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

[wormeyman]

Internal Display on battery power

[wormeyman]

1080p external display.

[wormeyman]

4k external display with native resolution off.

[wormeyman]

1.1.110 on my 4k monitor. The performance difference is noticable.

[Oleg_7777776]

Good afternoon! The text is translated automatically, sorry for the spelling((. I'm playing the best game ever on a MacBook M3 pro 18 gb. as we wrote earlier in 1.1, everything was perfect - 60/60. I have set SA, graphics to maximum, Vsync is enabled. Laptop resource monitor - 8 GB free RAM, 10% CPU load. The screen resolution is native. The monitor is built-in, I do not play on external devices. Friezes occur in three cases - stoves, bring the camera lower, wait 10 seconds, ready 30/60. Logging takes 15-20 seconds and 40/60. And the coolest thing is the laboratories - we bring them closer and voila 30/60. Disabling Vsync gives 60.2/60.2, but if the above conditions are met, there will be freezes and screen twitching. other manipulations with graphics do not improve FPS. At the same time, when the camera is high and not zoomed in, everything is OK, below are two screenshots - the graphics conditions are met. Once again, I'm sorry for my style and style, English is not my native language.

[ezekiel]

And the coolest thing is the laboratories - we bring them closer and voila 30/60. Disabling Vsync gives 60.2/60.2, but if the above conditions are met, there will be freezes and screen twitching

This definitely matches what I see - some areas of the map are good and some are very slow. Solar panels I think were also not good.

[Untucked]

Experiencing the issues described, but I am not using an external display. Solved with disabling the 'Render in native screen resolution' feature. Using a Macbook air M2.

[epiccoleman]

Thought I'd add on to this one, as I'm experiencing similar problems. I'm currently on 2.0.10, seems to me like the problems are worsening as time goes on, but not sure if this is related to new versions or if it's just my save growing bigger.

I'm using an external display too, it's a 1440p Apple Thunderbolt Monitor. I've attached the usual screenshot, log, save, and also some output from the "Capture Performance Statistics" option.

Couple things I've noticed:
Game seems to be stuttering more at the start than during active play. Seems to work better when I "un-fullscreen" the window too. Lags down pretty severely if I open the "Tips and Tricks" section on Space science (maybe others too, but that one was the most recent to pop up).

Not sure if this is of any use, but I also recorded a minute or two of gameplay that shows some of the stuttering: https://youtu.be/JGe2yezK7_g

Macbook info:

10-24-2024, 16-18-52.png (79.43 KiB) Viewed 1799 times

Game screenshot:

10-24-2024, 16-19-34.png (7.15 MiB) Viewed 1799 times

I'll be watching this thread, so if there's any extra data that might help diagnose what's wrong, I'm happy to provide whatever I can.

[saaste]

Just wanted to chime in and say, that I'm having similar performance issues with my MacBook Air M3 and external monitor. I have tried several combinations of settings, and it looks like turning off the MacOS display scaling makes a huge difference. It is a bit annoying to have to do this every time I want to play the game, but with the scaling off the FPS seems to stay around 60 FPS.

[avealokin]

I have a similar problem, in map mode when zooming in, zooming in, there are fps drops, and it gradually decreases to 30, laptop with core i3 10th gen 12 RAM, integrated graphics, full hd monitor, all settings set to minimum, the problem remains

[5rgw9ozl6]

I think main point here, that it worked flawless with old version on the same hardware. Reddit full of posts about same problem for other Mac users.

I was previously playing even on 12" macbook without huge problems, now I have M3 with 24 Gb, and was enjoying the game until it was updated to Space Age. I have not tried to start completely new game, IMHO should not be related to old save data used, but I will try later. In the meantime I will not play and wait until problem would be resolved at least to some degree.

[Oleg_7777776]

Colleague, I fully support you! M3 Pro should obviously cope with graphics like Factorio, it coped with BG3 and Factorio 1.1. super well. And here is an obvious failure, if there was a strong change in graphics - then everyone would have noticed it. I am in a group of 800 active players, the graphics dropped only on systems with Mac OS. I also removed the native retina resolution, the picture became super bad visually, FPS / UPS 60/60 - but the freezes did not go away. I can't wait until I can finally play SA

[Oleg_7777776]

Colleague, I fully support you! M3 Pro should obviously cope with graphics like Factorio, it coped with BG3 and Factorio 1.1. super well. And here is an obvious failure, if there was a strong change in graphics - then everyone would have noticed it. I am in a group of 800 active players, the graphics dropped only on systems with Mac OS. I also removed the native retina resolution, the picture became super bad visually, FPS / UPS 60/60 - but the freezes did not go away. I can't wait until I can finally play SA

[nickmoNW]

Hi all! I'm in a similar situation, and want to report what seems to be working to fix it. 16gb macbook pro, M1. FPS was solid 60 until getting to Gleba, where it's now in the 40s.

I'm playing Factorio with all the default graphics on; all high, *AND* rendering in native resolution. For me, Nauvis and Vulcanus was fine, Gleba was not.

I'm playing on my laptop using the laptop screen. Here's what worked for me: in Display Settings, if you don't have it enabled already, click "Advanced..." and "Show resolutions as list". Change the resolution to something nearby and alt-tab back to the game. I found that some resolutions immediately bumped me to 60 (I have the fps counter enabled in steam), and others didn't. *WEIRDLY*, switching back to the default resolution after doing this *also* seemed to work?

So, my takeaway is: fiddle with switching resolutions (even to something almost identical). It does *not* seem to be related to the size itself: as in, a big or small resolution can either be great performance or terrible. Very fiddly and odd, huh?

One last tip: disabling "Wait for Vsync" in Factorio graphics got rid of the microstuttering I still seemed to experience.

All the best to you all this lovely Factorio weekend!

[Oleg_7777776]

Hi all! I'm in a similar situation, and want to report what seems to be working to fix it. 16gb macbook pro, M1. FPS was solid 60 until getting to Gleba, where it's now in the 40s.

I'm playing Factorio with all the default graphics on; all high, *AND* rendering in native resolution. For me, Nauvis and Vulcanus was fine, Gleba was not.

I'm playing on my laptop using the laptop screen. Here's what worked for me: in Display Settings, if you don't have it enabled already, click "Advanced..." and "Show resolutions as list". Change the resolution to something nearby and alt-tab back to the game. I found that some resolutions immediately bumped me to 60 (I have the fps counter enabled in steam), and others didn't. *WEIRDLY*, switching back to the default resolution after doing this *also* seemed to work?

So, my takeaway is: fiddle with switching resolutions (even to something almost identical). It does *not* seem to be related to the size itself: as in, a big or small resolution can either be great performance or terrible. Very fiddly and odd, huh?

One last tip: disabling "Wait for Vsync" in Factorio graphics got rid of the microstuttering I still seemed to experience.

All the best to you all this lovely Factorio weekend!

I played with the resolution, unfortunately there is no difference. But I turned off "decorative elements and particles" and it helped my FPS, I think. Graphics at maximum, VSYNC on. In general, it would be cool if tech support paid attention to us. In the end, the recommended requirements in steam, apple silicon 2020)

[wormeyman]

The person in charge of the Mac build said earlier in this thread that he is out sick and will deal with this when he feels better.

[Var18]

Same issues here. No problems with Factorio pre-space age. I have the base model M1 Pro. I am using BetterDisplay(https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay) with an eternal ultrawide monitor, which seems to align with others' experience.

[herrkocur]

Probably at this point is a bit worthless report, but M1 Max 32GB RAM, UPS is all good, FPS get those 1-2 seconds slowdowns, I think it's only for certain areas.
Setup is with an external LG 4K monitor over USB-C (or Thunderbolt 5K2K + USB-C 4K daisy chain, playing on 4K) – scaled to 1080p since I like my stuff big but crisp.
Factorio renders in native so it's easy on eyes, interface scaling to Automatic (200%).

Obvious thing might be try and disable Low power mode, seems like some of those slowdowns have correlated with MacOS automatic backup when it starts to prepare a backup. Why would that affect FPS and not UPS beats me, but that was my experience.

Get well @posila, hope you get rid of nasty autumn bug soon!

[Oleg_7777776]

Probably at this point is a bit worthless report, but M1 Max 32GB RAM, UPS is all good, FPS get those 1-2 seconds slowdowns, I think it's only for certain areas.
Setup is with an external LG 4K monitor over USB-C (or Thunderbolt 5K2K + USB-C 4K daisy chain, playing on 4K) – scaled to 1080p since I like my stuff big but crisp.
Factorio renders in native so it's easy on eyes, interface scaling to Automatic (200%).

Obvious thing might be try and disable Low power mode, seems like some of those slowdowns have correlated with MacOS automatic backup when it starts to prepare a backup. Why would that affect FPS and not UPS beats me, but that was my experience.

Get well @posila, hope you get rid of nasty autumn bug soon!

Join us! Get well soon! @posila

[EnerJi]

Any update on this issue @vinzenz @posila?

(Is there another way to tag users or maybe I just don't have permissions to do so? In the preview it doesn't look like it's tagging.)