Constant texture popin

[builder680]

Just messing around in this game for the first time since 2015 (played a lot back then). I am noticing a LOT of texture popin this time around, and an overall blurriness I don't remember from before. What's really odd is I've upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 1070 which has 8gb VRAM, which should be fine for textures on High, so I don't see why the game looks worse now than it did when I played it before.

It's not resolution scale, that's all the way up. Watching GPU Tweak II shows that I hover around 4.1 gb VRAM usage, so it's not even using all that's available (8gb). Other specs are i7 5820K @ 4.1 GHz, 16 gb DDR4 RAM, and 850 EVO 1TB SSD. My rig is decent. I'm playing in 1080p on a native 1080p monitor. FPS is fine unless I'm over a river with a zillion dinos or a huge base (just like it was in 2015, seems optimization still hasn't really happened, sigh), but the texture popin is insane.

This is something I never saw even using my old GTX 760 2gb card back in 2015. I'm not sure how to get rid of the texture popin. Textures are set to High, but it also happens when I have them on Epic. Only thing I can think is texture streaming is borked, but I have a fairly decent 1tb SSD (it's the only storage on this rig, there is no HDD), so that seems unlikely unless it's game related. But I've seen recent videos from other players and they don't seem to have this problem, or maybe I just can't see it in their videos. I'm not sure. Anyone got ideas?

[builder680]

Right after I made this post an old memory came back regarding forcing dx10. Added -d3d10 to launch paramaters and the texture popin seems to resolve, although my lighting isn't as nice now. I do still have shadows at least. So if you're having this problem, try that.

[Yaka]

Yeah I get the same issue with textures suddenly turning into a lower detailed one, after some time it reverts back to normal.

[Toooni]

Originally posted by builder680:

Just messing around in this game for the first time since 2015 (played a lot back then). I am noticing a LOT of texture popin this time around, and an overall blurriness I don't remember from before. What's really odd is I've upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 1070 which has 8gb VRAM, which should be fine for textures on High, so I don't see why the game looks worse now than it did when I played it before.

It's not resolution scale, that's all the way up. Watching GPU Tweak II shows that I hover around 4.1 gb VRAM usage, so it's not even using all that's available (8gb). Other specs are i7 5820K @ 4.1 GHz, 16 gb DDR4 RAM, and 850 EVO 1TB SSD. My rig is decent. I'm playing in 1080p on a native 1080p monitor. FPS is fine unless I'm over a river with a zillion dinos or a huge base (just like it was in 2015, seems optimization still hasn't really happened, sigh), but the texture popin is insane.

This is something I never saw even using my old GTX 760 2gb card back in 2015. I'm not sure how to get rid of the texture popin. Textures are set to High, but it also happens when I have them on Epic. Only thing I can think is texture streaming is borked, but I have a fairly decent 1tb SSD (it's the only storage on this rig, there is no HDD), so that seems unlikely unless it's game related. But I've seen recent videos from other players and they don't seem to have this problem, or maybe I just can't see it in their videos. I'm not sure. Anyone got ideas?

This texture popin was added about 2 weeks before release. Wildcard is calling this "performance optimization".

Its really annoying to see textures which are not even low when moving around...
(I'm using Epic textures).


The game was optimized regarding performance in big bases (Only structures), but wasn't optimized regarding many dinos...
Whats still missing is a function on our dinos "Disable Animation" which would really improve the performance :)
The mod which made us able to deactivate the X-Plant Animations proved that the performance problems are mostly coming from the animated objects.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Just a wild guess here. Did you actually go in to in-game graphics settings and -UNCHECK- the "LOW QUALITY LEVEL STREAMING:" option? Because this is exactly what that option does...............

[builder680]

That option is not checked, no.

ETA: Not sure what that setting does exactly. What does "Low Quality Level Streaming" mean? Does it give me low quality? Should it be on or off? Sorry the name doesn't make it immediately apparent, and I haven't found a definitive answer on Google with a cursory 2 minute search.

ETA 2: Found a general ARK modding wiki* regarding level streaming and how it pertains to map loading. I will try turning it and reverting back to dx11 just to see the effect, it but I don't think it's related. Honestly just forcing dx10 via the -d3d10 launch parameter fixed the issue for me with minimal loss in graphics quality overall, so I'll probably just stick with that. I won't use -sm4 though, because I think doing that gets rid of shadows.

ETA 3: So, I checked the box for Low Quality Level Streaming and removed my earlier added -d3d10 launch parameter. Loaded game back up and it does seem to have noticeably less texture popin. Still not sure exactly what it does but I am happy with it for now. Thanks for the tip. The lighting in dx10 vs dx11 just isn't as nice anyway.

*
https://wiki.arkmodding.net/index.php/Level_Streaming

[Czaritsa]

I had that problem.
Drove me nuts for 2 days.

Problem emerged when I had tried a few launch options, and then "reset to defaults" in-game on accident. Screwed it proper.

Once you screw around with textures something gets mesed-up, and you need to delete the settings ".ini" files.

But not just in "ShooterGame > Config", but in "Engine > Config" too.

Just highlighted "Config" folder in there, and deleted it. Did a files check of the game to restore missing parts.

Delete your launch options, or it will happen again.

"NoManSky" is safe tho. (And no, they haven't actually fixed the sky yet like they said they did, so keep it in.)

......

But don't try to force the directx10 thing on a good video card, makes no sense. DX11 has better performance, that's only for DX10 cards. (Ancient ones.)

Alot of the 2015 "make the game run faster" advice is really bad now.

"Disabling Vsync" makes no sense. It's already disabled by default now.
"SM4" on a good video card makes no sense.


The Resolution Scale Slider in the game makes no sense. (No perforamnce gain, just makes the game look like the original Wolfenstein 3D.) (Are you listening devs?) :D

But touch that thing; and it's another way you can get the screwed-up texutre problem.

.......

Want a real performance gain? Start the game without shadows, and on medium textures. Bump settings up in-game.
Don't ask me why!

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Czaritsa:

But don't try to force the directx10 thing on a good video card, makes no sense. DX11 has better performance, that's only for DX10 cards. (Ancient ones.)

Alot of the 2015 "make the game run faster" advice is really bad now.

"Disabling Vsync" makes no sense. It's already disabled by default now.
"SM4" on a good video card makes no sense.


The Resolution Scale Slider in the game makes no sense. (No perforamnce gain, just makes the game look like the original Wolfenstein 3D.) (Are you listening devs?) :D

But touch that thing; and it's another way you can get the screwed-up texutre problem.

.......

Want a real performance gain? Start the game without shadows, and on medium textures. Bump settings up in-game.
Don't ask me why!

Just because the resolution scale and dx10 command-line settings "don't have any effect on performance" for your computer, does not mean they won't help someone playing on like a R9 290X or a GTX-700 series or something. Which are, like you mentioned, DirectX-11 cards, but still have problems with ark. These settings actively do have a direct impact on performance, for some people. Just not for you.

Hell I can't even barely maintain 60 FPS minimums in a built up medium sized base in ark even on a 1080 Ti unless I turn off ground clutter, and maybe a couple other things like view distance, even with an overclocked x99 cpu. Ark is unoptimized to hell right now. They've been promising an optimization pass for almost 1.5 years now and never have done it yet.