Stutters: all related with texture streaming?

[LoBiSoMeM]

After play with all settings, the only that made MAJOR improvements in fluid gameplay, without micro/major stutters, was texture quality. With textures to "medium", I only lost detailed textures in close range of objects and minor visual degradation, and keep good quality in vehicles, and all stutters gone. Even over London, fast low level flight.

I have 1GB VRAM card.

[SAC_Crapper]

~S~

Thanks for the info, don't have a chance to test it right now but looking forward to trying it out and getting back to you.

[LoBiSoMeM]

I tested a lot, in other versions, with Kegeys mods, etc. The only think that really reduces stutters in my system, in any of the versions and with official and modded tweaks, is the texture setting.

All other settings have minor impact in FPS - not related with stutter. Even SSAO.

[Querer]

Just a fact that the game looks awful with textures on medium imho...

[5-in-50]

I set my textures from medium to high and the stutters increased significantly. Adjusting other settings whilst leaving textures on medium does not affect stutter frequency for me.

[RE77ACTION]

I'm not a programmer (at least not professional), but I think the stutters occur when loading textures to memory with too high priority.

[LoBiSoMeM]

I'm not a programmer (at least not professional), but I think the stutters occur when loading textures to memory with too high priority.

+1. In ArmA2, without major improvements made in patches, we have texture streaming problems too, but now the game is much more fluid. In first release of ArmA2, we don't have big stutters, but a lot of crazy LOD/Texture loading.

If this is the only problem with the graphic engine regards stutters- and all leads to this conclusion - I'll be really happy, because it's not so hard to solve, just need some compromise between high quality texture loading and performance.

[LoBiSoMeM]

Just a fact that the game looks awful with textures on medium imho...


Not so awful here, only if I fly straight in some building, because I can now set the buildings details and amount high, forest very high, etc. The game looks better now and with no stutters, just a little FPS lost.

Until better texture streaming logic/size optimization be made, I like a lot the new visual using reduced texture setting but with even SSAO on (I like a lot the effect of SSAO).

Let's wait for next patches... Now the visuals here with textures on "medium" (no SSAO in this video):

T9KgId5RDc8

Good enough to have fun until the next round of optimizations! No more stutters!

[Tvrdi]

Just tested...reduced textures to med and almost all other settings at high...massive improvement in fps and smoothness...now is playable...very interesting. That means either this sim is not optimised well (textures) or we will need to wait 2 years to get hardware so we can play this.

[Ali Fish]

this is the root cause of any "regular" stuttering ive had. Medium looks crap. but thats how it works for me. GTX280.

with my texture work, i think its incredible it even works at all given the amount of textures the scenery is made from.

[Wolf_Rider]

the bug is in the shadows side of things

[ZaltysZ]

Low altitude stutters are also result of sound. I had stuttering land at <100m in MP. Turned off Voices (Speech or whatever it is labeled in English version) in sound options and stutters went away. AI talks was probably taking too much resources and interrupted texture loading.

[JG5_emil]

Low altitude stutters are also result of sound. I had stuttering land at <100m in MP. Turned off Voices (Speech or whatever it is labeled in English version) in sound options and stutters went away. AI talks was probably taking too much resources and interrupted texture loading.

The sound definitely causes some stutters for me

[RE77ACTION]

The sound definitely causes some stutters for me

Luckily a new sound engine is in the works. Hopefully that would ease a part of the stutters.

[Blackdog_kt]

Lowering texture quality is what i've been telling people that had problems getting steady FPS to try all along.

The amount of VRAM used by the sim as tested by other users and the way some textures loaded incrementally (first the low detail LODs, then the medium ones and then the high ones) in the initial versions of CoD, causing glitches similar to those i've seen on FSX on a friend's PC when he would set his graphics too high, convinced me that there's just not enough VRAM to load everything and it has to be swapped in and out of VRAM.

So, when we got the ability to use reduced resolution textures in one of the patches it was the first thing i did and the sim has been perfectly playable ever since on my two year old hardware.

As for looking ugly, the only issue is that some of the stencils on aircraft and cockpits have text that's a bit blurry some times. The landscape is looking good enough and to be honest, i've found out that setting textures to medium and land shading to high looks better and runs faster than doing it the opposite way (original size textures and setting land shading to low).

In any case, glad it's working out for you guys ;)

[Rattlehead]

In my case, the stuttering was a direct case of my 1gb card just not having enough vram on 'high' texture detail. Lowering the setting to 'medium' made all the difference in the world and I enjoy a virtually completely stutter-free experience now.
I'm a bit surprised some (a lot?) of people still haven't really figured out the link between the texture detail and video card vram.
The choice is a simple one: buy a card with more vram or lower the texture detail.

Has anyone tried the high-res texture patch for Crysis 2? It requires about 1.5 to 2gb of vram, and stuttering is present in that game at the 'extreme' setting as well, for guys with cards with less than the reccommended vram.

[LoBiSoMeM]

The choice is a simple one: buy a card with more vram or lower the texture detail.

To say the true, today game devs are a little bit "lazy" in terms of optimization of textures... With today cards that have +3GB of VRAM, I'm afraid that this behaviour will lead to even less work in optimization of textures... The problem isn't the detail of the texture, is the size. We can have detailed textures if devs go back in time and do the texture work like was some time ago, using small textures like "bricks" in a wall for some big part...

[MadBlaster]

What about texture compression algorithm? Isn't DX11 supposed to have this and do it better? Hopefully they have this switch built in somewhere.

[SsSsSsSsSnake]

does ssd drives and a lot of memory help with such issues?

[Rattlehead]

To say the true, today game devs are a little bit "lazy" in terms of optimization of textures... With today cards that have +3GB of VRAM, I'm afraid that this behaviour will lead to even less work in optimization of textures... The problem isn't the detail of the texture, is the size. We can have detailed textures if devs go back in time and do the texture work like was some time ago, using small textures like "bricks" in a wall for some big part...

I suppose that is true. Devs have been spoilt a bit. ;)
Most video cards ship with 1gb of vram or more these days though, so unless people are running some pretty old hardware, they should at least be able to run texture detail on medium settings.

[Rattlehead]

does ssd drives and a lot of memory help with such issues?

Probably not, since they don't deal with rendering graphics. Extra system memory will help in other ways, but not if you are experiencing stutters as a result of texture size.

[LoBiSoMeM]

I suppose that is true. Devs have been spoilt a bit. ;)
Most video cards ship with 1gb of vram or more these days though, so unless people are running some pretty old hardware, they should at least be able to run texture detail on medium settings.

Here I can run without stutter in high, in one 1GB VRAM card.

But I suspect that devs can lower the size of high detailed textures without losing much quality, and really need to work in clouds rendering: they don't look so great and is the big impact in FPS so far. I lost maybe 20 FPS in maps with clounds, and in a modern VGA, decente optimized clounds and smoke aren't that bad...

[katdogfizzow]

Here I can run without stutter in high with 2 x 1GB cards.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=316416&postcount=89