24 replies to this topic

[G4LV4TR0N]

I am testing some really low graphics settings and I wonder is it possible to set all terrain LOD to lowest possible, like one marked with green line on my screenshot? Area marked with blue line shows some terrain texture, if I would move mech forward it would keep loading it beyond red line. But I seriously want everything to be flat, just like terrain marked with green line. On youtube there are same videos uploaded where people indeed had it done, but those videos were uploaded in 2013 and 2014 and I can't find anything more recent. I need it for both, performance and ascetics.

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 12 June 2017 - 09:51 AM.

[NARC BAIT]

I believe what your refereeing to is the pre 2K texture normalizing .... and, honestly, I had trouble going to the point that your standing, because I cant load into the 'academy' without setting a whole heap of other keybinds up .... anyway ...

I'm not sure if anything can be done that is going to save much GPU memory, and a lot of that comes down to the way the files are packed together, and the way they are cached into the system ... and I'm honestly not sure if its going to help you much, but we sure can get some of that texturing down ... firstly though, about the marked zones, I'm pretty sure the green zone, where you want to be, is essentially the 'normal' texture LOD applied to the scene, I'm not honestly sure which setting from your configuration is making the blue section overly detailed ... but I do know it can be lower overall ... so, try changing your values to these, I also notice you have the particles quality set to the maximum value, not the minimum ... try changing that ...

r_TexAtlasSize = 32
r_TexBumpResolution = 4
r_TexResolution = 4
r_TexSkyResolution = 4
e_ParticlesQuality = 1
e_AutoPrecacheCgfMaxTasks = 4   --; custom for your dual core ...

beyond that, its a bit all over the place ...

[G4LV4TR0N]

This is my current config: https://pastebin.com/raw/X96m3bqW

Values starting with // were my previous ones. I did notice drop in terrain texture quality but the effect is still there. Perhaps I should be using tuning cfg? As for particles, I had it set to 0 and don't know if that's higher or lower than 1. For me most important particle cvars are: e_ParticlesLod(set to 0 to disable some weapon effects) and e_ParticlesMaxDrawScreen(setting this to something lower than 1, possibly like 0.0001 will disable many other game effects for good).

Quote

r_TexAtlasSize = 32 //256
r_TexBumpResolution = 4 //2
r_TexResolution = 4 //4
r_TexSkyResolution = 4 //2
e_ParticlesQuality = 1 //0
e_AutoPrecacheCgfMaxTasks = 4 --; custom for your dual core ... //64

I was also wondering on changing some sound settings, but I am unsure if there would be any performance effect. But I definitely know that game sounds are separated from in-game communication sounds that are based around Teamspeak dll's, which would mean that different sound cvars would be used.

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 17 June 2017 - 06:08 PM.

[NARC BAIT]

Ideally, you should have the tuning.cfg file contain either your important values, or a reference to exec user.cfg, which executes the user.cfg file again on map load .... some (most) settings will 'stick' much better, if you load onto the testing grounds before any live games .... you can try increasing those 'resolution' values aswell, I tested values up to 8, and they seemed valid, essentially its factoring away the drawn texture quality, but not the textures memory footprint ....

there are plenty of other things you could do ... but at some point you probably cross the line on what the community will consider acceptable ... for instance you could turn the water off further, its still actually there, but if you tell the renderer not to draw it, it wastes frametime with it ... on old, or perhaps integrated, gpu's you might get the biggest boost from disabling all alpha based effects ... but the developers might not be impressed ...

game sound has changes coming next week ... so there is probably a bit of a wait and see on that front .... I can hear the REEE already about peoples sound mods not working anymore ...

[G4LV4TR0N]

Water was actually main reason I decided not to touch tuning.cfg. For some reason it was always flat(like I wanted) but also always completely reflective in certain areas, and it wasn't normal reflection, it was a perfect unnatural 1:1 reflection of certain nearby map areas, definitely a bug. It didn't look like a water reflection, more like a mirror one. Tried very many config options and couldn't disable it. Second reason was my unability to make distant objects appear on certain maps, like River City had it buildings missing, again there was no way for me to enable them except for raising "Object Detail" bar in game options. And third, I had this constant texture popping issue where I wanted to set textures to lowest setting possible and keep them there but it was impossible, just like with popping terrain texture I have shown in this post.

My GPU is still listed as fully supported by game and it has 1GB DDR4 RAM, but I am lowering textures as much as I can because for some reason it affects my lowest fps numbers, and one of main points of my config is to get not average, but lowest fps as high as possible to prevent slowdowns/stutters during big fights when on laggy map areas.

But I didn't try selective tuning.cfg yet, it takes time to properly test and benchmark all of these cvars. Will have to try it out...

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 18 June 2017 - 07:46 AM.

[NARC BAIT]

try setting these, the cvar keys in your file are not valid ....

e_TerrainDetailMaterialsViewDistXY = 1 		-- 2048) normal 
e_TerrainDetailMaterialsViewDistZ = 1		-- 128) normal 

Edited by NARC BAIT, 21 June 2017 - 04:26 AM.

[G4LV4TR0N]

All of this works, still toying with my config. I do have more artifacts that I am trying to remove. What could be causing this grain? Texture streaming? It's very annoying because it changes when I am moving.



I can move a bit and it disappears:


Another example:




This one is bit more complicated, whole texture is being applied in similar fashion:


Move away a bit and it disappears:



Lot of this doesn't happen when I am on flat terrain but it changes when elevation changes, so on maps with hills and such textures this is pretty big nuisance. Or when I use jump jets. Seems there are few types of such artifacts and possibly they all need different solutions.

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 07 July 2017 - 03:39 AM.

[G4LV4TR0N]

So called invisible walls are another problem. It seems there are at least three types of object models out there. By object I mean structures like buildings, perhaps it shouldn't be confused with config "object" string. On lowest setting those are causing huge graphical anomalies but offer best performance. Those are well known anomalies like holes in objects where you can see through(could even be considered cheating in some extreme scenarios) but can't move/shot through. I know very many players hate it and best way of getting rid of it is to use third type of object, slowest and of highest quality and to manually set draw distance to as far as possible. I can technically make 90%(not 100%, this is somehow odd) of those displayed objects buildings remain static and not switch from lowest to medium to highest type when closing in, but I can only do it for lowest and highest setting.

Now lowest setting is fastest but has most of those anomalies, like on screenshot - can see through but can't shot through:


Same scene, left laser beam goes above, right one gets blocked by same wall as on picture above, this time visible:



For highest setting I'm not posting pictures, those are well known and do not cause any issues. But what I really want is to set all my objects/buildings to the second, medium type. I have found that it's best compromise between visibility and performance as the amount of holes/invisible walls is reduced greatly because buildings/objects are much more solid while still without nice textures. Does anyone have any idea how to set it up this way?

[NARC BAIT]

yeah, those happen because the LOD system is spazzing out, I've seen it, messed with it, but really conceive many scenarios where one could use it to there advantage ...

I think part 1 is

e_Dissolve = 0

I don't think the description you have for this key describes usage well

e_LodCompMaxSize = 6

Edited by NARC BAIT, 07 July 2017 - 07:45 AM.

[G4LV4TR0N]

Thanks, first one removes grain properly. I don't know if there was any performance hit because my new CPU is much faster than old one. As for second one, it fixes one big problem with filling by using textures of higher quality, let me show:



Now same place before:


My problem was, that those textures were flashing and constantly changing while I was in motion, especially when elevation changed. And while setting "e_LodCompMaxSize" to default 6 has fixed flashing, texture used is of higher quality while I would prefer it to be as plain as on second picture.

Moreover my buildings are unaffected, so I still get those invisible walls everywhere. I do use user.cfg and tuning.cfg now and I believe that there's something else in tuning that blocks it(and it's not working this way when it's in user.cfg).

There are many more textures that are flashing too, examples:






And more of texture loading happens, this time on objects. Take a look at building behind crosshair. For me one to the left is definitely better but I don't know how to disable this loading:



And one more thing, ground textures are being drawn, take a look at area above my pointer:


Same area, just bit closer:

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 07 July 2017 - 09:02 AM.

[TypicalDogAct]

try setting these keys

r_TexturesStreaming = 1
r_TexturesStreamingMaxRequestedJobs = 0

essentially, were telling it to use the texture streaming mode, and then telling it that no jobs are allowed to process, so everything will have its absolute lowest possible texture ... including particles, they are there ... but ... well ... you will see, and you can decide if that's acceptable ...

[G4LV4TR0N]

Really cool trick, while it still loads textures of lowest quality, they are locked and don't flash anymore. Visually great, but probably everything is still being in background, so no performance gain. I got some other issues, instead of posting images directly I will just link to imgur albums:

1. Vegetation pop-ups. I would probably want to disable those completely but if it's not possible then pushing actual draw limit higher to make them drawn at distance to disable popping would be good. But none of my vegetation cvars is capable of making any difference here.

https://imgur.com/a/ev4OK

2. More vegetation pop-ups. This time those are unavoidable, they are being redrawn with higher quality and I see no way of forcing them to stay in lower(or higher) quality just so things will stop pop.

https://imgur.com/a/bnoxd

3. Building/object/material LOD. Or how it's called in MWO because it seems that everything is mixed here. Goal is to use single LOD level for everything to block pop-ups but not use neither lowest nor highest setting. Normally forcing "e_LodMin" and "e_LodMax" to same value should take care of it but in MWO "e_LodMax" is locked at 6(lowest) so textures will always keep scaling down. Then, "e_Lods" can be completely disabled forcing highest quality. And I would always prefer something in-between, like LOD level 3 or 4 or 5 because of geometry artifacts. Examples here:

https://imgur.com/a/SqYRa

https://imgur.com/a/hMGVL

4. More graphical artifacts, probably related to poor LOD levels. Those are opposite of invisible walls, they look pretty solid but they are completely passable and you can shoot through those.

https://imgur.com/a/ysjGK

5. Terrain popping. It just keeps changing shape as I am closing in. Not sure how to disable/force singular level and what performance hit could it be. Take a look at solid ground around rock:

https://imgur.com/a/qs9PN

6. Strange white lines on building, they keep moving when I move, very annoying. Most of such effects could be disabled by forcing some higher anti aliasing, but it won't work for all them. And I don't want to use any AA. Those shouldn't be present when using native monitor resolution but somehow they are very present in MWO.

https://imgur.com/a/P4j2n

[NARC BAIT]

G4LV4TR0N, on 10 July 2017 - 02:52 PM, said:

1. Vegetation pop-ups.

a lot of the vegetation stuff is locked, it was their intention to force you to see it, and completely disabling it, will give an unfair advantage in a handful of places on a couple of maps, so that's kind of not an option, probably best bet there would be to increase the draw distance with

-- 40) low / 100) very high
e_ViewDistRatioVegetation

G4LV4TR0N, on 10 July 2017 - 02:52 PM, said:

2. More vegetation pop-ups.

again I think this is related to the LOD system/distance

G4LV4TR0N, on 10 July 2017 - 02:52 PM, said:

3. Building/object/material LOD.

yeah that ones the LOD of the object, I honestly didn't notice this when I dumped the cvars into my own config because it has e_Lods = 0, forcing the most basic texture onto the full detail model ... which is going to mean/require 2-3 gb of gpu vram ... without completely disabling the LOD system, you should try tuning the view distance ratio, or possibly its the ratio detail,

--; 25) low / 35) med / 100) high
e_ViewDistRatioDetail

G4LV4TR0N, on 10 July 2017 - 02:52 PM, said:

4. More graphical artifacts, probably related to poor LOD levels.

I think your on the money with that assesment

G4LV4TR0N, on 10 July 2017 - 02:52 PM, said:

5. Terrain popping.

this ones a bit tricky, and needs to be scaled to the hardware, normally the game will not set it lower than 2, which still adjusts LOD a lot, values between 1-2 give very little scaling, over a long distance, but will probably have a significant performance impact, the value is a float, so you could try '2.5', and see if that improves it a enough, before dropping down below 2 ... 1.75 will probably yield a good result, for a large impact ...

-- 3) low / 2) med + high / 1) super high 
e_TerrainLodRatio = 1.5

G4LV4TR0N, on 10 July 2017 - 02:52 PM, said:

6. Strange white lines on building

ummm, I did see this ... at one point ... but don't remember which key was interacting strangely .... have to get back to you on that ...

[G4LV4TR0N]

Wouldn't forcing all those "e_ViewDistRatioXXX" cvars to "0" make popup activation unconditional(ie. 100% on)?

Plus, here are some of most serious artifacts that I am unable to deal with. Missing chunks of textures/objects probably caused by derated LOD levels:

https://imgur.com/a/E1AO3

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 11 July 2017 - 01:41 AM.

[NARC BAIT]

G4LV4TR0N, on 11 July 2017 - 01:41 AM, said:

Wouldn't forcing all those e_ViewDistRatioXXX cvars to 0 make popup activation unconditional(ie. 100% on)?

they seem to get real weird if the value is beneath the min draw distance, if you want a laugh, set lights to -1 and take a run at mining colony ... I never really tried a higher negative number than -1, maybe -10 will cancel out the min distance properly ...

yeah, I'd say a lot of it relates to the LOD'ing .... and you can either disable it, or increase its primary ratio ... heres a vid from my test run, so you can see what I was seeing ... while it might give you the aesthetic look you wanted, it certainly doesn't save on overall texture memory ... you could very politely ask and explain why you'd like the LOD min/max made functional ... but they will probably never get back to you with anything useful ... even just the ability to use the min triangle value properly would work well, you could set it for one or two above the minimum, and it would probably scale better on current hardware ....

Edited by NARC BAIT, 12 July 2017 - 07:31 AM.

[G4LV4TR0N]

Currently my game looks quite similar. I am testing low particle cvars now you've provided and while I consider effects to be great, I have strange feeling that they also affect HDR somehow and make game more bleak and dark, which is huge issue on those 'night' maps. For example I was playing on River City night and couldn't see mech shooting me in any mode(normal/heat/night) while I had it selected on my radar and it was around 800m. Now that mech could see me perfectly and was shooting at me, even picking my side torsos off side by side, those probably weren't cheats, my config somehow reduced overall vision causing this. Additionally those particle cvars work on mech textures, which again makes them more bleak and harder to see(for example on normal settings certain mech colors almost glow while this effect is gone here).

[NARC BAIT]

G4LV4TR0N, on 12 July 2017 - 11:47 AM, said:

For example I was playing on River City night and couldn't see mech shooting me in any mode(normal/heat/night) while I had it selected on my radar and it was around 800m. Now that mech could see me perfectly and was shooting at me, even picking my side torsos off side by side, those probably weren't cheats,

yeah this happens when the HDR system gets out of balance, essentially you need to restore it to the 'normal' levels, either pgi or crytek, and start re-tweaking it from there .... but I honestly wouldn't bother getting rid of it completely on your new less potato system .... you might want to mess around a bit with the

r_HDRDebug = 1

which disables the majority of the HDR 'effects' but keeps the gamma correction stuff ... and you get to keep the proper use of NV and HV, well ... in actuality, because you told it to stop doing *most* of the HDR effects, you can probably see further than normal ... and because of that it may bring a performance hit ... HDR blooming is a bit more excessive in NV, and HV has a bit less 'cloaking', but I don't think it gets near the point of unfair ....

[Artillery Witch Viridia]

Hi. I used to stream but my CPU can't handle the load of cryengine and OBS on lowest settings really anymore. The changes that have been made to the game really aren't optimized and I dip into single digit frames in a lot of fights or even just turning towards the enemy team on certain maps. It used to be memory leaks like the river city water in early beta but that was fixed. I think the issue now is just feature creep and all the cool bells and whistles making the game heavier after clans were released.
If I could get a copy of how to reduce the CPU load and use minimum textures without the grainy stuff, popping, etc to keep my frames from dropping as the OP similarly wants would be cool. I don't know how to put stuff into the config or whatever anymore. The only thing we used to do was reduce film grain and remove that dirty cockpit glass before they added the button. It would be nice but too much to ask the develop to stop with the "immersive ambience". Without all these visual effects and filters like film grain.... I know artists/graphic designers need jobs but looking for enemies in combat is really taxing on the eyes and frames these days. Snow maps are even blindy and bloomy with minimum settings.
I just would like to ask what to do. What to copy paste and is this a thing we have to do after every patch?
Aesthetically the game is going to look like garbage on my rig anyway using the lowest settings. I just want to see where the terrain ends so I'm not shooting the tops of hills, the enemies at long range and what weapons people are shooting at each other. The rest of the graphics don't really matter when you are stuttering everywhere. So any advice/guidance would help tons.

[TypicalDogAct]

Azoic23, on 13 July 2017 - 12:37 AM, said:

you should probably make a new thread, start it off with some info about your current system, including CPU, motherboard (less useful to know), RAM and GPU, the resolution you play at AND what values you have set for under the advanced tab .... lets make a vague template ...

   CPU )
  MOBO )
   RAM )
   GPU )
RESOLTN)
EFFECTS)
OBJECT )
PARTCLS)
POSTPRO)
SHADING)
SHADOWS)
TEXTURE)
ENVIRON)
 ANTI A)
 OTHER ) eg PSU, windblows 10, usb sound card, whatever ...

and don't forget to throw in whatever effect you cant stand, like blinding HDR bloom on snow maps ..

in the mean time, make sure your pc isn't full of dust ( keeps cropping up ), go over the repair tool, check the windows power plan settings, check status of windows game bar and recording, if your that up to date ....

[G4LV4TR0N]

Is it possible to set certain tuning cvars just for specific maps? On some maps having many things reduced/disable doesn't do anything wrong but there are those few maps where you got building geometry or HDR messed up...

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 13 July 2017 - 11:15 AM.