DSR and Sacred 2 - Visual improvements

[Androdion 884]

7 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

Sacred 2 anti-aliasing solution is very laggy and not very effective. The DSR solution, that is now part of both NVidia and ATI card software, provides superb image quality without any lags I could detect.

This is an excellent tip! I've spent the last couple of hours testing different combinations and there's definitely a huge improvement, animations are extremely fluid and more noticeable and even damage/XP counters appear to be much better.

May I ask you what settings you're using? I've settled for 4.00x with 33% and in-game resolution to 3840x2160 and it looks awesome!

[dimitrius154 612]

2 hours ago, Androdion said:

4.00x with 33% and in-game resolution to 3840x2160

Yes, that same setup.

[Androdion 884]

Thanks.

[Hooyaah 2,830]

15 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

Yes, that same setup.

If you have a NVIDIA GPU could you take a snip of the NVIDIA control panel so that I can  see the way you have adjusted your other settings, please, sir?

[dimitrius154 612]

31 minutes ago, Hooyaah said:

take a snip of the NVIDIA control panel

It's in Russian, but should work.

[Androdion 884]

1 hour ago, Hooyaah said:

If you have a NVIDIA GPU could you take a snip of the NVIDIA control panel so that I can  see the way you have adjusted your other settings, please, sir?

I also only turned on the DSR options, everything else on top of it seems to make the game engine behave worse. AA from the Nvidia CP introduces stuttering much like the in-game AA, and Anisotropic Filtering doesn't add much after DSR is working its magic, though it still taxes on the game engine. So I'd say that the no-brainer option is DSR and in-game resolution both set for 4K.

[dimitrius154 612]

3 minutes ago, Androdion said:

AA from the Nvidia CP introduces stuttering much like the in-game AA,

The more I read about it's mechanics, the more I tend to think, that antialiasing was a wrong path to take right from the start. Its computations are unwieldy and resource-heavy.

It's a if the initial goal was to sell something expensive, but capable of handling the computations.

The only thing worse in games are the fog/smoke solutions.

[Androdion 884]

Gladly DSR set for 4K takes care of all those jagged edges. The grass and trees' foliage in particular look "anti-aliased" even if they aren't.

[Hooyaah 2,830]

2 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

It's in Russian, but should work.

The settings below appear to be adjusted to your recommended specifications. Please correct me if I am wrong. Deciphering the Cryllic alphabet is not my strong suit. Thanks for the assist, kind sir.

 

 

 

[dimitrius154 612]

4 minutes ago, Hooyaah said:

appear to be adjusted to your recommended specifications

You should also check the DSR factor flags above 2.00x. What they do is enabling those extra screen resolutions, thus you can always set the ingame (scaled)resolution  to the value most suitable for your video-card + monitor practical output.

[Hooyaah 2,830]

2 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

You should also check the DSR factor flags above 2.00x. What they do is enabling those extra screen resolutions, thus you can always set the ingame (scaled)resolution  to the value most suitable for your video-card + monitor practical output.

Copy! What about the others, Low Latency Mode, Max Frame Rate, OpenGL Rendering GPU?

[dimitrius154 612]

2 minutes ago, Hooyaah said:

What about the others, Low Latency Mode, Max Frame Rate, OpenGL Rendering GPU?

I would rather leave them be. Sacred 2 utilizes Direct3D, not OpenGL. I've found no use for latency, or frame rate manipulation(there may be in other games, but not Sacred 2).

[Hooyaah 2,830]

Okay, thanks for the advice. The new settings seem to make a difference.

[Androdion 884]

Sorry to keep highjacking the topic but I wanted to report a side-effect of using DSR, which is very easy to test for. Turn it on and on Sloeford head to the side road below the Runemaster, enter the cave and get back out again. Do enemies have a lag in spawning, as in, do they take a couple of second to appear as well as their enemy markers? Well, to me they do and whichever up-scaled resolution I use causes the same thing to occur. Sometimes it even happens in the wild (Kobold camp for instance). I'm assuming this is a bottleneck on my PC since I still have a first-gen i7, even if it has a more recent GTX960. I'd be happy to hear if I'm the only one experiencing this though, as to realize if it really is just a bottleneck on my system or if the game engine dislikes DSR in any way.

[dimitrius154 612]

38 minutes ago, Androdion said:

Do enemies have a lag in spawning, as in, do they take a couple of second to appear as well as their enemy markers?

I don't think it has to do with the DSR per se, but the server-client desync. It used to be far worse in the previous(up to 5 minutes sometimes), before I made some distance calculation alterations. 

Edited August 23, 2020 by dimitrius154

[Flix 5,117]

2 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

I don't think it has to do with the DSR per se, but the server-client desync. It used to be far worse in the previous(up to 5 minutes sometimes), before I made some distance calculation alterations. 

This is true; it was worst in CM 1.60 and onwards.  @Androdion  I'm surprised you haven't seen it before.  I feel like I see it all the time now.

[dimitrius154 612]

50 minutes ago, Flix said:

it was worst in CM 1.60 and onwards.

The delay was present in vanilla as well. The difference in perception may be attributed to being able to longplay without frequent crashes since CMP 1.60.

[Androdion 884]

Uhm, interesting. So my setup is a first gen i7 with 12GB RAM and a GTX 960. I don't have an SSD as system drive but I do have a WD Raptor which does 10k RPM. It should be more than enough for Sacred 2, yet I avoid using everything maxed out in the Nvidia CP since it causes slowdowns here and there. So DSR at first seemed amazing because it did cause a massive visual improvement, yet in terms of entering different areas I've started noticing that lag in enemies spawning. As soon as I've disabled DSR that stopped happening though, so I'm guessing that maybe it has something to do with the game's engine rendering the spawns or something?

@Flix - I haven't noticed it before because it never happened to me before, but after activating DSR I started seeing that effect. Going after Gahanka and finding the camps empty, only to notice them suddenly filling in was my first warning shot. But that cave near Sloeford is the perfect place to test since enemies both in and outside respawn on entering/leaving the cave. With DSR turned off the spawn is immediate, so no issues on my end. That's why I assumed it was a bottleneck on my end.

[Flix 5,117]

1 hour ago, dimitrius154 said:

The delay was present in vanilla as well.

Yes I know, yet I never saw it until CM 1.60.  It could be as simple as some graphics setting that's changed in my setup.  I find it interesting that Androdion can trigger it reliably simply by changing one thing in Nvidia control panel.

1 hour ago, dimitrius154 said:

The difference in perception may be attributed to being able to longplay without frequent crashes since CMP 1.60.

I doubt it.  I played much longer in the old days compared to the short bursts I do now for testing.

[dimitrius154 612]

25 minutes ago, Androdion said:

WD Raptor which does 10k RPM

Specifications for available models show a max transfer rate of 150 Mbit/sec. Twice slower then budget Kingston SSD models. Magnetic disks with mechanical actuation cannot win

8 minutes ago, Flix said:

It could be as simple as some graphics setting that's changed in my setup

Interesting. Is the change traceable from the default settings?

Edited August 23, 2020 by dimitrius154

[Androdion 884]

2 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

Specifications for available models show a max transfer rate of 150 Mbit/sec. Twice slower then budget Kingston SSD models. Magnetic disks with mechanical actuation cannot win

Yes, of course SSDs will always be faster.  I was simply pointing out that for a game as old as Sacred 2 an SSD vs a 10k HDD most likely isn't a cause for a bottleneck.

And basically yeah, DSR on/DSR off changes that behaviour for me. Mind you that like I said above DSR does make a much better improvement on the game's graphics than any other Nvidia CP setting, no doubt about it, but it also introduces (at least on my end) that kind of lag in the spawning. At first I thought I was seeing things but today I could trace it to what we're talking now. I even tried out other resolutions above 1980x1024 and the result was always the same.

I know @Hooyaah has a better rig than myself, it'd be interesting to hear his input on this matter.

[Hooyaah 2,830]

8 hours ago, Androdion said:

Yes, of course SSDs will always be faster.  I was simply pointing out that for a game as old as Sacred 2 an SSD vs a 10k HDD most likely isn't a cause for a bottleneck.

And basically yeah, DSR on/DSR off changes that behaviour for me. Mind you that like I said above DSR does make a much better improvement on the game's graphics than any other Nvidia CP setting, no doubt about it, but it also introduces (at least on my end) that kind of lag in the spawning. At first I thought I was seeing things but today I could trace it to what we're talking now. I even tried out other resolutions above 1980x1024 and the result was always the same.

I know @Hooyaah has a better rig than myself, it'd be interesting to hear his input on this matter.

I have not noticed any lag whatsoever when my toon spawns in a new location or goes into a cave or such. However, the game did experience an arbitrarily (but rare) crash yesterday, shortly after the completion of a minor side quest. I am running Windows 10 Pro 64 bit with 32GB of RAM and an Intel i7-3960X CPU @3.30 GHz and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti GPU. I have Windows running on an SSD, Drive C and the game running from Program Files on Drive D. The resolution is set to 3840 X 2160. Because of this set-up it's likely the reason why I don't have any bottlenecks. I haven't had a problem playing The Witcher 3 on max settings either or Nier: Automata or Dragon's Dogma. The lags you are experiencing are most likely from the limitations of the rig you have. It is important to remember that the data transfer rate is the key limiting factor to speed. The data transfer rate for a S-ATA Drive is indeed significantly slower than an Solid State Drive and an older S-ETA drive can get glitchy before it finally wears out. It's worth investing in a good SSD. I recommend Samsung; some come with a very long warranty, up to ten years depending on the series.

[Androdion 884]

Sacred 2, a game that still bottlenecks PCs in 2020! 

Last investment I did in this rig was the GPU, anything else I'd throw at it now would only be "covering the sun with a sieve" as we say here. And I haven't gotten to the point where I feel the need to invest heavily into a new rig as I feel like I wouldn't take out the best of if. I barely play any recent games.

Thanks for the input though. 

[Hooyaah 2,830]

Look at your frame rate, you may need to turn the Low Latency setting in the NVIDIA control panel to OFF. Also there is, with the newest drivers, a max FPS setting. I have mine set at 60 FPS but you may want to lower your setting to about 30 or so. I hope this helps.

[Androdion 884]

@dimitrius154 - Do you mind if we keep having this discussion here or would you prefer that I split theses posts into a different topic? Your call.

@Hooyaah - Guess I need to run some field tests. I'll be back.