First impressions ... lag issues!

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venquessa
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First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by venquessa »

So I installed the game on Saturday morning and my weekend disappeared completely.

I've managed to get the basic idea of how to play it, completed all the tutorials and had a play with some of the missions.

My main problem is the lag in the UI. Watching YouTube videos of others playing the game look much smoother, so it doesn't seem to be totally inherent in the game itself but something with my install.

Basically the "Pulse time" for me is in and around 3-20ms with outlyers as high as 900ms. However the UI and map all have about an 800ms lag. Sometimes the actual "windows based" menus and dialogs have very little lag, other times they have some lag, but invariably the map has lag.

Examples:
Press right cursor to scroll map.... wait for 1 second... map moves.
Mouse wheel forward to zoom in... wait for 1 second... map zooms.
Click a unit... wait for 1 second... unit selects.

This isn't perfectly constant, but gets slowly worse over the duration of the game running.

I was playing the Iron Hand scenario and after my initial attacks I wanted to wait 5 hours on my SEAD Fullbacks rearming and so tried to go up to "30min" time scale. There were about 5 active/moving units on the whole map, pulse time around 6ms. The map stopped updating, looked like it had frozen, stuck for 5 or 6 seconds, then jumped many minutes in one lump, my flight appeared over the target and by the time I could hit "STOP" they were already RTB.

Even watching a few units move around is lumpy with the map refreshing about twice a second, but frequently pausing up to 2 seconds at a time.

I have 16Gb of RAM and there is virtual no disc access going on.
I have a GTX980 with 4Gb video RAM.
I have an 8 core AMD Piledriver.

If I affinity it down to a single core the game runs smoother and less lurchy, but slightly slower than when it's running well on two cores. More than two cores makes no difference.

Smell to high heavens of poor thread modelling and bad concurrency locking.

My map updating problems seem to me like I have no hardware acceleration.

DO NOT try and tell me that it's difficult to render 10 range circles, a few dotted lines and a few sprites on a photo map background! My phone does a better job with a complex google map than this does on a machine 10 times as powerful. Note, the actual "simulation" update rate seems fine, my issue is with the graphics lag.

The only time I have seen iconic graphics slow my machine was when I jumped into a 300 person fight in Eve Online with full brackets turned on, but it was still pulling 5 frames per second, CMANO barely machines 1 frame per second and is often down as low as 1 frame every 3 seconds.

To make it playable I have switched the two performance settings (no pulse and no high fidelity) options off which didn't really help. "Show unit status icon" made a big improvement. It CANNOT be played with "Show targetting vectors" or "Show plotted course" set to all. The frame rate drops to about 1 frame every 5-10 seconds.

Hopefully I have a setup issue and then game isn't expected to run this slow.

Cheers,
Paul
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Dysta
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by Dysta »

What's your display's resolution?
venquessa
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by venquessa »

Two monitors 1920x1080 + 1920x1200 twin monitors.

Windows 7 64bit. It's a GTX970.

Game installed through Steam. I have zero other performance issues.
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darkhelix
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by darkhelix »

I have this too.
My PC can run anything, so it's not a hardware issue.
I run at 2560x1440 on a Gsync display (Gsync switched off) for the game and a second monitor at 1900x1200 for database viewer etc.
It doesn't make a difference if I change the resolution.
I thought it was all the CPU calculations going on in the background.
Sure would be great to have a 100% smooth game.
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Sardaukar
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by Sardaukar »

Just a question, but what is your game version? Usually it is best to use latest, which is now 1.11 RC 8.
"To meaningless French Idealism, Liberty, Fraternity and Equality...we answer with German Realism, Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery" -Prince von Bülov, 1870-

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Dysta
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by Dysta »

The resolution does matter to my system though, it felt slightly laggier on larger display, but not by much. If he got 4K or something that will definitely made it worse.

If not, let's try to update to 1.11 beta first.
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darkhelix
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by darkhelix »

I'm running RC8 Build 809, is there a newer patch?
venquessa
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by venquessa »

My game version is v1.10 Build 775. With it being Steam installed I'm not sure I can safely patch it.
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Dysta
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by Dysta »

ORIGINAL: venquessa

My game version is v1.10 Build 775. With it being Steam installed I'm not sure I can safely patch it.
It is safe to patch it, and Steam will not change it back; unless you had manually made Steam to check the content of the game, it will revert back to the original version.
Rory Noonan
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by Rory Noonan »

I can confirm it is quite safe to use the betas with steam as others have suggested above. The latest beta has huge performance increases, so that alone may help a lot.

Are you using DPI scaling greater than 100%? I had some similar lag issues on one of my machines before I changed the DPI scaling. Trade-off is I have to hold the screen up close to read things every now and then (it's an ultra book so no biggy)

I do recall some people having similar issues that ended up being certain programs running in the background. Have you tried shutting down everything else?

In any event, welcome to the community. I'm sure you'll find the dev team and forum members are a very helpful bunch, and hopefully we can get you up and running properly.

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ComDev
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by ComDev »

The lag issues should be considerably improved in v1.11 :)

Also, you can go to Game Options -> Game Speed to turn off CPU-intensive features that you don't use etc.
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venquessa
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by venquessa »

Okay I got build 809 installed, looks better so far. Fingers crossed.
venquessa
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by venquessa »

So now my performance issues are 70% addressed. I still get lag, but it's more consistent. What I can't do however is advance time faster than 60x. If I got to 300x the map freezes. If I slow time back down it unfreezes, but a massive amount of stuff happens all at once. It's like time freezes, then jumps 10, 20, 30 minutes and flights that hadn't even taken off yet are being shot down over the enemy positions already.

Anyway. As something of a review, the game isn't quite what I had anticipated. Yes it has massive breadth/scope coming form the huge exhaustive database of combat units and having the whole Earth as a theatre, but I'm not entirely sure about the depth.

I'll try and explain. The AI are barely satisfactory and in some cases completely unsatisfactory. If you only use the AI, such as Mission Editor created missions and trust them to do their job the do not reflect the depth the game is aiming for or even come close. They are fairly predictably poor at their job and don't really follow any kind of tactics and when they do show tactical design in their attacks it's usually wrong.

So that leaves you to micro-manage the battle which becomes a click fest. It is really only possible if you use "Pause" frequently as well as constantly scan and check on units in case they are doing something stupid.

There are quite a few basic concepts missing from the mission editor that are required to correctly form up an air strike for example. The main one is "Coordination features". There should be programmatic "Rendezvous" or "Wait" tasks allowing you to form up complex strikes at reference points and have them push from that reference point once all required units are formed up. There should also be general marshalling commands such as "Wait at waypoint until unit Group_123 pushes from ref point 432"

There are a few things I have still to try to help with this, by using relative reference points on flights with other flights set to patrol those reference points. Works with ships, why not with planes. Still it's micro-management.

The TOT calculator concept for me does not sound like enough. We need a "Package planner" or a "Strike planner" which allows you to coordinate the missions planned in the Mission planner so you can set actions like, "Rendezvous", "Wait until unit passes point", "Wait until unit goes active", "Push at time X", "Return to IP after attack" and so on.

I know this sounds childish, but if you look a little into the psychology of games and why people play them you will find the "Reward concept". I see too many games missing this basic concept and CMANO is one of them. You need to reward players for doing well. Even if that is just a popup when an objective is completed or a milestone has been reached. A lot of the scenarios with the game don't even have scoring so it is left completely up to the player what is a win and what isn't. There is no reward, no "Ye ha I did it!" feeling.

All that said I think it's a great game, very addictive, very engaging. However, I believe I can see what the game is aiming for and it's well short of it thus far. That's fine, it seems it is still in very active development. What it currently does not afford is it's price. If it lived up to it's own expectations then yes, £60 would be fine. However it doesn't yet, so it doesn't afford that kind of price... yet. If I was you I would drop the price significantly, to say £30 and split off a bunch of BIG features into an add-on expansion costing £30 once complete (giving existing £60 players a discount coupon). That ultimately splits the revenue but as it makes the game cheaper it should increase up-take and still provide money to develop the big features.
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Dysta
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by Dysta »

I do run some Standalone Scenarios in editor mode for benchmarking, and let AI run on its own with pre-planned missions.

I still remember a remarkable performance boost when the game is run on RAMDisk since 1.10, but I could feel smoother response and very little improvement at fast time-lapsing. But the game is still have some limit -- the game is not 'very' CPU or RAM intensive (based on i7 and 16+GB of RAM) as the game will not being too beneficial from high-end setup, unless you are running a huge scenario (>1000 units, which can be disasterous before 1.11, it crash very easily by bugs than performance issues).

Moreover, it isn't just the AI or combat rendering slowing down the game, the UI rendering does affect to the game as well, like I said screen resolution. Also, the more unit you are controlling, the more range/link indications showing at the screen, which is also a performance killer. I did mentioned about that and all the best I can do is disable some indications, it does reduce the UI lag, but that's about it.

(This inspired me from the flash video/games I played in the past at older computers -- if it feels laggy, I can reduce the render quality at menu setting. Maybe CMANO can take a note of it, for the ability to reducing line rendering quality, from smooth line to pixelated line?)
venquessa
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by venquessa »

It looks like the simulation is running fine. It's the graphics that are letting it down.

It seems like the shapes are drawn with basic code libraries rather than DirectX or OpenGL. Similar performance can be found using a Java application and JPane with a canvas and basic shape drawing libraries in Swing or AWT... ie... very poor.

Surely this could be refactored to use DirectX or OpenGL drawing libraries?
venquessa
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by venquessa »

Actually maybe I'm being unfair and have misunderstood what the game is telling me.

Based on the Pulse time and the way the game seems to move in time it seems as though the underlying simulation model is updating at a rate of 50-100+ updates per second. The graphics are updating more like 2 frame every second if you are lucky.

This is back to front of what normally happens in simulation games today. Normally the graphics are running at 50-100fps and the simulation engine is updating once a second or so.

EDIT: Regardless of which 'thread' is the slowest the interactive thread of the graphics and UI should NEVER, EVER be blocked waiting on that thread. This is UI programming 101. So if the simulation is running slow or lagging you should be able to scroll the currently rendered graphics at normal 50fps we are all used to today. ie. The map should respond to move, select, drag, drop and zoom immediately even if the simulated icons are updating slower.
dox44
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by dox44 »

"the game is not 'very' CPU or RAM intensive (based on i7 and 16+GB of RAM) as the game will not being too beneficial from high-end setup, unless you are running a huge scenario"

so true. i have CMANO on an six year old lenovo, 4gb RAM, integrated graphics card and game runs smooth--no lag...unless i play one of those huge scenarios.

Rory Noonan
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RE: First impressions ... lag issues!

Post by Rory Noonan »

ORIGINAL: venquessa

So now my performance issues are 70% addressed. I still get lag, but it's more consistent. What I can't do however is advance time faster than 60x. If I got to 300x the map freezes. If I slow time back down it unfreezes, but a massive amount of stuff happens all at once. It's like time freezes, then jumps 10, 20, 30 minutes and flights that hadn't even taken off yet are being shot down over the enemy positions already.

With higher rates of time compression and the 'pulsed' time setting, the map is updated once per second or so, and reflects the end state of what has occured in the last pulse (30s, 60s, more depending on which setting you chose).

If you are choosing to have 1 second of real time reflect 30 minutes of game time, then yes indeed you may have a plane take-off and get shot down in the period represented by a single pulse.
Anyway. As something of a review, the game isn't quite what I had anticipated. Yes it has massive breadth/scope coming form the huge exhaustive database of combat units and having the whole Earth as a theatre, but I'm not entirely sure about the depth.

I'll try and explain. The AI are barely satisfactory and in some cases completely unsatisfactory. If you only use the AI, such as Mission Editor created missions and trust them to do their job the do not reflect the depth the game is aiming for or even come close. They are fairly predictably poor at their job and don't really follow any kind of tactics and when they do show tactical design in their attacks it's usually wrong.

The AI is 2016 game AI, not SkyNet or AlphaGo. Considering the amount of 'intelligent' things it does without any input from the scenario designer or player (AAR, weapons evasion, pathfinding etc), it is actually pretty good IMO. It is the responsibility of the scenario designer to mould the AI into behaving intelligently on an operational and strategic scale. With Lua and the event editor, it is actually possible to make the computer behave unpredictably and react intelligently to events as they unfold.
So that leaves you to micro-manage the battle which becomes a click fest. It is really only possible if you use "Pause" frequently as well as constantly scan and check on units in case they are doing something stupid.

This becomes less and less the case as experience is gained. Doctrine, WRA and mission settings actually allow the player to stay fairly 'hands-off' if they wish.
There are quite a few basic concepts missing from the mission editor that are required to correctly form up an air strike for example. The main one is "Coordination features". There should be programmatic "Rendezvous" or "Wait" tasks allowing you to form up complex strikes at reference points and have them push from that reference point once all required units are formed up. There should also be general marshalling commands such as "Wait at waypoint until unit Group_123 pushes from ref point 432"

There are a few things I have still to try to help with this, by using relative reference points on flights with other flights set to patrol those reference points. Works with ships, why not with planes. Still it's micro-management.

The TOT calculator concept for me does not sound like enough. We need a "Package planner" or a "Strike planner" which allows you to coordinate the missions planned in the Mission planner so you can set actions like, "Rendezvous", "Wait until unit passes point", "Wait until unit goes active", "Push at time X", "Return to IP after attack" and so on.

These things would be nice, but they are by no means critical to the enjoyment of the game.

There are in fact options similar to this in the new AAR configuration settings; i.e. you can specify that a strike will not launch until a specified amount of tankers on a specified mission are either available, airborne, or on station. There is also nothing to stop you marshaling your aircraft at a designated point manually or using a support mission, and then assigning them to the strike missions once all assets are in place.

Personally I enjoy the intellectual challenge of organising some of these things myself. I get a sense of achievement when I time the launch times of my missions and fine-tune the waypoint positions and speed settings to have these things synchronised. Often it's not perfect, but perfect isn't realistic.

Clicking a button would make it easier, but there is no button to click to get your forces to work in perfect synchronicity in the real world. Someone, somewhere along the chain is sitting down with a pen and paper (or more likely spreadsheet these days) for a couple of minutes to work all this out.
I know this sounds childish, but if you look a little into the psychology of games and why people play them you will find the "Reward concept". I see too many games missing this basic concept and CMANO is one of them. You need to reward players for doing well. Even if that is just a popup when an objective is completed or a milestone has been reached. A lot of the scenarios with the game don't even have scoring so it is left completely up to the player what is a win and what isn't. There is no reward, no "Ye ha I did it!" feeling.

This is the responsibility of the scenario designer. I make an effort to do it in my scenarios, but not everyone gets their kicks out of the same things. Personally seeing a well planned and executed strike pan out is the reward for me.

Lack of points/scoring in a scenario don't automatically make the scenario no fun to play.
All that said I think it's a great game, very addictive, very engaging. However, I believe I can see what the game is aiming for and it's well short of it thus far. That's fine, it seems it is still in very active development. What it currently does not afford is it's price. If it lived up to it's own expectations then yes, £60 would be fine. However it doesn't yet, so it doesn't afford that kind of price... yet. If I was you I would drop the price significantly, to say £30 and split off a bunch of BIG features into an add-on expansion costing £30 once complete (giving existing £60 players a discount coupon). That ultimately splits the revenue but as it makes the game cheaper it should increase up-take and still provide money to develop the big features.

There are pretty frequent Steam sales if price is a problem. The developers have also released a version very much along your suggestion, allowing potential buyers of the full sim to 'dip their toe' and get a taste of the sim at reduced price. Personally I think it's more than worth the money once given a chance.
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