[B3.1][Stadium] Graphics performance/quality

[Pedal]

Thanks tpower,

By setting the fps-limiter to zero fps are up to more than 50 avg. using the same settings as in my first post. i will also play around a little With the other settings you mention.

With the increase in fps, the game looks a little better but it becomes more apparent there is no working AA

[nocturne]

You have to remember.. new game or not, the rendering tech is quite outdated. DirectX9 with bloom.. not exactly cutting edge..

Newer systems (or more accurately, newer gfx cards) are designed more or less to take advantage of new tech, ie. unlocking the parallel computing capability of the gfx card to offload physics/env processing -- methods used much more extensively in modern titles like CoD:BO2. Easy example.. my old ATi 4870 had way more raw processing power than my current 7850; but when utilized correctly with DX10/DX11, the new card gets far better performance.

Any modern system -- start out at maximum gfx, and work your way down from there. Stay away from the compatibility settings (unless you are one of the few of us who know what they mean), and concentrate on the game settings first (# opponents, bg quality) and then start on shadows, geometry, effects, etc.

Edit: Should also obviously disable SLI or CFX for this game.. Only works right with extensive work by ATi/NVidia tweaking their drivers along with extensive work by the game dev -- I'm sure neither of which apply here.

[Pedal]

You have to remember.. new game or not, the rendering tech is quite outdated. DirectX9 with bloom.. not exactly cutting edge..

Agreed, and this is also something i for myself exepcted also updated on the game.

Edit: Should also obviously disable SLI or CFX for this game.. Only works right with extensive work by ATi/NVidia tweaking their drivers along with extensive work by the game dev -- I'm sure neither of which apply here.

I have not disabled SLI on this game. I know that they had problems with SLI-support in the past with ManiaPlanet and Canyon. I have tried both the SLI-profiles from Nvidia and Evga and there are no performance-difference between the two. Both cards show 90% + utilization running the game, but ofcourse this is no "indication" of how well the SLI-drivers work.

Thanks for the post.

[nocturne]

Try this:

Set FPS limiter to 0 instead of 150.

There is no 'fps limiter'.. only a refresh rate override. Not exactly the same, unless you take buffering and vsync in to account. Setting it to zero -- the default method of letting the game handle itself..

Set background quality to medium.
Particle quality of cars to High-medium opponents.

BG quality helps. Only point in first person particles is for making replays, so might as well set to low (biggest fps gain -- press 'O' to disable other racers)

Light from maps to none (also, you can test difference with My car only).

These are compute settings for solo.. Lightmaps up to 'default' quality are automatically saved in the track file itself, and you can choose to generate/use higher quality lightmaps that are saved in the cache using these settings. Virtually no effect on performance on any modern system, as DX9 is already in the realm of quizzical. Only performance wasted is load times..

Set geometry details to fast.

I want to think it helps, but..

Set bloom to medium (it looks better, i saw it is none in your settings).

It may look 'more acceptable' to the eye, but on your box you are better off maxing it out

EDIT: You can also try to disable "D3D9Ex", i had to disable it because custom resolutions/refresh rates.

That's why it's called a compatibility setting.. don't touch it unless you are having problems with ALT+TABing between different resolutions/refreshrates (something I've not had a problem with on win8).

The moral.. if you don't know what it does, don't touch it!

With your system, should be able to start out with default settings, max them out, and run without any problems. If that's not the case, must be something on your system causing a problem (key-pollers, im programs, DLNA servers).

[tpower]

Thanks tpower,

By setting the fps-limiter to zero fps are up to more than 50 avg. using the same settings as in my first post. i will also play around a little With the other settings you mention.

With the increase in fps, the game looks a little better but it becomes more apparent there is no working AA

You're welcome . You can freely change any compatibility settings, you can't damage anything by it, worst think that can happen is to make game unplayable. If youa re not sure what you doing, backub your Maniaplanet folder from documents (C:\Users\--yournamehere--\Documents) and start messing with those settings, if something goes wrong you can delete and get back your backup folder, also you can always reset settings to default from Maniaplanet launcher (but backup just in case...).

Yeah AA is another thing, for FPS limiter thingy, bug is reported, hopefully, NADEO will fix it, or just set 0 as default and problem is solved at least.

[tpower]

There is no 'fps limiter'.. only a refresh rate override. Not exactly the same, unless you take buffering and vsync in to account. Setting it to zero -- the default method of letting the game handle itself..

FPS Limiter is in no way connected with refresh rate. Only by looking at default 150 value that can be clear (so far, none of the LCD displays can refresh themselfs at that rate, simply because crystals can't change that fast = physical limitation). But you made me curious to see if it's actually somehow connected, and i tested with refresh rates up to 160Hz, down to 60Hz.

These are compute settings for solo.. Lightmaps up to 'default' quality are automatically saved in the track file itself, and you can choose to generate/use higher quality lightmaps that are saved in the cache using these settings. Virtually no effect on performance on any modern system, as DX9 is already in the realm of quizzical. Only performance wasted is load times..

I'm not sure if that setting is in any way connected with game mode (a bit absurd...). But anyway, I've done testing, and it really makes no difference in performance (unlike on TMF), also it is connected with wehicle reflection as far as i know from TMF. Didn't tested in more scenarios to be 100% ertain, but as far as it goes, you are right, it make no difference on current settings i use. Load times are fast anyway... 1-3 secs at max.

I want to think it helps, but..

Depending where is bottleneck on one system, it can make difference. Allot of factors make tole here, for example, target FPS, if with "modern system" at high settings, targert FPS is over 200, then it will make difference. It really depends from more factors. I don't play TM below 120FPS (as minimum), avg 200 or more, with high settings.

That's why it's called a compatibility setting.. don't touch it unless you are having problems with ALT+TABing between different resolutions/refreshrates (something I've not had a problem with on win8).

The moral.. if you don't know what it does, don't touch it!

With your system, should be able to start out with default settings, max them out, and run without any problems. If that's not the case, must be something on your system causing a problem (key-pollers, im programs, DLNA servers).

Why he should not touch compatibility settings??? I don't understand that logic. There is no way he can do damage to hes system with those settings. IF you like to experiment and learn, play with all settings developers gave to you (it is very rare at this time), worst that can happen is that you will learn nothing from it .

When is more then obvious that no one can actually find out what is wrong on one system without investing more time to it, and actually sit on that system and check it in person, best way to determinate what is the problem is fot him to play with the settings (learn about it) and find out on it's own with help from community.

[Pedal]

I have searched some more on this matter, and the problems for me running this game was indeed my SLI-setup and poor profile/configuration from Nvidia.

Using the method here, my fps are now more than 120 avg. with all settings maxxed out. So i am now able to enable vsync.

Changing "SLI-Compatibility bits" to "0x00500045" really made a difference and i am a Little amazed that Nadeo/Nvidia has not done anything about this as this has been an issue since the launch of Canyon and obviously still excists. Now with Shootmania, Stadium 2 and introduction on Steam this will be more important to get sorted. This "workaround-solution is not for "everyone" to just to go ahead and change.

I also made a post on this in Nvidia forums and to their survey/driver feedback program, so hopefully we will get an updated SLI-profile soon.

[LuckyBoy]

Hello,
We've worked with NVidia to find out and correct some AFR (alternate frame rendering) issues we had in previous version of our renderer.
Latest ManiaPlanet version is already compatible with AFR2 profile: you should not experience visual or performance glitchs when using this profile (you can force your driver to use this profile instead the NVidia one).

Please note that the current NVidia's official profile do reduce peformance in SLI (compared to single GPU).
This is an issue NVidia is solving now (according to my concat this profile fix won't be in the next driver update, but should be in the following one).

Thanks
LuckyBoy