Push graphic quality to the limits

[IIIIIII]

Hi,

ED needs (on my PC with W8.1 x64) around 600MB of RAM. This is pretty low. Is there anything planned to increase the visual performance? There are "pop-up planets" and micro stuttering which could be prevented.
Most of today PCs have +4GB RAM available so there should be a possibility to increase the draw distance and preload some objects in the background while approaching them.
Another question: is there a 64-bit executable planned for the game?

I know this is a minor problem but... it´s still worth to ask

 

[kelticfury]

I too am Interested in an Elite Dangerous Client 64!!!

I have my settings on ultra and I only stutter when entering an area with new textures for a brief moment as they load. I do however get weird sound stutters during high intensity warfronts when fighting close to a capitol ship.

 

[burzum]

I too am Interested in an Elite Dangerous Client 64!!!

It probably will gain you nothing at all. 2015 and there is still the urban legend that 64bit will make things faster. If the game consumes just ~600mb memory you can go up to 3.6gb until you need a 64bit to allocate more memory in one chunk.

 

[lexandro]

It probably will gain you nothing at all. 2015 and there is still the urban legend that 64bit will make things faster. If the game consumes just ~600mb memory you can go up to 3.6gb until you need a 64bit to allocate more memory in one chunk.

^This guy gets it.

 

[Sergio Smegolia]

Also, all languages (either directly or indirectly) use pointers to memory. 64 bit makes those pointers twice the size. However the amount of cache memory doesn't actually double. Result, worse performance.

If you actually need 64 bit to get things working correctly, chances are your doing it wrong.

 

[IIIIIII]

Thats not right. Im sure 64bit would result in better performance. There are some reasons for this, for example you have much more CPU registers available which CAN decrease the number of RAM access.

It probably will gain you nothing at all. 2015 and there is still the urban legend that 64bit will make things faster. If the game consumes just ~600mb memory you can go up to 3.6gb until you need a 64bit to allocate more memory in one chunk.

32bit Apps can only allocate up to 2GB (or if you push the limits 3GB) of dynamic memory... but your right, even 2gb should be enough for this game (at this point).

Would be very nice to read someting about this performance "issues" from the devs to know their roadmap (just dreaming ).

 

[Morbad]

Memory is not the limiting factor in ED's graphics quality.

 

[mono]

I had noticed the stuttering is back in 1.05. The last WHQL nV drivers fixed it for me in 1.04 so I'm guessing FD did something to cause it again. What I do see is when it stutters fps bounces, dropping by about 25% for a fraction of a second then bouncing back to what it was, rinse and repeat for the next 10 seconds. It's generally in SC.

So for me it's either FD keep messing with something in the graphics that's fixable at a driver level or the networking can't deliver the required bandwidth to load things smoothly. They need to sort it before they start putting out even better textured planets et al because as things are that's just going to cause more stuttering. IMO.

 

[rdizz]

^This guy gets it.

^ this guy gets the guy who gets it.

 

[lanael]

I would add that RAM consumption has nothing to do with the graphics quality. In any game. Ever.

 

[CMDR Crumpeteer]

Since DB plans to future proof the game graphically, one can only imagine there will be plenty of optimisations to go with that. Remember they aren't even done with celestial bodies yet, so there's lots of work to be done. Things will get better over time.

 

[TheNameIsJambo]

System RAM != Video RAM.

Although, a lot of games released today aren't optimised for poop and can only use 2GiB of system RAM on an x86_64 Windows client. Therefore, there is a program out there called Large Address Aware: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/

This allows the modified .exe to use up to 4GiB of RAM, by enabling the LAA flag. If you are running x86_32 version of Windows, you can use this command - in conjunction with the above - to get more RAM usage: bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA 3072

It's a bit of a shame that gamers, in this day and age, still occasionally need to faff and tinker with settings to get the most out of their games - I'm not saying that Elite is one of them, it's probably one of the best optimised PC games ever released.

 

[Pomerlaw]

They have more important things to do, but I'm sure they will keep making the game look better. Example : Specular light on oceans would make planets look much better.

Maybe they could add details to ship too in the future. they are pretty low polygon now, but remember they have to keep the game running smoothly. They need to implement planetary landings in the future and that means a lot of performance will be needed.

 

[ThirdNostril]

There are certain things that you can enhance currently in the game through ini tweaking. IT's not much though and I too hope the developpers push the graphic fidelity further. One thing that bugs me is the single light source on planets in binary star systems; 2 stars 300Ls apart and a planet between them will only have one light source on it.

About the tweaks, in your game folder there's a xml file called GraphicsConfiguration which you can open with notepad, though I highly recommend Notepad++ whenever editing a game's config files. In there you will find a lot of settings that you can change and go well over what the game's graphics options allow.

For example you can change the texture size of the space background, the milky way. The default value on high is 2560, however at 4096 the detail is crisp and no longer fuzzy. Here's an example of the difference between the two settings: http://abload.de/img/2kgalaxyjtuao.jpg http://abload.de/img/4kgalaxyspuww.jpg

<GalaxyBackground>
<High>
<LocalisationName>$QUALITY_HIGH;</LocalisationName>
<TextureSize>4096</TextureSize>
</High>

For planets the texture size can be increased as well though you will need to be really close to see the difference, like being dropped out of SC close.

<Planets>
<High>
<LocalisationName>$QUALITY_HIGH;</LocalisationName>
<TextureSize>4096</TextureSize>
<AtmosphereSteps>8</AtmosphereSteps>
<CloudsEnabled>true</CloudsEnabled>
<WorkPerFrame>256</WorkPerFrame>
</High>

Note that 4096 is the max setting as anything higher will freeze the game during the loading screen.

If you look at <GalaxyMap> you'll notice that there are no differences between low, medium and high and changing the value for HiResNebulaDimensions from 256 to 512 will display a currupted nebula. So higher settings haven't been implemented for this, yet hopefully.

There's an update coming for gas giants that I'm really stoked about, I'm mure more graphical improvements are on their way.


One final thing, if you're like me and like taking those HiRes Screenshots with alt+f10 here's how you can increase the output size

C:\Users\[your name]\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics

Settings.xml
<HighResScreenCapScale>6</HighResScreenCapScale>

6 being the multiplier of the resolution you play at.

 

[Hexcaliber]

It probably will gain you nothing at all. 2015 and there is still the urban legend that 64bit will make things faster. If the game consumes just ~600mb memory you can go up to 3.6gb until you need a 64bit to allocate more memory in one chunk.

^This guy gets it.

Also, all languages (either directly or indirectly) use pointers to memory. 64 bit makes those pointers twice the size. However the amount of cache memory doesn't actually double. Result, worse performance.

If you actually need 64 bit to get things working correctly, chances are your doing it wrong.

Actually, you are all wrong or misinformed to some degree, a 64-bit client has many advantages over a 32-bit client, the least of which is the increase in memory.

While the pointers do require more memory there are more of them, which has a far greater positive impact on processing speed compared to the increase in memory footprint, additionally the 32-bit client is run under wow64 that incurs additional operating system overheads over a 64-bit client. However, far and away the biggest performance gain to be had from a 64 bit client over 32 Bit is in the handling of large data arrays, which can see as much as a several hundred percent speed increase. Oracle on demand's service saw a response time reduction of 13.60 seconds to 2.35 (based on 350 simultaneous users) after switching to a 64-bit client. While there are yet more advantages to having a native 64 bit client, they are minor in the overall scheme of things and unlikely to have a noticeable impact on performance in a computer game.

Having written a program from the ground up as a 32-bit client the work required to convert all the data types, convert your code to take advantage of the 64 bit architecture and adding a bunch of pre-processor directives for both code paths is not insignificant, and would have to be weighed against the potential gains. X rebirth, a game some may be familiar with was plagued by performance complaints on high end machines until they introduced a 64-bit client, in this instance producing a 64 bit client was worthwhile.

Given how well ED already runs even on modest equipment, is it really worth all the developer time that would be required to add a 64 bit client taking away from feature development, no, probably not.

 

[cappedup]

^ this guy gets the guy who gets it.

I dont get it at all. But I think ^ this guy gets the guy that gets the guy.

 

[WalterHWhite]

>System RAM != Video RAM

This.

It can get murky too, as some GPU's require data to be copied from main memory to GPU memory and vice versa (I've done a little bit of CUDA programming), but some other architectures can access memory directly.

Fancy graphics has never been a thing for me, but if I had a high-end machine for gaming... I can see why you'd want to push its capabilities before it becomes old hat.

 

[CreepyD]

I wonder if I never see stuttering because I have ED installed on an SSD.
It might be all to do with loading new parts from the disc at a guess, nothing to do with RAM at all.
I suppose someone with stuttering using an SSD would prove that wrong.

There's only 1 game I want 64-bit for, and that's Kerbal Space Program (since adding tonnes of mods can actually push you over 4GB easily).
Adding extra planets basically requires it, but it doesn't work right yet.

I'm surprised new games aren't written in 64-bit from the get go these days though, why stick with 32-bit?
Is there any reason since all CPU's have been 64-bit capable for maybe 10 years now, and drivers for almost as long.
Do people really still install the 32-bit windows? (there's really no need if you do!)

 

[DoneWithFD]

The game is running very smoothly for me with all settings enabled/maxed, except for medium shadows if I remember correctly. 1920 x 1200 on a GTX 670 OC (2 Gb) Seems reasonable to me. There's extra room for more eye candy, even on this old-ish card. I'll upgrade later this year anyway.

The only performance issue I've noticed is when I enter a Hyperspace jump, here there's some stuttering at the beginning of the tunnel sequence. The stuttering looks more like a data streaming issue rather than a pure graphics performance issue. 80% of the tunnel sequence is super smooth, it only stutters at the beginning, where I think it's streaming in data for the next system.

I'm playing from an SSD. i7-4770K / 16 GB RAM / Win 7 x64.

 

[deMangler]

The stuttering, on my machine at least did seem to be related to disk access. I have two installs, one on an SSD and the other on spinning rust. I hardlinked to the different ones to test and the stuttering is much better on the SSD.
Surely whatever data that is could be in RAM?
Not claiming to be an expert just throwing it out there. Maybe it doesn't know what data to cache until the server tells it, but seems like pretty much the whole game would fit in RAM.