Background
I've played ED on the same machine since about 4 months after release of the base game with a fairly long break before the Odyssey Alpha. Ive generally played it on either High or Ultra settings with various settings tweaked (often a mix of: shadows, texture quality ambient occlusion, terrain quality, bloom) to get the best performance vs frame rate. I dont mind dropping to 30fps on planets as long as it looks pretty and it's still relatively smooth to play. In stations it would often drop textures on buildings close to PADs and then occasionally load them back in if I stayed there for some time. It would often drop the textures on inside of the SRV ship hangar as it lowered and brought me up through it, or my legs and hands if I looked down in the cockpit. All in all though it was playable on these higher settings.
Since Odyssey Alpha and the full release this has become really difficult. Textures being a muddy mess (most of the time) and polygons displayed in stations has made it a real chore to play and I didnt do any of the Alpha once the exploration part started. With the minimum spec changing my card fell just outside of this, mainly because it's only 2gb
Testing
So this afternoon I ran a few tests with the updated version of Horizons vs the Odyssey release. Originally I was only testing in and outside a station as I didnt see the point in comparing planets as they would be so different and rather pointless to compare. However, I did and I noticed something very surprising, but in a good way. But more of that later.....All vanilla settings, with Vsync off, in open with the frame limit turned off and in 1080p. I've not included GPU useage as they were all 100%. I also deleted my graphics file as per FD suggestion.
Armstrong Dock (Landing pad with external camera)
Horizons - Ultra mode
Odyssey - Ultra Mode
I then flew outside the station and parked 4kms away
Outside Armstrong Dock @ 4km distance
Flying into Armstrong Dock
I was a little surprised that the FPS in Ultra was so high without anything turned down, but it's been a while since I played so I thought I'd make a trip to a planet in Horizons and look at it there. I went to Aritimi 5b and took a trip out in the SRV. I drove about and was surprised to see that the frame rate didn't drop below 60 fps. On Ultra.....Here's two static cam shots, showing
Aritimi 5b - SRV (Horizons)
Horizons - Ultra Mode
I then increased supersampling to 1.25, which I know to be a real killer for my card. To my surprise it still ran upwards of 40fps..
Horizons Ultra Mode (1.25 Super Sampling)
I'd include a photo of the same spot in Odyssey for a 'comparison', but for some reason it's just in the dark side of the planet, whereas Horizons isn't!....I'd point out though that the Odyssey version is hovering about 20fps on Ultra.
Conclusion
Im not really sure what to think. Has there been some optimisation of Horizons long before Odyssey was released that Im unaware of? Has it been optimised in advance of Odyssey? Has Horizons been downgraded? Has deleting my graphics config made any difference? Either way Im definately getting a much better performance out of Horizons than I did previously, and obviously the gap between it and Odyssey when comparing 'like for like' situations is very significant. Anyone else with a 960 able to do a test in Horizons and check if they are getting different results? @Agony_Aunt I think has a 960....
I've played ED on the same machine since about 4 months after release of the base game with a fairly long break before the Odyssey Alpha. Ive generally played it on either High or Ultra settings with various settings tweaked (often a mix of: shadows, texture quality ambient occlusion, terrain quality, bloom) to get the best performance vs frame rate. I dont mind dropping to 30fps on planets as long as it looks pretty and it's still relatively smooth to play. In stations it would often drop textures on buildings close to PADs and then occasionally load them back in if I stayed there for some time. It would often drop the textures on inside of the SRV ship hangar as it lowered and brought me up through it, or my legs and hands if I looked down in the cockpit. All in all though it was playable on these higher settings.
Since Odyssey Alpha and the full release this has become really difficult. Textures being a muddy mess (most of the time) and polygons displayed in stations has made it a real chore to play and I didnt do any of the Alpha once the exploration part started. With the minimum spec changing my card fell just outside of this, mainly because it's only 2gb
Testing
So this afternoon I ran a few tests with the updated version of Horizons vs the Odyssey release. Originally I was only testing in and outside a station as I didnt see the point in comparing planets as they would be so different and rather pointless to compare. However, I did and I noticed something very surprising, but in a good way. But more of that later.....All vanilla settings, with Vsync off, in open with the frame limit turned off and in 1080p. I've not included GPU useage as they were all 100%. I also deleted my graphics file as per FD suggestion.
Armstrong Dock (Landing pad with external camera)
Horizons - Ultra mode
Odyssey - Ultra Mode
I then flew outside the station and parked 4kms away
Outside Armstrong Dock @ 4km distance
Flying into Armstrong Dock
I was a little surprised that the FPS in Ultra was so high without anything turned down, but it's been a while since I played so I thought I'd make a trip to a planet in Horizons and look at it there. I went to Aritimi 5b and took a trip out in the SRV. I drove about and was surprised to see that the frame rate didn't drop below 60 fps. On Ultra.....Here's two static cam shots, showing
Aritimi 5b - SRV (Horizons)
Horizons - Ultra Mode
I then increased supersampling to 1.25, which I know to be a real killer for my card. To my surprise it still ran upwards of 40fps..
Horizons Ultra Mode (1.25 Super Sampling)
I'd include a photo of the same spot in Odyssey for a 'comparison', but for some reason it's just in the dark side of the planet, whereas Horizons isn't!....I'd point out though that the Odyssey version is hovering about 20fps on Ultra.
Conclusion
Im not really sure what to think. Has there been some optimisation of Horizons long before Odyssey was released that Im unaware of? Has it been optimised in advance of Odyssey? Has Horizons been downgraded? Has deleting my graphics config made any difference? Either way Im definately getting a much better performance out of Horizons than I did previously, and obviously the gap between it and Odyssey when comparing 'like for like' situations is very significant. Anyone else with a 960 able to do a test in Horizons and check if they are getting different results? @Agony_Aunt I think has a 960....
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