Linux: Framerate crashes when paning camera

[Narwhal Of Ages]

Hello all,

I'm hoping you guys can help with this problem. Ever since the update a few weeks ago that killed multiplayer for a while (thank you thank you for the hotfix guys!) I've been experiencing crippling frame dips whenever I try to move the camera on screen. Here are the relevant details:

Video demonstration [dl.dropboxusercontent.com] (recorded at 60 fps, with Steam overlay FPS counter)
Hardware and software information[dl.dropboxusercontent.com]
Nvidia Settings Information[dl.dropboxusercontent.com]

As you can see, I can easily maintain a solid 60 fps with my hardware when the camera is not moving. The moment I try and adjust my viewport, however, the framerate absolutely tanks, only to restore again shortly after movement has stopped. It does this in off and online games.

Please let me know if there is more information I can provide (packages & versions, etc.) or if I should be posting this somewhere else and thank you for bringing this game to Linux!

[SXX]

Can you try to disable Steam Overlay and then press Ctrl+P to enable in-game FPS counter?
Also any chance you using some special environment variables like __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS? G-Sync?

[SXX]

And if you're using some non-standard DE or window manager then it's worth to try with something popular like Unity/GNOME Shell or KDE/Kwin so you can check that it's not caused by your setup specific.

[Narwhal Of Ages]

Thank you for the replies! I am using stock Ubuntu 15.04 with Unity, using a custom GTK theme (Numix desktop + Icons). I am not aware of that having an affect on performance but I'm happy to turn it off if you'd like. I'm using the current driver from the nvidia-346-updates package (346.59). I have not set any specific environment variables that I'm aware of, and have't touched Xorg.conf or any graphics configuration files or anything in Nvidia-settings. Would you like the output of printenv or is there another command specifically for gfx related variables? I don't have Gsync turned on, or a Gsync capable monitor.

Both videos are taken with Steam FPS overlay off, ingame CTRL + P overlay on, and no sub or super sampling.
Uber settings[dl.dropboxusercontent.com]
Low settings[dl.dropboxusercontent.com]

Are there any debugging or system profiling tools I can run for you?

[SXX]

Ok there is few more tests I to do:
1 - Try to press Ctrl+U (this will disable UI layer) and check if FPS drop still present when UI is invisible.
2 - Leave your mouse alone for moment (probably disconnect it, but it's not really needed) and try to do panning with arrow keys. Check for crash drop while panning without mouse.
3 - Try disable/enable mouse lock in "Camera -> Edge Scroll Options" or enable it instead, check how it's affect FPS.
Only goal of this is find out what's may cause FPS loss.

Are there any debugging or system profiling tools I can run for you?

Nothing is really helpful until you can know what exactly cause lag.

Game does have built-in performance probe in it, but it's only useful for developers (I'm not developer even if know quite a lot things about that game). It's activated by Ctrl+F11 and dump profile information into:

/home/$USER/.local/Uber Entertainment/Planetary Annihilation/PerfLogs/

Sadly I almost sure that it's won't be useful in your particular case as issue likely not related to in-game rendering performance. For PA it's normal to see some FPS drop on panning as game will constantly generate new virtual textures for planet surface, but it's shouldn't be anywhere as huge impact as what you get. So your problem is more likely some issue with cursor rendering, UI rendering, etc.

Anyway I unable to help you then you can post same topic to official forums and upload profile data there.
https://forums.uberent.com/forums/mac-and-linux.73/

[Narwhal Of Ages]

Ah... I think we're on to something here.

1. Disabling the UI does not prevent the frame dropping.
2. Using the arrow keys instead of the mouse, however scrolls smoothly across the screen with no stutters or dips in performance! (There is a constat screen tear across the top 1/4 when pressing the down key, but that's livable and possibly unrelated.)
3. Changing the mouse lock from the default setting (Off [No Mouselock]) seems to make things drastically worse.

Now that it seems related to mouse input, I'll mention that I have a Roccat (Kone Pure Optical, with the 'flawless' ADNS-3090 sensor) and that I'm not having trouble with mouse input in any other game, leading me to beleive the issue isn't bad or dying hardware in the mouse itself. I tried moving it to another two USB headers (USB 3.0 and 2.0) and that hasn't had any affect either.

I did run the profile dump command, but it does not look like it's a plain text file so I can't decode anything from it. I'll keep it on hand, and thank you for mentioning it, but like you said it doesn't seem very useful to you or I.

Reading around on the forums, I also saw mention of trying --coherent-options="--single-process" in the launch options section to work around UI crashes, so just to see I attempted that and it didn't seem to make a difference either.

Do you have any thoughts on what I can do now? Thank you very much for your assistance.

[SXX]

Looks like your problem identical to what was explained in this topic:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/2/618463446159090703/

Originally posted by Narwhal Of Ages:

I did run the profile dump command, but it does not look like it's a plain text file so I can't decode anything from it. I'll keep it on hand, and thank you for mentioning it, but like you said it doesn't seem very useful to you or I.

It's just OpenGL renderer performance stats not really useful for non-professional even if it's was plaintext. Your problem have nothing to do with rendering.

Originally posted by Narwhal Of Ages:

Reading around on the forums, I also saw mention of trying --coherent-options="--single-process" in the launch options section to work around UI crashes, so just to see I attempted that and it didn't seem to make a difference either.

Your problem is not UI crash, it's have nothing to do with UI.

Originally posted by Narwhal Of Ages:

Do you have any thoughts on what I can do now? Thank you very much for your assistance.

Good start would be create topic on developer forums.

[Narwhal Of Ages]

Yes it does appear our problems are the same. If I adjust the polling rate of my mouse to 250 or lower the FPS dropping vanishes, like he describes in his thread. I'll start a forum post about this regression on the developer's site later today.

Thanks again for all the direction!

[SXX]

I'll create appropriate bug report for devs.

BTW can you please clarify what polling rate you have when issue start to occur?

[SXX]

Task on bugtracker for this one: PA#4389[pa.lennardf1989.com]

[Narwhal Of Ages]

My mouse supports the following polling rates:

• 1000
  
• 500
  
• 250
  
• 125

Problems are most severe at 1000, seem to get only slightly better at 500, and disappear entirely at 250 and lower.

[SXX]

Thanks. I'm reported it to internal bug tracker too so I hope devs will look at it soon. Though topic on other forum still recommended to at least make sure how many players affected. :-)

[Narwhal Of Ages]

SSX, I've created a thread here:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/linux-regression-framerate-crashes-when-paning-camera.68992/
Unfortunately it won't let me post any links there as I'm a new user. Would you mind posting links back to this discussion in the thread?

[SXX]

No problem, will do that.