relevance of portal travel time and SSD speed

[sora]

Hello Valheim players

I use portals a lot, so the long loading times when passing through them are a bit stressful. I would like to know if using a faster SSD would shorten the loading time.

So I have two questions for players.

[1] The read speed (actual value) of the SSD on which you have installed this game

[2] When passing through a portal, how long does it take from when the orange ring starts to appear until it starts to disappear

My speed is as follows.
[1] 3300MB/s
[2] About 8 to 10 seconds

I think the developers are probably doing their best to shorten the loading time with programs such as starting loading in the background when the player approaches the portal.

※I'm playing locally in single player.
※I am not a native English speaker, so there may be some inappropriate expressions. I apologize if that is the case.

[Calico-Jack]

tbh I think the travel time depends on how busy the area you're heading to is as mechanically the portal animation is there to hide the game loading in the map and its contents.

[sora]

@Calico-Jack

I tried it on multiple portals and the time was different. That's why I wrote 8-10 seconds. I don't know the exact reason, but I had a similar guess as you.

If you have time, I would appreciate it if you could tell me your [1][2].

[jonnin]

I will second that as you can hear the time pass when you portal. Eg if you go to a place that has 250 kilns making coal, you can hear them go into overdrive and you get to wait 2 min while it fast forwards the time in the target cell. Compared to an empty portal to go back to where you were after a nap and repair and junk dump, nothing there but a workbench and a portal, its near instant.

[sora]

@jonnin
If you have time, I would appreciate it if you could tell me [1] and the exact number of seconds for "its near instant."

I'd like to know your expression "its near instant" means 1 second, 8 seconds, or something else.

[Cap'n Bells]

I think you may be confusing
portal speed A=(normal) (ie no massive constructions on other end of portal)
and
portal speed B= (busy) (where you have a ton of world changes like @jonin's 250 kilns waiting to be rendered when exiting the portal)


i use exploration portals A LOT and the time changes the busier the location.So like @jonin seems to imply its not so much the ssd speed but the graphic rendering AND the data transfer.

ps i only play SP vanilla.. mods are a variable to add into this equation..

So the simplest answer is imho yes a super fast SSD may help load times... but i doubt you would be able to measure it.
as the root cause is the amount of data needing to be read and acted upon on the other side of the portal which is then also Video card and HDU/SSD AND Data size dependant

[jonnin]

Originally posted by sora:

@jonnin
If you have time, I would appreciate it if you could tell me [1] and the exact number of seconds for "its near instant."

I'd like to know your expression "its near instant" means 1 second, 8 seconds, or something else.

Edit... I was wrong, its never subsecond and its a lot slower when you watch the clock carefully :)

if I had not been there this game session, it takes notably longer the first time. This is where it gets weird though; my machine is dated and the big drive is HDD (game files). The save games are on the smaller SSD that has my windows profile. If it were all on SSD, it may be faster, but I don't know that.

trying to do some testing now.
house to house, not been before, 10 sec.
house to house, after visiting, 7-8 sec.
house to empty, first go, 7
house to empty, after loading, < 5 ... this is the fastest I see.

pretty consistent on those, sometimes various ones are randomly longer, but no faster than given above. Interestingly, first time, the red portal animation has just a tiny bit of stutter. Subsequent visits to same site, it never does. I don't think this is SSD; I think its ram & time to process the target, more crunching and less file reading.

[sora]

@Cap'n Bells
If you have time, I would be grateful if you could share your [1] and the exact time of the fastest portal travel you have experienced.

I would like to know if it was 1 second, 8 seconds, or something else.

[jonnin]

working on it above.

[sora]

@jonnin

Thanks for sharing the info.
That's a strange speed for an HDD. I don't know how fast the SSD your save data is stored on is, but it seems to be roughly the same as mine.

But I've never experienced anything under 5 seconds.

For example, in the simplest case.
Even with just a bench and a portal around the connected portal,
it still takes 8 seconds no matter how many times I go back and forth.

I also tried setting most of the graphics to the lowest level, but the time didn't change.

[knighttemplar1960]

I can explain why you are seeing a difference. If you had played multiplayer you would be able to observe it yourself. The "portal loading screen" you are seeing isn't really a loading screen. The time lag isn't really a time lag. Your character becomes invulnerable and flies directly from portal to portal at the same speed as the dev command fly while holding the shift key.

In multiplayer on the minimap you can see your teammates location icon flying from portal to portal. The display on the minimap is actually a couple hundred milliseconds behind where your teammate is. Their avatar will arrive and load in and then their location marker will update on the minimap and arrive too.

The time it takes is based on the actual distance from point to point at that speed plus any lag from a server, multiplayer, and/or large amounts of terrain modifications at or in between the end points.

[Cap'n Bells]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

I can explain why you are seeing a difference. If you had played multiplayer you would be able to observe it yourself. The "portal loading screen" you are seeing isn't really a loading screen. The time lag isn't really a time lag. Your character becomes invulnerable and flies directly from portal to portal at the same speed as the dev command fly while holding the shift key.

In multiplayer on the minimap you can see your teammates location icon flying from portal to portal. The display on the minimap is actually a couple hundred milliseconds behind where your teammate is. Their avatar will arrive and load in and then their location marker will update on the minimap and arrive too.

The time it takes is based on the actual distance from point to point at that speed plus any lag from a server, multiplayer, and/or large amounts of terrain modifications at or in between the end points.

oh thats MAGIC... i dont play MP so have never experienced this...Makes a ton of sense.. i have many portals across a previous map.. and in respect to this information.. they are all just island hopping.. in points of compass direction.. ie North 1st island ..then Second ..etc only the portals leading to Bossess vary.. (and i therefore build a more robust base (that seems to have more details and therefore more loading time LOL!! Again @knighttemplar1960 you are a font of wisdom!!

[Cap'n Bells]

ok i ran "AS SSD Benchmark"and got a score using 1 Gig test with a score of 5786 (laptop and lots of Windows open (shhh working)
i also jumped into VH and portalled around my old well mapped world alas i only got 6 seconds from both my close portals to distant portals using the "cat dog method of counting seconds" and @sora OP's start and stop points
but this laptop is a few weeks old and rtx 4070 and ..blah blah blah $$$

hope this helps the discussion

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Cap'n Bells:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

I can explain why you are seeing a difference. If you had played multiplayer you would be able to observe it yourself. The "portal loading screen" you are seeing isn't really a loading screen. The time lag isn't really a time lag. Your character becomes invulnerable and flies directly from portal to portal at the same speed as the dev command fly while holding the shift key.

In multiplayer on the minimap you can see your teammates location icon flying from portal to portal. The display on the minimap is actually a couple hundred milliseconds behind where your teammate is. Their avatar will arrive and load in and then their location marker will update on the minimap and arrive too.

The time it takes is based on the actual distance from point to point at that speed plus any lag from a server, multiplayer, and/or large amounts of terrain modifications at or in between the end points.

oh thats MAGIC... i dont play MP so have never experienced this...Makes a ton of sense.. i have many portals across a previous map.. and in respect to this information.. they are all just island hopping.. in points of compass direction.. ie North 1st island ..then Second ..etc only the portals leading to Bossess vary.. (and i therefore build a more robust base (that seems to have more details and therefore more loading time LOL!! Again @knighttemplar1960 you are a font of wisdom!!

Happy to be of assistance.

[Lacrimosa]

If you ever played a multiplayer and look at the map when someone uses the portal, you can see that their avatar on map is physically going on a straight line and it's constant speed for each player as far as I observed. So, my guess is that the portal travel speed also depends on the distance between the portals as your character is literally physically going there.

The loading itself might be a factor too but I never had more than 1-2 seconds, maybe 3 at max to wait, even if I arrive at the busy place, so I don't know.

(That's just my observation and I may be totally wrong and maybe distance has absolutely nothing to do with it)

[jonnin]

hmm. in that case, the 5 sec portal WAS pretty darn close to the target in my testing.