Performance Improvements

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Darkkrows wrote:

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Chris wrote:

Draw Calls
Every object that has to be rendered in a scene is a Draw Call. Processing all of these consumes the CPU (in addition to whatever rendering later happens on the GPU). On Windows XP, this is especially slow. Reducing the number of Draw Calls helps improve performance in situations where the CPU is the bottleneck rather than the GPU.

We recently found a problem that affects certain types of lights in Path of Exile. It would dramatically increase the number of Draw Calls in the scene when those lights were present. We have already deployed a fix to this (which helped reduce Draw Calls) and have a Labyrinth-specific fix being tested for an upcoming patch.

64-bit DirectX 11 Client
In the future we plan to release an alternate Path of Exile client that is compiled as a 64-bit executable and will use DirectX 11 rather than DirectX9. This client will require Windows Vista or above (and a 64-bit CPU). The old client will still work for Windows XP or 32 bit machines, but won't have the performance improvements that come with DirectX 11. This release is planned for 2017.

You are going to hit the wall again with DX11. the Drawcalls difference between DX12 vs DX11 is day and night. DX11 vs DX9? Drawcalls is still a problem.

Why not just make a giant leap and jump to DX12? At leats that jump can run for several more years b4 switching again. By 2017 a lot of computer will be DX12 capable, those who arent can still use DX9.

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sklipnoty wrote:

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Just because DX12 will be release doesn't mean that it will make a huge difference for path of exile. As mentioned, it may not be stable for some time resulting in even more trouble.

And you forgot another problem too: DX12 will work only on windows 10. GGG can't expect everyone to upgrade to Win10 so that they can play their game.

When it comes to switching POE's engine, I don't think this will happen anytime soon. This is a enormous and very expensive task and the time and money they spent to optimize the current engine will go to waste.

Perhaps the problem is that GGG's tries to support to many Potato's. I mean you need to put the bar somewhere. I prefer stability over wide-support.

Honestly It sounds to me like the only real fix for this game. What mess around for another 2 years to optimize the current engine? I'm they are rewriting whole portions of it, so why not do it good from the start?

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VarthDaver wrote:

Any chance you can let the client actually load the whole amount into RAM? Those of us with 16/32/64GB ram would likely trade initial load for removing lag.

Otherwise, glad to have the update!

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phmn wrote:

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sklipnoty wrote:

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Just because DX12 will be release doesn't mean that it will make a huge difference for path of exile. As mentioned, it may not be stable for some time resulting in even more trouble.

And you forgot another problem too: DX12 will work only on windows 10. GGG can't expect everyone to upgrade to Win10 so that they can play their game.

When it comes to switching POE's engine, I don't think this will happen anytime soon. This is a enormous and very expensive task and the time and money they spent to optimize the current engine will go to waste.

Perhaps the problem is that GGG's tries to support to many Potato's. I mean you need to put the bar somewhere. I prefer stability over wide-support.

Honestly It sounds to me like the only real fix for this game. What mess around for another 2 years to optimize the current engine? I'm they are rewriting whole portions of it, so why not do it good from the start?

First of all having an operating system older that Windows 10 does't make it a potato pc. My computer is prety decent but I use Windows 7. Does that mean that I have to upgrade to an operating system I don't want to just so that I can keep playing path of exile?

You prefer stability over wide-support? So what you are saying is that because you have an new system GGG should optimize the game caring only for your system, ignoring a huge portion of the playerbase they already have?

It's one thing making a new gaming that requires a new system and a completely different thing to givup on the majority of your playerbase just because they don't have the latest system/OS. Tell me, how many online games have you seen changing their engine or requirements after year of being active and saying that now only players who can upgrade can play?

In addition it is a good practice for companies to support as many systems as possible. Only huge companies with highly marketed blockbusters can afford to make games saying that they can only be supported by the latest system and even they still try to make their game playable to as many systems as possible.

You mentioned the word stability. What makes you think that working on a new framework (DirectX 12) will be more stable that working on an existing one that is being worked for quite some time? DirectX 12 may have new features, but in principle it won't be very stable in the begining because it is a new system.

Finally, I don't know the exact plan GGG has for their game engine, however generally changing the engine of a game is not a trivial task and it is certainly preferable to optimise the current engine, if this is feasible. Also changing some portions of the engine is still not the same as changing the engine entirely.

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"Normally we'd make these improvements without drawing attention to exactly how the game internals work or what was wrong."