Friday Facts #281 - For a Few Frames More

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-281

[Gergely]

Where did the rail sleepers go?

[posila]

Where did the rail sleepers go?

Under my decorative carpet

[CakeDog]

Am I weird for liking the 'noisy' look of low quality compression?

Either way, it's getting a bit wild how much you guys are optimizing this game. 0.17 is definitely going to be running SMOOTH.

[Leopard1800]

Would it be possible to cache the sprite atlases to disk (in some GPU friendly format) after they have been made so that they can be loaded directly the next startup?

That way you can keep the .png files but also have the speed increase of not having to re-create atlases and transcode etc.

[raiguard]

Oh my gosh, you can't even understand how happy I am for these optimizations. I have been wanting to be able to play Factorio in hi-res ever since I found the option, but my GPU was too weak to do it (GTX 660Ti 3GB). I have still been playing on hi-res, but have simply accustomed myself to the large lag spikes when I am going through my furnace array, or scouting out biters in areas with lots of trees, because I consider the sharper graphical quality to be worth the FPS drops. Now I won't have to worry anymore!

My birthday came early. Thank you so much for putting so much effort into optimizations, I (and many others) really appreciate it.

[Bilka]

Would it be possible to cache the sprite atlases to disk (in some GPU friendly format) after they have been made so that they can be loaded directly the next startup?

Go into the config and change

Code: Select all

; Options: true, false
; cache-sprite-atlas=false

to

Code: Select all

; Options: true, false
cache-sprite-atlas=true

[smew]

Any word on the release date? Also maybe graphics updates and such can go in minor version releases since they're unlikely to affect mods.

[JCav]

Any word on the release date? Also maybe graphics updates and such can go in minor version releases since they're unlikely to affect mods.

Well, you JUST read the latest blog.

Do you think they just forgot to mention a release date for .17? Or is it more likely that it isn't ready yet, and we'll have to wait and see what next week brings?

[Polman]

For years i thought you can play factorio with any gpu. I was kinda suprised when i noticed i had 30fps on a laptop with 940M...

[98coolmen]

Oh I love the way the rails look underneeth the grass, maybe this could be a thing in forrest areas.

[adam_bise]

Seeing optimization work brings a smile to my face. Thank you!

[bman212121]

I was going to point out that it would be helpful on the graphs to show a line at 16.66ms, but the last line kind of covers it. Basically the most important take away from those graphs are that the GTX 660 and R7 250 went from having slow downs to should run at a steady frame rate. The Intel HD 5500 gets a solid boost and is going from say 25fps to 50+, so that also is going to make a huge difference in play-ability. It won't be butter smooth, but it will probably feel that way compared to what those players are used to.

Ultimately, some GPUs are not cut for rendering the game in FullHD resolution no matter what (for example Intel HD Graphics 2500 or multimedia cards like GeForce GT 710 and Radeon HD 6450 come to mind), so they would benefit from an option to render the game view in lower resolution with native-resolution GUI overlay.

This is very relevant to me, and I do hope that low resolution still plays an important role in the graphics department going forward. When we have lan parties several of the machines have one of these cards in them, desktops will either have the GT 710, an HD6450 or some type of low to mid HD 7xxx card. I've played Factorio with as little as an HD3000 with only 32MB of dedicated VRAM. It's functional, but that's about it. I'm curious how much of an impact these changes have done for the low end configurations, and if they are also seeing a decent boost or not. (Obviously the texture compression part doesn't affect these, but hopefully the other tweaks have helped a bit)

For years i thought you can play factorio with any gpu. I was kinda suprised when i noticed i had 30fps on a laptop with 940M...

It kind of can be run on most gpus. The biggest change was when they added High resolution textures. Your device might be reporting enough VRAM that Factorio switches from the old low res, to the newer high res. If that's the case then you might have had a higher frame rate in one of the old versions, where the newer graphics are more demanding now. Not saying that's a bad thing, but you definitely want to be aware you might need to make some changes to settings or see about getting a faster GPU to keep up with the changes.

[adam_bise]

I think they put oddities in their pictures just to watch every OCD squirm.

For example, there are rail signals in the middle of nowhere, and they are using a 2-way train on what is clearly a one-way track.

heresy.png (361.48 KiB) Viewed 16945 times

HERESY!

[cpy]

Dayum boy! That's one hellova FPS boost.

[MarvinCZ]

In general I am really looking forward for 0.17.

My only concern is that if due to this rendering system overhaul I will still be able to run Factorio on High textures at 60 FPS on my MBP with integrated Intel Iris Plus graphics like I am now with 0.16.

Hopefully the game won't get optimizations only for desktop computers with dedicated graphics cards.

[adam_bise]

In general I am really looking forward for 0.17.

My only concern is that if due to this rendering system overhaul I will still be able to run Factorio on High textures at 60 FPS on my MBP with integrated Intel Iris Plus graphics like I am now with 0.16.

Hopefully the game won't get optimizations only for desktop computers with dedicated graphics cards.

According to benchmarks, the Iris plus is much faster than the HD5500 and is more on par with the R7 250. I think you will be fine.

[Quantum_mechanic]

I think they put oddities in their pictures just to watch every OCD squirm.

For example, there are rail signals in the middle of nowhere, and they are using a 2-way train on what is clearly a one-way track.

heresy.png

HERESY!

Rail signals in the "middle of nowhere" allow multiple trains to follow each other along that length of track. Since only one train is allowed in a block of track at a time if you don't have those extra signals other trains would be stopped back wherever the last signal partitioned the track into another section.

It's a technique required when you have many trains passing along the same stretch of rail if you want to keep up throughput.
Signals on the outside indicate they're using a Right hand drive setup, if they're on the inside then they're Left hand drive.

Also to address the two-way train on a one-way track could be addressed by the possibility that stations or other sections of the track that this particular trains service are built to be two-way, it is simpler to set it up to be reversible rather than looping it around to connect to the "highway trunk-line" that is in the screenshot. I have used this exact described set up on my last major play-through.

The more you know!

[bman212121]

In general I am really looking forward for 0.17.

My only concern is that if due to this rendering system overhaul I will still be able to run Factorio on High textures at 60 FPS on my MBP with integrated Intel Iris Plus graphics like I am now with 0.16.

Hopefully the game won't get optimizations only for desktop computers with dedicated graphics cards.

The optimizations aren't desktop or laptop specific, so they will help any GPU. The main focus of these updates are aimed squarely at high resolution textures, so in your case it will only run better. The graphs are labeled well enough for the average person to understand, but in this case they need a label that "lower is better". There's a good chance that in edge case scenarios like the ones in this test that your GPU could be up to twice as fast at the same task. So if you were experience dips down to as low as 30fps right now on .16, these changes will make it so that those dips would only go down to 60fps, meaning your game would always run at a steady 60fps.

[Proxy]

ok so if this gets optimized even more i could probably play it on a Raspberry Pi and take it with me for on the go