What recent engine changes?

[Autentist]

Wow, this is great. Can’t wait to see new perfomance.

[Gumshoe]

The support for DX11 isn’t as significant as the creation of a new multi-threaded, better optimized renderer. We still have to support DX9 and people running that will still see a decent boost in fps, with a little more for DX11.

Awesome news

And as a Linux user, thank you for maintaining the DX9 support, much as I’d rather it not be a necessary evil!

Also, if the renderer is re-written does that mean we do indeed get ‘prettier’ spell effects etc in the expansion?

If Microsoft truly ‘Loved Linux’ they’d open source DirectX…

[spikenik]

That sounds awesome, even if I only manage to get the “minimum” of +10fps then that’s still a huge improvement. Props to Rhis.

[Safarel]

How much frame rate increase you see will depend on your system. Unfortunately, it seems to be a bigger gain for higher end systems but, so far, everyone has reported pretty good gains. For me it was about a 20fps increase and I think everyone has reported at least 10fps.

For me it was about a 20fps increase and I think everyone has reported at least 10fps.

Wow, this sounds very… promising.

[RxJunkie]

Not sure you understand what Mamba was saying but he is correct. The issue is that the game is not fully utilizing additional cores on your CPU. Your GPU is probably at 37% because that is all that is needed to run the game, based on how fast it can perform given CPU limitations.

The problem with the engine is that it was created at a time when multi-core processors were not commonly in use and so it was mainly designed to run on a single core.

Over time, we’ve improved multi-threading and spread more of the processing tasks to other cores but it is a challenging and time-consuming task to do that to a pre-existing code base and still a significant share of the load remains on one core.

The next upgrade though will address one of the biggest issues, which is the old renderer. Rhis has totally re-written the renderer from scratch. Where the renderer bogs down the CPU is on collecting all the assets in the scene to be rendered. Until the CPU can do that faster, it limits the work the GPU needs to do.

How much frame rate increase you see will depend on your system. Unfortunately, it seems to be a bigger gain for higher end systems but, so far, everyone has reported pretty good gains. For me it was about a 20fps increase and I think everyone has reported at least 10fps.

Many thanks to you, Rhis and the rest of the Crate team! Can’t wait to play the expansion and whatever new games you come out with.

[medierra]

Also, if the renderer is re-written does that mean we do indeed get ‘prettier’ spell effects etc in the expansion?

Haha, wishful thinking but unfortunately no. The art and the pfx system are still the same - just improving the engine itself won’t make it look any different.

[Pavel]

The support for DX11 isn’t as significant as the creation of a new multi-threaded, better optimized renderer. We still have to support DX9 and people running that will still see a decent boost in fps, with a little more for DX11.

DX 11 will be added to addon???

[wwtchhntr]

The next upgrade though will address one of the biggest issues, which is the old renderer. Rhis has totally re-written the renderer from scratch. Where the renderer bogs down the CPU is on collecting all the assets in the scene to be rendered. Until the CPU can do that faster, it limits the work the GPU needs to do.

Have you guys noted an issue where the game bogs down while rotating the camera? Will the DX11 and other stuff improve this? It seems like what you are saying, I figure rotations are pretty intensive calculations. There is no such lagging or skipping if i leave the camera alone…but i cant. Some areas worse than others, Four Hills/Old Arkovia being one of the worst. Interior dungeons being the least affected. And more when panned out than when zoomed in…because more stuff on the screen i imagine. Really hoping the improvements help this.

[DonnieDarko]

I’m also experiencing stutters on camera rotation. Very enthusiastic to feel those changes, bigthanks to the guys for working on this.
Good to know poor CPU utilization was the bottleneck. Should really let the modern GPUs shine.

[Snazzblaster]

Have you guys noted an issue where the game bogs down while rotating the camera? Will the DX11 and other stuff improve this? It seems like what you are saying, I figure rotations are pretty intensive calculations. There is no such lagging or skipping if i leave the camera alone…but i cant. Some areas worse than others, Four Hills/Old Arkovia being one of the worst. Interior dungeons being the least affected. And more when panned out than when zoomed in…because more stuff on the screen i imagine. Really hoping the improvements help this.

I’ve actually noticed that too, but no one else really brings it up so I didn’t think others experienced it. I don’t think some people touch the camera very often, but something about outdoor environments cause it to skip quite a bit when I rotate the camera.

[CDQUINT]

wow this is a great notice! perfect

[Paavo]

hopefully this means i’ll be able to rotate the camera without the usual fraction of a second hangup.

[garpu]

The support for DX11 isn’t as significant as the creation of a new multi-threaded, better optimized renderer. We still have to support DX9 and people running that will still see a decent boost in fps, with a little more for DX11.

So there is dx9 in the expansion, still? (Asking because on Linux, dx11 is still a bit…experimental… :D)

[allufewi]

I hope it somewhat affectet the constant microstuttering as well.

GD is an absolute mess in regards of… how to say it… “stability of picture”. I recently switched to a Gsync-Monitor in hope it would fix some of the tearing. It did, but GD remains the only game on my disk (SSD actually) that stutters and feels “jumpy” and rough all the damn time despite my pretty high-endish setup.

Theres a ton of proposed fixes around, but none really helps preventing this entirely

[Stenget]

I hope it somewhat affectet the constant microstuttering as well.

GD is an absolute mess in regards of… how to say it… “stability of picture”. I recently switched to a Gsync-Monitor in hope it would fix some of the tearing. It did, but GD remains the only game on my disk (SSD actually) that stutters and feels “jumpy” and rough all the damn time despite my pretty high-endish setup.

Theres a ton of proposed fixes around, but none really helps preventing this entirely

what cpu/cpu clock do you have?
I got way better performance when i got a new cpu and overclocked it, atleast most microstuttering went away
seems like only core 0,3,4, and 6 on my cpu is affected by grim dawn, which is probably why i got more performance when i overclocked
this is I7 6700k @4.6 ghz btw

[allufewi]

Ive been through this topic quite a few times. As it is a 7700k@4,9Ghz, 32GB of 3600 16-16-17-36-2T and a GTX 1080 with other games running buttery smooth - no it is not the hardware.

For some people the microstutters came when switching to Win 10, some always had them, some claim its a driver thing and some never experienced them anyway. As a player of fast egoshooters I maybe notice such stuff heavier than the usual gamer, who just doesnt even notice.

Whatever the exact reason is, I hope the stuttering will disappear with the alleged performance-improvements of the new renderer.

[the_dead_pig]

Ive been through this topic quite a few times. As it is a 7700k@4,9Ghz, 32GB of 3600 16-16-17-36-2T and a GTX 1080 with other games running buttery smooth - no it is not the hardware.

For some people the microstutters came when switching to Win 10, some always had them, some claim its a driver thing and some never experienced them anyway. As a player of fast egoshooters I maybe notice such stuff heavier than the usual gamer, who just doesnt even notice.

Whatever the exact reason is, I hope the stuttering will disappear with the alleged performance-improvements of the new renderer.

no such issue but I use amd hardware.
no issue with turning camera either.
using ssd
game is smooth
some bog down when a lot of stuff happens and be better with dx11