[2.0.7] Frequent FPS slowdowns during gameplay (Apple Silicon)

[omcnoe]

What resolution is your screen set in?

I got slowdowns on both an external display 2560x1440 and internal display 1792 x 1120. Slowdown sometimes happened both in fullscreen & windowed.

I played around with a bit more in windowed mode. In some scenes the FPS will swap between ~10 and 60 based on an absolutely tiny window size change, probably 10 pixels difference in window size and it's difference between solid 60 and completely unplayable lagfest.


I realized that I was on older macos release, Sonoma. I updated to Sequoia the performance is much better and doesn't seem to lag nearly as badly!
Or maybe result of the SDL update? edit: nope I'm still on 2.0.15
I guess Sequoia ships with newer GPU driver.

Still need "Render in native screen resolution", and same kind of lag spikes do seem to happen sometimes. But not nearly as frequently or for as long.
Specific menu previews that were super laggy now seem ok most of the time.

[5rgw9ozl6]

For me update to Sequoia has not changed the behavior. It is going well first, but then starts to degrade. It looks like a typical garbage collection problem in Java, and as it is seen, that it goes worse and worse - IMHO looks like a leak problem.

[brunzenstein]

Dropping bellow 60 FPS, or stuttering sucks

For macOS players, I recommend to disable "Render in native resolution" in graphics settings, if you run into FPS issues.

Space Age has lot more complicated rendering to compose all the sprites and shader effects in somewhat acceptable way. We are always trying to find good compromises between visual fidelity and performance costs.

Hello, to say it clearly. Factorio 2.0 is more demanding on GPU than 1.1 was, and Space Age significantly so.

If you could play 1.1 on high resolution display with "Render in native resolution" graphics option enabled and 60 FPS, your might not keep 60 FPS on highest graphics settings in Space Age, and possibly even in base 2.0.

To improve the framerate, at the moment you can:

• Disable "Render in native resolution" (and restart the game)
• Disable individual effects like Show clouds, Show fog, Animated water, ...

Our plan is:

• Implement Resolution scaling option, so that the game can be rendered in lower resolution (for example 70% scale) but GUI can be rendered in native resolution.
• Explore optimizations that would utilize high power of Apple Silicon CPUs to lessen workload put on its GPU.

With all due respect, Sir e.g.@posila

— as a vivid supporter since 2016.
(I even sent a Sacher-cake to Prague to celebrate when the first real Factorio edition came out - ask Kovarex)

As you certainly know yourself:

Apple Silikon runs the most demanding games available, one can think of, without any hiccup.
Except Factorio on the Mac (I have a M2 Mac) , which is by a far shot not as graphical refined as many shootouts or e.g. Frostpunk.

It seems like a problem for everybody bought Factorio to be solved at your side asap - isn't it?

[BlueTemplar]

Apple Silicon just seems to be particularly poorly (graphically ?) suited to run Factorio ?

[...]
I do agree M1 is powerful chip, and it's possible we'll find a good way to use power of the CPU to reduce workload put on the GPU (which is something we always try to balance, but what makes it complicated is that it needs to be ballanced for different systems differently - essentially M1 Macs being near one extreme of the spectrum and Nintendo Switch being on the opposite extreme)
[...]
[discussion of what changed graphically on non-SA v2.0 compared to v1.1]

(emphasis mine)
And with the additional complication that most Apple Silicon users seem to be using laptops with limited power and heat dissipation ?
EDIT : You will note how the Nintendo Switch isn't planned to get Space Age at all, and hasn't even gotten v2.0 yet, though that seems to be worked on.

(Also remember how it isn't even an x64 CPU, it's quite a feat that games designed first for x86, especially those designed when Apple Silicon wasn't even on the radar, even run at all on it !)

[Oleg_7777776]

Apple Silicon just seems to be particularly poorly (graphically ?) suited to run Factorio ?

[...]
I do agree M1 is powerful chip, and it's possible we'll find a good way to use power of the CPU to reduce workload put on the GPU (which is something we always try to balance, but what makes it complicated is that it needs to be ballanced for different systems differently - essentially M1 Macs being near one extreme of the spectrum and Nintendo Switch being on the opposite extreme)
[...]
[discussion of what changed graphically on non-SA v2.0 compared to v1.1]

(emphasis mine)
And with the additional complication that most Apple Silicon users seem to be using laptops with limited power and heat dissipation ?

(Also remember how it isn't even an x64 CPU, it's quite a feat that games designed first for x86, especially those designed when Apple Silicon wasn't even on the radar, even run at all on it !)

I want to note that many games really warm my Macbook, BG3 warms it up to 80-85 degrees, with a processor load of about 40-45%. Factorio does not raise the temperature above 55 degrees, and loads the processor by 10-15%. I am for the exploits of course. I think that we are all here for the reason that no one warned about the deterioration of the game on the MacBook. A short post about this, or a release on the MacBook a month after the official release, would probably fix the situation. I am also far from programming, dear Templar, and I cannot correctly assess whether it was possible to foresee in advance the reason for the failure of the game on the Mac OS? after all, all failures have a single massive harkater, how did it get past the testers? P.S. - in general, the half-year patch helped me, the SDL change, the comfort of the game at 95% (I'm looking forward to the promised scaling of 70%) WUBE are great fellows!

[phro]

I just experienced this issue on Linux (Wayland with Nvidia GPU). The framerate drops when Factorio is rendered on my 4k monitor, but the framerate increases when it is moved back to my 1k monitor, *or* when the window size of Factorio on the 4k display is sufficiently small relative to screen size.

This was not an issue in the past, but seems to occur even on older releases. So far I have tested on 2.0.16, 2.0.15, 2.0.14, and 2.0.9 (the last of which I did not experience the framerate decrease on the external monitor earlier when it first came out).

I am not sure what has changed on my setup in this timeframe. I am updating my nvidia driver from 6.6.59 to 6.6.60, and will report back if anything improves.

[BlueTemplar]

Are you testing with exactly the same save, with the same actions, and not a different one where the factory is bigger ?

What about 1.1 ?

You are trying to drive ~4 times the pixels after all.

[araishikeiwai]

I'm also experiencing this issue with the latest M4 Pro 16-inch MacBook Pro

My base is rather small as I'm still starting up in Nauvis, playing it on my old Intel i7 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro and my Ryzen 3600 / RTX 3070 PC is totally fine (albeit with loud fans on my Intel MacBook), but playing it on my M4 Pro I have stutters and FPS drops to 40ish and unstable. Both Macs are using built-in display.

[phro]

Are you testing with exactly the same save, with the same actions, and not a different one where the factory is bigger ?

What about 1.1 ?

You are trying to drive ~4 times the pixels after all.

Indeed, but the slowdown only started happening recently. I have been able to run Factorio both 1.* and 2.* on the external monitor at full resolution without issue before. What is odd is that the versions that did not slow down earlier now do do so. I am not sure whether this is a bug that occurs rarely, or whether a setup detail on my end has caused this change.

[Panzerknacker]

A m1 (or later) mac should be able to run SA without performance issues. My Steam deck runs it fine and that is a less powerful device.

[UnfunnyChris]

Can we somehow help to narrow down the cause? Some metrics or debug info you need? I am a developer and know how valuable good feedback and "error logs" are

[BlueTemplar]

A m1 (or later) mac should be able to run SA without performance issues. My Steam deck runs it fine and that is a less powerful device.

That's not how it works, you can't reduce «computing power» to a single number (see above).

[Oleg_7777776]

We are looking forward to solutions from the WUBE team! M4 Pro failed; (hope for programmers!

[posila]

It seems like a problem for everybody bought Factorio to be solved at your side asap - isn't it?

I am sorry we have not met your expectations with Factorio's performance.

What expectation is that exactly, thought? I can see you'd like us to solve a problem ASAP, but what are the conditions under which you'll consider it solved? For example: "When Factorio 2.0 will run 60 FPS on 8-core M2 Mac in 1280x800 HiDPI, in any scene with 100k sprites or less, with clouds, animated water, smoke and render in native resolution graphics options enabled" ... or maybe "When the game with default graphics settings will run at 60 FPS in any scene with 100k sprites or less on any computer manufactured at most 5 years ago"

[posila]

A m1 (or later) mac should be able to run SA without performance issues.

When you say it like that, it is unachievable. Given a single planet is 2000000x2000000 tiles large, so at minimum you can always build bigger factory until there will be performance issues on any computer.

So M1 (or later) mac should be able to run SA without performance issues on what map, and on what graphics settings (and in which resolution of screen)?

[brunzenstein]

It seems like a problem for everybody bought Factorio to be solved at your side asap - isn't it?

... or maybe "When the game with default graphics settings will run at 60 FPS in any scene with 100k sprites or less on any computer manufactured at most 5 years ago"

"When the game with default graphics settings will run at least at 50 FPS in any scene with 100k sprites or less on any Mac computer M1 upwards.
This would do it.

[BlueTemplar]

EDIT : Eh, ninjaed by your edit, I'll still post it though, just in case...
«Any Mac», maybe (Apple only seems to release high-end computers ?), but «any computer»... I shudder to think what bargain bin horrors netbook manufacturers can come up with (also, have they finally stopped selling laptops without any SSDs ?)

[Oleg_7777776]

AAAAAAAAA, it seems to me that we will soon be left without MAC OS support. Let's live together comrades

[brunzenstein]

AAAAAAAAA, it seems to me that we will soon be left without MAC OS support. Let's live together comrades

It seems to me that the whole factorio developer team has very limited resources for the AppleOS.

It is rumored that only one single developer is responsible for the whole Apple environment.

I would love to be proven wrong - @posila?

[Oleg_7777776]

AAAAAAAAA, it seems to me that we will soon be left without MAC OS support. Let's live together comrades

It seems to me that the whole factorio developer team has very limited resources for the AppleOS.

It is rumored that only one single developer is responsible for the whole Apple environment.

I would love to be proven wrong - @posila?

is there a check mark to shift the load from GUI to GUI? And we will be happy