Crowd A.I severely drops performance

[AussiePatriot]

https://youtu.be/I0Jsl8LZi2M

Crowd A.I severely degrades the performance in game. At the start of the video you can see when I keep the camera still I can easily achieve 60fps. However as soon as I pan left or right frames begin to drop, into the low 40's, even with plenty CPU and GPU overhead. This is behind Mike's bar. The city has several bottlenecks like this area. Another is where the big buddha statue is close to Wakako.

As soon as I fire a couple rounds to disperse the crowd, when the entire crowd has fled you can see in the video 60fps is easily maintained without all the NPC's around you.

From what I can remember the game has been like this since day one, but it feels worse since the latest patch (1.5).

I get slightly better results if I set crowd density to low, but frames still drop below 60 having plenty CPU / GPU overhead.

[Orion Invictus]

I mean, what'd you expect? Can't have better AI without using up more resources.

[AussiePatriot]

The point is, I have plenty resource still available, and the game does not use it.

[AussiePatriot]

In addition, as mentioned before, I can produce similar results in dropped frames with crowd density on low. This is all with a setup in the higher end of the spectrum.

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Crowd AI is not one of the top priority system in the gam, so they probably limited somehow the maximum resources that system can take. It's preferable that maybe the crowd ai has a hickup than something the player directly controls or combat npc ai for example.
And yes, Dnamic navmesh calculations, can use up a lot of resources. Every single npc has to not only keep track of it's ownposition and surrounding obstacles, but also of all the other npcs around him, the players position etc. The more NPCs you have and the more complicated the terrain is the more resources every single npc uses.
This isn't something that increases gradually, but exponentially, at least if you want the npcs avoid phasing through each other etc.

[Farnsbarns]

AI driven npcs are extremely complex objects, obviously. CPU and GPU aren't the be all and end all. If you really have overhead in both (taking temperatures into account) look at drive speed, ram speed, amount of ram, single/dual/quad channel, cpu cache L1/2/3 and all the other performance relevant specs.

You're certainly doing better than me, I'm using a quadro card and on those setting I'd be getting less than 30fps.

[AussiePatriot]

Originally posted by Farnsbarns:

AI driven npcs are extremely complex objects, obviously. CPU and GPU aren't the be all and end all. If you really have overhead in both (taking temperatures into account) look at drive speed, ram speed, amount of ram, single/dual/quad channel, cpu cache L1/2/3 and all the other performance relevant specs.

You're certainly doing better than me, I'm using a quadro card and on those setting I'd be getting less than 30fps.

Specs in profile

[Twain_Driver]

I remember being stoked with the performance after modding them out. But it's a different game without the living aspect of the city. The city feels so much better now, though I have to make adjustments to keep frames. DLSS helped dramatically for that.

[pascal83]

The problem is that they have increased the crowd density. Even on low there are mor pedestrians. The more FPS the game gets through the update are now eaten up by the higher crowd density...

[Feuver]

Originally posted by goog:

Originally posted by Farnsbarns:

AI driven npcs are extremely complex objects, obviously..

Thinking out loud here, but what if CDPR had a server that was the game world, and everyone tapped into it for their own experience. That way, living city could be a thing. The extra load from complex AI could be handled on their end. CDPR could have moderators controlling the world adding in events, diversifying everything. Key NPCs wandering around for the community to spot, and report on this forum.

An actual living reactive world.

What you're describing is an mmo, way outside the scope of the game. It would require a constant internet connection and way more overhead as hundreds of thousands of players need to connect to thr servers for updates.

Just a bad take.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Feuver:

Originally posted by goog:

Thinking out loud here, but what if CDPR had a server that was the game world, and everyone tapped into it for their own experience. That way, living city could be a thing. The extra load from complex AI could be handled on their end. CDPR could have moderators controlling the world adding in events, diversifying everything. Key NPCs wandering around for the community to spot, and report on this forum.

An actual living reactive world.

What you're describing is an mmo, way outside the scope of the game. It would require a constant internet connection and way more overhead as hundreds of thousands of players need to connect to thr servers for updates.

Just a bad take.

What they're describing is the Matrix. Even an MMO can't be "an actual living reactive world" unless ALL characters are players, and even then, it's not fully immersive because games have limitations (EVE, for instance, doesn't let you visit a place like Night City).

[Klutch]

Originally posted by AussiePatriot:

https://youtu.be/I0Jsl8LZi2M but frames still drop below 60 having plenty CPU / GPU overhead.

why do you think you have extra cpu overhead?

turn off local shadows and retest cpu