Tweaking FPS

[Darjk]

Just been digging around a bit more and I noticed something odd - the games SoundSystem is taking most of the processing time per each frame - despite having sound completely disabled. Even the memory stats say FMod is only using 0.05MB compared to the 20MB or so that it normally consumes when enabled.

Picture explaining what I'm talking about:



Now each frame is taking 18ms or so, giving me a frame rate of approximate 55 fps, thats fine. However if you take a look the SoundSystem is taking up 1/3 of the entire processing time. Now I have sound disabled anyway so it would seem normal to NOT having to worry about making that call. By taking out that single call thats useles to me it would bump it upto 83fps.

During normal game play this doesn't really matter but when it comes to populated areas / raids / wars, every little bit helps!

Does anyone know if its possible to utterly disable the sound system? Wish I could just 'nop' out that call.

[DeathDwellsHere]

Originally Posted by Darjk

Just been digging around a bit more and I noticed something odd - the games SoundSystem is taking most of the processing time per each frame - despite having sound completely disabled. Even the memory stats say FMod is only using 0.05MB compared to the 20MB or so that it normally consumes when enabled.

Picture explaining what I'm talking about:



Now each frame is taking 18ms or so, giving me a frame rate of approximate 55 fps, thats fine. However if you take a look the SoundSystem is taking up 1/3 of the entire processing time. Now I have sound disabled anyway so it would seem normal to NOT having to worry about making that call. By taking out that single call thats useles to me it would bump it upto 83fps.

During normal game play this doesn't really matter but when it comes to populated areas / raids / wars, every little bit helps!

Does anyone know if its possible to utterly disable the sound system? Wish I could just 'nop' out that call.

I wish i could say you could but im not familiar with it but im sure if you turn down hardware acceleration it gives way for more FPS also. (They may be related for all i know)

[Kataq]

History repeating itself?

Darkfall had the same problem. Someone discovered that sound was killing FPS in large battles. The solution was to disable the sound device entirely, start the game, and then re-enable the sound device to get Ventrillo going. Another guy even made a script to disable sound.

This solution was widely used in large fights until Darkfalls developers fixed their sound system.

I would try this myself in the next siege, but the game crashes anytime I go near a zerg... or would it?

edit: Actually, I will try next time I am in Pand. My FPS in a busy Pand is around 25-30 at the lowest point. Would be very interested to see if this goes up by 30 FPS as you suggest.

[Bearcub]

This sounds actually quite interesting... would disabling the sound device help in Aion as well?

[Darjk]

Update:

Well seems like its easier to disable than I thought,
throwing this into your system.ovr file (may need to create it if you don't already have one) and reloading the game will disable the sound. It will still be called but won't do anything.

s_SoundEnable = "0"

And I was able to boost my FPS upto the 70's, not quite the 83 I was expecting but still a boost none the less.

Next I'm hoping to improve FPS in towns and judging by this:


The biggest performance hit is in the locking of the Vertices Buffer, this is unavoidable and required since the data is stored in your Graphics card memory. There are a few settings I'm playing with to see if they can be optimised though.

Edit:
Hmm guess it wasn't a permanent fix, just tested it in Sanctum and the SounSystem was back enabled. Will try disabling the hardware device as Kataq mention

[Stigz]

How do you get that info in your screenshots?

[Darjk]

Create a plain text file and call it system.ovr, place it in the same Aion directory as System.cfg

Inside that *.ovr file place

-- Enable the console
con_disable_console = "0"

Save it and restart the game, then press "Pause / Break" Key, and in the console enter

\profile 1

To turn it off, enter

\profile 0

And to display memory usage (that I've posted in a different thread) use its,

\memstats 1

[Kataq]

Well it was a totally non-scientific test, but I just tried switching off my sound device and running around in a fairly busy Pand.

I would say that the improvement wasn't really very noticeable, and I could still get my FPS to drop to around 26, but it did seem to stay more consistently higher.

I will try again in the next siege. If my FPS doesn't drop into single figures it would be worth doing.

[Darjk]

The thing I'm noticing is the longer the game is running, the more time the SoundSystem takes to process - in otherwords its slowly killing everyones frame rate. It starts off around 1ms, after 1 hour or so it will be upto 6ms, 3-4 hours around 10ms, and so forth.

For example, while grinding a level my frame rate will be down to 50fps or so, and according to the profile its due to the sound. If I exit and start Aion again, it will be back up to 120fps or so, then again slowly degrades. None of the other sub-systems seem to be degrading to the degree that the sound is.

*shrug*

Going to start looking at ways to reduce memory usage apart from the options available in-game.

[sirviceman1]

Great posts here amd huge THANKS for trying to sort out this problem!
Please kindly post your future discoveries.
Cheers!

[Prophesy]

Anyway to send this info to ncsoft?

[Darjk]

I'd imagine NCSoft already know and aware of it - if they don't then I'm be very concerned about the future development of this game.


I managed to resolve the framerate issues I was having regarding sound by tweaking the settings. You don't even have to disable the sound if you prefer having it on. This is what I'm using.

-- [[ SOUND ]]
-- Disable sound completely: Saves between 20-25MB's of memory
-- Toggles sound on and off.  Default is 1 (on). Set to 0 to disable sound.
s_SoundEnable = "1"

-- Toggles sound effects on and off. Default is 1 (on).
s_EnableSoundFX = "0"

-- sound max distance. Usage: g_sound_max_dist [value] Default value is 40.0f
g_sound_max_dist = "10.0f"

-- sound min distance. Usage: g_sound_min_dist [value] Default value is 8.0f
g_sound_min_dist = "5.0f"

-- Sets the vis area propagation number.  Default is 10. This number defines how far sound will
-- propagate, in vis areas from the player's position. A value of 1 means the sound is only heard in the current
s_VisAreasPropagation = "1"

-- Set Sound cache size.   Default: 128
s_KeepSound = "32"

I'm currently experimenting with a few things but its to find a decent control-test to see if it actually improves anything. But these settings have my interest

-- [[ MODELS ]]

-- Maximum cache size.  Default: 200.000000
ca_KeepMaxCacheSize = "50.0f"

-- Maximum cache size.  Default: 150.000000
ca_KeepMaxCacheSize2 = "25.0f"

-- Maximum cache size.  Defualt: 50.000000
ca_KeepMaxCacheSize3 = "10.0f"

-- If set to 1, will prevent models from unloading from memory upon destruction of the last referencing character.  Default: "1.000000"
ca_KeepModels = "0.000000"

-- Pre-render objects right after level loading [Default: 0 - off]
e_precache_level = "1.000000"

In populated area's changing this to a lower value, for instance "5.0f" can help with frame rates, it basically means objects will only render that are immediately next to your character. I would not recommend changing this permanently. It also helps to increase it to 100 or so if you're doing gathering and looking for Aether / ore / plant nodes to gather.

-- View distance for vegetation, brushes and entities [Default: 55.0f]
e_obj_view_dist_ratio = "55.000000"