Tuesday 1 April 2014

More Stutter Work

Work

Aside from the usual tweaks and fixes to make the game creation experience feel a little more together, the last remaining major task for this beta saw some more work, which is of course the 'strange stutter situation'. Just when you think you have fixed it, the issue is reproduced elsewhere. We have done some more work on this today and my final task was to create a small demo for some internal testers to see if we have finally resolved it.  The demo requires that it runs at 60fps (or whatever the refresh rate happens to be) but once achieved you get super smooth and silky performance with zero stutter.

We believe the stutter originates from the scaling of the physics universe, and given the not unlimited scope of a 32-bit float you can imagine at the ragged end the accuracy starts to suffer. We have a few ideas more on how we can make a difference in this regard but for now we have used an alternative approach.

Wednesday will also see some work on the store, and the system which brings store items into the main software. Hopefully we have the resources to complete this, AND resolve all aspects of the stutter problem before the next beta release!

12 comments:

  1. Vehicles and graphic work on the arms and hands. Especially the left....
    no offense...when is the next beta release?????????
    razornet7@live.com

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    1. Listen, you. Vehicles are NOT going to be in Reloaded for some considerable time, so just get over it. The point of Reloaded is not to make the next BF3.

      I do agree on the hudhands, though. Kinda bad looking when compared to any even semi-modern shooter. If you're not going to give the guy gloves, this is how the hands should look:

      http://ap.ign.com/pictures/games/115451/20186.jpg

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  2. Congrats! With 3 extra programmers on your side you can finally fix bugs and errors as well as improving the quality of the engine more quickly! We will see you in the next update!

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  3. you'll never get 60fps...no way....

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    1. When in highest of all settings? You can get 60 in lowest.

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  4. Let me suggest something here. Instead of trying to solve the stuttering physics movement, maybe you could try smoothing the camera on top of the physics. That way you don't have to rely on trying to get the (usually unattainably) high target of 60fps. I'm pretty sure smoothing the camera would have the best results.

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    1. The stuttering issues is so heavy for me. I'm not sure why. Doesn't seem to be the case with everyone.

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  5. Also, good article on the subject here:

    http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep/

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  6. A member of the forum commented that setting 'smoothcamerakeys' to 1 in INI and using arrow keys instead of WASD solved the stutter issue for them. Maybe that's another venue to explore. I'm concerned about the requirement of the demo running at max refresh-based framerate to achieve perfect smoothness and hope this won't be mandatory in the full release. My monitor is 144hz and I doubt I will be able to hit that mark even with all the optimizations (previously I averaged 35-45 FPS).

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    1. I agree. What game can you name that HAS to run at 60fps or the movement stutters?

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  7. Ok, frame rates and a smooth final game is important if we intend to sell our final games, but I guess there are only 10 kinds of people in this world: those who know binary and those who don’t.

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