Why do campfires, and campfires alone, OWN framerate?

[Decado]

Anyone else get this? I've been playing with my framerate across the board and reached a pretty reasonable balance, but there's one object which OWNS them - and by own i mean, it turns my game into an actual slideshow when looking at it - the lit campfire. Unlit - fine. Lit - horrendous framerate when looking in its direction.

This is bloody odd because:

1. Hand held torches have no impact on frames
2. I can have an entire forest burning with no impact on frames

But the campfire - BOOM.

Does anyone else get this problem? Or does anyone know if there's a setting somewhere linked to them? They're an important part of the game (at least early) for cooking, for being able to sleep etc but right now they're almost single handedly dominating my experience.

Is this a bug with the asset itself? I'm using an AMD card if its of any help an RX 570 specifically.

[DeathMetalDruid]

Maybe try turning down shadow detail settings. I think shadows can be one of the most demanding things to render. I set mine to medium on my RTX 2060 and I don’t have any frame rate issues.

[k4el]

I think this is an unreal 4 title. If that's the case then this is my guess on why fire is such a big performance hit.

A common method of creating fire effects in unreal via the particle can easily result in 10s if not 100s of transparency materials overlapping. This situation is very expensive to render.

They probably need to take a look at the fire VFX and either optimize it's content or consider some code side solutions to limit the number of fire particle systems that are concurrently overlapping.

I've not taken a look at the graphics settings menu, if you're having trouble with performance related to fire try turning down any settings related to particle systems.

[Decado]

Originally posted by k4el:

I think this is an unreal 4 title. If that's the case then this is my guess on why fire is such a big performance hit.

A common method of creating fire effects in unreal via the particle can easily result in 10s if not 100s of transparency materials overlapping. This situation is very expensive to render.

They probably need to take a look at the fire VFX and either optimize it's content or consider some code side solutions to limit the number of fire particle systems that are concurrently overlapping.

I've not taken a look at the graphics settings menu, if you're having trouble with performance related to fire try turning down any settings related to particle systems.

Yeah I have - i've looked at particle settings, shadows etc - none seem to have any effect on the fire itself.

But as I said in the OP - it's not fire specifically, ONLY the lit campfire. The torch is fine, the forest on fire - fine. Only the campfire.

For comparison - other games like Conan Exiles, Ark, Myth of Empires, Last oasis etc (i like my survival games) - none of these games had issues with campfires being lit. I'm not saying this game has anything to do with those, but it strikes me as odd that ONLY the campfire being lit causes this from what i've seen so far.

Do you guys who've replied not have this issue with the campfire?

[k4el]

Hmmm if it's only the camp fire and not other fires that's a bit odd but not totally impossible. Are you playing in DX11 or DX12?

RTX on or off?

[Decado]

Originally posted by k4el:

Hmmm if it's only the camp fire and not other fires that's a bit odd but not totally impossible. Are you playing in DX11 or DX12?

RTX on or off?

I've tried DX 11 & 12 - zero difference between the two. I dont use RTX - my machines not up for that, but I've tried AMD's scaling (forget the name) which performs better (albeit blurrier) than straight up anti-aliasing.

But that's the thing - it's ONLY the campfire, not other sources

[Rocket]

Known issue with AMD and fire in the game. We reached out to AMD but its something we will have to work through with AMD/Epics support.

[Decado]

Originally posted by rocket2guns:

Known issue with AMD and fire in the game. We reached out to AMD but its something we will have to work through with AMD/Epics support.

Alright nice - thanks for at least confirming that. I've been going out of my mind trying every combination of setting trying to improve it. But for me at least, it's not other fire sources, ONLY the campfire. Hilariously I had a whole forest on fire and it was smooth but the single campfire beside it was what turned my game into a slideshow.

[Decado]

Here's something interesting about this:

Campfire lit = horrendous fps
Held torch lit in my hand = fine
Held torch lit and dropped on the ground = horrendous fps
Entire forest on fire = fine - zero frame impact

Maybe the setting which disables shadows from player sourced lights needs to be applied to torches on the ground plus campfires as an interim solution

[xMoDx]

have the same problem but only if the campfire is in the open. As long as it is inside a house there is no drop in framerate when i loog at it

[Macdallan]

My hand held torches do have an impact on framerate unless I turn off shadows from player lights. It seems that many things are affecting FPS in different ways depending on your system and settings. I don't see any major differences with fires.

[Marxxsman]

Yah i have a RX 6600 XT and i have the same issue with Campfires. Had the same issue with hand held torches until i turned off the player shadows. But i still get the issue with campfires. What's odd is it will not happen sometimes for hours and other times in the first 5 min of playing. And logging out to char select and back in fixes it for a bit. I hope this can be resolved soon it is very Frustrating.

[Redbu11]

AMD RX 580 4gb VRAM here.

Same issue with campfires, when a <campfire/cooking pit/dropped on the ground torch> is lit and I'm looking at it - some of the time my fps drops to like 4, but sometimes it's fine. Mostly it's fine when the campfire texture isn't loaded. So I'd guess it has something to do with fire textures and not lightning.

[Redrum Pancakes]

in display option turn ON theses ones ( use simple building shadows turn on/
disable lighting effects turn on/
tesselation turn on/
clouds dont care/
disable player light shadows turn on)

with this i stopped lagging in thunderstorms and fires effect me less.. alot less...

RX580 4gb

[Decado]

Originally posted by Redbu11:

AMD RX 580 4gb VRAM here.

Same issue with campfires, when a <campfire/cooking pit/dropped on the ground torch> is lit and I'm looking at it - some of the time my fps drops to like 4, but sometimes it's fine. Mostly it's fine when the campfire texture isn't loaded. So I'd guess it has something to do with fire textures and not lightning.

Yep that's the thing - holding a lit torch, NO effect on fps - drop it on the ground though? Actual slide show

[Redbu11]

forest fires cause me no fps drops whatsoever