Can we have a fps lock for the menu / pinhall?

[4MIGO]

It would be great if we could set the fps for the pinhall to a fixed 60fps to keep the system quiet.

I personally play PFX at 120fps and the system is super quiet, but when I enter the pinhall I'm at about 105fps and the system gets super loud.

Zen please!

[Sorthious]

Originally posted by Darth Skippy:

This is interesting because I had an aging PC power supply unit that was on its way out after about five years. One of the things that reliably black screen/crashed the system was the Pinhall screen when you switched views. For some reason, this puts a HUGE load on CPU/GPU.

After I replaced the PSU, everything was fine and looks great, but I have to wonder what was happening there to put such a huge demand on system power draw that it killed aging (but functional) PSUs.

I've worked with computers and PSU"s for decades. Computers will do really weird things when a PSU starts to fail. At first, normally, it will be intermittent, but will eventually start happening more frequently. When you're trying to troubleshoot a computer that's acting weird and you can't figure out what is causing it, it's time to test that PSU, as it's likely going to be the issue.

As for PSU's, if I remember correctly, the average lifespan for those and for HDD's is 5-years. I've had them last upwards of 10 years though. I'm not sure if average has changed over the years, but if it hasn't 5-years is normal. The Pinhall, and all the other menu screens, puts a heavy demand on my GPU, which uses the PSU. My CPU cores, iirc, are only around 4-7% in the menu screens.

[spooh]

Yes, it's annoying. And i don't even want to see this room - it's poorly designed

[DornoDiosMio]

Yes, please lock the FPS to a maximum of 60 when games are not actively being played!!!

[balti]

Sorry for the late reply to this thread! I forwarded your requests to the dev team. :)

[4MIGO]

Originally posted by balti:

Sorry for the late reply to this thread! I forwarded your requests to the dev team. :)

better late than never! thx a lot!

[keluvu]

Seems that the problem has been fixed although has not been listed in the update notes!
Can somebody else confirm?

I'm confused reading the note from balti 2 hours ago telling she will report to devs, cause seems that the problem has been fixed.

Now MSI Afterburner shows the GPU running without stress!
At least for my hardware has dissapeared (RTX 4070ti + i7 13700K), Nvidia drivers 572.16

[4MIGO]

Originally posted by keluvu:

Seems that the problem has been fixed although has not been listed in the update notes!
Can somebody else confirm?

I'm confused reading the note from balti 2 hours ago telling she will report to devs, cause seems that the problem has been fixed.

Now MSI Afterburner shows the GPU running without stress!
At least for my hardware has dissapeared (RTX 4070ti + i7 13700K), Nvidia drivers 572.16

No, can't confirm it. :( Updated from 560.94 to 572.60 and it's exactly the same behaviour.
Using a RTX 3090 here...

[Sorthious]

Originally posted by 4MIGO:

Originally posted by keluvu:

Seems that the problem has been fixed although has not been listed in the update notes!
Can somebody else confirm?

I'm confused reading the note from balti 2 hours ago telling she will report to devs, cause seems that the problem has been fixed.

Now MSI Afterburner shows the GPU running without stress!
At least for my hardware has dissapeared (RTX 4070ti + i7 13700K), Nvidia drivers 572.16

No, can't confirm it. :( Updated from 560.94 to 572.60 and it's exactly the same behaviour.
Using a RTX 3090 here...

I just retested and I'm getting about 67% GPU usage just sitting in the menu system(any menu screen, not just the showroom.) It's so weird that the menu system is more demanding than actually playing a table. I complained about this when the game was released on Steam and nothing, to date, has been done about it. Oh, I take that back. They did remodel the showroom, rather than optimize it. For me, playing on FX4 puts 3x the load on my GPU compared to FX3.

Both are set to 60fps, high settings and no upscaling...

FX4, Bride of Pinbot:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3435939328

FX3, Medieval Madness
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3435956174

[SqueakyGibson]

My last PC had a fairly elderly GTX 1060 - and this issue in Pinball FX was very obvious. Whilst playing a table the GPU utilization was 90% but the fans only went half speed. In the pinhall/menus the GPU utilization was still 90% but the fans ramped up all the way like a jet engine. It made me not want to linger in the menus for long. This was at 60fps vsync.

Now I'm on an RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the better GPU seems to have brute-forced the issue away. I still see that the pinhall/menus are using the GPU much more than the tables, but it doesn't make the fans go hard.

This is something I used to see sometimes in PS4 games actually. I remember God of War (2018) would turn the PS4 into a jet engine but only in menus. I don't think it's necessarily about menus running with unlimited framerate -- it's more about the GPU being told to render absolutely everything in the scene at once instead of only rendering what the game camera is pointing at.

[Yakass]

Originally posted by balti:

Sorry for the late reply to this thread! I forwarded your requests to the dev team. :)

We've been asking for this for 2 years or so. Greta Thunberg would have a fit if she knew how much energy was being unnecessarily wasted by gamers staring at the menu in Pinball FX

[Sorthious]

Originally posted by SqueakyGibson:

My last PC had a fairly elderly GTX 1060 - and this issue in Pinball FX was very obvious. Whilst playing a table the GPU utilization was 90% but the fans only went half speed. In the pinhall/menus the GPU utilization was still 90% but the fans ramped up all the way like a jet engine. It made me not want to linger in the menus for long. This was at 60fps vsync.

Now I'm on an RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the better GPU seems to have brute-forced the issue away. I still see that the pinhall/menus are using the GPU much more than the tables, but it doesn't make the fans go hard.

This is something I used to see sometimes in PS4 games actually. I remember God of War (2018) would turn the PS4 into a jet engine but only in menus. I don't think it's necessarily about menus running with unlimited framerate -- it's more about the GPU being told to render absolutely everything in the scene at once instead of only rendering what the game camera is pointing at.

I'm not sure what is being processed by the GPU in the menus, but there is unacceptably high usage, in menus, when the pinhall isn't even being displayed. A higher framerate would just increase the problem. I agree that the framerate should be capped in the menu system, as there is no need for a high framerate when viewing a menu. The framerate could be as low as 30fps and not be an issue. With that said, if they'd just optimize the menu system, it would solve the problem of high resource usage. As far as when your fans are kicking in, this could be due to other factors; overall case temps are going up due to CPU usage, increase in room temps, power supply adding to heat in the case. I've noticed over the years more and more games are being released unoptimized, or poorly optimized, and never, or rarely, being fixed. You will see many suggestions to upgrade your hardware, but all that does is mask the problem. If you aren't monitoring your systems resources, and nothing burns up or fails, then everything will appear to be running smoothly, but under-the-hood, your system may be working extra hard due to unoptimized content. This affects the longevity of your hardware. Sure, if you have the disposable income to spend on the latest and greatest setup, then this won't apply to you as much, but you can still get issues like hitching/stuttering, lag,etc., from poorly optimized games. I don't know if Zen even plans to address this issue. I reported this issue at launch, but I've not heard of any plans to address the problem, and it's one of the reasons I don't play FX4 much. Conversely, on FX3, everything runs smooth. I can play a table on FX3 at 240fps and the GPU usage is at 69%, which is almost the same as sitting in the FX4 menu system, doing nothing. In FX3's menus, at 240fps, my GPU is running about a third of what FX4 is using; 23% max usage. I'm only playing at 1080p on both systems, so I shouldn't need any extra processing required for the extra pixels. Anyway, hopefully they will eventually do something about it.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3438956683

[4MIGO]

One day i thought, the Zen City outside the building where the pinhall sits in, might be the problem. Too much to render lol
Thanks for all of your replies so far. I guess it's just a matter of time until we'll see an update about it...