PC Type "gfx pp enable 0" in the console for a huge performance boost.

[HeLLKnight]

Hey I've just tested the command and I found the exact shader is killing the performance, at least for me. No surprises here, the shader is Screen Space Reflections (ssr) and halves my fps by 50% indoors with a GTX 1080:

You can disable just this one and leave all other shaders enabled:

"gfx pp ssr 0"

And thats all. This way your game will not go that ugly as typing gfx pp enable 0. The visual difference is very minimal. Display FPS with F8 key to discover it by yourself. Can you report if I'm not alone here?

I was reporting that in the bug thread in the past with more detail:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?110709-Alpha-17-2-Experimental-B27-bug-reporting-thread&p=953052&viewfull=1#post953052

 

[faatal]

Hey I've just tested the command and I found the exact shader is killing the performance, at least for me. No surprises here, the shader is Screen Space Reflections (ssr) and halves my fps by 50% indoors with a GTX 1080...

SSR can be pretty bad. It works fine for me, but I have a RTX 2070 and play at moderate resolutions (1080 or 1440). Disabling SSR at 4k I get a 33% FPS boost.

I just fixed a slow memory leak issue, so there is a good chance we will be putting out a 17.4. If so it will also contain:

Changed gfx command default permission, so all clients can use.

 

[Shin]

Works like a charm... Gone from 25 to 70 FPS on average on my old potato. Only thing noted is really bad graphics on tilled soil. wasnt to great before either though...

 

[Aerial]

It’s the same one but the server admin must give them permission. The how to is already posted above.

So if I'm hosting one other player on my game I am technically running a server? Where is the server config file I need to modify located?

 

[faatal]

So if I'm hosting one other player on my game I am technically running a server? Where is the server config file I need to modify located?

On Windows 10 mine is here:

C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie\Saves

 

[Wigbert]

This game is weird.

I have 8GB of ram. Windows 7 64bit. AMD PhenomII X 4 820 processor 2.80GHz. NVIDIA GeForce GTX-970. Brick slow HDD.

I have every graphics option in 7DTD turned up all the way.

I have super slow internet access. ( Whatever the rate is when you have used all your interwebz bandwidth and they throttle your connection )

I have Zero performance issues. Smooth as butter.

My only performance issues is it takes an extremely long time to make a RWG map.( With this new update it is quite a bit faster eg. 15 minutes to make an 8K. )

The performance issues in 7DTD are all over the map. Weird I tell you.

 

[Damocles]

Hey I've just tested the command and I found the exact shader is killing the performance, at least for me. No surprises here, the shader is Screen Space Reflections (ssr) and halves my fps by 50% indoors with a GTX 1080:
You can disable just this one and leave all other shaders enabled:

"gfx pp ssr 0"

And thats all. This way your game will not go that ugly as typing gfx pp enable 0. The visual difference is very minimal. Display FPS with F8 key to discover it by yourself. Can you report if I'm not alone here?

I was reporting that in the bug thread in the past with more detail:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?110709-Alpha-17-2-Experimental-B27-bug-reporting-thread&p=953052&viewfull=1#post953052

Yes that does it for me.

Turning off the SSAO would be overkill and make the game look pretty flat inside.

 

[HeLLKnight]

SSR can be pretty bad. It works fine for me, but I have a RTX 2070 and play at moderate resolutions (1080 or 1440). Disabling SSR at 4k I get a 33% FPS boost.
I just fixed a slow memory leak issue, so there is a good chance we will be putting out a 17.4. If so it will also contain:

Changed gfx command default permission, so all clients can use.

Hey faatal, thanks for your answer and the effort. Would be possible to reduce the quality of reflections in "low" and "medium" settings, and/or maybe disable in the surface of blocks or if not possible reduce the precision of reflections in blocks? Fps cuts in half switching from off to low indoors, but not when looking at water surfaces.

 

[zootal]

nVidia 1060 proprietary drivers

32GB Ram, client currently using 16GB.

3 SSDs with lots of spare space.

Swap file utilization: 0

Linux - Slackware 64 bit 4.19.37 kernel. xfce

I picked an indoor scene with a few torches and shadows and a view out the window. Nice sunrise.

Eye candy maxed out including shadow settings. Vsync off. FPS: 4 (yes, four).

gfx pp enable 0: Scene becomes washed out, fps increases to 4.5

At this point, something else is sucking FPS so badly that enabling/disabling this makes no difference:

Change reflection quality from Ultra+ to off. FPS changes from 4 to 6

Reflected shadows from yes to no: no change in FPS

Shadows distance from far to near: FPS changes from 6 to 8

Shadows distance off: fps increases from 8 to 45

Now I try gfx pp ssr 0. FPS increase from 45 to 50

gfx pp enable 0: fps increase from 50 to 60

Motion Blur, SSAO and Depth of Field settings do not seem to have an appreciable effect on FPS

So what I'm seeing is that shadows are a severe FPS sucker. I can max out everything else and get great fps, but turn shadows on and the game is not playable.

Changing the shader settings doesn't help when shadows are on makes no significant difference. Changing shader settings with shadows off gives me a 15 fps boots, but at that point I don't really need it.

Shadows. They are death to FPS.

Note that I'm using a linux client, and it's very possible the optimization level for linux client is very different than Windows clients. Remember A14? How they seriously screwed the lighting, and for a while the shaders, for the linux client? I had to use Wine and play the windows version on linux, as the linux client back in A14 was mostly unplayable.

 

[faatal]

Hey faatal, thanks for your answer and the effort. Would be possible to reduce the quality of reflections in "low" and "medium" settings, and/or maybe disable in the surface of blocks or if not possible reduce the precision of reflections in blocks? Fps cuts in half switching from off to low indoors, but not when looking at water surfaces.

Low already has extremenly basic reflections going on. The main difference in the reflection settings is how fast it renders the faces of the reflection cube map. The resolution of those is not that high and lowering it make little difference.

The reflection probe system needs to be redesigned to use multiple probes that blend together instead of constantly updating one, but that is a bunch of work and don't know when someone can get to it.

 

[faatal]

So what I'm seeing is that shadows are a severe FPS sucker. I can max out everything else and get great fps, but turn shadows on and the game is not playable.

Shadows on cause it to render all the objects around each shadow casting light, so it tends to be expensive, but should not be as bad as you are seeing. It is using OpenGL on linux, so probably some edge case of bad performance in Unity and/or your drivers. For A18 I shortened shadow distances (low is much shorter) and added one more distance setting, but may not do much in your case.

What resolution are you running at?

 

[zootal]

Shadows on cause it to render all the objects around each shadow casting light, so it tends to be expensive, but should not be as bad as you are seeing. It is using OpenGL on linux, so probably some edge case of bad performance in Unity and/or your drivers. For A18 I shortened shadow distances (low is much shorter) and added one more distance setting, but may not do much in your case.
What resolution are you running at?

That would explain why a lot of torches in the same area or line of sight can cause a severe performance hit.

I run at 1920x1080. I seem to recall in the not-too-distant past that I could use shadows, so it could be the current nVidia drivers set. nVidia drivers historically tend to be hit-or-miss, I might try an old driver set just to see if it makes a difference. Or like you suggested it might be a Unity issue...

 

[zootal]

A few years ago, in an educational environment, I wrote in c++ a radiosity rendering solution for an enclosed environment. I think I was doing five bounces, and it actually looked really good. Unfortunately, I chose to use a ray tracing technique to determine if a polygon was in line of sight of a light source, and while that impressed my profs, it was horribly slow. I shudder at the thought of doing this in real time...

 

[Crater Creator]

Hey I've just tested the command and I found the exact shader is killing the performance, at least for me. No surprises here, the shader is Screen Space Reflections (ssr) and halves my fps by 50% indoors with a GTX 1080:
You can disable just this one and leave all other shaders enabled:

"gfx pp ssr 0"

And thats all. This way your game will not go that ugly as typing gfx pp enable 0. The visual difference is very minimal. Display FPS with F8 key to discover it by yourself. Can you report if I'm not alone here?

I was reporting that in the bug thread in the past with more detail:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?110709-Alpha-17-2-Experimental-B27-bug-reporting-thread&p=953052&viewfull=1#post953052

I can confirm that, among post processing options, turning off screen space reflections has a big impact (gfx pp ssr 0), while other gfx commands like bloom and ambient occlusion only give me another frame or two per second.

That’s on the “low” video settings preset, though. Like zootal, I find on higher settings my frame rate is low regardless, and post processing makes little difference.

I’m running on macOS, and the OpenGL renderer, with an older card (AMD Radeon HD 6970M).

 

[HeLLKnight]

Low already has extremenly basic reflections going on. The main difference in the reflection settings is how fast it renders the faces of the reflection cube map. The resolution of those is not that high and lowering it make little difference.
The reflection probe system needs to be redesigned to use multiple probes that blend together instead of constantly updating one, but that is a bunch of work and don't know when someone can get to it.

I decided to extend the reflections testing a little more. All options to the highest except motion blur off, I7 7700k, GTX 1080, 1920x1080, vsync off, exclusive fullscreen, recent drivers. Indoor scenario:

From 75 (low) to 145 fps (off). Ultra is getting 75 fps also, but much more fps spikes in graph. However, little visual difference and almost zero difference between low and ultra. Extended gallery here: https://imgur.com/a/xlYYgHf.

Water surface:

From 122 fps (reflections ultra setting) to 126 fps (off). Big visual difference.

I think this issue should be at top priority since if a I'm getting such a giant fps loss with a GTX 1080 at 1080p, how bad are fps for most people thinking low setting is ok? No other option or shader can compare to this by large margin.

I took a look at unity documentation and has many options to set SSR. Maybe I'm talking too much about a thing I don't know, but would be possible to revisit them just in case you missed something?

 

[faatal]

I decided to extend the reflections testing a little more. All options to the highest except motion blur off, I7 7700k, GTX 1080, 1920x1080, vsync off, exclusive fullscreen, recent drivers. Indoor scenario:
From 75 (low) to 145 fps (off). Ultra is getting 75 fps also, but much more fps spikes in graph. However, little visual difference and almost zero difference between low and ultra. Extended gallery here: https://imgur.com/a/xlYYgHf.

Water surface:

From 122 fps (reflections ultra setting) to 126 fps (off). Big visual difference.

I think this issue should be at top priority since if a I'm getting such a giant fps loss with a GTX 1080 at 1080p, how bad are fps for most people thinking low setting is ok? No other option or shader can compare to this by large margin.

I took a look at unity documentation and has many options to set SSR. Maybe I'm talking too much about a thing I don't know, but would be possible to revisit them just in case you missed something?

The reflection setting changes the reflection probe updating, which is basically probe distance, resolution and update rate. You have to be moving around to see the difference in update rate. I don't recall the difference for me between off and low being anything as drastic as you are experiencing.

The reflection setting does not do anything with SSR. SSR is a completely separate system. I do need to review the SSR settings, since they were made by an artist for looks, not performance. A off/low/med/high may be more useful than an off/on (in A18).

 

[IroncrossBG]

50% performance boost!

Saw the "gfx pp enable 0" command, tried, i instantly got 50% more FPS... had like 20, now average is 30, sometimes 35-40. Make sure you try it! still far from my 60 FPS in Alpha 16...

 

[faatal]

Yesterday I moved these changes from A18 to A17.4:

Added Bloom and SS Reflections graphics options and reordered.

Fixed SSAO graphics option, so not always on.

Added medium shadow distance option (closer than the old low) and reduced low to faster values.

Added Ultra graphics preset (similar to old High) and reduced Medium and High settings a little.

Fixed graphics options defaults that were not medium.

 

[HeLLKnight]

Yesterday I moved these changes from A18 to A17.4:
Added Bloom and SS Reflections graphics options and reordered.

Fixed SSAO graphics option, so not always on.

Added medium shadow distance option (closer than the old low) and reduced low to faster values.

Added Ultra graphics preset (similar to old High) and reduced Medium and High settings a little.

Fixed graphics options defaults that were not medium.

Thank you very much faatal, sounds amazing.

Could be great to alert users with a red text like "slow!" or "experimental" just beside SSR option and disabled by default.

 

[mr.devolver]

I guess "gfx pp enable 0" doesn't affect Radeon users as much as it does Nvidia users. I haven't noticed any difference between gfx pp enable 1 and 0 on my RX Vega 56.