How do people get 125 FPS with Advanced Lighting in Beta2?

#1 I have noticed alot of folks are getting a wide range of numbers. There is a general mentality i have noticed that Devs and the like tend to do their development on highend/highpower computers and graphics cards. And then the average user goes to use it. And there seems to be some items that dont roll back. As a perfect example of something like this in the industry remember then everything suddenly expected to conform to DX10. And they had all the big game companies release it in all their games to promote the new Vista.

Can we get maybe a more dynamic tool that all the Developers can run, using torque that will give all the devs a way to clock the torque engine on a level field.

#2 People with 125FPS have high end graphic cards, not lower mid range cards like you do

#3 i'm not sure you could make that sound more condescending if you tried Marc :p

I dont know crap about ATI numbers tbh i havent bought an ATI for at least 6-7 years.

what do people consider high end graphics cards these days, whats mid high mid range an low midrange?

and break it down into countries please because while the USA has cheap as shit hardware the rest of the world is subsidising your cheap parts with overpriced hardware :p

#4 ;-)

High end means HD4870x2 / HD4890 and CrossFire combos of HD4870+ for ATI
High mid range to low high end would be 4850 to HD4870

The HD 46xx forms the lower to higher mid range spectrum of the cards
Nice to game but beeing restricted on those things that are most demand in current games.

If you work with the settings for shadow distance, number of splits (the default is now 3 in the fps kit, not 4 anymore for example) as well as disabling SSAO, you should get something thats much more "friendly" to your system

#5 Im using GForce GTX295.

I would consider that higher end then HD4870x2 :P (but thats just me, i dont like ATI, never has, owned it once in my intire life, never again)

But then again, before final im not so uberly into finding out my FPS (wich is 50-150ish depending on features enabled), im more like... lets get the engine working 100%, 100% fast, 100% awesome features.

Then, ill worrie about FPS :P

#6 I dev on a laptop with an 8600M Geforce and definitely hit into performance limitations with Advanced Lighting on a lot of the levels, I also would run into problems with Crysis etc... Matt Fairfax and I have identical laptops so we both definitely are not deving on high end machines with little performance issues :)

#7 According to hardware surveys the industrial standard right now is still a GF8000 class video card with 256megs ram. Most game reviews show GF8600 with 'standard' visual settings to receive ~30FPS with most modern games.
I am using an GF8500GT and receive around 20FPS in 'Warrior Camp' at 1024x768 window mode with Advanced Lighting, up from about 12FPS in beta1. Setting 800x600 window mode with Advanced Lighting will result in ~40FPS so its easy to see i am being fillrate(it is actually video card ram speed as proven in overclocking tests, what is closely related to fillrate) limited.
You can test to see what part of your system (Video or CPU) is lagging you down using Resolution settings(for fillrate stress) and $Pref::timeManagerProcessInterval = to see if your CPU is slowing you down.

T3D is not that far off when it comes to FPS considering the glitter it is tossing about. Basic Lighting mode needs alot of work, it is far less then stellar. And yet we are still assured of more optimizations to come, so I have high hopes.

#8 Well when it comes to optimization, of course some of it will be on our own, but yes, the shaders, terrain and culling needs some work in my oppinion, but thats why we have beta :)

#9 I am finding the shaders to exert excessive heat stress on my video card, first noticed when i thought it was a FOG bug. My report about it is in another thread about FOG. This do not happen in other GPU intensive situations, only T3D.

#10 To Marc Schaerer: I'm glad you came back to your senses and countered your useless piece of information with something more respectfull and informative. I was gonna let you have it for being so disrespectful.

So, instead I'll thank you for the info.

#11 lol i honestly dont think he meant anything i think his comments were just 'matter of fact' type to be honest.

as for all the fill rate and such and such, i'd love to know how this can be measured so that we can see which parts of the hardware are limiting the performance.

and when it comes down to it i'd love to find a way to actually limit my FPS to be quite frank 30fps is more than enough for many games and i dont think you get any real benefit for FPS games over 50-60 fps either imo, meanwhile my graphics card is churning 100 frames per second for no real reason other than to generate extra heating of my office...

edit: and yes i know about vsync but sadly that is a full screen only feature

#12 FPS numbers are a subjective topic. I personally find playing at less then 40FPS to give me headache after a short time. Some people swear they can tell the difference between 80 FPS and 120FPS.

I mention in post #7 some simple ways to test separate components of your hardware seeking the 'bottleneck'. I also know that several other threads have discussion on the topic from some of the programmers themselves, not that many days previous.
As far as in depth hardware benchmarking, you will find massive amounts of information with a Google for 'computer hardware benchmark'.

#13 The best way to test fillrate is to go to a lower video resolution.

If you see a significat performance improvement with lower resolutions... your bound by fillrate.

If the resolution doesn't change the frame rate then your either CPU or vertex bound.

#14 On my P4 3GHz, 1GB Ram, GeForce 6600GT, I get 2-10fps in warriorcamp @ 640x480 with basic lighting and post processing off. When I switch off water reflection it sometimes reach nearly 14 fps ;) Also on a empty map it is not much faster.

#15

Quote:Also on a empty map it is not much faster.

What do you mean... the empty room level?

#16 With empty map i meant empty map part of warrior camp outside the terrain where only water is in visible range which is about 30fps

#17 Can you guys with low fps test advanced lighting ON, but turn the sun shadows OFF? In my own tests the shadows seem to be the most fill rate intensive operations. Rendering the actual shadowmap seems cheap, though, it's the shadowmapping shader itself that seems to be the culprit (since the performance increases a lot when reducing the window size, not so much by reducing shadow map size).

I'm testing using a NVidia Quadro FX3450 (which is equivalent to a GF 6800 or something). Disabling the shadows increases my framerate in about 300%. It's also of note that dynamic lights without shadows seem to be almost free, due to the deferred lighting.

#18 Thomas,the terrain is the thing that is crucial for performance.
If you delete it and create your own optimized terrain,you will get at least 250 fps with the base lightning.

#19 what exactly is 'optimised' terrain?

i mean as far as i can tell you have x squaresize and x resolution, the LOD has 1 setting 0 or for off 16 for on, if you are a LONG way from one of the terrain render cells other wise the LOD is pretty uselss, if you are stood at the center of your terrain it pretty much renders 100% at full detail (this includes shadows) even when you are staring at the floor and sky; i still think this is a wierd setup tbh


as for "at least 250 fps" with a 6600GT... i need screenies :p

#20 You should read a lot about the opcode terrains.