(invisible) Reflections FPS drop

Hi all,

I was fiddling around with the GFX settings to try and optimize fps, when I found out that road and environment reflections cause huge fps drop (especially the latter). By disabling the reflections I nearly doubled my framerate. The odd thing is that I can hardly see the difference in-game (if any at all). I tested this on dry track on a sunny day and I can imagine that other conditions might lead to more significant differences. However, wet conditions are not very common. This leads to my question: "What is the use of the resource-hungry reflections in dry conditions?"

I'm also eager to find out your experiences with this particular "problem".

Cheers!

Thijs

 

I believe the 'mirage effect' is using road reflections. I believe (though I'm probably wrong) that Environment reflections are on the cars themselves--either that or on buildings and such.

 

I suspect as soon as the feature is turned on, the cube maps are being generated and stored in VRAM, no matter if the current conditions are dry or wet.

What's the bottleneck with your configuration? Is it VRAM size?
On which track did you experience this?

 

I own the following system:
i5 2500K @ 3,3GHz
AMD HD6870 1 GB GDDR5
8GB pc6400 DDR3

The graphics card is most likely the bottleneck. It was on the Mills track with the new Clio mod. Also I have both track and car detail at max (I imagine this would be of big influence also). HDR is turned off because it is too bright for now.

 

You will notice the use of Road Reflections more in wet races when the refections on the road surface are really visible. Dry conditions you possibly won't see alot of difference. So if you don't really race wet races much then it won't be as much of a loss as it would under wet conditions with it disabled.

 

Hm, at 1GB it's unlikely to have been a VRAM-size issue then. Or were you running with lots of AI?

 

Sure yes i understand that. But the reply was to the quoted part of the original post. The OP could not really see the difference with them turned on or off, was just saying you will notice it more under wet conditions

 

I have the same issue, I use HDR (too shiny and too much saturation imo) and enviroment reflection OFF, hope that next build have better performance and more realistic HDR effect.

 

Oh ok i didn't realise that, i have not played around with them tbh. But yes still if you turn them both off and then start a wet race you will see the difference of them both being enabled and disabled. Only real issue i have right now is the opac headlights on most cars, can't seem to fix it but have seen screens from others and their headlights are fine.

 

Re the opaque headlights Nismo...

I saw screens of the new Clio`s being driven at Historic Monaco and the headlights were nice and clear, as they should be.

From what I was told by the poster of the shots he said the opaque headlights are caused by a track bug and not a car bug so on some tracks they are clear and on others opaque... not tried it myself yet but thought I`d mention it.

 

That's interesting, i didn't know that. I think i see the pics on RD your on about aswell. Thanks for that, hopefully it gets sorted

 

I have aswell as far as i remember. I can't remember seeing clear windscreens and headlights for a long time now.

 

Yeh the screens were posted on RD Nismo and the headlights are as clear as a bell.

Strange though as I see it hasn`t worked for feels3.

I`ll go and check if it works for me and let you guys know.

 

Just did a very quick test and sadly the headlights are still opaque...

This was at historic Monaco... I`ll try the other tracks in a bit but not holding out much hope.

I wonder how the poster at RD had nice clear headlights then?

 

Build 85 buggered everything up and has'nt been right since! hoping the next build fixes it as I'm desperate to go night racing!