept 30 fps when playing CMBB or CMAK. I never had a problem with CMBO, but with the later two games once a significant number of units were on the map, it slowed down to about 3 fps, which was seriously unplayable. I never figured out what the problem was. I had a top of the line vid card with lots of memory on it (for the day; about 256M). I thought I might not have had enough RAM in my machine, but I had committed to the game at least twice what its listed requirement was. Weird. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroCat Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 There is nothing wrong with your hardware, its the game engine. I've done so much testing with so many different configurations with SF that I am sure of it at this point. That is why I was so curious about any fixes to the engine for Normandy. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Okay, I can accept that. Let me say though that seven or eight years ago I would have been pleased to accept 30 fps when playing CMBB or CMAK. I never had a problem with CMBO, but with the later two games once a significant number of units were on the map, it slowed down to about 3 fps, which was seriously unplayable. I never figured out what the problem was. I had a top of the line vid card with lots of memory on it (for the day; about 256M). I thought I might not have had enough RAM in my machine, but I had committed to the game at least twice what its listed requirement was. Weird. Since you're talking about the CMx1 engine, and it's been years since I booted that up, I'm dealing with the foggy recesses of my memory here. But best I can recall, the laptop that I played CMBB and CMAK had some flavor of GeForce Go card, with 64mb memory, and I was able to play pretty darn large scenarios at an acceptable frame rate. Maybe not always highest detail and over 30fps, but I'm sure I never had the framerate drop to anything like 3fps, even in the largest scenarios. And I generally played with a lot of hi-res mods installed. So it must have been some sort of bottleneck particular to your setup. I can't even remember enough about the details of my own rig at the time to speculate any further. Cheers, YD 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 My comments about diminishing returns after 30fps is valid, I think. At 30fps most of the time the action is smooth as silk. When the camera is still the eye is only really noticing the parts that are changing, not the parts that are stationary. Since the majority of the screen is usually not moving, or at least not moving concurrently, 30fps is fine. When moving the camera around, however, things can change. But something different happens. When you move the camera around things are moving so fast that smooth transitions between images are inconsequential because the illusion of motion exists even without literal portrayal (as Yankee Dog aptly described). Where framerate really matters is when you're zoomed in very, very close and a LOT of stuff is going on and/or the camera is in constant, radical motion. This is very true in FPS games where the camera is often tied to the weapon and allowed a very fluid, and extreme, range of motion. In CM there is no direct parallel. As I say, from a practical standpoint 30fps is fine. 60fps is better, true enough, but it isn't twice as good as 30fps. 30fps is, however, probably more than twice as good as 15fps, and 15fps is probably 4 times as good as 7fps. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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