FPS Drops and Slowdowns in Wind and Snow Drift

[StandardFare]

Hi!

Allthough the game otherwise runs smoothly on my system, I usually get FPS drops or slowdowns when there is wind with snowdrift in forests. It happens rather in windy situations in better weather, not so much in full-on blizzards. It is especially noticable when walking through forests.

My graphics card is Nvidia 1050Ti (ca. 2017) and CPU is i7 3770 (ca. 2012), RAM 16 GB.

My graphics settings are custom "overall high" but not ultra.

What advice can you give me to smooth this issue out?

What is the explanation for slowdowns in the situation described above? Is it because Wind Physics needs intensive CPU calculations and my CPU is rather old?

I'm novice with Hardware and Graphic Options terminology, so any help would be appreciated. Also, I can provide more details about my options if needed.

Thanks!

Kind regards,

Nicolas

[Old Hermit]

My problems with FPS were greatly resolved when i disabled SSAO.

I was even able to maximize other graphic options after that.

I use GTX 750, CPU Xeon X99 2620, 16gb ram. Not a big rig, but yet i got my problems solved.

[Stinky socks]

Two cores are more than enough to drive the game. Most issues are gpu related.(either that or some optimizations..)

[xAnAngelOfDeathx]

For what it's worth:
I7 2600, GTX 1660 ti OC 6 gig, 16 gigs ram - game settings ultra and I get a steady 100 fps no fps drops or slow downs.

[starlin]

Are you using above 1080 resolution? Particles are brutal on low to mid end GPUs, and snow storms have a lot of them. Whats your FPS like from a Vista on a clear day, where the draw distance can stretch out?

[xAnAngelOfDeathx]

oops should have added, 1080p 120hz.

[StandardFare]

On 3/7/2021 at 6:10 PM, Old Hermit said:

My problems with FPS were greatly resolved when i disabled SSAO.

Thank you for this tip! This indeed has improved my issues a lot!

[Stinky socks]

Noo!😢 don't disable it, just try lower values! Medium for me gives same result as disabled. Why remove effect altogether when you can have it partially enabled with no performance penalty!

Test to see maybe you can have some occlusion enabled.

[StandardFare]

Can you give a descriptive example of what that effect does in TLD?

[stratvox]

It does a shadow effect around the edges of objects, so if you look at say a tree limned against the sky, look carefully around the tree and you'll see that there is a sort of penumbra around it. Helps make the landscape pop. It's also pretty expensive computationally speaking, so it really depends on whether your card's up to hammering it. If you're having trouble with frames dropping large, try turning it down instead of just off to see if your card's up to it.

[Stinky socks]

Yes, another good example would be a barrel on the floor. With ambient occlusion, you'll have this gradual shadow covering the side of the object where the light can't reach.

[StandardFare]

OK, I will do some more experimantation with SSAO set to low instead of off.

With Off, i no longer suffer from the FPS drops in "windy snow drift" as described in my initial post.

I don't understand why shadows around edges would cause slow downs in these specific "windy snow drift" situations.

A specific location in the game which had very bad slowdowns for years, was inside the little office building at the milton picknick area near the rope cliff. With SSAO off, I can now move around in that office completely smoothely with 60 fps (maximum of my Monitor).

Also my GTX 1050ti is far better that then official Hardware Requirements of the game recommends, which to me as novice implies, I should be able to smoothly run with every setting at Ultra. My CPU also meets the recommended requirement, though it is an old CPU.

Edited March 22, 2021 by StandardFare

[StandardFare]

Great! So it seems that the bottleneck on my system is hit somewhere between SSAO High and SSAO Medium. With Medium I no longer have the frame rate drops and can smoothly sail at constant 60 FPS.

My hopefully final settings are now as follows:

Starting point "Preset Ultra" -> Change SSAO from High to Medium, no other setting modified (becomes "Preset Custom").

Happy. Thank you all for the hints, especially Old Hermit!

Edited March 22, 2021 by StandardFare