FPS improvement tips for large zoo

[CombatShawn]

This game is apparently having an optimization bottleneck as it uses DX11 instead of DX12. It's similar to many simulation & management games, you need a great CPU instead of great GPU.

I recently upgraded my GPU from 1080 to 3080, as expected, not much improvement. I tried some experiments and want to share some tips to improve your FPS.

1. Use sandbox mode if you want to build a large zoo and if you have the ambition to include many animals in your zoo. If you want to play under either franchisee mode or challenge mode, forget about it. No way you can build a large zoo.
2. Limit the visitors in your park. This game constantly calculate the needs of each individual guest as well as helping them to find the right path to their destination. Not an expert of this type of algorithm but I assume the developer has chose at least the best algorithm to run this kind of calculation. So the only thing you can do here, is to limit the number of guests. This is why I recommend you to build your zoo in sandbox mode, since you don't need to worry about revenue.
3. Turn off some needs of the visitors if you need. Apparently in the latest update, this game allow you to turn off some needs in sandbox mode. I tried to turn off the energy setting, aka, the visitors will no longer feel running out of energy. This apparently is very helpful as the daemon process no longer needs to calculate that. As expected, if you turn off other needs, like drink, food, then you should have better FPS. But those will affect your income, so use this as a last option. Turn off energy first.
4. When building your zoo, pause the game as it doesn't need to keep the calculation running.

I'll continue do some experiments and I'll keep update this post. But the summary is: if you want to build an awesome large zoo and you don't care about the management part of the game (which to be honest, is not the best part of this game), try run it in sandbox mode and reduce the calculation.

I don't really feel that whether you build some complicated buildings or you use a bunch of workshop contents matters a lot. Those do matter when loading the game, and when your camera is focus on that complicated building. Definitely don't build a palace for each of your habit.

Hope these will help.

[MIGHTYANDYMAN]

What is your CPU, what resolution are you using and what is your CPU usage?

[CombatShawn]

Originally posted by Green_Goblin:

What is your CPU, what resolution are you using and what is your CPU usage?

10850K, 4k resolution. usage between 30% to 40%

[onizukaftw]

Originally posted by CombatShawn:

Originally posted by Green_Goblin:

What is your CPU, what resolution are you using and what is your CPU usage?

4k resolution.

...try 1080? or 1440?

[MIGHTYANDYMAN]

If you really want the best fps you can empty your zoo of animals, just doubled my fps from 15 to over 30 by doing this, in a very large 500 plus animal franchise zoo, saved as a sandbox.
Seriously though my point is there is no point in worrying about fps, so many factors affect it.
I also have RTX 3080, with AMD 3900X, boxing or as i tried in sandbox removing the animals seems to be the only way to go from 15fps to 0ver 30fps,
I just play the game as I want and forget about fps.

[Just Kevin]

I don't know about Franchise mode, but the sandbox is usually the only place you can build a huge zoo due to the size of the landscape.
And indeed Green_goblin. I have no idea what my FPS is or my Hrz, or whatever, is, I just build zoos until they begin to lag. Then I start another.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Just Kevin:

I don't know about Franchise mode, but the sandbox is usually the only place you can build a huge zoo due to the size of the landscape.
And indeed Green_goblin. I have no idea what my FPS is or my Hrz, or whatever, is, I just build zoos until they begin to lag. Then I start another.

I play mostly only Franchise mode (plus do all the career/timed scenerios as they are added) and it's mostly the same there...once the zoos get to a certain size i starts to chug.
For me, in Franchise mode, that happens around 6,000 visitors or, if I limit the visitor count to a much lower number (which I usually do) around 25 to 30 habitats.

[Just Kevin]

In sandbox I can manage around the same. And in my opinion my PC is quite humble.

[Emma Herb]

Iv had no problem running a big zoo in franchise iv got over 300 animals and over 8000 guests.... it just depends on your pc

[MIGHTYANDYMAN]

Originally posted by Emma Herb:

Iv had no problem running a big zoo in franchise iv got over 300 animals and over 8000 guests.... it just depends on your pc

True, also depends on what you consider to be an acceptable fps, I'm currently hitting 15fps without any problems

[Léon Cleaner's]

"I'm currently hitting 15fps without any problems"

15 fps, that remind me a lil the cartoons of 1920... don't blink too often, otherwise you lose half of the information :(

[Sheep]

Originally posted by Emma Herb:

Iv had no problem running a big zoo in franchise iv got over 300 animals and over 8000 guests.... it just depends on your pc

Ok so what is your PC then? And what do you consider "no problem"? Because most people would like at least 30-60fps if not more, and this game in itself has a glaring problem with optimization.

[Frederick_Zou]

Try to close the game and reopen it when you played over around 2 hour. Cause of these finding path algorithms, it will create many cache which no needed, that will slow down your CPU to calculate unneeded staff. My build is i9-9900k with RTX-2080, 1080p resolution, around 1000-1800 people in my zoo, and with around 60fps (pause the game will increase to 80-90 fps), But it will drop to 10-20 after continuing play 2-3 hours. Hope these will help.

[Jay]

What would you consider the cut-off point for number of animals and guests before you started having issues?

Currently I'm only running one franchise zoo, but if it lags when it gets large I'll start a new one. Currently at 3000 guests and 95 animals with no issues.

[SLG]

It depends on your computer.

[Wylie28]

Not really. Going from DX11 to DX12 won't net you more than a 5% performance increase at best if you are struggling. All the DX11 and DX12 upgrade would do is allow for multi-threaded draw calls. And they aren't bottleneck by much. Otherwise you'd be experiencing MUCH larger fps issues. The vast majority of each frame is spent on everything else. Its only a bottleneck by technicality. For the very small moment draw-calls are being computed yes the rest of your machine idles. That moment is 2ms max. Even if you drop this to 0 (which is impossible). you are gaining 1.5 fps. (less if your framerate is even lower) And if you are running at framerates higher than 30 fps that your zoo isn't big enough to be bottlenecked by draw calls to begin with.

DX12 will do nothing and its not worth dropping W10 support entirely. Don't listen to people who talk about bottlenecks without actually looking at frametimes. A bottleneck isn't always actually significant. There is a reason this hasn't been done.