Unplayable in 4k/UHD, massive Input Lag

[DaDude]

Hello guys,

i know Factorio is not a game to play in 4k, but since there is no dedicated option to set the resolution to 1080p (correct me if i'm blind) i'm kinda screwed, because when i launch the game in 4k i'm experiencing massive input lags, usually between 2 and up to 10 seconds. I know it's the resolutions fault, because on my other screen (1080p) it works perfectly fine, just like in windowed mode when i resize the game to ~1920x1080. (and tbh, changing the desktop resolution to 1080p before starting Factorio is a pain in the a** )
Im running Factorio on an i7 4720HQ and a gtx 970m (with optimus, but set to use the geforce by default). Usually more than enough power to run a game like factorio in 4k. Is there something i'm missing or something i can do to make it work?

Thanks in advance,

DaDude

[orzelek]

Hello guys,

i know Factorio is not a game to play in 4k, but since there is no dedicated option to set the resolution to 1080p (correct me if i'm blind) i'm kinda screwed, because when i launch the game in 4k i'm experiencing massive input lags, usually between 2 and up to 10 seconds. I know it's the resolutions fault, because on my other screen (1080p) it works perfectly fine, just like in windowed mode when i resize the game to ~1920x1080. (and tbh, changing the desktop resolution to 1080p before starting Factorio is a pain in the a** )
Im running Factorio on an i7 4720HQ and a gtx 970m (with optimus, but set to use the geforce by default). Usually more than enough power to run a game like factorio in 4k. Is there something i'm missing or something i can do to make it work?

Thanks in advance,

DaDude

Try to change texture setting to something lower. 4k resolution needs lots of more memory so it might be struggling - that kind of stutter could be potentially produced by texture streaming from RAM.

[Koub]

Duplicate of viewtopic.php?f=29&t=21615. Your logfile would probably be helpful as it was requested by the devs - but not provided - in the other topic.

[DaDude]

wow, didn't find that post...guess the search function ignores 2 character keywords ("4k")? it doesn't tell me that my term is to short, but only that no results were found...
will get some logs, is it better to post them here or in the other topic?

[Koub]

Here will be just fine .
Tbh, I think under 4 chars, search strings are discarded, but as I'm a moderator, I try to read all the posts in every topic, and I remembered another guy who had problems with 4K

[DaDude]

Yeah, seems so

I started a game on a new map to get some logs and timings.
But i don't think it has got something to do with ingame textures like orzelek said, as the menu is unresponsive too.
When i move my mouse in the main menu the selected entry gets highlighted 500-1000ms later.

Logfile:

Code: Select all

   0.000 2016-04-08 23:49:51; Factorio 0.12.29 (Build 17931, win64, steam)
   0.000 Operating system: Windows 10 
   0.000 Program arguments: "E:\Games\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Factorio\bin\x64\Factorio.exe" 
   0.000 Read data path: E:/Games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Factorio/data
   0.000 Write data path: C:/Users/Marc/AppData/Roaming/Factorio
   0.000 Binaries path: E:/Games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Factorio/bin
   0.012 Graphics options: [FullScreen: true] [VSync: false] [UIScale: 150%] [MultiSampling: OFF] [Graphics quality: normal] [Video memory usage: all] [Light scale: 100%] [Screen: 255]
   0.013 Available display adapters: 1
   0.013  [0]: \\.\DISPLAY1 - Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 {0x05, [0,0], 3840x2160, 32bit, 59Hz}
   0.013 Create display on adapter 0. Size 1280x720 at position [1270, 702].
   0.598 Initialised Direct3D:[0] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M      ; driver: nvd3dumx.dll 10.18.13.6472
   0.658 Desktop composition is active.
   0.715 Loading mod core 0.0.0 (data.lua)
   0.718 Loading mod base 0.12.29 (data.lua)
   1.700 Initial atlas bitmap size is 16384
   1.702 Created atlas bitmap 16384x7754
   8.367 Sprites loaded
   8.734 Loading sounds...
  10.059 Factorio initialised
  25.032 Info Scenario.cpp:124: Map version 0.12.29-0
  82.256 Steam API shutdown.
  82.258 Goodbye

Bitmap atlas seems kinda big, but that's just me wildly guessing
Timings (as requested in other topic) are also attached to this post, if you'll need any other information i'll happlily provide it.

[orzelek]

Can you check if you have vsync enabled?
If yes try to disable it and restart the game.

There is one thing in common between both issue threads - flip times seem to be very long. It looks like vsync is trying to sync to every other (or 4th) frame.
Might be some GPU settings also.

Don't worry about atlas - mine with mods and WaiTex is about 4 times as big

[bk5115545]

Depending on what magic the devs are timing with the flip call, there probably isn't a lot they can do.

You could see if your graphics control panel allows you to force exclusive-mode fullscreen. If they're literally timing the context.present() or context.swap() then it's a pretty difficult problem.

[DaDude]

@orzelek: VSync is off, see logfile. And yeah, you're probably right, just tried it on my other screen with waitex

@bk5115545: i literally didn't see that value when looking at the timings, but yes, thats a little bit much But you're a genious anyway: Forcing exclusive fullscreen with GeDoSaTo seems to do the trick. It's not really a good way to solve this, because alt-tabbing out of the game crashes it that way, but it's a start. I can't take any screenshots (not working with force fullscreen too...), but the flip timing went down from 69.4 to 0.7

While this is an acceptable solution for me right now, i think it's something that needs fixing. I'm by far no expert, but wouldn't it be possible to add an exclusive fullscreen mode to the game settings?

[posila]

Depending on what magic the devs are timing with the flip call, there probably isn't a lot they can do.

You could see if your graphics control panel allows you to force exclusive-mode fullscreen. If they're literally timing the context.present() or context.swap() then it's a pretty difficult problem.

Yes, it is timing just Present() for DirectX or SwapBuffers() for OpenGL.

As I understand it, it is problem of cooperation between Intel and nVidia drivers.

1) Does it happen also when you play in maximized windows instead of fullscreen?
2) I can see you have up-to-date nVidia driver, do you also update Intel drivers?
3) Is it possible to disable Intel graphics entirely in BIOS?
4) Did you try to run the game on Intel GPU?

[DaDude]

1) yes it does, i can see it slow down the bigger i drag (EDIT: or maximize) the window. the further i go above 1080p the more it slows down
2) yes, intel drivers are up to date according to the intel driver update utility
3) nope, as i mentioned in the first post it's an optimus system, means the intel gpu does all the output, but can use the nvidia to compute all the graphics stuff. There is no way to disable that on optimus enabled notebook. You can however force an application to specifically use the intel or nvidia gpu for computation. (which is what i did, i set it to nvidia, because the intel didn't deliver good performance even on 1080p)
4) i didn't until now, but that even makes it worse, flip timing is now 85 instead of 69

I don't know what Factorio does different than other games and what could possibly be the reason for optimus behaving wrong, but i can play other games pretty much without problems in 4k, even graphically intense stuff like "Rise of the Tomb Raider" and so on

[orzelek]

Did you try switching between OpenGL and D3D in Factorio?
You have d3d now so launching with --force-opengl might get you different result.

[DaDude]

WIth OpenGL flip timings go down from 0.7 to 0.1, so that problem doesn't exist there.
The render timings however are slower by the same factor: ~1.0 with GeDoSaTo and dx9, ~7.0 with OpenGL.
I'll stick with my solution for now, but i still think this should be fixed, even if its just checkboxes for exclusive fullscreen and/or use opengl, because if it was clickable, i would have tried before posting here
It's up to the devs now how they are going to approch this or if they leave it that way since there are two possible ways of fixing that right now.
If i can help with anyhthing like more logs, tests, etc. feel free to ask, otherwise im happy for now, thanks guys

[bk5115545]

As I understand it, it is problem of cooperation between Intel and nVidia drivers.

Forcing exclusive-mode fullscreen allows the graphics driver to do some intense optimizations (an example is that the Nvidia GL implementation will only do threaded-optimizations on exclusive-mode applications on Windows; Linux doesn't have this limitation). It also, forces the graphics hardware to handle the monitor directly (which goes against several awesome Windows-10-only features which were designed to improve blit performance with non-constant frame rates).

It's not really a good way to solve this, because alt-tabbing out of the game crashes it that way, but it's a start.

It's natural that factorio would crash from alt+tab in this setup because it's probably not handling the signal the OS sends for forced graphics context-reinitialization (when the graphics driver hands the monitor back to the OS). This is actually quite difficult and the the major reason AAA games often have issues with alt+tab.

While this is an acceptable solution for me right now, i think it's something that needs fixing. I'm by far no expert, but wouldn't it be possible to add an exclusive fullscreen mode to the game settings?

The short answer is "yes" but in reality exclusive-mode fullscreen is very vendor/driver dependent and only complicates development with the inability to do basic debugging tasks (like screenshot). Personally, I'm glad that the staff wasn't wasting too much time trying to implement it correctly (for a fast fix, there's a flag that you pass the graphics context on creation to do exclusive fullscreen -- this flag is what GeDoSATo changes with DLL injection); not fixing it means faster bugfixes and overall quicker development. I do think that they will probably have it by version 1.0 however I'm in no way associated with the devs so I can't be certain.

[_cdecl]

I am suffering from what I believe is a similar issue. My flip time is ~12 but my frame cycle is ~120. If I resize to a small window I get a solid 60 FPS and at 1080p I get 45, if I'm lucky. I have a i7-4810MQ, a GTX 960M, and 16GB of RAM. GeDoSaTo is out of the question for me as I prefer not to disable secure boot. Is there anything I can do? The screen tearing is unbearable at times.

[bk5115545]

I am suffering from what I believe is a similar issue. My flip time is ~12 but my frame cycle is ~120. If I resize to a small window I get a solid 60 FPS and at 1080p I get 45, if I'm lucky. I have a i7-4810MQ, a GTX 960M, and 16GB of RAM. GeDoSaTo is out of the question for me as I prefer not to disable secure boot. Is there anything I can do? The screen tearing is unbearable at times.

The frame cycle time is the total time it takes to make and show a frame. 120ms means you have about 8 FPS, which is terrible but since the flip time is a bit more reasonable I don't think running in exclusive fullscreen will help very much.

Can you make a new topic with a screenshot of the f5 debug overlay and the general specs of your computer?
Make sure to include additional information like how to reproduce the low FPS (it might be as simple as trying to run a vanilla game or maybe it's because of a specific setup in your endgame base -- we can't tell from the above info).

[_cdecl]

The frame cycle time is the total time it takes to make and show a frame. 120ms means you have about 8 FPS, which is terrible but since the flip time is a bit more reasonable I don't think running in exclusive fullscreen will help very much.

Can you make a new topic with a screenshot of the f5 debug overlay and the general specs of your computer? Make sure to include additional information like how to reproduce the low FPS (it might be as simple as trying to run a vanilla game or maybe it's because of a specific setup in your endgame base -- we can't tell from the above info).

I won't make a new thread as I think I have solved the issue. After getting the updated version of both the Intel graphics driver and the driver update utility (which was completely broken), the game seems to be consistently running at 58 - 60 FPS. What you say about the frame cycle time doesn't seem to make sense, because the first number is still about 100 to 120, even on a fresh vanilla game. Thanks anyway, though. If you still want to know more, I will provide the screenshot and create a new thread about it.