From 60fps to 30 constantly

[Komodo82 0]

Hi, friends!

O have discovered one more bug:

My fps constantly flowing from 30 to 60 (never below 30). After moving camera it shows 60fps, than I leave mouse and in 1-3 seconds it shows me constant 30.

Also while moving camera fps falls to 30 from 60fps.

I am sure that the game can run smooth and constant 60fps.

Do you have any ideas how to make it work always on 60fps?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

For openers, how about a description of your machine?

[Komodo82 0]

Ofcourse : I7-4770k, 16gb, gtx 670

[rsc204 21,815]

Well, SC4 is not a first person shooter, why exactly would 60fps gameplay be beneficial? It would make sence if Maxis had locked the frame rate to 30fps, a common practise, to keep things running smoothly.

[Komodo82 0]

I simply like comfortable 60fps  instead of uncomfortable 30 )

Is there an opportunity to unlock 30fps ?

[rsc204 21,815]

I don't even know if it is locked, but I think you misunderstand me.

There is no appreciable difference between 30fps and 60fps when running a simulation game. There is no "action" going on for things to appear slow.

If Maxis locked the frame rate, which I'm saying is common practise where 60fps has no benefit, not that they did. Then I'd guess no, you probably won't be able to change that. But then I have no specific knowledge of this in relation to SC4.

[Komodo82 0]

For me 60fps is very important. And there is a bi difference between 30 and 60 - https://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

[rsc204 21,815]

I am aware what FPS is all about. I'm the sort of guy who has special cables to make sure the signals my TV receives, are always the best possible quality. But the article you linked to is in no way relevant to the situation we have here. There is no moving about, sans say some clouds drifting across the sky, some cars and people moving about and other animations. As you say, when you scroll, the point where 60fps would be advantageous, indeed 60fps is what you are getting. If nothing is moving, how is updating the display faster going to improve anything? All the in-game animations are very basic and would gain little to no improvement from so doing.

The mere fact that the game switches between them, shows the game is capable of running in 60fps, when it wants to. This lends weight to my theory that Maxis locked the frame rate when you are not moving around, to improve the performance of the game engine. Whilst this might not be necessary with your modern rig, it probably was in 2003. There is no setting you can flick on or off to change this behaviour.

You might want to look at the Graphics Rules.sgr file, if there was any way to change things, that'd be the most likely place. As far as I know, there is no such setting.

If you believe you will get a better experience with constant 60fps from a simulation game with a static view, I'm sorry but I think you are wrong. The idea that 60fps is always better is a total myth, just like the idea that all games need to be in 1080p resolution to look their best. Plenty of games run much better because they are locked to 30fps or use a lower (albeit up-scaled) resolution.

[Komodo82 0]

It seems for me that I didn't understood you well. )

The problem is that when I move camera the fps drops down from 60 to 30, when I stop camera I have 60 again and in 1-3 sec it frops down to 30fps.

Something like that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you run constantly at 60fps you will slow down the simulation.  This means that you'll have to settle for smaller cities before you start running into the simulation lag.  The operations curve for this simulation is a hyperbola, and the knee of the curve at the X-axis is dependent on the speed of the CPU.  If the CPU is too busy updating the GPU just to achieve a rather silly frame rate, it has less time to run the simulation and so you drag the knee of the curve to the left.  Instead of hitting the lag at 500,000 Sims and other objects, it will happen at, say, 350,000 or sooner.  Why get excited about the frame rate if the display looks OK?

[Prophet42 1,501]

6 hours ago, Komodo82 said:

It seems for me that I didn't understood you well. )

The problem is that when I move camera the fps drops down from 60 to 30, when I stop camera I have 60 again and in 1-3 sec it frops down to 30fps.

Something like that.

Which game are you talking about?  This forum is for SimCity 4.  There really is no 'camera' in SC4.  You can rotate the whole city or zoom in and out, but that is about it.  The FPS would only be relevant really for a 3D game (which SC4 is not).

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

On 4/4/2016 at 10:47 PM, Prophet42 said:

There really is no 'camera' in SC4.

Hmmm. Mine seems to have one.

Tho whether or not this relates to the OP's concern is beyond me.

[Komodo82 0]

Prophet42

Ofcourse I am talking about Simcity 4 ))

There is a camera, but it is static by it's angle.

" The FPS would only be relevant really for a 3D game (which SC4 is not) " - you are completely wrong. look at this 2D gif and you will understand it https://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

[rsc204 21,815]

No I'm sorry, but you are wrong, you simply don't understand how games work.

Quote

When the frame rate of a movie is too low, your mind will no longer be convinced that the contents of the movie are continuous, and the movie will appear to jump (also called strobing).

But SC4 is not a movie, it was not filmed. It is a game engine, therefore what you see is rendered in real time. Therefore many of the arguments put forward by the website you link to are simply irrelevant when it comes to a game.

It seems to me that 60fps is some sort of target you feel unhappy if you can not achieve with your games? You are by no means alone, in the case of fast-paced action games, heck I'm inclined to agree. For example, I have a number of Japanese Videogame systems and games, especially to avoid the 50hz problem associated with older European consoles. So this is absolutely an area I know of and care about.

But, there is no benefit to SC4 from displaying at 60fps, none, zip, nada. Not that it matters anyway, because as far as I know, you simply can not force that to happen, regardless of your hardware's capability. But the point I and many others are trying to get across is simply that it isn't necessary in this case. This type of game does not benefit from 60fps, even if more generally the concept of 60fps is usually beneficial.

When the view of your city is static, it is impossible for the eye to "miss" a frame. That's like saying a photograph is out of sync, totally illogical.

When you are scrolling your cities, 60fps might give a slightly improved experience. But, why do you need it? Long before SC4 drops frames, it will fail to refresh the display in time entirely. The game is very CPU intensive, even if your GPU can keep up, likely your CPU can't. We have very similar systems, I've an i7 4770, 16GB and GTX 750ti, I also run SC4 from an SSD and use a RAM drive for increased performance. But SC4 doesn't care. It was made in a different time, and still has many moments of lag, despite the hardware I throw at it. So even if you got 60fps, you would still have lag, because this is not the GPU's doing, it's the CPUs. And if (admittedly only 1 core of) an i7 Haswell chip can't keep up with the game, then nothing will, since you can't use multiple cores to work around the issue.

[Komodo82 0]

 

rsc204

It seems for me that we are speaking about the same things )

" When the view of your city is static, it is impossible for the eye to "miss" a frame " - agree, but there are planes and cars which moves 30 times per sec instead of 60.

" When you are scrolling your cities, 60fps might give a slightly improved experience "- yes, it is much more pleasent to see smooth movement.

Thank all of you to discuss the theme )

 

 

 

[APSMS 1,892]

The real issue is that, because everything in the game is a representation of what is happening mathematically under the hood, you don't miss anything by having a "slow" frame rate of 30 fps, unlike in a shooter game, where what you see has a correlation between your interactions in the game, and therefore rendering speed (measured by FPS) is important.

Your eye literally cannot see the difference, because you only see at 24 fps, and there is no motion blur in the game. Also, because what you see isn't what is actually happening game-wise, it cannot affect your experience. I frequently get 17-25 fps when playing the game, and about 240 fps when scrolling (because the simulation pauses when you move the camera). The frame rate is noticeable at 20 fps, as everything is slightly stilted, but at 25fps and above, there is essentially no difference; scrolling is smooth because of the framerate, but this is the only tangible benefit of the higher frame rate, and again it's only possible because the simulation pauses when the view changes.

 

[Mister Giggles 310]

On 4/7/2016 at 10:10 PM, APSMS said:

The real issue is that, because everything in the game is a representation of what is happening mathematically under the hood, you don't miss anything by having a "slow" frame rate of 30 fps, unlike in a shooter game, where what you see has a correlation between your interactions in the game, and therefore rendering speed (measured by FPS) is important.

Your eye literally cannot see the difference, because you only see at 24 fps, and there is no motion blur in the game. Also, because what you see isn't what is actually happening game-wise, it cannot affect your experience. I frequently get 17-25 fps when playing the game, and about 240 fps when scrolling (because the simulation pauses when you move the camera). The frame rate is noticeable at 20 fps, as everything is slightly stilted, but at 25fps and above, there is essentially no difference; scrolling is smooth because of the framerate, but this is the only tangible benefit of the higher frame rate, and again it's only possible because the simulation pauses when the view changes.

 

 

24 FPS for a motion picture is not the same thing as 24 FPS for a video game. They are quite different.

Like the 30 FPS/60 FPS debate for certain games, what we'll live with depends on our tolerance and, indeed, what we notice. In this case, your eyes can't tell the difference. Mine can. I find that I am exceptionally sensitive to jitter in my games.

Anything under 75 FPS, the refresh rate of my monitor, becomes noticeable in the form of a jagginess when moving. 24 FPS is extremely jittery. It is not that important given the nature of SC4, but it is noticeable.

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

@Mister Giggles Your recent post triggered a memory, however only fragments are available to me.

What I'm imagining is the Glide Wrapper they wrote for Diablo II, LOD. It might be game specific, but the fragment part of my memory says it was tweakable and/or the source code was public for modifying for other games or something like that. I'm really getting in way over my head on what I really grasp about the how's and why's of fps's. It seems like the discussion was about the game running 25 fps for internal calculations but the video was a different aspect.

I'll quit here cause I really don't have the outer grasp of the whole thing. I never needed Glide, so I just played.

[APSMS 1,892]

@Mister Giggles I wonder if what you're seeing is FPS related, though.

My question comes because my automata (particularly trains) is often jittery when it moves around my city. Often my game doesn't reach the magic 30fps, much less 24, but it does get reasonably close that I can ignore it most of the time. This doesn't necessarily apply to the automata, however, because occasionally they will maintain their jitter (bouncing back and forth on the track or the road) when the camera is scrolling and FPS is theoretically faster than my screen can display.

An easy way to see whether this is true or not is whether it applies uniformly to all motion in the game. Does it do this jagginess for everything, from planes/trains/car/boat automata to clouds and waves? If your PC is really capable, give the JENX Aurora/Jupiter mods a whirl, and see if in a developed city you still notice the jagginess on everything that moves, and if this effect still occurs when you move the camera.

I am curious as to how big your cities are, because I suspect there is a limit in your CPU bandwidth that prevents the game from being as smooth as it could. It's not the fault of your computer, but a limitation of the game, which is not only single-threaded, but heavily CPU dependent because it was expected to run on low end machines with only a graphics display driver, not a proper video card (though obviously there is video card support).

 

And finally, not to be inflammatory or anything, but I am just the slightest bit curious as to how you were ever able to watch TV or movies before the modern digital era without pulling your hair out, given slow-motion and high frame/refresh rates are a modern phenomenon. I understand that there is a difference, but how much motion blur can you be not discerning in an overview shot of SimCity that it gets to you? Something tells me that this is not the case, and that in fact something else (besides framerate) is at play here.

[Mister Giggles 310]

Animations in video games can be tied to different rates of play. 30 FPS, 60 FPS, unlimited, etc. They can be detached from what the main game is running at, and start seeming out of place when the game is running at a higher FPS. This appears to be true for SimCity 4, as I notice automata being a bit laggy in comparison to, say, the animating of waves upon a beach.

My largest city is the largest city ever naturally grown in SimCity 4 in terms of population and workforce numbers (16 and 10 million, respectively). The amount of work the simulation has to use simply to maintain itself is impressive once a city gets close to this size, and made finishing off the final sections rather irksome. For instance, the radius the game uses to search for network connections shrinks as a city becomes more complex.

It was created on a machine running a Phenom X4 clocked at 3.2 Ghz. More than enough for the task. Importantly, it should be noted that it is impossible to get optimal visual performance with SimCity 4 as long as shadows are being rendered. Turn those off and it'll be a silky smooth experience for anyone with a half-modern machine. Even on my current machine with an absolutely overpowered processor compared to the Phenom X4, I see regular dips down into the 20s depending on what's occurring. Areas with many props slow the game down, as does moving diagonally.

(Note that the speed at which SC4 can visually render is separate from its calculation speed; I can have 20 FPS and on Cheetah speed the game will still run through months like prunes through old people)

The image a CRT television puts out is, frankly, really bad compared to what a monitor can do. The image is naturally blurry, making detecting jitter in the image more difficult. More importantly, you sit farther away from a television than you do a computer monitor. Your eyes aren't close enough to start observing issues in motion. Finally, one does not interact with a movie or a television program.

When running at the frame rate of my monitor, SimCity 4 shows no jitters at all when moving around.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Don't count on a fixed FPS with this game.  The simulation takes precedence over the display, which is abstract at best.  As a city grows larger and takes more CPU to complete the simulation loop, the number of bows to the GPU will drop.  This has the appearance of lag, but in fact the CPU is doing what is asked of it, which may be more than it can handle in one time slice.

[APSMS 1,892]

I suspect the laggy automata is due to the fact that automata are a visual representation of a statistical quantity, and are therefore probably more dependent on the CPU than is probably desired. Speaking off the top of my head with no basis whatsoever, I suspect this helps explain why automata would be more laggy compared to other animated aspects of the game, especially since (unfortunately) I suspect that the randomization of the automata paths is probably calculated by the CPU and not the GPU which  would exacerbate the problem. (Though again, I am talking off the top of my head and have no background, game-wise or profession-wise, to back up my statement).

Also, I suspect that although an i7-4770k is overkill for the game, unless you have it overclocked to something north of 4GHz, I suspect it isn't substantially better (maybe 20-25% at most due to bandwidth improvements) at running the game than a Pentium D at 3.3GHz, though if you multitask while playing obviously the computer will run smoother at everything else as well, mostly due to the fact that the game is single-threaded. I do not run with the -CPUCount:1 shortcut target line in my game, as my computer seems to handle "multithreading" of the game fairly well, but I suspect that it doesn't properly schedule most tasks, and causes the game to run a little slower (if anything) because my laptop has slight heating issues and using multiple processors forces down the CPU clock speed (I have a Sandy Bridge i7 Quad core laptop--it's nice, but not the greatest at CPU-intensive tasks; I think I need to redo the thermal paste on the CPU heatsink).

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

 

6 hours ago, APSMS said:

Speaking off the top of my head with no basis whatsoever, I suspect ..

I imagine this is what the chaotic hair guy would refer to as a thought experiment. Your reasoning for why the CPU is likely over loaded is sound imo.

 

6 hours ago, APSMS said:

I do not run with the -CPUCount:1 shortcut target line in my game, ...

Yikes! I'm guessing you have an absolutely rigid Save Routine. Like APSMS.

My first experience with the plain vanilla game was I could run anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours before the multi-threading-magic of one test comp went CTD on me. I was upset I'd lost a lot of work. I always use the -CPUCount:1 switch. (To each their own, ofc.)

 

[rsc204 21,815]

6 hours ago, APSMS said:

Also, I suspect that although an i7-4770k is overkill for the game, unless you have it overclocked to something north of 4GHz, I suspect it isn't substantially better (maybe 20-25% at most due to bandwidth improvements) at running the game than a Pentium D at 3.3GHz.

The default model (non-K 4770) will TurboBoost to 3.9ghz, when running a single-core application it can keep this up constantly too. Having this variant, I can tell you that the processor is neither overkill for SC4 (which happily eats it alive), nor is it a Pentium D either!

Clock speed is a meaningless way of referencing the actual capability of a chip. It's a bit like thinking every 3.0l engine would perform similarly, they simply don't. Frankly it's a minefield, even with the aid of benchmarking. However the technology of the cores of i7 chips is very different from the Pentium D. That's before factoring in things like enhancements on the motherboards and other components used with them. In real terms, the i7 would whip the Pentium D's proverbial butt, although probably not by as much as some might think. In reality though the biggest improvements come from software that's properly designed to support the chips specific instruction set. Things like Hyper threading and multi-core support. When you throw a heavy render from 3DS max at it, you'll know where your money went. SC4 doesn't have any such newer code, so actually under-performs on modern hardware as it simply can't take advantage of most of the improvements.

For most people (not gamers) a Celeron or whatever they are called now (Pentiums?) would probably be more than adequate for their computing needs. The irony of modern PCs, we all have more power at our disposal than we can realistically utilise in everyday use.

As for disabling the multi-core function for SC4. My experience is much like many others, on at least 4 systems (all multi-core), not disabling this leads to constant CTDs, especially when zooming.

On ‎11‎/‎04‎/‎2016 at 9:59 AM, Mister Giggles said:

The image a CRT television puts out is, frankly, really bad compared to what a monitor can do. The image is naturally blurry, making detecting jitter in the image more difficult. More importantly, you sit farther away from a television than you do a computer monitor. Your eyes aren't close enough to start observing issues in motion. Finally, one does not interact with a movie or a television program.

Well TVs and Monitors have never been the same, whether CRTs or LCDs. Even in the days of C64's, a dedicated monitor would be a huge improvement over a TV. However, having had a Sony Trinitron Wide/Flat CRT monitor, I can tell you it's the crispest PC monitor I've ever owned or seen, with the best reproduction of colour too. Sadly, space necessitated a flat screen, so I had to compromise. Even my latest twin 1080p IPS displays don't come close to that old Sony monitor.

[Mister Giggles 310]

<_<

What RSC said, really.

I can add that an i5 3570 is vastly superior to a Phenom X4 955 (Almost twice as powerful!), even though its stock speed is only a relatively minor increase over the Phenom's. Multiple reasons for this, varying from instruction set to bandwidth. The same reasons account for why a Phenom X4 is vastly superior to a Pentium 4 despite having lower clock speeds.

[APSMS 1,892]

11 hours ago, rsc204 said:

The default model (non-K 4770) will TurboBoost to 3.9ghz, when running a single-core application it can keep this up constantly too. Having this variant, I can tell you that the processor is neither overkill for SC4 (which happily eats it alive), nor is it a Pentium D either!

Clock speed is a meaningless way of referencing the actual capability of a chip. It's a bit like thinking every 3.0l engine would perform similarly, they simply don't. Frankly it's a minefield, even with the aid of benchmarking. However the technology of the cores of i7 chips is very different from the Pentium D. That's before factoring in things like enhancements on the motherboards and other components used with them. In real terms, the i7 would whip the Pentium D's proverbial butt, although probably not by as much as some might think. In reality though the biggest improvements come from software that's properly designed to support the chips specific instruction set. Things like Hyper threading and multi-core support. When you throw a heavy render from 3DS max at it, you'll know where your money went. SC4 doesn't have any such newer code, so actually under-performs on modern hardware as it simply can't take advantage of most of the improvements.

<Emphasis Added>

Hence why I said that the i7 probably isn't substantially better at running the game than a Pentium D (the first CPU I ran SC4 on). My comment about bandwidth refers mostly to the I/O improvements in the lower level cache (L1-L3), which I understand to be at least an order of magnitude faster than the older Pentium models, and allow lower level code to remain in the CPU instruction space, rather than residing in the RAM (or so I've been told).

For what I use my laptop for, I am very glad I have an i7 over a Pentium or a Celeron or an i3 even. The difference to me is tangible, though obviously the real capabilities are underutilized, and I am well aware that clock speed is a poor indicator of performance.

13 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Yikes! I'm guessing you have an absolutely rigid Save Routine. Like APSMS.

I've wavered back and forth between having that target line, but my computer doesn't seem to like it that much, and I have Daeley's Save Alarm tool to help mitigate the problem, and my CTDs from zooming didn't go away with that in the target line. I also multitask too much while I'm playing the game, and -CPUCount:1 slowed it down way too much.

Also, APSMS happens to be my initials, though that is a clever acronym.

[rsc204 21,815]

8 minutes ago, APSMS said:

Hence why I said that the i7 probably isn't substantially better at running the game than a Pentium D (the first CPU I ran SC4 on).

Indeed I had missed the running the game part, although for the most part I agree with you.

I first ran SC4 on a Core2Duo chip, which was satisfactory. But performance on my i7 system was much better. However, when you throw 4-5GB mods, a full NAM controller, many thousands of seasonal HD trees and everything else at SC4, lag is just inevitable, though still very acceptable. I'm playing in a region with minimal plugins recently for fun, here things are running silky-smooth.

I've heard of similar issues with others when disabling the multi-core, but honestly have no explanation for why. Perhaps there is another cause for your CTDs there confusing the issue? Not that I think it's the case here, but you did get the syntax right? I had troubles on my test machine after installing the digital version. Realising after many CTDs that I had missed a space somewhere or added one erroneously. Performance wise though, I don't really see much of an improvement without it. Although the point of the i7 was to get the fastest single-core speed possible, I don't overclock, hence I ignored the pricier K variant. Without paying stupid money, the 4770 was the best way to accomplish this. Although it was a bit of folly on my part, but it's the nicest PC I've ever built, I went a little mad with it . Although, on the occasions I play C:S, or with a number of my modding tasks, it's actually been utilised way more than I had intended.

[Max4k 721]

Is there any way to shut off Road Construction ?  Like when I build a Road - the Animation is slow at times.  Especially when laying road across large areas.  It takes too long.

That is the only frame rate issue Im having for the most part.  I've got RTX 2080ti video card, but this game does not show up when Nvidia asks to search for games on my PC.  If it did show up, it comes up with extra options to tweak the game.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

3 hours ago, Max4k said:

Is there any way to shut off Road Construction ?  Like when I build a Road - the Animation is slow at times.  Especially when laying road across large areas.  It takes too long.

 

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

18 hours ago, Max4k said:

Is there any way to shut off Road Construction ?  Like when I build a Road - the Animation is slow at times. 

Construction time for each network is one of the many parameters hiding inside your "slope mod". Be careful: If you install a mod to speed up the construction crews, then you might be overriding ALL of your network exemplars (including NAM tunnel settings and all your slope, tunneling, bridging, smoothing etc parameters.

Instead, I recommend editing your own personal slope mod in iLives and hunting down the construction parameter for each network type you care about. Change the number to something more pleasing.

However, also consider that the construction is probably only eye candy. I don't think the sims wait for construction to complete. They plot their paths whenever the simulator can get CPU cycles.