Shadowdancer has said that CPU comes into play with players, and this seems to make sense as my frames drop heavily with more players and I find it hard to imagine they have coded the FPS to be in sync with the network state?
Thanks, I will soon see if CPU really is what is in play with big instances. We are on Distant Stars, I will go to the next meetup and see if my fps drops to 25fps like it has been.
Otherwise, does anyone know if there is anything that can be done to improve performance in instances? It slows down significantly even if it's only 1 or 2 other players...Note, that's not to do with ships as NPCs are 100% fine, I can be in a conflict zone with 30 ships and not suffer a drop
No, network updates are refreshing the ED game client state with new player position data as fast as it can, but this is usually a lot slower than anything happening in the rendering pipeline. GPU thread will be disconnected from the networking thread.
What may be happening is cpu time being taken up in client-side prediction i.e. CPU has received a player position/vector data 50ms ago but the GPU has rendered 5 frames since then and each time the cpu had to extrapolate the ship position for the last four frames...
We don't see a lot of 'rubber-banding' in ED where the player ship positions are suddenly updated and the ship snaps into its 'true' position... *cue Anacondas flying about like fighters
ED player instancing is handled by a central server, but peer-to-peer communication is used for the player to player positional updates. ED probably predicts player vectors using a spline - a calculated curve that the ship moves along between position updates. ED can smooooth the spline between updates, as any fast change would cause ships to jump about - 'rubber-banding'.
I'm making a guess, but prediction could be costly, especially if numerous players are on screen (the geometry is reasonable but all players will need splines updating for each frame), and of course having lots of players all talking via P2P networking can increase network latency. In VR this might be exacerbated further by the tight timings - I'd bet ASW kicks in faster when there are lots of players.
With NPC's, the client is generating their positions based on AI, which is more predictable and possibly much, much faster than networked players.
I have played on several PCs and have noticed that CPU appears to affect what happens on the "back-end" more than the eye-candy though it does affect the graphics somewhat, too. Menus load faster, the map loads faster, entering/exiting hyperspace & supercruise happens more quickly and smoothly (less hitching and freezing).
Agree - the menus are quite cpu intensive (and it spikes network traffic when you open the menus and system/galaxy map too). There's a LOT of dynamic data on your ship screens such as targets lists etc, and that all has to be worked out by the cpu then rendered.
Not sure it would really affect entry/exit from hyperspace - while you're in hyperspace, the instance is selected by the server, players are set up in P2P network and updates start coming in, and the GPU is usually busy generating your destination starfield. Upon exiting hyperspace, the best data is used as a seed, and the instance you play in flows from there.
Thanks guys, looking forward to trying! Also will be glad to be rid of the "Your computer does not meed the requirements for VR" message!
Good question. There could be a number of reasons I can think of, but why it should be as much as it is is beyond me. I'll file it under the "why does it take 30 seconds to open the pause menu, and another 30 seconds to open controls" list of mysteries
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...looking forward to trying! Also will be glad to be rid of the "Your computer does not meed the requirements for VR" message!
Oh yeah, I hated that in Oculus Home with my 3770K.
A simple render test like the Steam VR demo would check your cpu speed etc. and warn you IF REQUIRED, just once.
Oculus Home is very simplistic, and has't changed much in 6 months... (I'm not counting the silly jelly avatar with a hat selection...)
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