Pioneer Performance

[FluffyFreak]

Recently I've been hearing a lot of comments about the performance, as measured in FPS, in Pioneer having gotten much worse since the change to OpenGL 3.1

What I would like to do is to quantify what's gotten worse and for whom. So if you could reply to this thread with some information that would be really helpful.

First of all you need to determine what FPS you are currently getting in Pioneer. Pressing the key combination : "Ctrl + i", should bring up the information output including the FPS count.

Now that we have that I would like to know where you feel the performance is worse than the last OpenGL 2.1 version (can be found at via this link) and if possible approximately how much worse it is as measured by the FPS counter in the game.

The final thing that I would like to know is about your computer, because as I've discovered when testing this not all graphics cards and operating systems respond in the same way.
For example I was testing on my laptop the other day when I found I couldn't reproduce the appalling the performance I had seen on the Comms screen (F4), then I realised that I was using the (rubbish) Intel GPU in my laptop instead of my nice-fast nVidia GPU. The Intel GPU handles it much better than the nVidia, hardly dropping a frame. The nVidia on the other hand is slaughtered in this case due to the way that the very old GUI is rendered.

So, what CPU, GPU, OS and RAM do you have?

Lets get some numbers on this issue and then we can figured out how to fix it.

Andy

[Tichy]

After the change to OpenGL 3.1 I got better FPS than before.
~60 almost always. It falls to 30 when a full city is shown on screen.

I play at 1920x1200 with maximum details to all. Antialiasing and eclipse disabled. No cockpit.

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz
RAM: 8GB DDR3
GPU: Radeon HD 6770 with 2GB RAM

OS: Arch Linux, kernel 3.17.6. mesa 10.4.0. Opensource drivers.

[impaktor]

On the machine I have that still runs pioneer (OpenSuse 12.3 x86, Linux 3.7.10-1.40), this is what i got:

In short: I don't notice any changes in fps, perhaps slightly better in 3.1? I can't really say I did a lot of extensive testing though, since I gather I'm on a system where there is no/little change.

Ctrl+i for debug gave me:

OpenGL 3.1
Landing pad, New Hope: 20 fps (18-20 at max time accel)
Flying above New Hope: 20-50 fps (mostly 30fps)

OpenGL 2.1
Landing pad, New Hope: 20 fps (19-20 at max time accel)
Flying above New Hope: 20-30 fps (more 20 than 30)

Code: Select all

glxgears -info:
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh.  The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
GL_RENDERER   = GeForce 210/PCIe/SSE2
GL_VERSION    = 3.3.0 NVIDIA 340.32
GL_VENDOR     = NVIDIA Corporation

Code: Select all

grep -i memory /var/log/Xorg.0.log 
[    10.712] (--) NVIDIA(0): Memory: 524288 kBytes
[    10.745] (II) NVIDIA: Using 768.00 MB of virtual memory for indirect memory access.
[    10.806] (==) NVIDIA(0): Disabling shared memory pixmaps

System RAM: 8GB
CPU:

Code: Select all

lscpu 
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                8
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-7
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    4
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 42
Stepping:              7
CPU MHz:               3401.000
BogoMIPS:              6785.08
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              8192K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-7

[cakjohnston]

The new version is unplayable for me.

pioneer-20141118:
earth start: 55 fps
bernard's star: 300 fps

current:
earth start: 13 fps
bernard's star: 3 fps (the new station)

PC:
core 2 quad
8mb ram
radeon 7770
linux64 with fglrx

[FluffyFreak]

@cakjohnston, that's odd, I have a much slower Linux PC I use to development/testing that performs much better.
Mind you it's not using fglrx but Mesa.

OpenGL version 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 10.1.3, running on X.Org Gallium 0.4 on AMD ARUBA
Available extensions:
Shading language version: 3.30

System Name: Linux
Host Name: sapphire
Release(Kernel) Version: 3.13.0-43-generic
Kernel Build Timestamp: #72-Ubuntu SMP Mon Dec 8 19:35:06 UTC 2014
Machine Arch: x86_64
Domain Name: (none)

SDL Version 2.0.2
Initialized OpenGL 3.1, with extensions, renderer

I get ~21fps at Barnards Star and 30fps on Earth.

However my detail levels for Cities and Planets are very low on this machine. What detail settings do you use?

Andy

[cakjohnston]

There's very little performance impact from detail settings. From everything very high to everything very low I get maybe 10% more fps

But from what I remember it's mostly always been that way. Higher detail just spent more time loading the terrain, it didn't do much for performance

ver git (48fa9ae) on: Linux

System Name: Linux
Host Name: desktop
Release(Kernel) Version: 3.16.0-28-generic
Kernel Build Timestamp: #38-Ubuntu SMP Fri Dec 12 17:37:40 UTC 2014
Machine Arch: x86_64
Domain Name: (none)

SDL Version 2.0.2
Initialized OpenGL 3.1, with extensions, renderer

OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.4.12968 Core Profile Context 14.201.1006.1002
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.40
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile

[FluffyFreak]

Ok excellent I have some good news!

I haven't been seeing these issues on my Windows PC (nVidia GTX 670) but today for some reason I did, so I fired up the Profiler and... they went away :/ That was a bit odd but made me wonder if I was changing the timing of the interactions with the OpenGL implementation which subsequently made me wonder about buffer thrashing which made me profile some thing which...

...well anyway I think I found some hilariously nasty performance problems :) and they're an easy fix so I'm just testing the changes now.

Hopefully these should be a good fix and improve performance for everyone.

[FluffyFreak]

I have submitted a PR for review which implements the bulk of the changes.

[FluffyFreak]

Well on my little Linux test machine I'm now getting a consistent 30fps at each of the starting points whereas I was getting large fluctuations before.

[cakjohnston]

I tested it with the same settings:

earth start: 15 fps
barnard's star: 20 fps

It seems to have improved the performance a lot near the station