Performance: Not improved at all. If anything, it's worse. I got about 23 fps average during a brawl, that's unplayable for a light 'Mech. Yeah I could join the heavy & assault meta...
Also, I don't understand why you don't tackle the HUD performance impact. I still get a steady 20 FPS boost when deactivating the HUD with right-shift + F11. I do not know if that's the case for all other players using low-end PCs, but I hear similar reports from other players.
If I deactivate HUD, the FPS is high enough for me to consider it playable: 40-60 FPS.
If I don't deactivate HUD, I cannot enjoy playing a light 'Mech any more in 12v12.
You can do slight to unnecessary performance improvements of 1-2 % for several patches or try to work out why the HUD consumes about half the FPS on low-end machines, which might involve building a new HUD system from scratch.
Btw my specs are still higher than the minimum requirements. I don't think anyone could call 23 fps playable.
Edit: yes I've set to lowest settings
It might be the case that there's a bug with the paperdoll:
I watched twice now a 'Mech with a cored CT (= no armor left) get damaged at the CT, and during the resulting flash of the paperdoll's CT, the armor flashed, too. That is, during this 3 second flash, it looks like the CT has still some armor left.
Edited by Phaesphoros, 18 July 2013 - 10:30 AM.