Trees killing performance

[Fireball 16]

Hello Beta community!

Since here are many interested testers and many of you probably know of the issue, that some of the very elaborate leaf trees are pulling down FPS very hard:

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/7866

I have three pleads to those affected:

a) deliver feedback about your CPU/GPU/driver involved

b) help me reproduce the issue

c) vote up the bug to show some approximate numbers of affected people

Thanks!

Remark: I've noticed that (shift)-FLUSH resets the FPS, when the issue with the trees seems to be very strong.

[MavericK96 0]

Voted up. I've noticed the same issue, where some trees (orange?) will sometimes cause a lot more lag than other trees. Very strange.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Voted up. Near those trees, when zooming it, it's like my system goes from counting FPS to counting SPF... It's that bad.

[Mr.X 10]

I feel that this tree issue is holding my performance down. In a grassy field in Chernarus on normal settings i get about 25fps which i can deal with but as soon as i approach or even look at trees my performance drops dramatically; down to 9fps once! I would be happy to provide some pics to show examples.

[evilfury 0]

When I zoom in to trees my gpu fan begin to spin faster. Which means that trees are really gpu intensive.

[icebreakr 3156]

Well known issue. And even grass autumn_t is lagging the system when used as clutter.

[stk2008 14]

When I zoom in to trees my gpu fan begin to spin faster. Which means that trees are really gpu intensive.

Same problem here I have an 8800gt yes I know not great but works ok tbh.

When I zoom in on some trees as stated yes my GPU fan goes bloody crazy nd it lags more than normal :P

[Zipper5 74]

Trees, or any vegetation for that matter, have always killed performance in BIS' games. Even in OFP, on my old desktop that could barely get 20 FPS playing it, would just die when I looked at one of Everon's forests without fog.

Unfortunately, I think that the amount of detail BIS put in to their vegetation is what kills performance. Granted, the Linda system is better than what they've used for OFP and ArmA, but it still causes performance issues. I don't think that it's possible to fix it, however, only minimize it. It's pretty much the same for every game unless the vegetation is very under-detailed.

We'll have to see what these new shader systems and such for OA bring to the table. Perhaps they'll finally sort out the vegetation issue.

[otrebla_snake_ita 2]

Trees, or any vegetation for that matter, have always killed performance in BIS' games. Even in OFP, on my old desktop that could barely get 20 FPS playing it, would just die when I looked at one of Everon's forests without fog.

Unfortunately, I think that the amount of detail BIS put in to their vegetation is what kills performance. Granted, the Linda system is better than what they've used for OFP and ArmA, but it still causes performance issues. I don't think that it's possible to fix it, however, only minimize it. It's pretty much the same for every game unless the vegetation is very under-detailed.

We'll have to see what these new shader systems and such for OA bring to the table. Perhaps they'll finally sort out the vegetation issue.

Why don't use a new "Vegetation system" to solve those performance problems?

Something like this: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9701

[thr0tt 12]

Don't worry they have solved the vegetation issue, well not really solved but bypassed, expansion is set in the desert ;@) lol

[ScareCroweb 10]

I have tested the new Beta and with the beta i get increased stuttering just by looking around close to trees, when i run the same test without beta, the stuttering is almost gone, infact very smooth, so something must have gone wrong somewhere. I hope this will be fixed before they decide to make the beta a public release :j:

Video card Nvidia 250GTS 1G

[teaboy 11]

Yeah the new beta's that have come out over the last few days, is basically one and the same beta patch. Where just doing the final testing on the changes they made so they can get it spot on for us, before including the changes into the next patch.

Well thats what it sounds like they are doing.

As for the tree's, yeah same problem, also noticed a double texture load on buildings when i was testing my settinggs. Seems some buildings like the wooden ones have a double layer of texture skins instead of just having the one layer of texture skin. So that explains the hog on the system that buildings are known for aswell.

Edited May 4, 2010 by teaboy

[otrebla_snake_ita 2]

Don't worry they have solved the vegetation issue, well not really solved but bypassed, expansion is set in the desert ;@) lol

Hahahah XD

[bensdale 0]

the first problem is that the trees are an absolute FPS killer.

the other Problem is like Fireball said on the CIT.

"quote from Fireball:

Yes, I've found the same about the trees specially; also I was able to repro it everytime by playing online for a while (let's say 30 minutes), and then looking at certain trees with lots of leaves (not firs) lead to the performance breakdown.

Using -FLUSH improves the issue greatly (e.g. from 13 FPS up to 25 again, looking at the same scene) until it degrades again, more and more down to unplayability."

[AnimalMother92 10]

Same here, the non-evergreen trees eat a noticeable amount of FPS. But I think the vegetation in general on Chernarus is quite resource hungry, just having grass around causes the frame rate to take a significant hit.

[otrebla_snake_ita 2]

the first problem is that the trees are an absolute FPS killer.

the other Problem is like Fireball said on the CIT.

"quote from Fireball:

Yes, I've found the same about the trees specially; also I was able to repro it everytime by playing online for a while (let's say 30 minutes), and then looking at certain trees with lots of leaves (not firs) lead to the performance breakdown.

Using -FLUSH improves the issue greatly (e.g. from 13 FPS up to 25 again, looking at the same scene) until it degrades again, more and more down to unplayability."

What is -flush? A startup parameter? Why no one talks about that?

Can you tell me more about this "-flush thing"? XD

[AnimalMother92 10]

Hold the left Shift key then press the minus key, then you type in "flush" (it won't show up on the screen). The screen goes black for a seconds and the video memory is flushed. At least that's how I remember doing it..

[Dwarden 1125]

i noticed most of people who speak about this problem

mentioned they have it after certain time (online gameplay)

and that it's temporary resolved by flush

also most had NVIDIA (tho some had amd.ati card)

so it might be related to some VRAM fragmentation issue...

[MavericK96 0]

Hold the left Shift key then press the minus key, then you type in "flush" (it won't show up on the screen). The screen goes black for a seconds and the video memory is flushed. At least that's how I remember doing it..

Just to clarify, it's shift + minus on the Keypad. And the -flush command rarely ever has any real effect for me.

[AnimalMother92 10]

Just to clarify, it's shift + minus on the Keypad. And the -flush command rarely ever has any real effect for me.

Yep, you're right. I haven't used it in awhile. Game has been a lot more stable for me lately.

[otrebla_snake_ita 2]

Hold the left Shift key then press the minus key, then you type in "flush" (it won't show up on the screen). The screen goes black for a seconds and the video memory is flushed. At least that's how I remember doing it..

I'll try it. Thank you

[ubermachtig 0]

Ah, I was about to make a thread about this subject as well. I experience exactly the same, and I'm sure the trees are the biggest frame-droppers. They should be made a lot more efficient so performance can be improved vastly.

Although I have a relatively slow system, ArmA 2's performance is pretty decent in non-forested area's:

Processor: Core 2 duo @ 2,13Ghz

Videocard: Nvidia GeForce POV 9600GT 512MB

Drivers: GeForce 197.57 BETA

Making trees more efficient would help me a lot, especially with the above system where every frame counts.

[Cionara 10]

I've been critizising that since release last summer. One solution is to download a low vegetation mod which replaces the trees with lower detailed ones. I don't remember the name, didn't play ArmAII for months. I think BIS is too proud of their Linda Vegetation. They rather have every single PC running ArmAII creeping around 10fps then replace their vegetation with low res ones ;)

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

I'm using a GTX285 and the only time I run into a significant problem is when looking at Kamyshovo, something about those small islands right next to it that just makes my FPS drop like a rock.

[MavericK96 0]

Videocard: Nvidia GeForce POV 9600GT 512MB

Drivers: GeForce 197.57 BETA

Didn't realize there were new betas out for nVidia. Can you comment on whether or not they make a difference over 197.45?