Frame rate discussion moved from Devnotes thread.

[Padishar]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

To get a correct framerate, a mod that reads out the variable process timer would solve the problem.

Oops, the linux bit totally didn't register, sorry...

Try this: https://github.com/Gerry1135/FrameGraph/releases/tag/v1.0.0.3

Very simple mod (MIT license, see main source file on GitHub) that shows a graph of the time taken for each rendered frame (strictly speaking the time between successive calls to this plugin's Update method) and also shows the min and max frametimes (since reset) and an average framerate for the last 16 frames updated every 8 frames.  Just copy the DLL from the zip into GameData, run the game, hit Mod-= to display the window...

[Azimech]

1 hour ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Now that one's new to me! 

Exqueese me for the little off-topic, moderators. Here's a link to laugh. Please permit this.

 

[Green Baron]

Morning. So this was moved, good idea.

 

@Padishar thanks for the link. The dll loads successfully according to the log but i seemingly can't open the program's window. Which could be bacause of the keyboard i use, or kezboard as they write in some aereas :-)

My ' is at the position where the english = is, but mod-' doesn't open the window. The = is shift-0 but the mod-key is the right-shift-key so it might be that mod-= (which would be mod(rightshift)-shift-0 on my keyboard) can't be recognized correctly. Or is it nonsense what i'm writing ?

:-)

 

[Padishar]

@Green Baron, doh, bleedin' keyboards...  See version 1.0.0.4 which changes how the fps is calculated to make it a bit more stable (though you need to wait 5 seconds for it to stabilise) and changes the key shortcut to Mod-Y.

https://github.com/Gerry1135/FrameGraph/releases

Edited October 23, 2016 by Padishar

[Green Baron]

You were right.

Build 1586: 7.5 to 8.5 fps on rather high graphic settings with lights on, around 10-11 lights off.

Build 1473 roughly the same.

Nice sunday

[Kobymaru]

Any way to get the pre-release versions? I'm willing to test, but I'm afraid I don't have them stored anymore.

[Majorjim!]

As well as testing high part counts can someone test atmospheric flight? I am seeing a flickering green/yellow timer on ascent with a 350 part craft during ascent. Looking down causes more flicker. This DID NOT happen in 1.1.3. I would not get a flickering green/yellow timer even with 600 plus parts.. and looking up or down would never have affected the timer like that.

[Padishar]

28 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

As well as testing high part counts can someone test atmospheric flight? I am seeing a flickering green/yellow timer on ascent with a 350 part craft during ascent. Looking down causes more flicker. This DID NOT happen in 1.1.3. I would not get a flickering green/yellow timer even with 600 plus parts.. and looking up or down would never have affected the timer like that.

Can you provide the craft file (from version 1.1.3) and describe your ascent so we can test the same actual situation?

[Majorjim!]

Just now, Padishar said:

Can you provide the craft file (from version 1.1.3) and describe your ascent so we can test the same actual situation?

I have noticed a change with any craft of a certain part count. Any rocket over 300 parts seems to cause a flickering green/yellow timer on ascent and did not before.

[WooDzor]

57 minutes ago, Padishar said:

Can you provide the craft file (from version 1.1.3) and describe your ascent so we can test the same actual situation?

HAHA! nice try trying to get @Majorjim!'s New Duna Mission crafts :'D 

@MJ how are you getting on?

 

OT haven't yet messed around enough with 1.2 to add anything useful to the discussion..

Edited October 24, 2016 by WooDzor

[Padishar]

46 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

I have noticed a change with any craft of a certain part count. Any rocket over 300 parts seems to cause a flickering green/yellow timer on ascent and did not before.

I've just launched this craft in both 1.1.3 and 1.2 and both gave almost identical performance, certainly no sign of yellow timer on either version.  So, it certainly isn't "any rocket over 300 parts".

41 minutes ago, WooDzor said:

HAHA! nice try trying to get @Majorjim!'s New Duna Mission crafts :'D 

@MJ how are you getting on?

OT haven't yet messed around enough with 1.2 to add anything useful to the discussion..

If you really think I'm interested in his vessel for anything other than testing the issue he has reported then you are sorely mistaken.  How he is getting on is not the subject of this thread and you state you have nothing useful to add so please keep out of it...

[Majorjim!]

28 minutes ago, WooDzor said:

HAHA! nice try trying to get @Majorjim!'s New Duna Mission crafts :'D 

@MJ how are you getting on?

 

OT haven't yet messed around enough with 1.2 to add anything useful to the discussion..

LOL! I was testing with my rebuilt Ares V 541 MSL but progress is good with the Constellation craft man! Maybe out by Christmas.

Just now, Padishar said:

I've just launched this craft in both 1.1.3 and 1.2 and both gave almost identical performance, certainly no sign of yellow timer on either version.  So, it certainly isn't "any rocket over 300 parts".

OK mate, l of course meant for me it is any craft over 300 parts. How would i know it was happening to you?

 

Just now, Padishar said:

If you really think I'm interested in his vessel for anything other than testing the issue he has reported then you are sorely mistaken.  How he is getting on is not the subject of this thread and you state you have nothing useful to add so please keep out of it...

There is no need to be unpleasant. I will try with that rocket you posted and see what I get. What settings are you using, graphics, physics timer ect?

Edited October 24, 2016 by Majorjim!

[Padishar]

1 hour ago, Majorjim! said:

Take it easy mate, there is no need to be unpleasant. No reason at all. I will try with that rocket you posted and see what I get. What settings are you using, graphics, physics timer ect?

There was nothing unpleasant in my message.  This thread has already been moved out of the devnotes thread because it was off-topic so we certainly don't need more off-topic stuff in it now.

I am running in 1600x900 windowed, FPS limited to 60, vsync off, AA off, all other graphic settings at default.  The rocket is just over 400 parts (not the most aerodynamic, it was built in 0.23.5, so be careful to keep close to prograde or it might flip) and I was getting 40-45 fps all through the launches (except for the small glitches on staging) and I didn't see any trace of yellow timer at all.  My machine is reasonable, i7-4770K at stock speed and a GTX560ti.

The reason I asked for your vessel is simply so that I can test something that definitely shows the problem for you.  Any vessel where you definitely see this performance drop will do, it doesn't have to be one that you might be reluctant to share, you say it's any craft over 300 parts so surely you have at least one that you're happy to share...

Edit: you will probably also need this stub version of KER 0.6 to allow it to load.  It just provides a definition of the old EngineerChipFlight part and a simple DLL that provides replacement PartModules that do nothing.

Edited October 24, 2016 by Padishar

[Dafni]

@Majorjim! I get the fairing thing too, same behaviour as you describe.

I feel the general performance drop from 1.2pre to 1.2full as well. Question here is if we will ever see an increase again or if it will stay like that now?

[Padishar]

To stand any chance of this even being taken seriously, let alone officially investigated and fixed, we are going to need some concrete examples of vessels that run significantly quicker in a specified earlier build than they do in 1586.  These examples need to be reproducible on other systems.  This is a bit of a tricky thing to test for a number of reasons, a 20% difference in fps on one machine may feel a lot worse than on a different machine, e.g. if one machine has gone from 25 to 20 fps then it will have changed from 100% to 80% of real time which would be highly noticeable but, a faster machine with the same vessel may have changed from 40 to 32 fps which would give no real time slowdown and would be quite hard to detect by eye...

The main problem is getting hold of the earlier builds if you didn't archive them away.  The license doesn't allow us to distribute any versions of KSP between us so a way for people that are willing to do in-depth tests on this (who obviously do have a license) to get hold of earlier builds would be very helpful.  Are previous versions available from the store or does that only have one previous version like Steam does?

[Majorjim!]

7 hours ago, Padishar said:

I've just launched this craft in both 1.1.3 and 1.2 and both gave almost identical performance, certainly no sign of yellow timer on either version.  

Can you upload a stock version of that please? It says it is mission an engine chip flight..

[Padishar]

20 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

Can you upload a stock version of that please? It says it is mission an engine chip flight..

I edited one of my posts with a link to a stub version of KER 0.6 that I use to load old saves that use it into new versions that only support KER 1.x.  Someone unhelpfully voted up several posts in the thread which has messed up the order unless you select sort by date.

Alternatively, you can try this one which I've just edited in 0.25 to remove the chips:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8nhah4l4spikj57/Tetrahedron Launch Mk III.craft?dl=0

[Majorjim!]

32 minutes ago, Padishar said:

I edited one of my posts with a link to a stub version of KER 0.6 that I use to load old saves that use it into new versions that only support KER 1.x.  Someone unhelpfully voted up several posts in the thread which has messed up the order unless you select sort by date.

Alternatively, you can try this one which I've just edited in 0.25 to remove the chips:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8nhah4l4spikj57/Tetrahedron Launch Mk III.craft?dl=0

Yup as soon as the craft goes over 250m/s or there about and when the aero effects kick in the timer flashes green/yellow mostly yellow.

 What CPU do you have? GPU?

[Padishar]

1 minute ago, Majorjim! said:

What CPU do you have? GPU?

i7-4770K at stock speed and a GTX560ti.  So, quite a decent CPU and a reasonable, though a long way from cutting edge, GPU.

[Majorjim!]

Just now, Padishar said:

i7-4770K at stock speed and a GTX560ti.  So, quite a decent CPU and a reasonable, though a long way from cutting edge, GPU.

And you don't get a flickering yellow/green timer on ascent even when the aero effect kick in?

[Padishar]

24 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

And you don't get a flickering yellow/green timer on ascent even when the aero effect kick in?

Ahh, I was launching it at reduced throttle because I was actually trying to get it safely to orbit and, being so draggy, it gets very flip-happy in newer versions of KSP with a shallow launch profile and TWR > 2.  It initially gets 44-47 fps off the pad.  If I launch at full throttle then it does drop to 24-28 fps giving occasional yellow flickers as it goes through the mach 1 region but this stops again at 10k.  If I fly very shallow so it almost ignites the payload (almost horizontal at 30k) then it also drops to 22-26 fps with much more yellow timer (though 22/25 ths of real time isn't very obvious).  If I turn the aero effects down one notch then I get virtually no slow down during either phase of aero effect.  This was in build 1586.  I'll have to test some other builds tomorrow to see if the aero impact was less.  This could be understandable (and unavoidable) if changes had to be made to the aero shaders during the pre-release...

[Majorjim!]

Just now, Padishar said:

Ahh, I was launching it at reduced throttle because I was actually trying to get it safely to orbit and, being so draggy, it gets very flip-happy in newer versions of KSP with a shallow launch profile and TWR > 2.  It initially gets 44-47 fps off the pad.  If I launch at full throttle then it does drop to 24-28 fps giving occasional yellow flickers as it goes through the mach 1 region but this stops again at 10k.  If I fly very shallow so it almost ignites the payload (almost horizontal at 30k) then it also drops to 22-26 fps with much more yellow timer (though 22/25 ths of real time isn't very obvious).  If I turn the aero effects down one notch then I get virtually no slow down during either phase of aero effect.  This was in build 1586.  I'll have to test some other builds tomorrow to see if the aero impact was less.  This could be understandable (and unavoidable) if changes had to be made to the aero shaders during the pre-release...

Ah I see. I think aero effects are a bit more taxing now for some reason..

[Miuramir]

I may be able to help some here; I should have at least four different versions of pre-1.2 beta builds still installed at home, and if I scrounge through my downloads folder may be able to dig up a few more that I didn't get around to testing before the next version dropped. 

Note discussion above about changes to aero effects and drag; I'm definitely noticing that some of my aerospace planes are harder to push through the "mach wall" region than before, which will have side effects. 

Also, one of the things I distinctly remember from earlier betas was that at first, auto-strutting seemed to be practically magic.  IIRC it seemed like it would turn a plane that would disintegrate half the time at 3x and ran yellow-red, into a plane that ran smoothly at 4x mostly in the green.  It seemed closer to part welding than strutting, really.  I can't be sure, but I am guessing that something about it has been dialed back or changed; and that has a significant side effect on frame rates, as the game "wastes" a lot of calculation time calculating parts wobbling about subtly, which then causes more aero issues and even more calculation. 

[Padishar]

On 10/24/2016 at 11:47 PM, Majorjim! said:

Ah I see. I think aero effects are a bit more taxing now for some reason..

I ran a few tests on this yesterday, first in 1.1.3, then in a couple of pre-release builds and then in 1586.  1.1.3 gave a noticeably higher framerate, I was getting around 55 fps off the pad, dropping to mid 30s with the first aero effects.  Both of the pre-release builds I tried also gave similar results.  Then I tried 1586 again and, at first, I was getting the same sort of performance as I reported a couple of posts back but, after 2 or 3 reverts to launch the performance suddenly jumped to the same as the older versions.

I think there's certainly more to this than just changes to the aero effect shaders, but it's going to be tricky to get useful data if the performance of a particular build can vary so much...

[Majorjim!]

8 hours ago, Padishar said:

I ran a few tests on this yesterday, first in 1.1.3, then in a couple of pre-release builds and then in 1586.  1.1.3 gave a noticeably higher framerate, I was getting around 55 fps off the pad, dropping to mid 30s with the first aero effects.  Both of the pre-release builds I tried also gave similar results.  Then I tried 1586 again and, at first, I was getting the same sort of performance as I reported a couple of posts back but, after 2 or 3 reverts to launch the performance suddenly jumped to the same as the older versions.

I think there's certainly more to this than just changes to the aero effect shaders, but it's going to be tricky to get useful data if the performance of a particular build can vary so much...

There is definitely something going on with 1.2.. If we keep testing I'm sure we will find it though.