Can we expect a performance increase for full game/later patches?

Yes, 24+ FPS when watching a film is acceptable. Obviously. On a game using a pc monitor its a different story. Now, it would be fine if like a film the frame rate at 24 never fluctuated but that's rarely going to happen even with a cap trying to lock it. The same goes for 30 FPS because when it dips your going to notice it. I believe the point of 60 FPS is to leave head room for dips so it's not so noticeable because 30 to 24 FPS is not a lot of room. But i don't know about that.

What i do know is that for me 30 is the limit of playability for a GAME of this type. Any lower and things start to lag and feel unresponsive. Like the camera, using the selection box, selecting units, units not responding when you click etc. Most people can and do notice changes in frame rate between 30 - 60 FPS. Some will see changes between 60 - 90 FPS. And above 90 hardly anyone can tell the difference.

A test was conducted on fighter pilots who spotted a picture in 1/220 frames in that second. So our eyes can indeed pick up FPS beyond this stupid 24 FPS rubbish they are trying to sell you here. Again 24 FPS is good for MOVIES because of the blurr effect they use to mask how smooth it actually is. TV and monitors are different and the distance you sit from them is a factor too.

So if 30 and less FPS means "running perfect" for you then great. But for some of us here so far its not good at all..

Can't believe a game company is stating that about FPS. >.<


Edit: A little thing I found, have a read. http://www.firstshowing.net/2011/peter-jackson-talks-at-length-about-using-48fps-for-the-hobbit/

Neocore_Kate said:

And our questions and answers to you one by one:


@Rastyl

From what you said it seems the game runs on your rig with about 2-3 FPS. Is that correct?
Could you let us know exactly how many FPS you get and exactly which graphics card you have?
From the 5800 series we also have several cards, on most of them we tested the game in the hardware test lab but we didn't experience this problem.

Click to expand...

Kate - Cheers for looking into to this. Neocore is doing a great job of reassuring it's customers that any issues with the game will be sorted out.

In answer to your specific questions: The game was running at around 2-3fps on my computer to start with, but as I pointed out in this thread and another thread http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?577928-Possible-workaround-solution-to-low-fps-performance-issues once I selected to run the game as an administrator the fps became playable and didn't drop below 20fps as far as I could tell. That was even with the graphics set to high. My video card is a Radeon Sapphire HD 5850.

i'd like to know if the devs are in contact with nVidia / ATI to figure out a solution, and which drivers are recommended.

Click to expand...

I was just about to ask something like that.

I've had some very bad experiences with ATI, lately. So much so, in fact, that when I discovered how awful the performance was in King Arthur 2, I immediately suspected ATI, way before it even occurred to me to suspect the actual developers. However, when other posters with these issues started posting their hardware, I quickly saw that a bunch of them had Nvidia-cards. Which means that if this is a driver issue; it's not ATI-exclusive. It'd be nice if the devs could inform us if they have some form of communication going on with ATI and Nvidia.

Also, like someone pointed out, can we please stop discussing the "24 FPS"-topic? I whole-heartedly agree that it is quite a bit worrying when the developers of a videogame apparently doesn't quite know how FPS works, but it's getting a bit off-topic.

Nudz said:

I was just about to ask something like that.

I've had some very bad experiences with ATI, lately. So much so, in fact, that when I discovered how awful the performance was in King Arthur 2, I immediately suspected ATI, way before it even occurred to me to suspect the actual developers. However, when other posters with these issues started posting their hardware, I quickly saw that a bunch of them had Nvidia-cards. Which means that if this is a driver issue; it's not ATI-exclusive. It'd be nice if the devs could inform us if they have some form of communication going on with ATI and Nvidia.

Also, like someone pointed out, can we please stop discussing the "24 FPS"-topic? I whole-heartedly agree that it is quite a bit worrying when the developers of a videogame apparently doesn't quite know how FPS works, but it's getting a bit off-topic.

Click to expand...

I agree, enough of the FPS talk.

Ok, I managed to finish the prologue last night. Absolutely cool story and build up to the main release of the game. Am looking forward to when it gets unlocked, though I don't know when that is now because steam got rid of the countdown? Neocore?

Performance is still bad for me though, framerate dips into the teens and averaging around 22. The game feels like hard work at those frames, and like I said earlier in a post above things like selecting units really becomes a chore because the box is so unresponsive. Even the tool-tips and mouse cursor in general feel sluggish. There are many other issues too but all that being said I soldiered on and completed the prologue.

What a good game you have made Neocore, it's a shame it has performance issues for some of us huh? Any chance we would see a fix in it's lifetime like good ole KA1 got or more semi sarky comments from your PR team? >.>

@Anon052

Yes, 10-20 FPS is low. Is that what you get with using the settings Auto Setup set for you?
If not, please let us know how many FPS you have with that.

From your DxDiag we only see that you have a 6800 series graphics card – could you tell us exactly which card it is in the series?
The performance you wrote down is bad anyway, so we'll try to find the solution.
Only problem is that with our 6870 and 6850 cards the game runs well and we got a much better performance with those.

Click to expand...

With the autosetup options when I run as administrator I get those framerates, vsync forced off:

on campaign map: when it rains or snows: 13-14 FPS, when it dos not rain/snow:18-23 FPS mostly around 20 FPS
in battle: It springs between 11-25, most of the time the FPS are around 16.

Well, I was thinking about getting the game, but I don´t like what I´m reading.

The first game (demo) run like crap, so I didn´t get it, I thought it would be improved with the second game, but FPS around 25 is just not acceptable for me.

BTW, all that talk about human eye not seeing more than 30 FPS means that an average human can´t see an individual frame at more than 30 FPS. It doesn´t mean that it won´t see the difference, just won´t get individual frames.

Anyone can tell the difference between a game running at 30FPS and 60FPS.

Neocore_Kate said:

@derdree

With your config 15-25 FPS is indeed bad performance.
We had feedback on the Steam forums from Dungeoncrawler who also had similar problem with SLI and/or dual monitors: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=28317742&postcount=23

Try what he says and make sure to turn Ambient Occlusion and Vsync off in the game menu and check the Nvidia Control Panel too. Let us know what happened.

Click to expand...

Sorry for my late reply and thank you very much for your effort. I tried setting Ambient Occlussion to off and i got around 30 FPS in Campain Mode and between 20 and 30 in Battle Mode now. For the SLI thing: I dont have SLI for my graphics card and there is no change when I plug out my second monitor.

MIght be end of discussion but I just want to correct the wrong information you gave.

Our brain is a digital system. So is our cones and rods receptors in our eyes. Our Neuron fires in Pulses, and it does not fire in continuous waves. It does not continuously translate information like a sinus wave. It is a serious of pulses - e.g. like a modem.

Your eye actually see in frames, there are plenty of evidence for it. Simple example is just switch between 2 stationary pictures really fast (e.g. 2 frames). One with an upright block, one with that block laying down, your brain will make you see movement as if the blocks are getting up and laying down. Because our brain takes individual frames and links them together to make sense.

But while our eyes can see well past 100fps you don't need to get that high to see "fluidity." Depending on the details of an image 20-30 fps is more than enough. Most of the time any stuttering you notice is placebo. We are far more sensitive to control lag than we are to FPS stuttering - E.g. most of the stuttering you notice while playing first person shooter is Control Lag (e.g. frames does not catch up to your control movement) as oppose to sheer FPS.

But on Topic.

I have tried Comaptibility, Dx9-10-11, All Options on and Off, my frame rate does not go above 30. With the lowest-est setting at 1920x1080 and dx11 I only get around 28 fps on winter campaign map. Which is lower than what I was getting at max setting before the recent patch.

On max setting (and every option on) I now only get 20-22 fps on winter campaign map.

Vsync, Ambient Occlussion, admin, etc. does not product a pronounced effect. At most 4-8 fps, but never did I go over 30 fps.

JamesX said:

But while our eyes can see well past 100fps you don't need to get that high to see "fluidity." Depending on the details of an image 20-30 fps is more than enough. Most of the time any stuttering you notice is placebo. We are far more sensitive to control lag than we are to FPS stuttering - E.g. most of the stuttering you notice while playing first person shooter is Control Lag (e.g. frames does not catch up to your control movement) as oppose to sheer FPS.

Click to expand...

I guess the rational middle ground would be to call "fluidity" a very subjective phenomenon. "Acceptable framerate" should be considered on personal basis. Some people "accept" ~30 fps while others have a threshold of say ~45 fps (like me).

Other than that I was considering this game but I also don't like what I've read in this thread. If Crossfire is not supported, I'm going to hold off for the moment and wait for a CAP and some reviews.

A week later and no word except '12-24fps working as intended'.
Closing in on the 'send' button on the refund email.
But i understand if they wanna keep it hush-hush until a day post release, just like the Shogun 2 preformance / anti-aliasing issue. Less loss of sales

Clearly you haven't been paying attention. They delayed the release to order more test systems to diagnose and fix the perf issues.

They delayed the release to order more test systems to diagnose and fix the perf issues.

Click to expand...

Among other things.

I don't have KAII yet, but if the engine operates anything like KAI, a big performance hit may be had if using ATI gfx cards. I'm not sure if the same will apply to nVidia cards. But, let me explain anyway.

When you launch the game with ATI cards, high performance mode is not activated and instead, the graphics card's powerplay stays in 2D mode, with all it's idle clocks and voltages. If you want to check what KAII is doing, load up GPUz, or other monitoring tool and see what your sensor readings are for core/memory clocks and voltages, when the game is running.

1. Fire up GPUz and switch to the sensor tab, then fire up the game.
2. Alt-Tab out of the game to check your clocks and voltage.

If I were to guess, I would say KAI is running in a borderless windowed mode. That game always ran at the desktop resolusion, with the selected resolution being stretched to fit the window. The overlay UI is always at desktop resolution. They have definately implemented some funky non-standard game coding practices.

Thus, it is also impossible to activate or even force any crossfire modes, even through RadeonPRO.

If you want to turn off powerplay and ramp up your card to full speed for this game*, follow this guide to set idle clocks and voltages to FULL POWAHH!

!!IMPORTANT!! - Notes for linked guide:
- Make TWO new profiles, High Performance and Power Saver (stock). When copying from the Profiles.xml, paste the contents into BOTH new profiles. You will only need to edit your High Performance profile.
- The guide doesn't mention memory or voltage, adjust those too. (MemoryClockTarget, CoreVoltageTarget)
- If you have crossfire, make sure your edit all entries. (MemoryClockTarget_0, MemoryClockTarget_1, ect.)
- You can use this for other games to stabalise performance as well, as powerplay just kicks in when not wanted, every now and then.
- In Windows Control Panel Power Options, select high performance to turn pci express link state power management off.

*This is assuming KAII behaves the same way as KAI, regardless of the "new engine."

Neocore_Kate said:

About the "24+ FPS is too low" and it is "bad performance" issue:
It is not bad performance and not too low.

Click to expand...

It is bad performance and it is too low. I get 50-70 fps on Shogun 2; on King Arthur 1 I get 15-30fps. This makes the controls unresponsive and gives the game a choppy feel, and is one reason I stopped playing.

I had hoped Arthur 2 would be radically improved in this regard, but the fact that you, as a developer, insist that 24fps is fine, suggests that your team either doesn't intend to put in the effort to optimize your engine, or simply doesn't have the programming ability to optimize it.

PoundedLemon said:

I don't have KAII yet, but if the engine operates anything like KAI, a big performance hit may be had if using ATI gfx cards. I'm not sure if the same will apply to nVidia cards. But, let me explain anyway.

Click to expand...

I don't agree i have had two ati cards, that being the 4970 and a 6950 and KA1 never ever had any lag. Ka2 has no lag for me on the 6950 with fps never getting under 30 at all times. Max of about 55

However i do agree that the game could be further optimized.

beachedwalrus said:

I don't agree i have had two ati cards, that being the 4970 and a 6950 and KA1 never ever had any lag.

Click to expand...

While your opinion of what I said about KAI is incorrect, you are indeed entiteled to it.

Perhaps seeing is believing... Demonstration.

I am now convinced that KAI is not running in fullscreen mode. However, I am still curious if KAII actually is. Fullscreen=I can force crossfire.

I would very much like it for Neocore to succeed, as they have some really great ideas. Letting people use the full power of their hardware can't hurt.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 1/12/2012, 22:04:59
Machine name: ESPY-PC
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.110622-1506)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: GA-870A-UD3
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor (6 CPUs), ~3.8GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 4094MB RAM
Page File: 2515MB used, 5669MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode

All that and a 6870.... 15 fps on medium settings.... Oh I can get 40 fps with everything set to low. The problem with that is of course it looks like crap.
Fun game, if only I could play it. Upon further inspection It appears that I only ever get 40 fps when zoomed out in the heat of battle I am in the low twenties and teens. This is very low settings dx 11

Have you tried it with Dx9? Also, turn off Vsync (both in the game and in the Nvidia Control Panel or Catalyst Control Center) and Ambient Occlusion. You can also increase FPS by scaling down the Shadow detail in the graphical settings. You may also try right-clicking the (Coretech) launcher files in the game install folder and selecting "Run as administrator" - it increased performace for a couple of people.

By the way, you did not mention above what kind of video card you have in your rig.

I have tried to run as admin, did not work. I also have never used vsync for the game as I read it led to problems. My gpu is actually listed above 6870 I get 45plus fps on almost every game I say almost because I mostly get above 60. This of course being ultra settings not very low. I have also tried running the different executes. No luck.