FPS problem

[fredou54]

hello

when I test my map I have only 11 fps max and when I leave the building I 70 fps.

How to remedy the problem. Thank you for your answers.

[Josh]

It's difficult to speculate about your specific situation without seeing your scene and knowing more about it. Also, if you are running in debug mode it will be much slower.

[fredou54]

I posted a short video on steam for you to realize the problem.

this is not so bad if you can remedy thereafter.

[shadmar]

# pointlights rendered would be my guess.

[Josh]

That would be my guess as well, especially if your hardware is sort of mid-range. If you run in debug mode it will tell you how many lights are drawn and how many shadows are being re-rendered.

[cassius]

What graphics card?

 

I have level with 10 buildings a terrain and lots o furniture an I get a steady 59 fps with synch set to true and 113 fps with synch set to false.

I have 1directional light and 8 spotlghts.

[fredou54]

I remove all my lights is I get 80 fps. I had 42 spotlight.

my graphics card is a gtx660

[SlipperyBrick]

I remove all my lights is I get 80 fps. I had 42 spotlight.

my graphics card is a gtx660

 

Wow that is a lot of lights man. I have a GeForce GTX 660Ti and I have no problems with FPS. Currently in my level I have 2 point lights and a spotlight and about 30 models to make up the layout of my level and I have 2K texture maps on most of the models in my scene and I get between 200 - 300 FPS

 

Little tip for you in regards to lighting. Try to use your angles nicely with your spots and place you ranges on your points higher also, for lighting unless things are moving in your scene try putting the lights to 'Static' and use your ambient lighting as well. If your scene is dark then try to set the ambient lighting to a low value, but not so low that you can see anything that way you won't have to use a lot of lights to brighten up your scene.

[cassius]

When I set sync to false I get around fps 113 which is not brilliant compared with le 2 results .Also my player moves much slower than when sync is set to true. I now have no point lights

[YouGroove]

@Cassius :

Industry games don't bet on brutes lights and shadows , they use lightening optimized systems or they would be unplayable also. It has already been discussed

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/8857-leadwerks-31-framerate-low/

I suggested also lightamps + dynamic lights, so you would activate dynamic lights only when player is near , and lightampping would allow to have lightening and shadows on whole level even from far distances without putting 30 real time lights or more.

 

You need a really big machine to display almost empty level and really simple TPS basic game.

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/8589-models-lod-lights-per-object-shadow-qualitymip-mapping/page__hl__fps

 

I think LE3 will have to implement some global lightening system or other optimized one instead of relying in pure hardware that will never be good for performance.

[Haydenmango]

I agree YouGroove. I am constantly having trouble with lights in all of my outdoor scenes.

I find myself making my maps smaller just so that I can fit a spotlight over the scene. When I attempted to create a night time scene with a couple of lights(set to static) I had to create scripts for the lights so that they are hidden when my character is a certain distance away.

At this point I barely ever use more than 2 lights to keep my games running above 20 fps. I understand my hardware isn't top notch but that is why optimization in this area could be extremely useful to users, like myself, with mid/lower end hardware.

[cassius]

Yeah. You reach a point where you can't work anymore without optimization.

[Einlander]

Couldn't you use a directional light to light up your scene with shadows, instead of one spotlight? Or changing the color of the scene roots ambient light? I too want to see the return of selective light mapping and some more optimizations in engine performance, but sometimes its a good idea to start from the beginning optimizing your level.

[YouGroove]

I understand my hardware isn't top notch but that is why optimization in this area could be extremely useful to users, like myself, with mid/lower end hardware.

Our mid range hardware runs big games complex with multiple lights.

 

Couldn't you use a directional light to light up your scene with shadows, instead of one spotlight? Or changing the color of the scene roots ambient light?

@Einlander :

So this means , we don't use spotlights with LE3 , so they are useless ? and like he said he already tried to optimize making hidding lights not near camera.

 

The problem is LE3 is considered deffered rendered with unlimited lights and shadows so that's what people expect, and there is game cases where people will want to put lot of lights for night levels for example.

I also expect from a 3D engine to be able to put several lights without having to care about frame rate, could the solution be lightmapping solution combined with real lights or some global illumination system.

 

Performance improvments will come, you have to wait for now.

[Einlander]

He said that he made his level smaller so he could use 1 spotlight to light his level. He can get the Sam effect on a larger level with 1 directional light instead. I didn't say spotlights were useless. In his usage case there was a simpler more efficient method to accomplish the same thin. Spotlights are good for small areas, but not to light your entire level.

[cassius]

The directional light is supposed to be the sun. That's the one to use for terrain lighting

[Haydenmango]

Hmmm I see. For the longest time I thought Directional Lights do not cast shadows for whatever reason... haha Well while that does solve my "Spotlight not fitting over map" problem I still run into performance issues when I try to create a scene with more than 5-6 lights(without using scripts to hide them).

I suggested also lightamps + dynamic lights, so you would activate dynamic lights only when player is near , and lightampping would allow to have lightening and shadows on whole level even from far distances without putting 30 real time lights or more.

^ this is what I would like to see. Being able to see lights from a long distance would be awesome.

[Josh]

Hmmm I see. For the longest time I thought Directional Lights do not cast shadows for whatever reason... haha Well while that does solve my "Spotlight not fitting over map" problem I still run into performance issues when I try to create a scene with more than 5-6 lights(without using scripts to hide them).

 

^ this is what I would like to see. Being able to see lights from a long distance would be awesome.

What GPU do you have?

[Haydenmango]

Nvidia GeForce GT 630M

GeForce 334.89 Driver

5.89 GB of usable RAM

 

one more question about directional lights--why do shadows of objects move as my player moves?

my directional light is set to dynamic and my objects are made in blender and set to dynamic(i tried setting both to static as well, same results). I only have 1 directional light in the scene with objects on the terrain beneath it.

I can open a new topic if this question doesn't have a simple answer.

[Josh]

That's not terribly surprising. A 630M is about the same level as a GEForce 8800:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gt-630m/specifications

 

This is a really good explanation of the static/dynamic lighting system, even though it's using Leadwerks 2:

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/Leadwerks_2_tutorials/_/artwork/indoor-lighting-optimization-r18

[Haydenmango]

Good news indeed! Thank you very much for the links, especially on the lighting system.

I will have to invest in a new graphics card to see what I'm missing in performance. (solves the performance issue, most likely) and (gotta fork out more cash!!)

I was trying to figure out most of the lighting settings through testing/trial and error so that article was a good read as well.

 

Thanks Josh for the help and quick responses!