framerate smoothing?

[Capt.Toilet]

Ok I never tinkered with this option so last night whilst I was messing with my mouse sensativity(which I FINALLY got squared away now no joke! ) I decided to turn framerate smoothing off to see what it would do. The results left me a little confused to be honest. It took the 62 fps cap off and I was now entering 100+ fps, but the overall performance felt jerky. Guess my question is why have that option unchecked if all it does it make for a more unpleasant experience. And god forbid this game doesnt need anymore unpleasant experiences.

 

[T2A`]

I dunno what it does either. Without it you can only get 90 FPS online but if you set the smoothing cap to 120 (or whatever; I use 120) you can get that amount online instead.

However, I do know that framerates that are at an odd ratio of your refresh rate will feel worse, so I'm assuming this is what's happening. For instance, if you're on an LCD running at 60 Hz, something like 85, 90, or 100 FPS will feel less smooth than running 60 or 120 FPS. So, whenever possible, keep your framerates limited to even ratios like 1:1 and 1:2.

My mouse sens. still doesn't feel right in UT3, though, and this is after doing all the tweaks on the interbutts, both game- and desktop-related.

 

[Alhanalem]

Framerate smoothing does what it sounds: it is intended to cause there to be less variation in your frame rate at any given time i.e.e smaller spikes and dips. However, overall it lowers your framerate so there's really not much reason to have it on unless you're haivng some kind of technical issue ive never heard of that would make your framerate jump around for no reason.

 

[-AEnubis-]

no, that is the point. The card spends less energy pushing the limit of frames, and uses it for pushing the extra frames when things get busy on the screen.

I imagine it's no different than the idea behind vsync and triple buffering, cap the frames, and have some extra frame buffer to prevent dips.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Plus, 62fps constant feels a lot smoother than random numbers between 60 and 120.

 

[Alhanalem]

no, that is the point. The card spends less energy pushing the limit of frames, and uses it for pushing the extra frames when things get busy on the screen.

I imagine it's no different than the idea behind vsync and triple buffering, cap the frames, and have some extra frame buffer to prevent dips.

Except no amount of purposely drawing fewer frames will make the video card draw more frames when things get too intense for it to maintain that frame rate. All it does is bring your FPS down to a level where it can be kept more consistent. There isn't really any value in this, it would be best to have your vid card performing its best at all times, unless maybe your cooling is inadequate and you start getting artifacts and VPU resets as a result.

 

[jasposfagot]

Sought of on the subject, on my 2 older machines,

P4 3.4Ghz
GF 7950 GT 512MB (AGP)
2GB Ram

P4 3.2Ghz
GF 7950 GT 512MB (AGP)
2GB Ram

I found that changing the following settings in the UTEngine.ini to 45

MinSmoothedFrameRate=45
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=45

was far better than having it set at the default,

MinSmoothedFrameRate=22.000000
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=62.000000

for those 2 machines, things were so much smoother.

 

[T2A`]

Maybe my logic is wrong, but I'm thinking it was smoother because your settings have such a shallow range that smoothing was effectively disabled. D:

 

[h.pocus]

Sought of on the subject, on my 2 older machines,

P4 3.4Ghz
GF 7950 GT 512MB (AGP)
2GB Ram

P5 3.2Ghz
GF 7950 GT 512MB (AGP)
2GB Ram

I found that changing the following settings in the UTEngine.ini to 45

MinSmoothedFrameRate=45
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=45

was far better than having it set at the default,

MinSmoothedFrameRate=22.000000
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=62.000000

for those 2 machines, things were so much smoother.

just curious, how did you end up with two almost identical (assuming p5 is a typo) older machines?

 

[jasposfagot]

yes typo, (Fixed)

Just so I could, have the 2 machines relatively equal for (home) lan games, nothing worse than having to have your opponent (or yourself for that matter) playing on an inferior machine.

I have 2 dual core, PCIE based machines now, but the older 2 are still to good to just through away, they can run UT3 fine. The only problem I have now is I'm running out of space.

 

[leilei]

I didn't like Smooth Framerate because it attempts to lower details while in play desperately for performance. On a computer with bad slow caching, it does the opposite.

 

[os][ris]

Plus, 62fps constant feels a lot smoother than random numbers between 60 and 120.

winnar......

 

[J3FF]

Capped at 200 frames, works perfectly but I, of course, do not have a ****ty TFT monitor

CRT forever!

 

[-AEnubis-]

Memory not used in cramming as many frames a second can be used for buffering the next second.

 

[Pser]

Capped at 200 frames, works perfectly but I, of course, do not have a ****ty TFT monitor

CRT forever!

woah, are you playing @ 640x480. ( i do have a CRT too though, 1024x768@150)

 

[Pser]

Memory not used in cramming as many frames a second can be used for buffering the next second.

do you think with enough memory it can buffer into the future. Because the next second IS the future.

 

[T2A`]

Wow! I didn't know UT3 broke the space-time continuum to enhance performance! Maybe Epic spent so much time perfecting quantum physics that they had no time to polish the game! It all makes sense now!

Seriously, you can't buffer things when you don't know what's going to happen next. The game caches level assets and key gameplay components but it can't do more than that.

 

[Alhanalem]

Wow! I didn't know UT3 broke the space-time continuum to enhance performance! Maybe Epic spent so much time perfecting quantum physics that they had no time to polish the game! It all makes sense now!

Seriously, you can't buffer things when you don't know what's going to happen next. The game caches level assets and key gameplay components but it can't do more than that.

I lol'd

 

[-AEnubis-]

I know, but you can render the current frame more times, in case it gets dropped which is really what I meant.

Funny the stuff that gets through the editorial process when it's 103 degrees in your head.

 

[Nereid]

Wow! I didn't know UT3 broke the space-time continuum to enhance performance! Maybe Epic spent so much time perfecting quantum physics that they had no time to polish the game! It all makes sense now!

Seriously, you can't buffer things when you don't know what's going to happen next. The game caches level assets and key gameplay components but it can't do more than that.

It's something called render frames ahead, also known as video lag.