FPS Shattering BUG Discovered & Examined! - Environmental Effects...

[DJSatane]

Environmental Effects FPS Killer BUG aka. the killer Polygon!

I have read how number of people complained about bad fps even on good spec PC's, I havent experienced it until friday...and ever since I noticed something and reason why this occurs! Below I will present you with my findings.

First, this is confirmed on SH4 ver 1.1. Second, this bug revolves around using of Environmental Effects option which is responsible for clouds shadows and volumetric fog, in addition you can see parts of ships through the water to a certain depth etc...

Now let's get to business:

1. I start a training mission and right off the bat as I look around the horizon I encounter terrible fps drop in one spot. It's so bad my fps drops to 1-5fps, everywhere else its basically 60fps(vsync on). I discover its this mysteriously looking rectangle polygon sticking out of water:
http://www.cuih.net/sh4/env/env1.jpg
Notice on left side you can see a rectangle polygon that differs in brightness, notice my fps of 1, I can barely click to switch to another station to regain normal fps.

2. I go into Free Camera mode and get close to this entity. I play around with graphical options and narrow this bug is tied to Environmental Effects:
http://www.cuih.net/sh4/env/env2.jpg
Notice Environmental Effects is turned on and I am up close to this mysterious polygon, fps is 5 in the picture. Btw, this polygon is very small about 1/10 of a submarine length, I just got very close to it in this picture.

3. Now I click off Environmental Effects and bam look what happens! The polygon dissapears and look at my fps it maxes out again at 60:
http://www.cuih.net/sh4/env/env3.jpg

4. Here are 2 more pictures of this bug:
http://www.cuih.net/sh4/env/env4.jpg
http://www.cuih.net/sh4/env/env5.jpg

NOTES:

This polygon can always be found near your submarine or at least within 1000meters on beginning of tutorials and other scripted missions, however it reappears in other places and you never know when you can run into this. Assuming of course you play with Environmental Effects on.

* I haven't seen this in 1.0 version, only in 1.1. However, I only played 1.0 for few minutes, where 1.1 many hours.

CONCLUSION: Do not play with Environmental Effects on to avoid this, last night I played online with my friend and during deck gun fight where me and him ganged up on 1 destroyer he ran into this bug point blank range while using deck gun and it killed his fps to the point where it killed entire multiplayer session(he was the server).

My computer is adequate btw, here are the specs:

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU E6700, 2GB (4x512MB) DDR2 800mhz RAM, ATI Radeon X1950 XTX @ Catalyst 7.1, SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio, Windows XP Professional SP2.

I hope this helps people who had bad fps due to this, as they now know how to avoid it. But turning this effect on removes the beautiful look of submarine in shalow waters...

[Safe-Keeper]

Doesn't turning some Debugging feature in some obscure cfg file also turn this off?

Nice write-up anyhow.

[Mud]

I have fps improvement by this settings in the Main cfg ...

[DEVELOPING]
DevDebugEnable=No
DevEditEnable=No
MiniDump=No

But fps jumping from 1 to 30 in freecam while zooming in and returning to normal when going back to bridge.

Mud

[OneTinSoldier]

I have a feeling he's correct and that it's related to 'Enviromental Effects' being turned on. I don't think the DevDebug/Minidump stuff makes any difference one way or the other, although I'm not 100% certain.

[DJSatane]

I will try those settings, however this bug is not related to overall fps problem. This is a bug with Environmental Effects and random polygon in random surface places that when closely viewed will nearly freeze your rendering device...

[AirborneTD]

I've not noticed the rectangle of slowness, but tried Environmental effects yesterday which slowed my system way down. I have a 3.4 P4, 2 Gig Ram, GE Force 6800. I cannot cannot use the EE option at all. Just becomes too unplayable.

[shmall]

I have not seen the mysteroius poly yet? could htis just be an ATI problem? as i have an 8800GTX?


No real slowdowns on enviro either, just that on Enviro the crew turn into see- though ghosts when on deck lol :(



Simon

[Mud]

I have a feeling he's correct and that it's related to 'Enviromental Effects' being turned on. I don't think the DevDebug/Minidump stuff makes any difference one way or the other, although I'm not 100% certain.

What I did was with Enviromental Effects turned on and it does effect fps , at least on my system.
When I have the debug stuff on "Yes" I have a solid 5 fps :doh:

Mud

[DJSatane]

I will try to investigate this with debug things off but environmental effects on and see if I can find the polygon around still and get the cripple effect.

The polygon doesn't occur often, usually best chance to catch it is on beginning of missions, usually best to use periscope view zoomed in and slowly look around if you find it you will know cause the fps will die in one area. It does occur in missions afterwards but its occurence is random at this point from what I could find out.

As for video cards, its too early to tell if any specific brand is affected, I will get few answers from ubi forums from people who confirmed this, if they can confirm it on range of cards then we can eliminate specific brand.

[Tranton]

When I was going throug the Navigational part of sub school yesterday I notice that when I looked over to port, my system nearly froze. To startboard everything was fine and speedy. I wonder if one of these things was sitting in the water abeam to port.

[OneTinSoldier]

Probably, I wouldn't doubt it at all.

Everyone that has some input on the meat of this matter please list your...

System Specs

I have seen this FPS robbing bug with EE on and here are my System Specs. Video Card is an ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition with Catalyst 7.2 drivers.


System Specs:

Intel P4 3.4C Northwood Core with Hyperthreading on Asus P4C800-E Deluxe(Intel 875P + ICH5R Chipset), Zalman 7000a-Cu HS/Fan, Enermax EG651P-VE 550W PSU, 2 GB Mushkin eXtreme Performance(2-2-2) Dual Channel PC3200 RAM, Samsung 214T MultiSync 21" Digital LCD Monitor, Sapphire Radeon X800XT PE AGP Videocard with Catalyst v7.2 Driver, DirectX 9.0c (February 2007 update), Creative Audigy2 Platinum Soundcard with Driver version 02.09.0016, Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Speakers, Western Digital 250 GB w/8 MB Cache 7200 RPM Parallel ATA HDD, WinXP Pro SP2, Norton SystemWorks and Personal Firewall 2006

[DJSatane]

When I was going throug the Navigational part of sub school yesterday I notice that when I looked over to port, my system nearly froze. To startboard everything was fine and speedy. I wonder if one of these things was sitting in the water abeam to port.

If you had Environmental Effects turned on then yes thats most likely the reason. Its not easy to notice this polygon sometimes especially if you dont zoon in on it or the sky color is darker matching other water colors.

Btw what video card do you have?

[codmander]

its the 50$ box from hell--:rotfl: --lol

[MP]

I get this monolith on occasion also. First time I saw it, it was about 1000m away, sitting on a beach. It was like a scene from 2001 Space Odyssey. It looked pretty solid from afar but became transparent as I got closer.

Environmental Effects does cause this for me also (only the polygon appearance), my FPS is unaffected. I play the game maxed out, but have turned of EE, now I know what problems is causes.

Thx guys

[Burnspot]

I ran into this bug in a big way yesterday while engaging a large convoy. I didn't see any polygons, but I did have a layer of fog about 100 feet off the water. In a nutshell, I reached a point where any external view would basically slam the game down to 1 FPS (game is normally 60+ FPS) and eventually cause the video to fail (according to Vista's error reporting).

I reloaded my save from just before this incident and turned EE off, butter smooth throughout. Having EE off DEFINITELY solved any stutters and the above problem for me. I don't think it's the water doing it; I think it's the volumetric fog that's the root of the problem.

Specs:
Everything is maxed out in the graphics options, running at 1900x1200.
Dell M1710
Core2Duo T7200 2.0GHZ
2gb RAM
Vista 32-bit
GeForce Go 7950 GTX 512mb w/driver 7.15.11.141 (3/2/2007 Vista driver)

[Linavitch]

Nice work shipmate. You've just found me 10fps by turning EE off.

Core Duo E6600
X850 Pro
2Gb Ram Dual Channel
Vista ultimate 32bit

[Waterboy]

I've seen it too. I thought it was a graphic placeholder at the time.

I've been playing around with various settings and finally got my FPS 30+ everywhere (occasional dip into the single digits when using TC). I'll look into the debug stuff and see what happens.

20" iMac, 2 Ghz Core Duo, 2 GB 667 DDR, ATI 1600, Omega (Cat 7.1), Win XP

[yamla]

I have not seen the mysteroius poly yet? could htis just be an ATI problem? as i have an 8800GTX?

Duplicated the problem (not tried the fix) on my system with version 1.1 and the BFG 8800GTX video card in my Athlon64-4800 system, latest nvidia drivers.

[bunkerratt]

ok..i'm not real shure but i think this klingon cloaking poly came in with 1.1 patch i can't be shure..
intel p-4 775 3.4ht em64t
asus p5gd2 deluxe
twin 100 gb hdd's raid 0 sata 2 hdd coolers
ati x1950pro 256pcie kwas 3000 water cooled /gpu
creative x-fi extreame music soundcard
enermax 600 watt psu
dvd rom
dvd r=rw dl
floppy
3 gb pc2 5300
1 120 mm front intake fan
1 80 mm side intake
2 80 mm rear exhaust
northbridge/south bridge coolers
logitec 5.1 surround speakers
saitek eclipse keyboard
logitec tracman rollerball mouse cordless
xp pro sp2
20inch viewsonic vx2035wm

[MONOLITH]

I have it too. Looking in it's direction definately kills the frame rates to near zero, looking away from it restores things to normal.
I really like the Environmental Effects too. I hate to turn them off, but this gamekiller Ghostpoly has got to go...

http://www.MayhemOnStrings.com/Images/box.JPG


I'm on a Radeon ATI X850, 6.14 driver.

[Charlie901]

This needs posting in the *Stickied* BUG THREAD!

[flyinj]

I've never actually seen the ghost poly, but I occasionally do get the problem. Looking along a certain bearing will drop my fps to 1, and turning away from it restores it to a smooth 60.

A workaround would be to just turn off environmental effects when this bug is present, and switch it back on when it goes away in the patrol.

System:
p4 3.4 ghz
2 gig ram
SB Audigy 2
GeForce 7900GT

[MONOLITH]

Here's the box after driving some distance away from it. If you move away from it and leave it behind, the fps drop effect gets less and eventually goes away.
This thing acts like a placed object, with the FPS effect only for a certain diameter around it.


It's like an "FPS Black Hole".


"Move away Captain! Move Away!"

;)




http://www.MayhemOnStrings.com/Images/box2.JPG

[OneTinSoldier]

Hi Monolith,

I think it's interesting that in another thread it was referred to as a 'Monolith'. :lol: I think the thread was titled...

"Whats this monolith taking up all my FPS?"

And now here you are. We're going to be coming to your house soon to take revenge! :arrgh!: :gulp:

[Skweetis]

I saw these boxes as well, HOWEVER, it was when I was testing forcing FSAA through my drivers, and when looking in the direction of ships that were beyond the horizon.

Double check that your FSAA settings in your video card's settings is set to Application Controlled.

SPECS:
p4ht 3.0
1024 DDR2
nVidia 7600 GT

[MONOLITH]

I saw these boxes as well, HOWEVER, it was when I was testing forcing FSAA through my drivers, and when looking in the direction of ships that were beyond the horizon.

Double check that your FSAA settings in your video card's settings is set to Application Controlled.




I'm going to go in game and check this right now. I don't think trying to force the AA is doing it though.


I'll be right back.

[MONOLITH]

Well, it's definately NOT related to trying to force AA.


Hi Monolith,

I think it's interesting that in another thread it was referred to as a 'Monolith'. :lol: I think the thread was titled...

"Whats this monolith taking up all my FPS?"

And now here you are. We're going to be coming to your house soon to take revenge!


Yeah, elanaiba actually pointed me to that thread from another website. It's not me though, I swear. :p

It's weird, it's like a physical object the engine is placing on the map. it has a definate location, a localized area of effect, and you can move away from it and eventually avoid the effects.

I'm sure the devs will figure it out shortly. :up:

[MONOLITH]

I have fps improvement by this settings in the Main cfg ...

[DEVELOPING]
DevDebugEnable=No
DevEditEnable=No
MiniDump=No



While not related to this wierd object, I just want to add that turning off these things above seemed to really help my FPS as well.

My rig is barely passed the minimum specs, but shutting those things off allowed me to turn every graphics option on and up and I'm still getting reasonably good frame rates now.

[Deep Six]

Same here got the klingon UFO in my starbord quarter...

My rig gives me in excess of 60fps anywhere untill I meet the Blob!! Then my machine halts to 5-7 fps


Intel Core 2 Duo 6700
EVGA 8800GTX ACs3 Superclocked @2000

It's a killer !!!
Turned off Environmentals and never once did my machine dip below 60 fps

Good call

Deep six

[Audie]

I too have been afflicted with these Borg Monoliths.\

But I can't bring myself to shut off Environmental Effects - they
are just too lovely to miss out on :lol:

Hopefully the issue will be addressed in one of the forthcoming patches. :up:


Intel 3.73 EE
4 GB RAM
ATI X1900XTX

[Fercyful]

I have the monolith of FPS death here :down:

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/46/46_images/2001monolith.jpg

remember 2001 A Space Odyssey movie ? well the monolith is in SH4 now!! LOL :rotfl:

hope 1.2 will fix all this...

maybe a fade anti-piracy protection (ugly) leaking in the original subs UBI? :hmm: :nope: :oops:

[Fire_Spy]

Capt. "Open the torpedo doors Hal!"
Hal. " I cant do that dave"

[Fercyful]

Capt. "Open the torpedo doors Hal!"
Hal. " I cant do that dave"


:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: :arrgh!:

[kassman]

i have also suffered this monolith glitch when environment option is on. if you goto the submarine school and enter the navigation lesson. stand on the bridge and using youir binoc's look at bearing 290 to 305, my framerate will drop down to 1fps, but either side of those bearings i get over 30fps.

At first i thought it was related to those 2 large ships, but even after they have gone well passed me, the frame rate still dropped. Hope the devs can fix this in the next patch, as i really do like the environment option switched on.

[Sh!tler]

Same with me Kassman. At first I thought it was the ships too.

Thus far I have only come accross this problem on the training level and I am dissappointed to hear that it happens more throughout the game.

Again, my FPS is fine in game, but drops to about 10 when this bug occurs.

Specs:

Opteron @ 2.4 ghz
ATI X1900XT
2GB RAM

[Sh!tler]

Another thing to note is that the closer you get to the monolith, the slower the fps becomes.

[SteamWake]

I have the monolith of FPS death here :down:

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/46/46_images/2001monolith.jpg

remember 2001 A Space Odyssey movie ? well the monolith is in SH4 now!! LOL :rotfl:

hope 1.2 will fix all this...

maybe a fade anti-piracy protection (ugly) leaking in the original subs UBI? :hmm: :nope: :oops:

My God ! Its full of stars !

[nfitzsimmons]

I saw this last night with an nVidia 7600GS.

[Autechre]

Yes I too have seen this anomaly at sea on rare occasion, although sometimes i get a killer fps hit to 1-5fps without seeing it. I always just Alt Tab out of the game and then back again, seems to fix it for me. I do not have to turn off env effects though and get 50-60fps constantly when this doesnt happen.

System:
Core 2 duo @ 3Ghz
ATi X1900XTX/1900XT in crossfire
2Gig'o'Ram
1920x1200 on Dell 2407

[Hartmann]

whith Alt +Tab some cards switches 3d mode clock to 2d speeds, ?? :hmm:

could be a problem that makes 3d card turn to 2d ??

[-Pv-]

You can also recover from the framerate hits caused by a fault looking in a certain direction by changing your view for a short time rather than switching graphic options on and off.
-Pv-

[Jace11]

Yeah I get it too...

ATi card again..

Reading this thread through, most people who have this problem seem to be ATI users, though there are a few nVidia users also...

Can nVidia users see the box... or do you just get the fps drop??

[DJSatane]

Yea i seen number of nvidia users that also see the box posted on ubi forums, this seems to be general environmental effects related graphical bug.

[StandingCow]

Happened to me in a multiplayer game the other night.. I was able to get out of parascope mode though, and it went away.

Geforce 7950 GT KO.

[Killer-Carrot]

Same problem, the damn thing is very annoying.
specs
MSI 7900GT
3x512MB kingston hyper-x DDR2 667
SB Audigy SE
MSI K9NU Neo-V
Amd athlon 4200+ x2

[Deep Six]

PV whilst I agree that changing your view will get the blasted thing to go away....THE point is ITS STILL there and so its a BUG.....

You are very informative on How to "Fix" most of the little gripes on these boards due to lack of not reading or jumping right in and not understanding the game....I applaud that...BUT this IS a BIG and a killer....We should not have to "recover" from something like this at all.

It needs to be sorted out by the Dev's

Deep Six

[DJSatane]

You can also recover from the framerate hits caused by a fault looking in a certain direction by changing your view for a short time rather than switching graphic options on and off.
-Pv-

Lol...good one now let me tell you a story of a multiplayer game I had with a friend. He was a server who hosted the mission. After we sank number of troop carriers, we both surfaced to attack a lone destroyer with our deck guns, a destroyer got very close to my friend and he was manning the deck gun himself, aiming shooting...now he was basically point blank to the destroyer when......he screamed(on ventrillo voice server) that his video nearly froze his fps was near 1, yep he ran into the nasty polygon object. Few seconds later the multiplayer session died saying server disconnected. No, he didnt crash or lose connection but the huge lag and fps drop caused some kind of desync in our online session. So the morale of the story is you are better off playing the game without Environmental Effects on because you never know when you run into this. Could be during critical periscope attack where time is of the essence...etc. I hope devs can at least narrow this problem down to specific graphics effect. Maybe this is related to volumetric fog.... I wish we could remove just volumetric fog and use only water transparency. Without Environmental Effects game looks half as good, I love the water transparency. We can't use AA, cant get any higher resolution of 3d engine than 1024x and now we are also afraid to use Environmental Effects... I know there is a ton of other gameplay issues but I hope at least 1 of the graphics areas are addressed soon.

[Snakeeyes]

I get this monolith on occasion also. First time I saw it, it was about 1000m away, sitting on a beach. It was like a scene from 2001 Space Odyssey. It looked pretty solid from afar but became transparent as I got closer.

Environmental Effects does cause this for me also (only the polygon appearance), my FPS is unaffected. I play the game maxed out, but have turned of EE, now I know what problems is causes.

Thx guys

Approach it slowly... have your radio operator monitor all frequencies. Send a commando team to the beach... have one of them touch it...

SSSSSSSSSHREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAK!!!!!!

Does it send a transmission towards the moon?

[fair_weather]

I had the FPS drop on me last night.

Didn't see the monolith...however I noticed that the lag was coming from the wake of my boat. It isn't exactly what you guys are posting about, could be related.

AMD64 3200+
1 gig ddr
250gig HDD
Nvidia 7600GT

[ScottD]

I was wondering what the hell this thing was...I have the same problem!

Specs:

ASUS P5W DH DELUXE
Intel Core2 Duo E6400
2x ATI X1950 Pro Crossfired with 7.3 drivers
4GB Corsair XMS2
Dell 2405FP
MS Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

[seawolf34]

You can add me to the list of people experiencing this bug, although I haven't had it happen since upgrading from a 7900gt to a 8800gtx

[GoldenEagle8]

Hi, well it's nice to see that the problem is being adressed at least.
I have an ATI 200m card.

I havn't seen the monilith, but I do have an FPS death.
sure, I get 5-6 FPS out side (good enough for me:up:), but with the EE on, I get a whopping 2-3, 1 if I'm lucky!:o

Someone said that Debugging thingies some where might help, how do I get there, does it help that much?

[AVGWarhawk]

All I can say is my X1300 EXG 512 mb worked fine with the EE turned on. I never did see the monolith with monkeys holding femurs beating on the monolith thus creating bad FPS. What did me in was the fog. Perhaps this monolith thing is part of the fog set up although it does not present itself as fog but the weird monolith?:hmm:

[Da_Junka]

Ive seen it, a dirty great box stuck on the horizon when approaching a convoy in one of the set battles, dident take much notice at the time, just thought 'oh look another bug'

[OddjobXL]

Nvidia user here. I'm on an XPS dual core laptop. I definitely got the slowdown a few times but no monolith try as I might to see the thing. Seemed to be related to my wake as well but I'm not sure. It happened just as I left on my first patrol out of Pearl Harbor - I started away from the port.

[alexoscar]

Nvidia user here. I'm on an XPS dual core laptop. I definitely got the slowdown a few times but no monolith try as I might to see the thing. Seemed to be related to my wake as well but I'm not sure. It happened just as I left on my first patrol out of Pearl Harbor - I started away from the port.

Same here, and Nvidia too (7950GX2).

[AVGWarhawk]

Seems to me that something is attempting to generate itself but appears as the dreaded monolith in stead of fog/rain/cloud/low level mist. The question is: What is the EE attempting to generate and why is it appearing as a monolith?

Maybe we can narrow down what is attempting to be generated and dump the sucker. Perhaps a log of when it happended. What the weather was like. Time of day. That sort of thing:hmm:

[LukeFF]

Good find, DJSatane. Now I know why they picked you to be a tester for Red Orchestra. ;)

I had this problem as well. I have a GeForce 7800 GT, 81.95 drivers, and with EE enable would get this FPS-killing bug. It was really bad in port, as it effectively killed my ability to look around while up on deck. As soon as I disabled EE, blam, the problem went away, and now I'm back to a steady 30 FPS, at 1600x1200 resolution.

Now, let's just hope the devs fix this problem with the next patch. This is too much of a game breaker for them NOT to.

[MONOLITH]

Just to add to my posts above (if you've never seen the monolith , check my pics on the previous page),


When you leave the area where the thing spawns, it does reappear at random at different locations. While sailing across the pacific, it would appear randomly every so often, usually just behind or next to me, and sometimes dissapear within a few minutes.

So it's not being recognized as an 'object' per say by the game engine, even though you can move away from it's physical location. Once it's too far away to be seen, it will respawn somewhere else close to your ship.

It definately seems related to some graphic appearance right where the atmosphere effects meet the water.

Like the rest of the bugs, I've actually just started to ignore it and keep playing. It's effect seem temporary, especially when your moving, which you usually are.

One test I haven't tried, but might be worth checking out since any info we can pass to the devs is helpful.... I don't think I've ever seen it when the sub is submerged. (with the camera above the water). Maybe the next time someone sees it at the beginning of a mission, try to submerge without moving too much lateral distance. See if the bug remains after the sub submerges. Maybe we can isolate it a little further to the the EE around a surfaced sub.

[Villicus]

I've never seen the monolith, but ever since I installed the patch the game has become unplayable due to fps loss. It runs smooth as silk for about 5-10 minutes and then almost freezes it's so slow. Before the patch it ran super smooth at all times. My vid card is ATI 800XT AIW.

Changed Vsync to Application Preference and it is much better now.

[GhostRider]

Well it sure ain't the bermuda triangle ;)

Anyway Its a bug. It should be fix in the next patch?

[klh]

I've not noticed the rectangle of slowness, but tried Environmental effects yesterday which slowed my system way down. I have a 3.4 P4, 2 Gig Ram, GE Force 6800. I cannot cannot use the EE option at all. Just becomes too unplayable.

In SH2, we had the "Red Triangle", and now the "Rectangle of Slowness"! :rotfl:

[d@rk51d3]

I hate to drag up this crusty old topic, but I'm seeing this "monolith of FPS slowness"........... on my windows desktop, and any other program I run:huh:.

I can't verify any FPS hit, but there is a definite patch along the top edge of my screen that looks sort of like a watermark (shaped like the bottom half of a square, sitting on about a 30 degree angle).

Anybody else seen anything like it?:dead:

[PepsiCan]

The issue described in this thread was resolved with Patch 1.2.

If you are not on patch 1.2, either upgrade to it or wait for 1.3 to be released sometime next week.

[d@rk51d3]

It's not just a SHIV issue, as I stated in my post. I'm getting it everywhere, even here as I type this.

[stabiz]

Then I would think you have a virus.

As stated, the monolith of decay and utter pain left us alone after 1.2.

[d@rk51d3]

Doubt it, but I'll re-check. Cheers guys.:up:

[Jmack]

this is crazy sh4 would run nice before 1.3 at the highest resolution , now on the lowest it keeps jumping between 1fps and 40 fps even with everything turned off

someone mentioned to me that develloping debug issue so i set everything to no ... it still sucks , i know i dont have a super rig ... but it should handle it

dual core 6400 2.14ghz
2048 mb ram
geforce 7300 gt 512 mb

windows xp