[for 0.16] [0.15.4] Fairly serious framerate issues

[Malor]

One possible point of note: I'm on Windows 7, not Win10. (the original bug poster here, not the latest.)

There's definitely something wrong in your code. Even if it's working on your laptop, something is wrong.

[Harkonnen]

We didn't change much regarding handling graphics, so the code is probably wrong, but it's not a change between 0.14 and 0.15. What did change - much more sprites (fluid wagon, nuclear stuff, etc...) and especially Highres sprites when they are on. So my idea is that we are getting closer and closer to the edge when we will have to implement some smart sprites streaming instead of loading them all at once.

[exi123]

I updated the driver of my gtx 960 and when i reconnected to the server factorio was on 60/60...
After 30 minutes of playing the game runs like this:

[Harkonnen]

This is very interesting information, thank you!

[Harkonnen]

A question to everyone - do you experience such lags/spikes in single-player or when connecting to some server in multiplayer? because it looks like catching up with the server when game sacrifices everything to reach it near 60 ups boundary

[TreefrogGreaken]

I'll just throw in my 2 cents with the rest of you guys.

I run a i5-2400 and 660 GTX (2GB). Which is an older setup, but before 0.15 Factorio ran without any major hitches what so ever.

Since the new sprites have arrived I tested out the High setting, and I got the stuttering on a new blank generated world, every 3 or 5 seconds the graphics would hitch then be ok till the hitched again. I lowered the settings to normal, and no problems at all, until a few nights ago. I was stood near an ore patch, belts around be messing with circuit network, when the hitching started up again, though this time, the framerate would be at a solid 60 fps, then drop almost in steps to around 45 fps then 30, few seconds later back up to 60. Once I moved away from the ore, belt, circuit area, the framerate cleaned up and was ok, need to get back in and do a bit more testing though.

I don't currently play in Multiplayer, so this is all happening in single player. Im going to be upgrading my card very soon anyway, but this is currently affecting me.

[NoXPhasma]

We have big performance problems too, but it'S really worse. The FPS drop down to 5 FPS and the game gets really unresponsible. But this only happens when we play the game online. When I run the save in single player there are no lags.

The server is running on my machine, which is quite powerful:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 @ 3.8 GHz
GPU: GeForce GTX 970
RAM: 32 GB

Since I have absolutely no lag in single player, my guess is that it is a problem with the server and or latency.

I'm running the Linux Steam Client version with currently 0.15.6 and the headless Linux server 0.15.6.

I will attach our save file. Please tell me what more information I can provide.

[Harkonnen]

TreefrogGreaken
Windows? (I mean DirectX?)

[TreefrogGreaken]

TreefrogGreaken
Windows? (I mean DirectX?)

Windows 7, so DirectX 11. I can do a double check later on today when im at home

[exi123]

So here is a screenshot of me at the same position when i load the savegame on my pc without server. The perfomance is really poor, but a bit better than on my mp screenshot. I set the sprites to very low, nothing else is changed (my coop patner has built some stuff around the factory, but he is struggeling with the same issues on his pc, i7 4790K, 16gb ddr3 ram, gtx 760 graphics card on win7)

Let me know if you need any information about my specs or settings or whatever. I will try to do my best to help with that bug/issue/whatever it is...

[orzelek]

You have seriously large game update. Can you post a save?
It seems that game is simply not managing decent fps due to a lot of objects.

And it would be different issue than op has - your UPS is also dropping.

[Harkonnen]

It was attached near bottom of previous page (see last two posts).

[orzelek]

It was attached near bottom of previous page (see last two posts).

Ahh right:)
Some impressive belts there.

Can't wait for the optimization then - I can run it at around 55 UPS.

[Harkonnen]

Try this .exe - just curious. It has belts optimized, after loading it will stabilize within about 10 seconds. But I do not recommend to keep playing for long time with this version because you will not be able to load its saves from anywhere else.

[orzelek]

Thats a fancy exe.
This save looks like a good test case for it - update time dropped from above 14 to around 9 on entities. Looks like megabase with belts might work nicely

[exi123]

Wow... Thats an impressive view of the new beltsystem you developed there. I can't wait to see this live with an official factorio-release. This recovers my save completely back to 60/60 with the smoothness of a just started new game. I gave it a try on my server, the catchup was done in 2 seconds, so from that point there are resources left for going further with the game. Thank you for taking this early look on what you are doing with this game!

But back to business: I found a savegame in my autosaves from that factory in a little earliyer state of play. If i understand it right the amount of updates is an indicator for how many things factorio has to do with one total update. At this point the factory has 10k updates and runs smooth and stable with 60/60 and no lags, fps drops or something. Is it really possible that the perfomance is crashing so much with the update jump of 7k updating items? I have never experienced such an impact in other factorio versions before. And the Ups goes up and down due to staying around while the factory is working at a constant level, this is really confusing me... with that fps lower than the ups and that stuff...

[TK_Neg]

An update to what I had posted earlier: it only seems to affect me in multiplayer games, even when the server is literally sitting four feet behind me. I'd attribute it to lag time, but I'm not 100% certain that's the case. If I'm in a single player game though, the game runs perfectly. I don't think I had tried playing 1p with the new version before posting here, so that's my bad. I'll go with 'working as intended' in my scenario.

[Jon8RFC]

A question to everyone - do you experience such lags/spikes in single-player or when connecting to some server in multiplayer? because it looks like catching up with the server when game sacrifices everything to reach it near 60 ups boundary

I hope I'm properly understanding the question. I have an older rig, but I do get ups/fps issues on some multiplayer megabases. It can take time to catch up, but once I'm in it often seems ok for a while, but gets stuck in low ups after a while. If I reconnect, it seems fine for a while again then goes downhill eventually. It's also very sensitive to the zoom level. If I stay zoomed in all the way, or maybe a notch or two out, it can be more stable, but if I zoom out it can't recover even if I zoom all the way in.

If I save that same map and load it locally, I have zero issues, and my ups/fps is not hypersensitive to the zoom level. It still can drop when zoomed out all the way, but far less drastically and with immediate recovery by zooming in a little bit.

Of note...the server I play on the most usually shows a latency of 120-160ms via the multiplayer browser. I have played on larger megabases without the same issue if the latency was lower, but I truly don't know, diagnostically, if the seemingly larger megabases were easier on my computer for whatever reason.

Windows7
Q9550 @3.8ghz
Hd5870
Wired connection
High sprite
High vram

[Harkonnen]

Multiplayer is different in sense that you must catch up with the server all the time, so when you reach 60ups margin, game starts sacrificing rendering frames to stay on same pace with the server. This is a big issue to solve for us because server is frequently a dedicated machine faster than any laptops connecting and server running in headless mode does not have to render anything, so catching up with it is quite a quest on its own. Right now players solve this problem by slowing down game deliberately with something like "/c game.speed=0.9", and further on as game drops below and below 60 ups. The right solution would be to perform some automatic game speed adjustment on server side, we have plans for that.

[Loewchen]

Multiplayer is different in sense that you must catch up with the server all the time, so when you reach 60ups margin, game starts sacrificing rendering frames to stay on same pace with the server. This is a big issue to solve for us because server is frequently a dedicated machine faster than any laptops connecting and server running in headless mode does not have to render anything, so catching up with it is quite a quest on its own. Right now players solve this problem by slowing down game deliberately with something like "/c game.speed=0.9", and further on as game drops below and below 60 ups. The right solution would be to perform some automatic game speed adjustment on server side, we have plans for that.

Perfect time to pitch my development suggestion: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=43204