Switch to DX11/DX12

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by FormelLMS, Jun 12, 2019.

  1. FormelLMS

    FormelLMS Well-Known Member

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    Dear S3 Developers, please switch to a newer DX Version.
    SCS Software does this now with ETS and ATS and it's quite impressive.

    IN VR it was quite laggy, like R3E now. With the 1.35 Update wit DX11 enabled its like maxing out the graphics sliders. It looks now very impressive in the HMD and is a fluid to drive now.

    Hoping, that S3 could do this very soon, too now.
     
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  2. Christian G

    Christian G Topological Agitator Beta tester

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    Dear Sector3 Devs, please consider Vulkan instead. ;)
     
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  3. pixeljetstream

    pixeljetstream Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    If you ever dared to look at the components that the engine uses, the chance for any level of "soon" even in s3soon units, are unfortunately very low. If they had the resources to do it, they would have done it by now, it's not like they are volunteering to stay on technology that is older than a decade (actually dx11 is getting 10 years in a few months as well) and there are no tools for anymore. So whatever prevents modernization looks unfortunately fundamental.

    +1 for vulkan, now that Google invested a bit in the HLSL to spir-v toolchain and uses it themselves for stadia
     
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    Last edited: Jun 12, 2019
  4. fufsgfen

    fufsgfen Active Member

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    Anything else than Vulkan at these days would be choice that has not longevity of Vulkan.

    Also potential to work with other than MS products could be a plus for future.

    Vulkan would do away with all the drawcalls issues that keep plaguing even many DX11 games, so moving to DX11 I think would be short lived trip, imo. DX12 would mean only Win10 and that would be quite few customers no longer able to play, Linux, SteamOS etc. are used in many computers, so even if there are no actual support to those operating systems, having DX12 would completely block game from running, while Vulkan would not block.

    As Vulkan is becoming easier to achieve, it is definitely most interesting choice for at least me and others who have no idea how difficult it is to make game work on Vulkan, even when it is 'easier', but DX12 would not be walk in the park either, so choose lesser evil, please! :D
     
  5. M-Bimmer

    M-Bimmer Well-Known Member

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    At least there’s VR eh ;) A newly released game with UE4 got no triples and official VR support just ceased...
     
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  6. Goffik

    Goffik Well-Known Member

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    Speak for yourself. For me, ATS v1.35 runs like crap in VR whereas R3E runs very smoothly indeed and looks much, much better while doing it.
     
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  7. FormelLMS

    FormelLMS Well-Known Member

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    So it was before the 1.35 here
    Are you sure, that you ran with DX 11?

    I've maxed out nearly everything in the graphics now.
    Before DX 11 it was a mess on my Oculus.
     
  8. fbiehne

    fbiehne Well-Known Member

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    Make sure you switch to DX11 experimental in Steam > start options.
    The VR performance is better now, but there is still room for improvements.
     
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  9. fufsgfen

    fufsgfen Active Member

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    DX11 in ETS2 does help tiny bit in non VR, but I don't think that alone will do much, maybe some batching techniques might work better in DX11 but they would need to adopt those, but when they first get it to work without too much crashes and sort out issues, maybe they can start looking into ways to improve performance.

    For me that has been running without issues at maxed out graphics, unless in rain at big cities, Raceroom has not really shown much of slowdown, except when I did full grid at Zolder with GTR3 there was bit of slowdowns, for me it appeared to be because of CPU render as slowdown was same with replay too and I'm not sure if physics do much on replay, especially when replay is paused.

    But with any current sim really fast Intel CPU seems to be needed, well maybe with exception of rF2 and no idea about ACC, however running full graphics and high end Nvidia GPU just seems to be bit much in terms of CPU load.

    It tells how there are challenges in optimization for games, not sure how those shooter games manage to do CPU rendering so well, maybe they put enough polygons to choke GPU before CPU, valid tactic of optimization of course, anything goes as you avoid hitting limits of CPU render thread :D
     
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  10. Case

    Case Well-Known Member

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    The performance of any sim on market today only seems to be determined by 1-2 threads at best, and is very CPU limited even on quite modern CPUs, so a CPU with a good single-thread performance is always preferred if you're aiming for high FPS, much more so than a better GPU. Which basically means going Intel, yes.

    RF2, in particular, seems to be basically single-threaded (it uses more threads than one, yes, but not in a significant way). So it's basically worse off than Raceroom in this regard (which at least seems to be using two threads).

    ACC, despite seemingly using a much more modern technology and around 6 threads overall, is still very much dependent on 2 main threads with the rest being almost meaningless for the game's performance, and is *heavily* CPU limited.

    So as a simracer, I had a good laugh at AMD boasting a lot about introducing "the world's first gaming 16-core CPU". Yeah, a fat load of good will that be for us ;)
     
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  11. MattYKee

    MattYKee Active Member

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    There are plenty of games that do a fantastic job at utilising more than 4 cores. I dont think any are racing sims though. If you follow Digital Foundry frequently give great info on games that have been designed and optimised fantastically well and those that are just lazily using up just 1 or 2 cores.
     
  12. MattStone

    MattStone Well-Known Member

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    I wonder why they can't spread the load across more of the cores?
     
  13. Case

    Case Well-Known Member

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    Any examples? I honestly can't think of any game that would utilize more than 4 threads effectively. Maybe the Assassin's Creed games, but in their case, I would certainly hesitate to say they're doing a fantastic job at it. And gaming media often mistakenly only look at individual core usage to determine whether or not a game is optimized well for multicore processors, which is absolutely useless and doesn't really tell you anything about how well the game is multithreaded.

    (And I also wouldn't call games that only use 1 or 2 threads "lazy". It's really not as simple as that when it comes to multithreading.)
     
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  14. Ablaze

    Ablaze Well-Known Member

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    Cities Skylines! :D At a higher population rate the engine utilizes at least 6 cores to 100%.
     
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  15. ElNino

    ElNino Well-Known Member

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    Same experience here, except ETS/ATS has in fact improved with the recent swap, but still not as smooth and clear as R3E. For whatever reason, R3E in VR looks great to me. Its just smooth and clean. ACC can't come close even.
     
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  16. fufsgfen

    fufsgfen Active Member

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    rF2 used to be very much like single core wonder, but some time ago it did change and CPU usage dropped a lot, but I think there is point where it becomes single core limited again as cars and complexity to track is added.

    Just Cause 3 is using at least 8 threads, around 50% load on 8 threads of 6th gen intel when at 60fps, but then going to higher frame rates is increasing load of one core instead of all threads.

    Cities skylines is dropping below 60fps even when tiny city if one zooms close enough, drawcalls go to over 5000 and their engine seem to be chocking to that amount as while single thread usage is high, it is not efficiently maxing out, neither is GPU, that is common to cases of unoptimized graphic engines, CPU load spikes 100% so fast that pretty much nothing except custom tools are showing that, result is the same though, GPU is waiting CPU.

    Some Rainbox six black something was using all 12 threads of 5Ghz 8th gen intel CPU to present text can't get serverlist or something, thought it would have single player mode and got it free, have no idea of actual game as I don't have plans to play any online game and firewall is set to block all in and out unless exception is made, so I guess that is using more cores, but I find it bit ridiculous how much CPU it uses even before getting to menus.

    I do doubt there being anything that actually needs 6 cores / 12 threads, with 8 threads pretty much everything run same as with 6 and difference between 4 threads and 8 threads when using 4 cores seem to be quite minimal too, even in games that actually use 8 threads or more.

    BeamNG.Drive is pretty much only game that can put maximum load on all cores, that is can, but at max graphics on many maps it will not because graphics, again. But on empty map with using single type of vehicle that can use all the cores to max as long as GPU can keep up, but again that is exception.

    Threading is not easy though, there is always timing issues to worry and bugs can be hard to catch, some work can't be threaded too well either, but I think with racing games it often is the case of available resources.

    Where shooter games are often designed to run at 200fps or something like that, racing simulators put less effort to achieve that on max graphics as most will run those at 60fps and even that can be pushing with maxed out graphics. Developing physics, FFB etc. takes time so graphics and optimization are often parts which are getting bit less time than with some shooter games which ride mostly with their graphics.

    AMD's 16 core CPU is as good as 6th-8th gen intel at same frequency to my understanding so as long as it can actually keep frequenzy up as good or better than Intel, it could be good option too, however no point paying from extra cores that won't do a thing.

    Difference between 6700K and 8700K is not much at all in racing sims indeed, 8700K drops clock bit easier, where tiny load on some threads of 6700K are not causing speed to drop so easily, IPC is very close to same, so not much of an upgrade there either unless you decide to do 5Ghz overclock to all cores, which 8700K might do better.

    I don't see huge jumps of IPC in future, so only route for racing sims to keep evolving is to spend some resources on getting more CPU cores working as GPUs will be getting faster, resolutions and refresh rates are going to get up and future VR might be giving much harder time on CPUs as other games are moving towards threaded code, Vulkan/DX12 making roads available, it is likely many games are moving to those so eventually it is likely that even racing sims might get benefit from more cores.

    That is where AMD 16 core is interesting option, as software moves to use more threading, it would be like hardware upgrade every time software becomes more threaded, if thing runs reliably at 5Ghz on all cores, it could be quite interesting from that reason, but lot of if's, also if next intel CPU gives 5% or even up to 10% improvement to IPC and still manages to run at 5Ghz or more, there is that too, but again if.

    Also sample CPUs of AMD have been crashing a lot at quite low frequency, so I'm not sure how rock solid 5Ghz on all cores there will be, it might be that AMD is already pushing chip to max with advertised clock speeds.

    But after first hype calms down we start to see some real information, like with Ryzen 2, 6 months after release it was no longer beating intel in everything, 2700X was reaching intel's performance in racing sims when it was overclocked, but no beating did happen, no matter how much some people did claim that before and during the launch.
    Other models for gaming use were behind intel as single threaded performance of lower end AMD models was considerable less, where as with intel you got close to same single threaded performance with less cores than with lot of cores, that practice is something to keep on mind if considering AMD, only top end models give top single threaded performance.

    Interesting times though, I think we are quite near of times where future is threaded and past is single thread, but takes some years still for sure.
     
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  17. pixeljetstream

    pixeljetstream Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    The next console generation will accelerate the multi-threaded uptake as well. As you write there is really no alternative to improve performance in future than going wide.
    If developers invest now into redesigns that are supposed to last them years, it's important to keep in mind. All of the current apis now are designed for that (dx12, VK, metal and Nintendos)

    As for comparing tech of shooter vs racesims, it's mostly a budget thing imo. Maybe fairer to take Forza or other major titles from top developers that have the resources. It's not comparable to what dedicated r&d teams the major studios have (I work for that green gpu company on developer tech)
     
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    Last edited: Jun 22, 2019
  18. David_Wright

    David_Wright Member

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  19. Case

    Case Well-Known Member

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    I've tested Cities Skylines and Just Cause 3. While I can't say I would say Cities is well multithreaded (it used like 2 and a half threads mostly, but maybe I didn't stress it enough), Just Cause 3 is actually a nice surprise. It would probably still be fine with a quad or six core CPU for the most part, but it actually uses around 7-8 threads worth mentioning (though two of them are still noticeably more utilized), and runs very nice.

    LOL, no. I've seen that ACC "performance analysis" before and it's a complete joke IMO. I don't understand the guy's logic at all. He keeps mentioning how ACC is apparently "held back by its API" without offering any reasonable proof for that claim, and he also suggests the game "appears to be scaling on multiple threads" while his own results show there's little additional gain beyond 4c/4t and the minimum framerate is almost the same even at 2c/2t. And I honestly have no idea why he includes the Task Manager CPU usage screenshots as if they are somehow relevant.

    And, as already mentioned, ACC basically runs on 2 threads, with 3-4 additional that are somewhat utilized, but overall nothing that a decently performing 4c/4t CPU couldn't handle. Adding more cores or threads would do little for performance improvements, as also evidenced by the data the guy above got (even though he doesn't seem to understand his own results). So certainly not an example of a game that "does a fantastic job of utilizing more than 4 threads".

    (In fact, PCars 2 certainly does a better job at this than ACC. It's the best multithreaded sim on the market today.)
     
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  20. fufsgfen

    fufsgfen Active Member

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    This is Intel marketing buff mostly, but does provide some insight of game development and optimization cycle using Intel's free GPA tool, which I think is quite interesting read for anyone interested of why Just Cause 3 does good job:
    https://software.intel.com/en-us/ar...t-cause-3-on-systems-with-intel-iris-graphics

    To really understand why performance is how it is with any game, such tools can provide quite good insight, Nvidia has their own tools of similar kind and I would guess that AMD might have something, checking developer tools sections of Intel, AMD and Nvidia can open worlds.

    Learning tools takes time though and doing proper analysis takes time, but I think it would benefit a lot if people doing game reviews would learn more about possible methods to evaluate how well game actually is done.
    Enthusiasts like often make claims, fans can be really vocal, but I find what is often missing is good data.

    I have played with a thought of making some really in depth comparisons of different games and how they use hardware, but I really do lack energy, motivation and interest, I'm using mostly my Win 98 box with Office 95 these days as this modern ways just is not my thing apparently, but at least you guys know now bit of ways how to find out about reasons games don't always run in way one would except.
     
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