Optimize the graphics engine (performance) in 2023 ?

Hi @Paul Jeffrey!

I have noticed for years that :

1) The day/night cycle cause excessive performance problems, especially depending on where the sun is in the sky, see the night in certain circumstances.

2) That rain and wet road cause an excessive loss of performance.

3) That some new cars, although more detailed, cause an excessive loss of performance.

4) Graphics settings should in my opinion adjust more things and have at least 1 more intermediate option (probably something like "very low") to take more account of hardware specifics.

Important :
I am aware that when using rain, night or sunset, a recent and ultra detailed car, it is normal that each time there is a real drop in performance.

I just think that this performance degradation is way too excessive.

So my question :
Is it in your plans (priorities) this year 2023 to optimize the graphics engine and maybe the content ?

Thanks for reading.

And I forgot : VR optimisations etcetera ?

 

Honestly aside from maybe ancient sims like R3E and RBR / LFS, Id say RF2 is the least performance hungry sim I have.. when i compare it to the likes of ACC which sucks my machine dry. On triple screen i rarely see the GPU go over 30-50% usage although on very large AI counts (40+ at lemans) the CPU can get clogged up a bit

 

I've got a friend who came from iracing lately, 12600k and 4090, and he got FPS drop on rF2, so I'm not worried that my 6900XT got them too, as I've got an older 8700K, I know I have to update to unlock a lot of performance but it's a bit ridiculous, I'm using what I woul call "e sport" graphics settings options, I shouldn't get a hint of framerate loss.
We're using Samsung G5 34", resolution is UWQHD, 3440 x 1440.

Night, especially on Barhain, is very FPS hungry.
Some optimization would definatly help stability on most people systems.
Pretty sure devs knows this and will be working on something.

 

Same with Daytona. The track is very intensive on fps especially on the first corner, I get sometimes -35 fps loss when the cars are nearby on race start. I guess that track objects and textures are fps killers but I am sure they can be better optimised!

 

the fact of the matter is that your processor is running on two threads (r-factor2 can't use more than two processes) and it's completely clogged and won't let your graphics card run at full capacity.
to check what i'm saying open the task manager at the moment when your card is at 40%, but the fps does not rise anymore and look at the processor load, there you will see that one of the cores of your processor is almost fully loaded.
and if you turn off virtual multitrading in the BIOS, then you will see that this core is 100% loaded.
so it turns out that the whole problem is this, even if you have a modern multi-core processor, but it has a small speed in gigahertz, it cannot fully provide the power of r-factor 2.

 

There are/were MANY MANY games that look amazing today that it wasnt possible to max out setting on current hardware *then* and can be done today. I'd rather have to lower settings today and be able to have it look even better in a few years when CPU and GPU hardware allows

 

Not so much the textures or objects, in games the dynamic shadows and lights are the sources which are very demanding on the system.
Not that i'm an expert but after some years of fiddling with game creation tools this was fairly apparent.
When creating a game there is always a trade off between looks and performance which means lower number of lights used, lower res for shadows and if static use a lightmapper to bake those shadows in the scene.

Every game which runs on DX11 will have the same problem because CPU scaling isn't good in DX11 which means that mostly 1 or 2 cores do all the work during gameplay.
While the average use might seem low, as @oikworld explains above, one core might in fact be maxed out because it gets all the load.
I did a little run on my system to see how the performance is, see attachments.

My system:
Ryzen 2600
16GB ram
RTX3060
SSD
Though i'm running a 21/9 resolution 3440x1440, the fps never goes below 100 so id say that performance is good with how my graphics settings are.
The RTX3060 almost fully utilized as it should be, well 100 percent actually.
If graphics cards are not fully utilized, this might be because either the CPU is a bottleneck but it could also be because of a misconfiguration in the system itself, namely how the power connectors are hooked up to the card.
Often one cable with two connectors is used and this could mean that the card isn't able to draw the needed power and hence the performance is low.
properly connecting the card with separate cables from the PSU to the power connectors on the graphics card would solve that issue.

 

If we consider ACC for example, when I first got it I had an i7/1070 machine and it was a frame slaughter fest, when I got the i9/2080ti it was game changing, I could finally play in medium settings in triple screen and with the interim 3080ti update its finally in glorius epic mode on my triples.. had Kunos decided to produce substandard models and tracks with low budget polygon counts to suit the low end of the market, the game would have looked equally crap for eveyone on day1 and continued to do the same, instead the world keeps moving forward and equipmetn improves.

I feel like about 18 months ago something changed in the land of the rf2 devs, they came to the above realisation, and a decision was made to not cater to the mid>>lowest end of the market anymore, and new cars came out where you cannot count the polygons on the steering wheel anymore, introduction of SSR etc, personally I think it was long overdue, RF2 is now starting to look like a current decade game and moving away from the R3E look and feel, I'd like to see more eye candy introduced, built in a way that those that dont have machine specs to run it can always turn it off?

I'd really like to see multicore AI on the CPU though.

 

I'm in the market for a new PC with an RTX 4090. To maximise rF2 performance, which Intel CPU should I be purchasing?

 

I get random tanks in performance after going back to the garage. Nice smooth 120fps, no input lag at all. Then i esc and go for another run, and the frames and input lag goes to shit. I have to exit out and reload the track to fix it.

 

I haven't had this problem for the past few months.

But I'll tell you the best.

I've had rFactor 2 for about 8 years and I can assure you that I've had the bug you describe many, many times for several years, 4 years or more.

I haven't had it recently.

There is therefore a real concern, and if you have the courage to try to discuss it with precision with the devs it will be good. So that our favorite sim no longer suffers from this issue.

 

I specify that I love the work of the devs of S397 including on the graphics engine.

Nevertheless, the priority clearly seems to be focused on the modernization/visual improvement of the graphics engine.

While an even more important priority in my opinion would be to allow thousands of users to take advantage, with almost equal performance, of the rain and the day/night cycle if for the moment they are forced like me to do without deprive, or moderately activate certain graphic parameters which until now would be deactivated or set excessively low.

Indeed, the visual or immersive improvement would perhaps affect many more users this way, ie by working on the optimization.

I add a personal OPINION :

At a time when the price of GPUs and computer hardware has doubled, what better proof of attention and deep mark of attention from the Studio than to invest a few months in an optimization process of the graphics engine.

This is just a remark.
I allow myself to tag @Paul Jeffrey on this message (for the beginning of the message).

 

im looking at the 13900, prices are starting to reach normal levels now. I have one at work, its a damn beast.

Im considering going 13900/4090/128gb drr5, should last 2 years or so before need a GPU upgrade.

 

Would only upgrade the CPU/ram... if I were you... and even that... only if I really needed the extra performance...

Most people focus way too much on Average FPS (GPU)... instead on the 1% low or 0.1% low (CPU/RAM)...

Start by checking the latency of your current system... with a program like aida64... a very good latency would be around 50 nano second...

If you don't already hit 120fps on your current system... sure upgrade your GPU... other than that I wouldn't see the point... plus rf2 will probably be CPU bound in a lot of scenario... making the 4090 a waste... until we either get faster CPU or better optimization.


And... why 128gb of Ram... unless your doing specific workload like video editing... for rf2 there is no point... like 0% extra perf... Maximum I would ever need for a simRig would be 32gb of very fast Ram... 64gb max, for marketing purpose, and for re-sell value only...

 

In general with gaming, once you go over 1080P, the performance gains from buying a silly-high end CPU are minimal to non-existent. There's no need at all to buy the "best" CPU out there unless you have specific uses for it outside of gaming.

 

Rfactor2 looks really amazing in full setting with my G2 reverb and SS-170% but you need the 4090|13900K to achieve stable 90fps!

 

When you write this, are you aware that less than 1% of sim racers can acquire this material ?

I find that a bit out of place.

 

How many of those cores are in use at the time?

 

Coming back after a near two year absence and it seems the evolution of tracks & cars (graphically) has come at the expense of optimisations, in essence I'm now running lower settings than I was two years ago with a better PC

Albeit with a marginally different HMD (Reverb G2 now, G1 back then) which will demand more, but that should be equalled over by the better PC anyway.

It's all good though, I'm maintaining 90fps from race start to finish in certain scenarios, but it wouldn't hurt to have some fresh optimisations to help across the board.
I'm sure it's the same for many constantly evolving titles, on the one hand they improve their games graphically to follow new advances but at the same time performance drops, getting an equalibrium must be tough.

 

At the end of the day it comes down to mesh weight, more triangles == more work for the gpu, to firstly just even draw them, then more per face light calculations, material mapping, etc etc, so when we say "please optimize" what we are asking for, is to make the models look like potatos again, like they used, like R3E/LFS/RBR/RF1 et al still do.. those days are gone.. competitor games are bringing the graphical game HARD and RF2 needs to keep up. (with RF2 Maxxed i still get 30fps more than i get with ACC just on HIGH for example)

So then the answer is a super convoluted LOD system like the Madness Engine?, where every track is actually 2-6 tracks, takes insanely longer to develop and would cost a lot more no doubt, and have the same glitcvhes as present in madness engine, (ever try open a PC2 track in blender, sorting through LODs is a disaster.), perhaps setup a negative resolution scale like ACC does where you can under render to 50% of actual resolution so the slower GPU's can keep up?

we finally have MSG/S397 outputting consistent good quality content (some of the best in market I'd say), I'd be loath to stop that good roll.