A targeted workaround to the exhaust trail related performance hit introduced by the April Update

[Morbad]

Firstly, I'd like to thank those who pinned down the source of the major performance hit introduced with the 3.4 update to a bug with the exhast trails, which I later doubly confirmed to be the culprit in my own testing.

Now, if you desire a more specific workaround than setting FX to "Off" (which affects far more than exhaust trails), adding the following to the GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml (normally located in "%LocalAppData%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\"...create the file yourself in a plain text editor if it doesn't exist) will disable exhaust trails for all FX quality presets, while leaving the rest of the effects untouched:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
    <Trails>
        <Low>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
        </Low>
        <Medium>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
        </Medium>
        <High>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
        </High>
    </Trails>
</GraphicsConfig>

Edit: If you are still seeing abnormal slowdowns in CZs, or when that multi-crew T-10 with seven rapid fire draghound launchers uses them on you, it's also possible to disable the weapon trails...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
    <Trails>
        <Off>
            <EnableWeaponTrails>0</EnableWeaponTrails>
        </Off>
        <Low>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
            <EnableWeaponTrails>0</EnableWeaponTrails>
        </Low>
        <Medium>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
            <EnableWeaponTrails>0</EnableWeaponTrails>
        </Medium>
        <High>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
            <EnableWeaponTrails>0</EnableWeaponTrails>
        </High>
    </Trails>
</GraphicsConfig>

 

[ebbrell]

Nice, so it's just the trails causing the issue
It would explain why it gets worse in CZs

 

[sneakygloworm]

Oculus Rift - On Low and Medium settings of FX quality, the framerate absolutely nosedive's but high seems to give around 45 fps using ASW still dropping frames (or is, at least, more stable). even with this workaround, FX is still unusable for me ( Ryzen 1600x - GTX 1080 - Core 2050, Mem 5550). But Performance Headroom is around -150%.
I Like the FX setting as it adds depth to stations, etc but it's gotta stay off until Fdev do a repatch.

Edit: Actually, the whole FX thing is still borked. Performance headroom drops to -300% as soon as the ship moves in a station. Fps drops to 22.

 

[MoonRacer]

PC, Windows 7, Intel Core i7 6850, 32GB, GTX 1080 Ti. 2560x1600 on a monitor, 60Hz. VSync is on.
Interestingly I do not see the problem! I have all on Ultra, FX is on.
Could it be that it is connected to the NVIDIA driver version?
I am being very conservative with driver updates, and therefore still use 399.24.

 

[sneakygloworm]

Could be that Rift has little extra headroom in ED and the FX is simply bringing the whole thing to it's knees. HMD users always need to be fairly realistic and conservative with graphical tuning values so a huge drop in frames is gonna be noticeable.

 

[Prae Taryn]

Morbad, thank you! You are a savior.
A have an older card and it was unplayable since the update, even on lower graphics. Runs perfectly now.

 

[capirex650]

cant locate the specific settings myself but hopefully now it's been found what the issue is Frontier can fix asap

 

[sneakygloworm]

Yep, my apologies, I was editing a non VR file. It deffo works for VR. Good find...

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Oculus Rift - On Low and Medium settings of FX quality, the framerate absolutely nosedive's but high seems to give around 45 fps using ASW still dropping frames (or is, at least, more stable). even with this workaround, FX is still unusable for me ( Ryzen 1600x - GTX 1080 - Core 2050, Mem 5550). But Performance Headroom is around -150%.
I Like the FX setting as it adds depth to stations, etc but it's gotta stay off until Fdev do a repatch.

Edit: Actually, the whole FX thing is still borked. Performance headroom drops to -300% as soon as the ship moves in a station. Fps drops to 22.

Google "Oculus Homeless". Oculus Home uses a lot of resources. Oculus Homeless replace it with a plain grey background. That gave me much better FPS. Also the Nvidia Experience is heavy on the hardware.

I run Oculus Rift on a 1060 3GB, and with trails off and everything else on medium or high, I get 45-90 FPS now, depending on the surroundings.

cant locate the specific settings myself but hopefully now it's been found what the issue is Frontier can fix asap

Open File explorer and navigate to the C: drive. Then search for "GraphicsConfiguration" using the File Explorer Search Field (Search from the taskbar is horribly hopeless). That should get you to the file.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Oculus Home uses a lot of resources. Oculus Homeless replace it with a plain grey background.

That is incorrect, and has been for quite a while. Oculus home (and some of the other tat) exits gracefully as soon as an application is opened, no loss of performance - perhaps even some gains to older versions - you can check this yourself by observing Task manager or your favourite flavour of monitoring method.
Even the reserved screen performance hit (recent) has been minimised recently.

 

[Morbad]

cant locate the specific settings myself but hopefully now it's been found what the issue is Frontier can fix asap

If you don't have the file in the directory above, you can make a text file with that name and past the contents in the OP into it. Just make sure the extension is .xml when you're done.

 

[ShadowWolf Kell]

That is incorrect, and has been for quite a while. Oculus home (and some of the other tat) exits gracefully as soon as an application is opened, no loss of performance - perhaps even some gains to older versions - you can check this yourself by observing Task manager or your favourite flavour of monitoring method.
Even the reserved screen performance hit (recent) has been minimised recently.

I think he's confusing Occulus Home with Steam VR.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Oops, forgot!

Thanks @Morbad

 

[Rat Catcher]

Just to confirm - the fix appears to work very well indeed! Been playing with Tharg Scouts and things are back to 'the old days' in smoothness

 

[jrf773]

Tripled my frame rates! Thanks dude!

 

[hems303]

Firstly, I'd like to thank those who pinned down the source of the major performance hit introduced with the 3.4 update to a bug with the exhast trails, which I later doubly confirmed to be the culprit in my own testing.

Now, if you desire a more specific workaround than setting FX to "Off" (which affects far more than exhaust trails), adding the following to the GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml (normally located in "%LocalAppData%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\") will disable exhaust trails for all FX quality presets, while leaving the rest of the effects untouched:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
    <Trails>
        <Low>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
        </Low>
        <Medium>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
        </Medium>
        <High>
            <EnableEngineTrails>0</EnableEngineTrails>
        </High>
    </Trails>
</GraphicsConfig>

Thanks. Comes to something when the users have to fix the product to make it usable!!! o7

 

[WeComeInPeace]

That is incorrect, and has been for quite a while. Oculus home (and some of the other tat) exits gracefully as soon as an application is opened, no loss of performance - perhaps even some gains to older versions - you can check this yourself by observing Task manager or your favourite flavour of monitoring method.
Even the reserved screen performance hit (recent) has been minimised recently.

I installed Oculus Homeless less than a month ago. Before that I had really low FPS even with low settings. After Oculus Homeless I could use medium (high shadows) with a smooth FPS. As I wrote I only have 3 GB memory for the GPU, and I could see a reduction of memory usage with Oculus Homeless. I might be wrong, but I would still give it a try.

 

[hems303]

Nice work-around... thanks! Rep+1 as we used to say

o7

 

[Rat Catcher]

I installed Oculus Homeless less than a month ago. Before that I had really low FPS even with low settings. After Oculus Homeless I could use medium (high shadows) with a smooth FPS. As I wrote I only have 3 GB memory for the GPU, and I could see a reduction of memory usage with Oculus Homeless. I might be wrong, but I would still give it a try.

I did check that home gracefully exits a few minutes ago, it does
That said, when home etc. is open my PC shows nearly 3GB of GPU memory being used (but I do have 4k screen res) so a lot of resources to swap out initially.

Second caveat, I usually launch Oculus apps from the desktop app, only use Home when I'm playing around in Home, possibly Homeless is saving you all of that swapping

 

[WeComeInPeace]

I originally bought Oculus for simracing (Assetto). To be able to run VR I also switched from my old 2008 Mac Pro to an Asus GR8 II. The specs and formfactor looked promissing, but I didn't notice the lack of GPU ram, nor did I notice that the stupid computer couldn't be upgraded. I was used to the Mac and I still miss it, even though Apple lost it's magic with Jobs. Apple never really made powerful hardware, but compensated with efficient software. So now I'm using a lot of time trying to slim down everything to get resources were I need them. Computers nowadays are horrible bloated. Especially a Windows PC.