I have found that occasionally the lighting engine chuuuugs when shadows are on high for no discernable reason. Turning off a ship or turning off/down shadows will typically restore framerate.
No no, its not low framerate. I can get 120+ pretty much anywhere always. What the problem is, is what is described by the OP. Where there is a visual 'stutter' (like a ghosted frame that shouldn't be there). This pre-jump frame, causes it to visually look stuttery, when it really shouldn't and isn't a low frame rate issue. Forcing fps down to 50 is a solution to the engine issue he described. But what I'm running across now, is sometimes the 50 force doesnt take, or doesnt help. Yet sometimes if I force down to 90, it goes away entirely, but then on next launch its back. So, its a weird one.
Actually fooling around more today in Creative mode, and having switched between "godmode" and normal jetpack... I noticed if I have godmode on to fly around, it is relatively more smooth visually (this stutter issue doesnt happen near as much). However turning off godmode and using the jetpack to fly around, it is much more noticed, even at down capping my fps to 50. So not so sure whats going on there. More testing needed.
It doesnt collide, its like 'noclip' of olden days. Which may the be issue with the unity engine settings. Nothing to do, so it is far smoother 'visually'. I notice no FPS drop though between godmode on/off... so, its odd!
I feel like this thread needs another bump! And, I would like to preface this post by saying that I have been playing EGS since early pre-alpha, host a dedicated server, have logged almost 500hrs, and I absolutely love this game. Also, I am a firm supporter of the idea that Game-play > Graphics. With that said, I realize that this issue has been discussed time and again, and I realize that James from Eleon stated almost a year ago now that, "It will get a fix, we know what causes it, but right now it is on a list and a lot of other much more important bugs and features need to be implemented first before we can apply the full fix for this." However, the micro-stutter is still present in the latest stable build running on even the most modest of settings. I would personally argue that this is a very important bug that needs to be addressed sooner than later if the developers want to continue to see significant growth and longevity in the community. For me personally, this is a "game breaking" issue because of my extreme sensitivity to inconsistent fluidity in game-play. As an example, extended sessions of play have led to headaches and specifically eye fatigue because of this issue. I do not experience this problem with any other title in my library. In order for me to continue to enjoy EGS, I have had to do what so many others have done and limit my refresh/fpscap to 50hrz/50fps. This does, in fact, greatly reduce the amount of micro-stutter, but at the cost of input latency and visual fidelity. I feel like it is time for the developers to reach out to the community again on this issue and reassure us that this is an issue that is slowly making its way to the top of the priority list. This issue has been lingering for almost 2 years now, and even though we are still in the alpha phase of development, I think that it is fair of me to ask that this issue be given more attention. Furthermore, I realize that halting the addition of new content and game-play mechanics to optimize this issue feels like an uphill battle that will only have to be fought again and again with each new content update, but as a developer myself I feel that this issue needs to take a higher priority for the dedicated community's sake. PLEASE HEAR MY CRIES! Thank you Eleon for your continued hard work, NSZ Gaming System Specs: AMD Eight-Core FX8350 Vishera @ 4ghz EVGA GTX 970 256-bit 4GB @ 1366mhz G.SKILL Ripjaws X 16GB DDR3 @ 1833mhz MSI 990FXA-GD80 V2 CORSAIR CX600W
Micro stutter was investigated by the devs, they did what they could for now, but without a full stop to production of new material and a full optimization of the whole game theres not a huge amount that can be done for now, the game is in a transitional period where a lot of new 3d models have and are being added all of these need multiple LOD models created etc etc plus the AI code and a few dozen other tasks the game engine is performing. You can adjust your frame rate limiter and that can change the 'timing step' the game uses when it updates so in effect you have a very small amount of adjustment but for some people limiting to 50 has worked well others not so well its really hit and miss. But proper serious full on optimizations are much closer to Beta than present time. Slowly slowly they are getting the blocks fitted out with LOD models, there chugging along pretty good for an indie team.
I understand where you are coming from, and to put it bluntly, you basically just reiterated everything I previously stated. I have limited the refresh/fps to 50 and that has been a reasonable solution. But, it has been over a year since many of us have adopted that workaround. I am simply asking for an update on the situation because I personally know of several people, including myself, that have had to let EGS sit on the back burner because the micro-stutter has become intolerable. Again, I will quote myself for the sake of redundancy, "I realize that halting the addition of new content and game-play mechanics to optimize this issue feels like an uphill battle that will only have to be fought again and again with each new content update, but as a developer myself I feel that this issue needs to take a higher priority for the dedicated community's sake." Please only reply again to this post if you have new information to contribute, repeating that same information we already have serves no purpose. Thank you again Eleon for your continued hard work, and I look forward to hearing back from anyone that has new information or insight into the situation. NSZ
Let's summarize: You asked for an update: Piddle was kind enough to comply: and you respond like this:
In all fairness. piddlefoot is not an official source, and NSZ was hoping that an actual developer chime in with their status on this forever-annoying issue.
Yes, I did ask for an update. And, unfortunately Captain Jack, you seem to have fallen into the same foxhole that piddlefoot has. Nothing against either of you, and it is encouraging to see that the community has eyes on this issue. But, I can't understand why you feel the need to extend this thread with yet more "already known" redundant information. All I stated was that I am seeking new information, yet both of you still felt the need to repeat what is already common knowledge within the community. Please refrain. Also, I am open to ideas or new information from anyone, but a developer or community manager's response would be extra welcome!
I think what "James" from Eleon, Piddlefoot and Captain Jack brought is very relevant, but that one sure way to get attention is to keep threads active. If you ask players to avoid answering you, even if it's just to say "naynaynay", then your "bump" will be forgottent in half a day and drop far down the list. Everyone wants a chance to get an answer on their own "most important issue" and this is no news to anyone familiar with forums. So even if you answer that I only repeat what some others said, it is still relevant to the issue, and it "bumps" the thread up, which serves you and OP anyway. Don't thank us. That being said, there ought to be more than a trivial adjustment in one of the two main "cycles" of the Unity engine ; this is not simply "the Unity engine" (I know you know) and this micro-stuttering affects many players but quite differently depending on lots of contexts. By the way, reading the thread did not point in any particular direction, since no one described precisely what he was doing, the scenery / props / builds in that scene, if it was just prior / after X update, a specific playfield, AI activity or proximity, etc. It is a bit speculative to propose that "this can easily be fixed" given the wide range of possible contexts that can produce this stuttering, and the lack of details given by those reporting it. I experienced it while building specific things with a specific type of block, and just changing the block type and doing the same thing solved it. I also experienced it while shooting enemies on some instances and not on others, when walking in a specific place or placing stuff, retrieving stuff with a multitool, with open view to the horizon and also with my nose on a wall. The OP shows an almost empty scene to support his proposal, and I don't think this remotely compares to a functional game with lots of features like we have now. This is something that could also be reported on the appropriate bugs threads, if considered a bug, and I suspect the "bug" section gets a lot more attention than all other threads, so there might be the best chance to have an answer from the community manager or some developer.
Honestly, your response is very welcome. Reason being, there is a difference between having a legitimate conversation about Unity and some of the physics update issues associated with the engine, versus simply re-posting the same information that is available from previous posts in the thread. Nevertheless, just seeing how many consistent community members have already replied and acknowledge that this problem has become a wide spread issue, is very relevant to me. I appreciate anyone who would like to help me keep this thread active in a constructive way. If moving to the "bug reporting" section of the forums would be more appropriate, then I am all for that. I simply would like to keep this issue on topic because of how important I, and many others, believe it to be. This is a serious game breaking issue that has not been given proper attention as you have already heard me say. This is my opinion of course. But, I think we need to look at the hard facts. A modern development cycle should easily be able to achieve a stable 60fps build within the first two years of their project. Now, please don't take this the wrong way, because this is not a knock against Eleon in any way. The game that they have set out to achieve is arguably the most impressive and ambitious title in its genre. The level of procedural depth in the game is amazing. All I am saying is that I am doing this, and taking the time to write these letters to the community, because I am on your side! I want this game to continue to develop and be the great space survival experience that it is. But I beg Eleon to open up more on this issue to the community, and for those of us that have been testing this game for the last 2 years. We want to see these fundamental issues fixed, and help in anyway we can. Cheers, NSZ
You are welcome ! I think it might also be difficult even for the developers to get all relevant info, because feedback comes from all over the place in heterogeneous reports. Just a few updates back, the "stuttering" was indeed much worse to the point of hampering building anything reasonably big ; this even put a halt to the "CV challenge of the month" because players would be unable to work on big designs like they used to do before. It was addressed in the following patch, and the positive results were obvious. This supports what the developers said to the effect that it is a "known issue" that could be "fixed anytime" but that could also get back as soon as new features are added, and it prove true up to now. The majority of players reporting bugs / issues are not really "testing" in the strict sense of this term, they are mostly playing and reporting various issues as they stumble upon them. Since this stuttering issue arises in multiple contexts, there should be proper "testing" with lots of notes taken, in as many situations / playfields / gamemodes as possible, to make comprehensive reports that could at least give some guidelines to players to avoid or reduce impact of this problem. We also have to keep in mind that all computers are designed and configured differently, and run different OS versions with a zillion possible programs eating RAM or CPU or HD / SDD in the background, which is almost never mentioned in bugs reports. This is the situation the developers have to cope with, and like you mentioned they do a very good job to help players get their game back up and running.
And lately, since I do most all my time in godmode (creative mode)... I don't see the stutter issue and keep forgetting its there (godmode disables something which triggers it). Which is night and day apparent when I very rarely am off godmode testing a POI, and get ill quickly, and rush through the 'on foot testing' and get back into godmode again. Even though this issue has existed for... like ever... doesn't mean old information is still relevant. Especially with a game that is rapidly developing like EGS does. Heck look at our wiki and cry in how stale and incorrect most that old data is! So asking for up-to-date info, is not a bad thing. I too wish to hear of a new report from Eleon on the Unity timing issue. Even if its exactly the same info they gave a year ago... at least it would be timestamped more relevant
Checking around for "voxel collision detection" yields some interesting insights, and here is an example of answer that could very well fit with the problem here: " (...) You can go much further by caching some information about the collisions but it will start affecting your ability to easily implement other game features that depend on collision checking so Im not going to suggest anything. Go with the brute force approach if performance is not a problem - its the least restricting one IMO." By the way, this "solution" is proposed with a "low level language" in mind. I don't want to start a war between C++ and C# minions now ...
Here's the thing, James has already acknowledged, "It will get a fix, we know what causes it, but right now it is on a list and a lot of other much more important bugs and features need to be implemented first before we can apply the full fix for this." Even though Kassonnade is completely right about making sure we continue to report this in all of the appropriate channels, that is not as relevant unless James is lying. Which I don't believe he is. The problem is that zero new information has surfaced, to my knowledge, regarding a follow up. I have patiently waited, played, and read almost every patch notes hoping for new information on the issue. But Eleon has yet to inform us on anything for approximately a year. That is too long to make your dedicated community wait. I have yet to reach out to any of the developers personally because I know how I would react to that, and I probably wouldn't like it. Bringing this issue to the forefront of the community and presenting this to the developers together is the right way to do things in my opinion. But I would like to continue to invite anyone who has an opinion or new information on this issue to keep this thread alive! NSZ
