What is this thread about?
In a "minor additions" thread, I had asked about the possibility of adding more trees to the planets, as by default they felt a little barren. Vice in his awesome level of interaction with the community, decided to try adding more trees through his simple index, but mentioned that the performance hit was too much. It was then suggested that tree amount could be a future graphic option for single player. As such Vice has decided to send a testing build of the game to those who email asking him, to try out the option by altering a text file. Below his Vice's explanation of the flora index:
What does this thread hope to achieve, and how can I contribute?Vice wrote:If anyone interested in the plant limit modification option would like to try it in test form (since the next update may be a while/uncertain), just send me a quick e-mail (starwraith.com > contact) from the address you'd like to receive download details at. A few quick notes on it. Each numerical increase in the value will specify a higher level for each placement group. There are 25 groups to which more plant indexes can be added. The default maximum value 24, so there are 25X24 total by default. If you increase the index value by one, it increases to the total plant count in range by 25X1. So if you apply a value of something like '80', it will have a net effect of 25X56 more plants indexes than before.
With this thread I hope that those of us who take up on the offer and test, can report performance results with various settings/rigs to feel out the possibility of adding a Foliage Density option of some kind in the next update, or one in the near future. For simplicity, those who try it out should have useful data. I'm using FPS as the performance measurement.
Here's the information I think should be in a first post, though Vice can always request more if it isn't enough:
CPU:
RAM:
Graphics Card:
Graphics Settings:
Mods:
Planet Tested:
PlantSettings Setting:
FPS:
With that said, here's my first entry, future posts on my findings will only contain the last 3 as there's no need to post others unless I change settings or hardware.
CPU: Intel i5-4590 3.3GHZ 4 core
RAM: 8GB
Graphics Card: Geforce GTX 960TI SSC 4GB
Graphics Settings: Everything on highest settings except Anti-Aliasing, which is off
Mods: The graphics mods from the community pack (High res stars and nebulas)
Planet Tested: Pearl
PlantSettings Setting: 80 (the example sent by Vice)
FPS: 60 in space, stayed around 47 on the planet near a crashed ship, totally playable.
My next entry will probably be pearl with the number much higher to see where the game or my computer melt.
Edit 1: Did another quick test.
Planet: Pearl
PlantSettings: 320
FPS On Planet: Hit 27 FPS at two points, but otherwise stayed around 35-37, still playable for the speed of this game based on my experiences so far.
Here's a couple screens showing the result of this test.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 01FF4BDFE/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... EBA64F37A/
Edit 2: Ran one more test
Planet: Pearl
PlantSettings: 1280
FPS on Planet: Went no higher than 25 FPS, this is where it felt too... unsmooth to play well. Plus I didn't see an increase of trees big enough via my eyes to warrant the FPS hit.
Based on these 3 tests, I'd say in terms of visual difference of tree count and acceptable FPS loss, I'd put my sweet spot at around 240, though I will have to test this. Hypothetically that would put me at about 40 or so FPS when on planets but have almost as many trees visible in the screens provided for 320. I think after 320 there's a bit of diminishing returns in regards to visible trees vs FPS loss.