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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Need help with full screen fps issues!  (Read 11131 times)

valefore

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Need help with full screen fps issues!
« on: December 17, 2014, 01:36:22 AM »

Hello

I've been playing starsector for some time now on multiple computers and today I tried it on my new laptop and came across a problem I cannot fix.


So the problem is that whenever I run starsector fullscreen, the fps stays at ~14, making the game unplayable. Originally I thought it was because of the bunch of mods I enabled and then I thought it was because of shaderlib but the problem disappears when I run the game as windowed (uncheck fullscreen from launcher). This happens with both vanilla and a bunch of mods enabled. I thought it was because of vsync but disabling it has no effect. Lowering the resolution also has no effect. Using starsector's default java or 64bit java has no effect. Only disabling fullscreen raises performance to ~60fps, which is a huge difference.

My laptop specs are
Windows 8.1
i7-4510U 2ghz, 2.6ghz turbo (has integrated graphics)
8gb ram
gtx850m 4gb memory (latest drivers)

and according the starsector system requirements and shaderlib recommendations, I think the laptop is well over recommended specs even though the parts are laptop parts. I also confirmed that the game is using the gtx card instead of the inferior integrated graphics through MSI afterburner. It shows that the gtx gpu works like crazy when starsector is running fullscreen. Really weird that I only get this problem with fullscreen...

I searched the forums with fullscreen and fps but haven't found anything useful.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
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Schwartz

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2014, 02:26:03 AM »

You can edit starsector-core\data\config\settings.json and set:

"undecoratedWindow":true,
"windowLocationX":0,
"windowLocationY":0,


Then simply disable fullscreen in the launcher and select your monitor resolution. That runs the game in windowed fullscreen.
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valefore

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2014, 04:07:00 AM »

You can edit starsector-core\data\config\settings.json and set:

"undecoratedWindow":true,
"windowLocationX":0,
"windowLocationY":0,


Then simply disable fullscreen in the launcher and select your monitor resolution. That runs the game in windowed fullscreen.

Thanks for the response.
Hmm... so very interesting.

I tried your suggestion but it gets sluggish (~14fps) the same way when on max resolution=the game covers the whole screen. When I decrease the resolution so the game and the desktop can be seen, it works fine again (30fps. Guess 60fps was my mistake in memory). Note the game also works fine when on max resolution but with borders so that I can move the window and see the desktop.
Interestingly, when I run on borderless and max resolution, I can't click outside the screen and it's virtually the same as full screen, if that means anything.
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Alex

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #3 on: December 17, 2014, 09:52:02 AM »

Hmm. Can you try turning MSI Afterburner off and running the game without it? IIRC others have reported having some performance issues with it as well, though they weren't the exact same issues, and not everyone using it had them, but it might still be worth a shot.
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valefore

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #4 on: December 17, 2014, 03:32:43 PM »

Hmm. Can you try turning MSI Afterburner off and running the game without it? IIRC others have reported having some performance issues with it as well, though they weren't the exact same issues, and not everyone using it had them, but it might still be worth a shot.

Oh, my bad. I only installed MSI Afterburner to check which gpu was being used, so I never used its other functions. I just needed a program that could monitor graphics card usage. ...Likewise the problem persists with or without Afterburner.
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Alex

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #5 on: December 17, 2014, 04:01:03 PM »

Ah, ok.

And you did say you have the latest drivers. Hmm. When you say you've tried disabling vsync; do you mean using the game's settings.json, or from the Nvidia control panel? Might be some settings other there that are making this happen...

Just to confirm, you did try running fullscreen without shaderlib and the frame rate was still low, correct?


Another thing worth a shot would be switching from an aero to a non-aero desktop theme, or vice versa. That has some interactions with graphics acceleration, though I'd have expected for any problems to show up in windowed mode rather than fullscreen.

(Also so odd that fullscreen and undecorated-windowed-fullscreen act the same, that makes very little sense.)
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valefore

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #6 on: December 17, 2014, 04:32:32 PM »

I disabled vsync through starsector's settings.json. I'll look into the nvidia control panel to see if I can disable vsync from there too.
I'm also going to try reinstalling the graphics drivers clean.

Also yes, the fullscreen problem persists with both shaderlib and no shaderlib vanilla.

I'm not sure what an aero or non aero background is... but I use almost the same settings for my computers on that if that helps. Just backgrounds in my picture folder changing randomly.


I'm no expert but I guess the problem happens when the game uses all the pixels on the screen at max resolution 1920x1080. Is that called a 1:1 pixel ratio? The only difference I can sense between fullscreen and undecorated-windowed-fullscreen is that when I alt-tab, I go completely to the desktop in the former case while I can only see the startmenu and can't see the desktop in the latter case. Everything else seems the same.
I have no idea on this either... Never saw a game that was slower in fullscreen (which obviously looks like a glitch of some sort)... and I played starsector for at least an year.
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valefore

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #7 on: December 17, 2014, 06:21:30 PM »

Okay, I think this might be helpful.

The problem I have only happens with the nvidia graphics card; when I use the integrated graphics card, the game just suffers an overall performance hit but there is no difference between windowed and fullscreen. However, this problem only happens with starsector and I can play other games at fullscreen with the nvidia card just fine. These games are all 3d games.
So I'm guessing nvidia settings has something to do with this but have no idea which one that would be. I don't think it's vsync though since I tried changing that in the nvidia control panel like you suggested (tried both starsector.exe and java.exe in starsector/jre/bin).

I also used older drivers, reinstalled the new driver, uninstalled MSI Afterburner (since I don't need it anymomre) but all of these have no effect.
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Alex

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #8 on: December 17, 2014, 09:03:47 PM »

Hmm, that is interesting indeed. One thing is that Starsector is using OpenGL, while other games you've run could be using D3D, and so might not run into the same issues.

Some googling around yields this:
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?topic=31029.0

Might be worth a try (the "disable DPI scaling" bit).


Also, re: aero vs non-aero themes: I'd suggest trying each to see if it makes a difference. When you right-click on your desktop and click "Personalize", you should see 3 categories of themes - "My Themes", "Aero Themes", and "Basic and High-Contrast Themes". I'd try running the game with an Aero and a Basic theme selected, just to see if that makes a difference. Aero themes in particular require hardware acceleration, so it's not impossible that something about that would interfere with the game.

Also #2: in your nvidia control panel settings, make sure that "threaded optimization" is disabled. That setting can cause problems.

I'd also try setting the power management mode to maximum performance, and set vsync to "use application setting".

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valefore

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #9 on: December 18, 2014, 02:39:08 AM »

Hmm, that is interesting indeed. One thing is that Starsector is using OpenGL, while other games you've run could be using D3D, and so might not run into the same issues.

Some googling around yields this:
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?topic=31029.0

Might be worth a try (the "disable DPI scaling" bit).


Also, re: aero vs non-aero themes: I'd suggest trying each to see if it makes a difference. When you right-click on your desktop and click "Personalize", you should see 3 categories of themes - "My Themes", "Aero Themes", and "Basic and High-Contrast Themes". I'd try running the game with an Aero and a Basic theme selected, just to see if that makes a difference. Aero themes in particular require hardware acceleration, so it's not impossible that something about that would interfere with the game.

Also #2: in your nvidia control panel settings, make sure that "threaded optimization" is disabled. That setting can cause problems.

I'd also try setting the power management mode to maximum performance, and set vsync to "use application setting".

Arghh... Well unfortunately none of those methods work. Changed Windows dpi settings to 100% (none); Don't have an "aero" theme choice but I did try each one; changing the nvidia settings you suggested also had no effect.

I also remembered I could run Master of Orion 2 and tyrian through doxbox and it worked normally. Do these games use OpenGL?
Well I can at least still play in windowed for the time being...
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Schwartz

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #10 on: December 18, 2014, 04:36:02 AM »

Those games are pretty ancient, they don't use much in the way of graphics acceleration at all.  But even so, a GTX 850M should be able to run the game okay.

It sounds like you have both integrated graphics and the GTX 850M running simultaneously. That could be problematic and could explain why fullscreen puts your laptop in a situation where these two GPUs might get in each other's way. If you don't depend on the integrated graphics chip, you could try disabling that in the BIOS and running the game with only the Geforce active.
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valefore

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #11 on: December 23, 2014, 09:18:06 PM »

It sounds like you have both integrated graphics and the GTX 850M running simultaneously. That could be problematic and could explain why fullscreen puts your laptop in a situation where these two GPUs might get in each other's way. If you don't depend on the integrated graphics chip, you could try disabling that in the BIOS and running the game with only the Geforce active.

Hmm.... Ok so I got a chance to try this but I'm not sure how I can disable the integrated graphics from my bios. Can't find any similar menus.

I did disable the driver for the integrated graphics from device manager though, but it has no effect. I'm not sure if I should uninstall it but I don't really want to take that risk...


Well... if anybody has more tips please post it here.


Edit: Apparently, my laptop doesn't support disabling intel graphics (this is the 'new' optimus), and disabling the intel graphics driver in device manager makes my nvidia card unusable as well. Talk about stupidity... HP and other similar companies suck... big time
« Last Edit: December 24, 2014, 07:10:39 AM by valefore »
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Schwartz

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #12 on: December 29, 2014, 10:10:30 PM »

On the other hand, if it's hardwired that way then both GPUs should play nice together and you shouldn't get any frame drops.
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Antino

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #13 on: April 15, 2015, 10:09:20 AM »

Hi there,

I haven't played the game for a while (since 0.6.2a) and got a new Laptop since then.
But something brought me back to the game ;)
I reinstalled the game (0.65.2a) and installed starsector+ with shaderlib & co.

And now I'm experiencing the exact same issue like valefore (with and without mods).
I also tried all solutions mentioned in this thread but nothing helped so far.

I'd be very grateful if any of you guys can come up with more ideas to solve this problem.

Thanks.

---------------------------------------

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention my specs...

i5-4210U 1.7GHz
GTX 850M
8GB DDR3 RAM
Windows 8.1
« Last Edit: April 15, 2015, 10:12:12 AM by Antino »
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Alex

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Re: Need help with full screen fps issues!
« Reply #14 on: April 15, 2015, 10:27:29 AM »

Hi - would you mind saying exactly what the issue you're experiencing is? I know you did say it's the same issue as the OP, but, well, I've seen a number of cases where someone has said that, and it turned out to be something subtly different :)

That aside, just to make sure:
1) Do you have the latest drivers?
2) Have you tried running at full resolution, but without checking fullscreen? That should automatically start the game in borderless windowed mode.


Finally, if you have two graphics cards on your system - which it sounds like you probably do, since you've got a dedicated one, and I'd expect the motherboard also has an integrated one - there should be some way for you to specify which card gets used for which application. I think there are several ways to do this, which, after some googling around, may or may not work depending on what the issue is, but I'm not personally familiar with it. This thread may be worth a look.
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