Volumetric Fog: The FPS killer

[SirLosealot]

FYI, I was playing 6.0 beta and noticed massive FPS drop in some systems like Heretic's End.

So I played with the graphic settings and realized that I got substantial FPS increase from lowering every step of Volumetric Fog settings from High to Off. I doubled my FPS with Off compared to High.

So if you have performance problem, maybe turning off Volumetric Fog will help.

[Toshis8]

From what game says, some anti-aliasing settings + volumetric fog is a bad combination.

Wish there were some setting, that optimize cpu usage. My GPU usage is at about 40% on high settings, but cpu is at 100%.

[SirLosealot]

I am aware of the warning about MSAA and volumetric fog. But no, even with MSAA off, volumetric fog could still tank my fps from like mid 80s to 40s fps in some areas like asteroid fields. In those area, my gpu actually maxed out with volumetric fog.

So it does not affect all areas in my case, but I'd rather have a bit of a consistent fps in most areas so I decided to turn it off completely for now.

[zpc]

Originally posted by SirLosealot:

I am aware of the warning about MSAA and volumetric fog. But no, even with MSAA off, volumetric fog could still tank my fps from like mid 80s to 40s fps in some areas like asteroid fields. In those area, my gpu actually maxed out with volumetric fog.

So it does not affect all areas in my case, but I'd rather have a bit of a consistent fps in most areas so I decided to turn it off completely for now.

What GPU are you using?

Also, the asteroid fields tank the CPU as well - so all the effects together (asteroid fields + volumetric fog + shadow for all the asteroids on the volumetric fog) can indeed / of course create a very resource intensive scenery.

[Mad_Lad]

Originally posted by SirLosealot:

I am aware of the warning about MSAA and volumetric fog. But no, even with MSAA off, volumetric fog could still tank my fps from like mid 80s to 40s fps in some areas like asteroid fields. In those area, my gpu actually maxed out with volumetric fog.

So it does not affect all areas in my case, but I'd rather have a bit of a consistent fps in most areas so I decided to turn it off completely for now.

Can I ask what GPU you're using?

[ZeroAffex]

Honestly, having it on nets you very very little visually. You'll get way more visually for less cost in fps to ramp up things like screen space relections or SSAO. I always keep volumetric fog turned off. It's a resource hog and nets too little visually for my taste. Maybe in another 10 years I'll think different with better tech but currently, just not worth it for my 1440p setup.

PS: Also, I wouldn't recommend using SSAA either. Just because it's super resource costing and again, the gains are marginal if you have a nice monitor. MSAA is what I use with my 3080 super (12gb) and i-7 12700k setup. Instead, I go into Nvidia control panel and add cool features like anisotropic filtering to like 8-16X and some other 'eye candy' options for X4 and get better looking visuals for the same cost as using SSAA. So yeah, I just avoid that too.

[SirLosealot]

Originally posted by Mad_Lad:

Originally posted by SirLosealot:

I am aware of the warning about MSAA and volumetric fog. But no, even with MSAA off, volumetric fog could still tank my fps from like mid 80s to 40s fps in some areas like asteroid fields. In those area, my gpu actually maxed out with volumetric fog.

So it does not affect all areas in my case, but I'd rather have a bit of a consistent fps in most areas so I decided to turn it off completely for now.

Can I ask what GPU you're using?

A 3070 with driver version 528.49.

[SirLosealot]

Originally posted by ZeroAffex:

Honestly, having it on nets you very very little visually. You'll get way more visually for less cost in fps to ramp up things like screen space relections or SSAO. I always keep volumetric fog turned off. It's a resource hog and nets too little visually for my taste. Maybe in another 10 years I'll think different with better tech but currently, just not worth it for my 1440p setup.

PS: Also, I wouldn't recommend using SSAA either. Just because it's super resource costing and again, the gains are marginal if you have a nice monitor. MSAA is what I use with my 3080 super (12gb) and i-7 12700k setup. Instead, I go into Nvidia control panel and add cool features like anisotropic filtering to like 8-16X and some other 'eye candy' options for X4 and get better looking visuals for the same cost as using SSAA. So yeah, I just avoid that too.

Agreed on the visual gain/performance loss ratio so I turn it off completely now. I may turn to MSAAx2 with volumetric off and call it a day.

[Rejected Spavvn]

I'm pretty envious of you folks, X4 runs at 60fps tops for me in almost empty space, Heretics End 2-3 in some spots and 15 in others that look practically identical to me, volumetric fog doesn't even do more than a single frame of difference for some reason unless I set some AA that is way beyond sensible (tried a ton of different settings)

...really hope 6.00 will fix whatever is causing asteroid lag, the game runs out of VRAM in 10 minutes if I fly through a dozen asteroid heavy sectors but if I stay away from them it's perfectly fine and runs like a charm for 50 hour sessions, no way some rocks should eat the entirety of my 12GB GPU... also, I noticed that if I start the game up and from the main menu load a save in an asteroid field, the game stutters extremely badly *permanently* until relaunched, framerate below 15 in empty space.

[ZeroAffex]

Originally posted by Rejected Spavvn:

I'm pretty envious of you folks, X4 runs at 60fps tops for me in almost empty space, Heretics End 2-3 in some spots and 15 in others that look practically identical to me, volumetric fog doesn't even do more than a single frame of difference for some reason unless I set some AA that is way beyond sensible (tried a ton of different settings)

...really hope 6.00 will fix whatever is causing asteroid lag, the game runs out of VRAM in 10 minutes if I fly through a dozen asteroid heavy sectors but if I stay away from them it's perfectly fine and runs like a charm for 50 hour sessions, no way some rocks should eat the entirety of my 12GB GPU... also, I noticed that if I start the game up and from the main menu load a save in an asteroid field, the game stutters extremely badly *permanently* until relaunched, framerate below 15 in empty space.

If you have Nvidia, try enabling image scaling. By default it's set to 50% which you'll be hard pressed to even notice the difference that it's on aside from a nice bump to fps. If you still need more fps, just lower it some more. The closer to 0% the more fps. Conversely, if you want better looking visuals go above 50%. Maybe give that a go. Oh yeah and make sure Hyperthreading is turned on and Texture Filtering is set to "High Performance" or "Performance" (another setting that gives a nice bump in fps without sacrificing visuals).

[SirLosealot]

Originally posted by Rejected Spavvn:

I'm pretty envious of you folks, X4 runs at 60fps tops for me in almost empty space, Heretics End 2-3 in some spots and 15 in others that look practically identical to me, volumetric fog doesn't even do more than a single frame of difference for some reason unless I set some AA that is way beyond sensible (tried a ton of different settings)

...really hope 6.00 will fix whatever is causing asteroid lag, the game runs out of VRAM in 10 minutes if I fly through a dozen asteroid heavy sectors but if I stay away from them it's perfectly fine and runs like a charm for 50 hour sessions, no way some rocks should eat the entirety of my 12GB GPU... also, I noticed that if I start the game up and from the main menu load a save in an asteroid field, the game stutters extremely badly *permanently* until relaunched, framerate below 15 in empty space.

I use MSI Afterburner to monitor the % of GPU and CPU usage. If the fps is low and the GPU usage is maxed out like in my case in Heretic's End, I play with the graphic settings until I found the sweet spot ( for my case it was just because of volumetric fog).

If even after turning down graphic settings but your GPU usage is still high, you may want to try AMD FSR image scaling in the game settings first to reduce GPU usage.

If the CPU usage is maxed out, then I don't know what to do in that case. But I have never seen it. In fact, the CPU usually stays only around 30% or maybe 40% usage.

[JasonX]

What is it with Vol Fog, is the entire idea just a failure? It's usually the #1 thing you want to turn down or off in nearly every game.

[FDru]

Originally posted by JasonX:

What is it with Vol Fog, is the entire idea just a failure? It's usually the #1 thing you want to turn down or off in nearly every game.

I know right. It doesn't even look good most of the time.

[SirLosealot]

Originally posted by JasonX:

What is it with Vol Fog, is the entire idea just a failure? It's usually the #1 thing you want to turn down or off in nearly every game.

I guess it is the same case like ray tracing without dedicated ray tracing cores: The computational power required is too much.

[ZeroAffex]

Originally posted by JasonX:

What is it with Vol Fog, is the entire idea just a failure? It's usually the #1 thing you want to turn down or off in nearly every game.

I think it's more for demo'ing content/screenshots? I have no idea. X4 is not the only game I turn it off on either lol I just never cared for it. It kills fps in games and adds so little (least for my eyes). Like I said, maybe in 5-10 years when we have crazy GPU's/CPU's, we'll laugh at this but yeah, I just find it better to turn it off in favor of using other more pronounced features for that fps cost I get by turning off if that makes sense.

[Rejected Spavvn]

@replies to my anguish: Much appreciate the good feedback, some Steam discussion boards have been nearly traumatic to engage in lately so it's heartwarming to see friendly helpful comments. The problem I keep running into is "out of VRAM" specifically, no matter what I do or how low I set literally everything, I can run at nearly maxed settings aside from AA and still get okayish framerate but rock bottom settings doesn't improve fps more than very slightly in most situations... The issue happens due to something that is either entirely caused by asteroids or at the least 1000 times worse specifically with asteroids nearby... The weird part is not everyone is getting that issue, only a really small number of players, and I haven't seen much in common with our hardware or OS or drivers or anything... really ain't got the foggiest what's up with this situation. :/

Haven't been checking my hardware using tools but I can tell from the fan noise what temperatures the CPU and GPU run at, they have super distinct (and loud) noises so I know they do perfectly fine computation wise in asteroid fields but both practically glow Xenon red around massive stations... but I still get 4fps at a 1000+ module HQ with a GIANT cloud of ships docking and undocking (specced it for smoothly terraforming the "last boss planet" hehe) while it's 2-3fps in many spots of Heretic's End with not a single ship in radar range and the computation load is only moderate... also briefly visiting a few dense asteroid fields causes NPC heads to vanish afterwards, a known symptom of "out of VRAM" and the weird part is (due to my EXTREMELY bad framerate I can tell) it's always beginning with heads flickering *exactly* every other frame, like this: one frame the head is rendered, the next it's not, then rendered, then not, back and forth for a while until even more VRAM runs out and then all heads vanish entirely. Usually I stop, save and exit as soon as the first flickering head appears, really bad stuff often happens if one keeps trying to play anyway... The problem wasn't around way back like 2 years ago as far as I can recall, dunno but it might have surfaced around the time they did something to improve load times, in one of the later major patches... not sure though, wouldn't wanna send anyone on a wild goose chase if I misremember.