Performances improvement : Shading Quality has a major impact (switch to Direct or Low)

[Veldrane]

Hello,

Like a lot of people, I noticed severe performances issues which are pretty unusual for my higher end rig that never face any issues with games. For the record : i5-13600 KF + RTX 3090 + 32Gb of DDR5 ram
I saw somebody indicated that switching to direct shader solved his issues, and it is indeed a valid solution in terms of performance gains. I decided to make a few comparison to assess the loss of visual appeal.

Settings for the record : Base setting of ULTRA-HIGH, no depth of field, no V-SYNC, and then only adjusting the Shading Quality (Direct Shading Only, Shading Low, Shading Ultra).
Performance gain indicated below are just by checking FPS counter when zooming out completely (since it brings pretty bad performances) so do not consider it as a real performance benchmark.

Check results for yourselves here : https://imgur.com/a/QyXeHNM

In short :
- Direct Shaders VASTLY improves performances (almost 100%), with "acceptable" graphical impact : most noticeable is the dirt roads that are harder to spot and water surface becomes completely bland.
- Direct shaders even bring some improvements in some aspects : the ground is much more detailed when zooming at maximum, and elevations like hills become more visible when zoom out)
- Direct Shaders however strangely doesn't show region border and overlay on water surface, which is very strange and borderline problematic if you are located near the water.
Using Low Shading will had those things bad but will result in blurry ground when zooming in. Performance gain remains interesting (around 50%)

While I hope the dev will adress those performance issues quickly, if they fixed the region border and overlays on water surface with direct shaders this would already help a lot.

[Don Vincenzoo 57]

use vsync improve game smoothness ;
no need of good latency here in this type of game so use it make it better smooth

[Veldrane]

You are right about the latency but Vsync is not a subject here, nor will change the game visually. It should be noted that some people report impact on performances but I didn't make any measurement about this.

[Akadai]

I turned off Vsync after reading that tip from a few places, and it greatly improved my fps. I jumped like 30 fps just from that alone. I do get screen tearing now, but it's something I'd rather put up with

I did change to direct shading and was wondering what happened to the water. Now I know

[Don Vincenzoo 57]

Originally posted by Veldrane:

You are right about the latency but Vsync is not a subject here, nor will change the game visually. It should be noted that some people report impact on performances but I didn't make any measurement about this.

vsync on / no msaa / 1440p 5950xt here : butter smooth .

vsync off = 100% gpu = heat = problem

[Thane_Ragnar]

The easiest Setting you can probably do for more FPS is to reduce the Render Resolution from 1.0 to 0.7 or 0.8. This doubled my FPS right away (from 53 to 102 or so) while playing on 4K.

[NeonHaggis]

On my older system (1660 super) switching to 'direct shading' makes a HUGE difference, it's like playing a different game. I can even raise other setting to high and play at 1440 with good performance.

As mentioned it does remove borders on sea regions for some reason, but that's a small price to pay and will hopefully be fixed.

[Many-Named]

Originally posted by Veldrane:

You are right about the latency but Vsync is not a subject here, nor will change the game visually. It should be noted that some people report impact on performances but I didn't make any measurement about this.

actually it does lol, I am always surprised by how people do not notice screen tearing, especially when scrolling. It's as if they are blind or something.

[Veldrane]

Originally posted by Many-Named:

Originally posted by Veldrane:

You are right about the latency but Vsync is not a subject here, nor will change the game visually. It should be noted that some people report impact on performances but I didn't make any measurement about this.

actually it does lol, I am always surprised by how people do not notice screen tearing, especially when scrolling. It's as if they are blind or something.

I meant : it doesn't affect performances. But yes there was (now fixed apparently) an issue with V-Sync :)