Low frame rate FPS and blotchy graphics rendering

Hi,
I have been searching around for ways to increase my FPS when running through a scene as I am getting a low frame rate and all the objects appear fuzzy and blotchy. I know there is a way under setting to lower the settings so that everything is rendered quicker going from epic to high to medium etc. Whilst i do then get a higher frame rate i sacrifice the overall look of the seem, something reminiscent of playing Duke nukem with blotchy graphics.

Is there any other way I can increase frame rate without sacrificing the visual graphics?

What i cannot understand is that the samples i download run fine in perfectly high def on ultra settings, and my PC is pretty high spec with 1GB nvidia and 16GB RAM. Could it be that I am creating the objects in the scene in the wrong way, I noticed a post about textures and polygons in adding up how many you have for each object you create in a scene so you don’t overload it, i’m still new so don’t know where to look for that yet.

Last point when creating the scene on ultra settings everything looks great and visually stunning in that high def kinda way, its only when i run the scene to walk through it that it goes all fuzzy, this is in 1st person over the shoulder type view so was wondering if I should switch to 3rd person and see if i get better performance?

Hope i don’t put anyone of answering so many questions here but this is rather frustrating and any help or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Hello Einarr,

When it comes to optimizing performance for game development there are several factors that attribute to the overall quality and speed in which the game runs. One of the main factors are your hardware specifications like your CPU (processor), and your GPU (graphics card). This will be your initial limitation and in order to understand how to develop games for your specific machine, you will need to do something called CPU and GPU profiling. What this means is that you will find the optimal limitations of each piece of hardware so you can develop within the scope of your personal machines performance.

Performance and Profiling Documentation

After reading through this documentation you will notice it talking about draw calls and the maximum or minimum amount in order to optimize your game development. To put it simply, draw calls are the amount of things on your screen that are rendered at any single point in time. These draw calls are split up between your CPU and GPU in order to divide the workload and run faster. This is where the profiling comes into play, so you can decide which piece of hardware will draw which assets and handle certain commands.

Why does this matter? Well depending on the amount of polygons and triangles per object, and other information like particle effects, materials, LODs (Levels of Detail), and lighting information. All of these things contribute to how well your game runs on your machine. With that in mind, if you want to provide me with your ‘dxdiag’ so I can have a look at your computers specifications I will be glad let you know how your computer should be performing, and if you are limited by your CPU or your GPU.

Here is some more documentation on one of the more common assets when designing games called, Static Meshes. It goes over the importance of subdividing your meshes cleanly so the Engine can render them efficiently.

Static Mesh Documentation

Draw Calls Documentation

With all that being said, sometimes you just need to lower your ‘Engine Scalability Settings’ in order to get better performance. Try using the ‘Auto’ button so the Engine can gauge your computers specs and try to find the most optimal settings. I hope this helped clarify some of the questions you had, but keep in mind. This topic has always been involved in game design. Finding the limitations of your platform and working within the scope of its own performance to create the best looking experience and smoothest game-play experience possible.

Cheers,

Thanks so much for the answer and the depth of response its amazing looking forward to spending the weekend tweeking and optimising it then moving on to the creative gremlins once more, thanks again

You are quite welcome. We are always glad to help, and enjoy providing users with sufficient knowledge when developing their games!