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

[BlueTemplar]

And that's still more than the 0 they had a few years ago (if you remember the job postings they did).

[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?

Even only 1 dev out of 30 is probably still greater than the proportion of Mac players to total players
(Not to mention that only ~half of those 30 are programmers, the other half are GFX/sound/devops/websites)

Its not the matter of user size but the sheer matter if the product is offered as working on the Mac OS.
If its not, it would harm the truly excellent reputation for Factorio.

It would be only fair to state that Factorio, given its limited resources, is from now on only for the
PC / Linux platform recommended/suitable/available
- this would be a clear cut.

and somehow understandable.

[Akyri]

There's a lot of reports from players relating this issue to external monitors, and that may be a factor to some degree. But I want to clearly state, I am having this same issue within 5 minutes of starting a new base, using only the inbuilt MacBook Pro monitor. While plugged in, while on battery, it doesn't matter.

I would love to just be able to play standard Factorio again under the conditions I used to. I truly hope this issue can be resolved soon.

[brunzenstein]

I would love to just be able to play standard Factorio again under the conditions I used to. I truly hope this issue can be resolved soon.

I sign that!

[collinvandyck]

[ snip -- removed to avoid piling on ]

[Panzerknacker]

Yeah I was also aware people are not talking gigabases here but new saves. I also owned a M1 macbook before and I know it's a powerful little machine, it ran DOTA2 better than my Steam Deck even tho the game is x86 code being emulated on Rosetta. Factorio also ran great, back then it was still the x86 version, now we even have a native ARM build.

If it's stuttering on new maps something must be wrong. Maybe it has something to do with the M1 sharing memory between CPU/GPU and the increased memory usage from Space Age.

People that are having issues, how much memory does your machine have?

[Oleg_7777776]

Yeah I was also aware people are not talking gigabases here but new saves. I also owned a M1 macbook before and I know it's a powerful little machine, it ran DOTA2 better than my Steam Deck even tho the game is x86 code being emulated on Rosetta. Factorio also ran great, back then it was still the x86 version, now we even have a native ARM build.

If it's stuttering on new maps something must be wrong. Maybe it has something to do with the M1 sharing memory between CPU/GPU and the increased memory usage from Space Age.

People that are having issues, how much memory does your machine have?

I have the M3 Pro 18 gb, the same problem on the M4, and the M3 Max with 64 gb. The symptoms are a drop in FPS. There may be an epidemic. The intended treatment is described earlier. we are waiting for the doctors from WUBE.

[brunzenstein]

Dear Sir,

As a dedicated supporter since 2016, I wish to express my concerns respectfully. The urgent pleas for assistance from the Factorio/Mac community make it difficult to understand why there are currently no open positions listed on the company's website.

Considering the substantial cash flow generated from the latest release, it seems there should be sufficient resources to bring on additional support, even if temporarily—perhaps even someone as high-profile as Tim Cook (just a lighthearted suggestion).

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[posila]

... but it also feels like wube is a bit irritated by the well-intentioned peanut gallery here and in the other adjacent threads, which doesn't feel great, but maybe i'm misreading the tone.

Wube sees 600 open issues with the game and is not bothered and believes it will be close to zero in couple of months. Wube is not irritated. I, on the other hand, am hurt and depressed, which occasionally manifests through anger. I feel there is an assumption, 2D graphics is automatically faster than 3D and therefore 2D game like Factorio should be fast to render without any effort on the developer part. And think this feeling of mine is not completely baseless, because even kovarex says they started Factorio in 2D, because they wanted to render large scale bases fast. I can't speak for other devs, so I'll speak just for myself - I was not making game I wanted to make, I was making a game I thought I was expected to make. On one side I think players expect the game to run fast even on old hardware (I am not saying Apple Silicon is old HW) and on the other side artists want to make beautiful game and expect me to add features they can use to realize their vision. And it took lot of effort and compromises, to make the rendering raise its requirements just a little bit. I did some mistakes, a change that I thought was both engine improment and also optimization is not optimization at all for integrated GPUs (including Apple Silicon)... I am working on adding option for this change for 2.0 and at least partially for Space Age (Vulcanus kind of requires it). The game performs on M1 Macbook Air as well as I expected it to perform on that machine, so I thought I also met player's expectations. It was hard for me to find out I did not, and I feel like lot of emotions oozes from discussions around this topic - lot of disappointment from unmet expectations, possibly people feel like they are not being seen or heard, or that nobody cares about their experience. Which in turn makes me feel like my efforts are not seen and appreciated, and I feel like some people are saying that we don't care about game performance anymore, and this feeling of mine triggers me, because you have no idea what could have been if I didn't care.

Anyway, I have not met your expectations even though I thought I did, which means I don't know what your expectations are. It seemed to me, you were expecting to be able to run the game at the highest graphics setting on M1 and higher, which seems like unreasonable expectation to me - cue in frustration and anger. But I realized I don't actually know and I'm still assuming, so I asked, and the answer I got was about "default graphics settings" which is much more reasonable. I could change the defaults now, but I think that would be kind of dick move, and I need to add better settings first. If adding those settings was simple, that would have been in the game already.

Posts like "I have similar issue, I am experiencing this, this and this ... here's my log, here's the screenshot of debug info when it was happening. Changing options as suggested fixes/doesn't fix it. I don't care much about options X, Y, Z, but I'd like to keep option W turned on, because it gives me much better experience playing the game" are helpful and welcome.

Anyway, thank you everyone for compation, patience and for showing your love for the game.

[posila]

All that said, I still don't know what's up with FullHD external displays (4K ones with render in native resolution = majority of the performance issue is due to more demanding renderer). To me, that's as if you said "when I stand on one leg and sing national anthem the game stutters" ... I am sure there is perfectly reasonable explanation of what is happening, but at the moment, it looks like dark magic to me.

Also, people say there are FPS drops/stuttering even with "render in native resolution" disabled, and it is unclear to me if that is with external display or on internal display too.

[brunzenstein]

I’m deeply shocked by your personal hurt Posila, and I want you to know that your pain resonates with me profoundly.
Your emotional experience is valid and important.
Everyone in our community genuinely loves and appreciates your extraordinary dedication and exceptional work. Your contributions have not gone unnoticed, and your commitment is truly remarkable.
The fundamental problem lies not with you or your incredible efforts, but with the systemic limitations within Factorio’s leadership.
Specifically: not putting enough resources into the Mac development.

Or to put it more bluntly:
Sorrily, putting all the Mac burden on Posila's shoulders as a one man company

[posila]

Your emotional experience is valid and important...

Thank you, it means a lot to me.

To clarify, I am not the Mac guy ... I am OpenGL/DirectX/graphics subsystem guy ... and so far this seems to "fall into my department"

[brunzenstein]

Your emotional experience is valid and important...

Thank you, it means a lot to me.

To clarify, I am not the Mac guy ... I am OpenGL/DirectX/graphics subsystem guy ... and so far this seems to "fall into my department"

What I don't understand, given the current state of Mac integration and development, is that the official Factorio website, which is supposed to list job openings when available, still shows no open positions.

[Oleg_7777776]

Your emotional experience is valid and important...

Thank you, it means a lot to me.

To clarify, I am not the Mac guy ... I am OpenGL/DirectX/graphics subsystem guy ... and so far this seems to "fall into my department"

What I don't understand, given the current state of Mac integration and development, is that the official Factorio website, which is supposed to list job openings when available, still shows no open positions.

I think the developers know how to fix the bug and fix it. or they don't know, and they don't fix it. 50/50

[brunzenstein]

Your emotional experience is valid and important...

Thank you, it means a lot to me.

To clarify, I am not the Mac guy ... I am OpenGL/DirectX/graphics subsystem guy ... and so far this seems to "fall into my department"

What I don't understand, given the current state of Mac integration and development, is that the official Factorio website, which is supposed to list job openings when available, still shows no open positions.

I think the developers know how to fix the bug and fix it. or they don't know, and they don't fix it. 50/50

[BlueTemplar]

There might be some confusion here : maybe Wube does have a 'Mac guy/gal' on the team now, it's just that this is a much more specific issue that rather takes deep GPU skills rather than generalist Mac skills to solve ? (or more likely, both of them would need to work together for a while ?)

[Var18]

What I don't understand, given the current state of Mac integration and development, is that the official Factorio website, which is supposed to list job openings when available, still shows no open positions.

I understand your frustrating, but have a look at @posila's most recent posts. The team is clearly under a lot of stress, and unkind posts like this will likely stress them out and make them more defensive. That is not the path to convincing them to prioritize our needs with a company of this size that seems to be run on passion and good will.

@posila I'm sorry to see you feel so criticized and defensive about this issue, perhaps you are once bitten twice shy about interacting with the community demanding a fix. It's tough to be a dev and prioritize things! That said, I think your defensiveness has clouded your judgement a bit—you seemed to think we are demanding super high quality performance and optimization for macOS even with bad hardware. I think it's clear from this thread we are reporting unexpectedly below average performance with external monitors... this seems like a weird edge case instead of some fundamental macOS optimizations, especially since it is happening on brand new saves with very few sprites.

Thanks for updating your expectations, as you said in your recent post, and hopefully we can keep things positive and constructive as we talk about bugs and issue. Thanks again for your work on this great grame.

[posila]

@posila I'm sorry to see you feel so criticized and defensive about this issue, perhaps you are once bitten twice shy about interacting with the community demanding a fix. It's tough to be a dev and prioritize things! That said, I think your defensiveness has clouded your judgement a bit—you seemed to think we are demanding super high quality performance and optimization for macOS even with bad hardware. I think it's clear from this thread we are reporting unexpectedly below average performance with external monitors... this seems like a weird edge case instead of some fundamental macOS optimizations, especially since it is happening on brand new saves with very few sprites.

Thank you for the support. Yes, my perception of things is definitelly clouded, that's without question. So I am sorry for overreacting to things.

Anyway, I am not saying there is not an issue with external displays on macOS, but I have not been able to reproduce it (and fair, maybe it would be good idea to ask StrangePan to help reproduce it). Also from the data in this thread (logs/screenshots), I can see there is an issue with rendering in high resolution (resolution higher in 1920x1080, both built-in and external displays), due to more demanding rendering subsystem of 2.0.

Only data about rendering in FullHD-ish resolution on external display is from wormeyman (viewtopic.php?p=622668#p622668) and it doesn't show any issue, and also he posted data from 4K external display with Render in native resolution disabled, which I have been recommending macOS users to disable, until we add alternative options. And that (viewtopic.php?p=622672#p622672) also shows 60 FPS. ezekiel and Teralink said they observe the issue on 1080p external screen, but have not provide any logs or screenshots, so I don't have any data supporting that the external display is related to their issue. Other people said, that disabling Render in native resolution or lowering resolution of their display fixed the framerate issue.

You use external ultrawide display. What resolution does it have? I wouldn't expect problems on 2560x1080 (unless you configured macOS to render in higher resolution and downscale) but on 3440x1440 and higher, I would expect framerate issues.

So, I don't know if there is an issue specific to external displays, I can see wide spread issue with rendering in high resolution - which is not even limited to mac, it's just that the Apple Silicon macs have combination of high resolution display and GPU such that mac players are affected by this much more than players on other platforms. And I feel, like improving this will benefit most players (not only macOS players) including you with the ultrawide display. And it will remove strong signal from the data, so that issues specific to external displays will be more visible and easier to analyze.

(There are also reports about FPS being OK-ish until Gleba, and yeah, all space locations use new effects, everything has its own gimmick, Gleba is super heavy on effects ... I am gonna add more options to disable effects, but other than that and Resolution scaling option, I don't think there will be any rework of Gleba or anything like that)

Anyway, this week I hope to roll out "Occlude light sprites" option, this is the new rendering behavior in 2.0, which caused more demanding rendering globally for all sprites, so even in vanilla 2.0. Disabling it should increase the 2.0 and Nauvis rendering performance to 1.1 levels at cost of lights "shining through" objects above them and tiles (lava) not glowing at all. I though I'll need to implement alternative light effect for lava, but Vulcanus has quite bright nights, so lava not emitting any light doesn't look that bad, so I'll do that sometime later.

There will be also "Additional terrain effects" option, which should increase Gleba rendering performance when disabled.
And I also found big performance problem with querying GL_TIMESTAMP on macOS. We use it to time how long did GPU take to process some operations, Apple's OpenGL never implemented it (it always return 0) so I was surprised it was taking non-trivial amount of time on macOS and probably caused CPU to wait for GPU when it didn't need to.

Render scaling is still in works. It's little bit complicated. Hopefully next week. After that I am gonna start collecting data for the external display issue, and improve default values for graphics settings.

EDIT: Also, I am aware, some people mention random stutters even with "Render in native resolution" disabled. Still I want to remove the "strongest signal" first, we have random FPS stutters reported from other platforms too.

[Akyri]

I'm also really sorry to hear that you got that impression from the community. I'm a software engineer too, so I totally get where you're coming from. It's only one person's opinion, but please know that I feel every single engineer (and corporate!) member at Wube is doing a fantastic job. Bugs come and go, especially with a major update like SA. I've had a ton of fun with what you've all built, and I'll continue to do so once this problem is resolved. I can be patient

If it helps, I'm on a 16 GB M2 MacBook Pro. No external display, MacBook connected directly to power. I run a very clean machine, essentially nothing other than native system utilities running while I play. Frame stuttering gets worse steadily as I play (unplayable after about 10 minutes). It doesn't matter if I create a new base or load one of my old "mega" bases (I think they're mega... ). If I disable "render at native resolution" then obviously the problem is resolved, but the UI becomes unreadably blurry and headache inducing.

[brunzenstein]

Thank you for the support. Yes, my perception of things is definitelly clouded, that's without question. So I am sorry for overreacting to things.

Thank you for your helpful post.

Please remember to never take criticism (even if it is strongly worded) personally.
Rest assured that all contributions in this forum are made with positive intentions.

That said, I believe you should not focus on isolated reports from users experiencing stuttering on multiple external monitors or vintage Macs. Instead, it would be more beneficial to concentrate on the core issue:

The game slows down significantly after about fifteen minutes, even on up-to-date machines running the latest software.