Poor performance

[unerwünscht]

No clue what has changed since last time I used Fantasy Grounds (it has been over a year). but I am getting the worst performance out of it that I have ever seen. If I had to guess, I (and my users) are getting somewhere around 8 FPS on various computers with various system specs. What did you guys do to the program?

Next post is the important stuff from my dxdiag on this machine (yes I know this machine is crap, but has never had an issue with FG before).

[unerwünscht]

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 1/14/2015, 20:58:54
Machine name: BLACKPEARL
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.130318-1532)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: BIOSTAR Group
System Model: N68S3+
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 250 Processor (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 4096MB RAM
Page File: 2862MB used, 5326MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 2: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.

[damned]

as no one else is reporting this issue it is likely something has changed at your end. are you the GM?
i dont know anything about tweaking direct-x which can sometimes cause performance issues but a common setting to checkwithin Fantasy Grounds is to go into Fantasy Grounds settings and make sure you do not have ticks against Cross platform compatibility for Linu and Mac, Enable network diagnostics or Enable Debug mode.

[unerwünscht]

None of those are checked.
But would poor performance on my machine cause poor performance on all other players machines?
If this is the case, it is probably just something as simple as I need to restart my computer, I don't think it has been restarted in over a month.
But I would not think that my performance would effect the framerates on things like dice rolls for all players.

[unerwünscht]

Just had one of the players disconnect from me, launch their own game and test. They say they are getting bad framerates even when going it solo and not connected to me.

[unerwünscht]

Ok.. going deeper (I assume for Moon when he gets around)

I am on an ultimate license.
2 players are on no license
1 player is on a full license.

We are using a fresh 3.5e campaign.
We have tried with and without modules loaded.
We have tried with and without dungeon theme loaded.

We have tried with and without Steam loaded (or I have, the others obviously can't link to steam.)
I have no other programs running (other than chrome, but only while posting on the forums.)

not sure if there is any other information I can provide that will help in any way.

[unerwünscht]

As a side note, I do find it more than a little funny that I can run World of Warcraft at medium setting and get 70+ FPS but Fantasy Grounds is getting less than 10.

[Mask_of_winter]

If the die rolls take some time to show up this is usually due to the internet connection. I get that a lot because my upload speed is low.

[unerwünscht]

We are not talking about lag, we are talking about flat framerate.
I grab the dice, I roll them, and they skip across the window with less than 10 frames per second.
My players are getting the same issue, connected to me or not.
So this is not a connection speed issue. Also, I have 20 meg up and 80 meg down, so.... really no chance of a bandwidth issue.

[ddavison]

I haven't seen any change in performance over the last year (or longer). Are you running the latest version with everything updated? I don't understand why this would be affecting one group only, especially when they are disconnected from each other. Let's try the simple things first though. Let's reboot and make sure that Windows didn't auto-update anything that caused an issue that needs a reboot. Please then double-check that the cross-compatibility is turned off and test with only you connected.

[ddavison]

BTW, you aren't hosting your data folder on dropbox or anything are you? Because that doesn't work -- for very long, or very well.

[unerwünscht]

I didn't know that dropbox was even an option.

and after restarting my computer (graphics drivers had updated) I am getting a much better frame rate with no users connected, but still not what it really should be.

Going to have the users connect one by one and see how it goes from there.
Will keep you posted.

[unerwünscht]

Well... no idea what caused the issue.
But restarting my system cleared it up.
Still not sure how my system effected the other players.... but whatever.

[unerwünscht]

Yep, entire game session was smooth once I restarted.
A very long list of changes crunched through on that restart, so not sure what was the big culprit.
If I had to take a guess it was probably an issue with memory being bogged down, as nothing that changed should have effected fantasy grounds in any way.

But if anyone else ever encounters a low framerate issue, try restarting your computer first, and seeing where it goes from there.

Am still very interested why my computer being bogged down would cause slow frame rates on other players computers.

[ddavison]

Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I have seen updates to the graphics libraries leave things in a partial state that caused issues though.

[Mysaga]

I had this issue last week as well. Today anyhow it is gone, although I don't know why. I did not change anything notable on my PC or in FG.. :confused:
So sorry that I can not help you out, but at least I can say that there is more than one user who had this problem.

[Gamolon]

Hey all.

I just downloaded the demo version, installed it, and thought I'd post what I first encountered with frame rates.

I opened Fantasy Grounds and then clicked the "Load Demo Campaign" button. I then selected the campaign "A Tale of Dinor - 4E". After that opened, I just started rolling a few dice and had no issues. I then clicked the "Characters" tab on the right which showed both Bjorn and Celeste. I double-clicked Bjorn to open his character sheet, tried rolling a few dice, and immediately took a frame rate hit until. The more tabs I opened, the worse it got with the dice rolls. If I closed all the windows, the frame rate issue would disappear.

I'm going to try a few things and will post results as I get them.

Keep up the good work!

[JohnD]

Gamolon, what are your system specs? There might be drivers or something that are out of date... I'm no longer what you'd call a Techie, but there are enough people around here who will be able to help you out.

As a newcomer, please don't think that the experience you see in this thread is typical for FG users; some people take an unduly adversarial/antagonistic approach to communicating which is rarely warranted. And welcome!

[Gamolon]

Gamolon, what are your system specs? There might be drivers or something that are out of date... I'm no longer what you'd call a Techie, but there are enough people around here who will be able to help you out.

As a newcomer, please don't think that the experience you see in this thread is typical for FG users; some people take an unduly adversarial/antagonistic approach to communicating which is rarely warranted. And welcome!

Thanks for the welcome!

I am in the process of updating drivers to see if that helps. Just thought it weird that the frame rate hit happened as I opened more windows.

As far as my experience, I had been reading much about Fantasy Grounds in these forums prior to registering and have watched many of the videos. I really like the product. This little frame rate issue (if it even stays an issue for long) has not tarnished my view one bit.

:)

[Trenloe]

I just downloaded the demo version, installed it, and thought I'd post what I first encountered with frame rates.

I opened Fantasy Grounds and then clicked the "Load Demo Campaign" button. I then selected the campaign "A Tale of Dinor - 4E". After that opened, I just started rolling a few dice and had no issues. I then clicked the "Characters" tab on the right which showed both Bjorn and Celeste. I double-clicked Bjorn to open his character sheet, tried rolling a few dice, and immediately took a frame rate hit until. The more tabs I opened, the worse it got with the dice rolls. If I closed all the windows, the frame rate issue would disappear.

I'm going to try a few things and will post results as I get them.
The main culprits will be machine performance and graphics card performance. With graphics card performance being the big one. FG uses DirectX 3D for the dice - if you have access to a configuration application for your graphics card (most computers will have such an application) then disable some advanced settings (basically set it to a low performance mode/speed over quality/etc.). Try playing around with some settings to see what makes a difference for you.

And, as mentioned above, reboot before you do your testing. Good luck! :)

[Trenloe]

Am still very interested why my computer being bogged down would cause slow frame rates on other players computers.
The player instances of FG rely a lot on timely responses from the GM instance for a number of activities. If the GM instance is getting overloaded then it might not be responding quickly or slow to run OOB (out of bounds) code that is triggered from the player side but runs/is processed on the GM side. For some rulesets OOB messaging is an integral part of the dice rolling action, so slowing down could well come about on the player side when dice are rolled if the GM side is slow to action the required OOB messaging.

[viresanimi]

I've found that if I just put my computer to "sleep" instead of just shutting it down completely, then performance will deteriorate over time, when using FG. A simple reboot always clears it up.

Just me to pennies.


Vires Animi

[Mirloc]

All versions of Windows have an inherent memory leak. It's gotten a lot better over time, but it's still there and that's with a computer that is just left on without any internet connection (and thus no updates). You indicated that it had been a month or more since you had rebooted your system and typically every Monday Microsoft releases updated software and drivers, this results in what's commonly called Patch Tuesday. If the PC has downloaded and updated drivers that have not been completed (i.e. the pc had not been restarted since the update was installed you get a mish-mash of DLLs loading.

As an example, your video driver loads certain DLLs by default, particularly if you have aero running that also means DirectX is running on start-up. If either DirectX, your printer, or your video driver is updated that means the PC is holding outdated DLLs active, and any program that starts up will fumble between the old DLLs and the new DLLs. It's a mess. As a rule, typically I reboot my servers and PCs at least once a week (I defer my updates using server software - but that's not the point of this...), so I defer updates to a specific day (in my case Saturday). You could do the same thing with a home PC by setting the update to specifically update on every Saturday, and force a reboot following the update.

[damned]

All versions of Windows have an inherent memory leak. It's gotten a lot better over time, but it's still there and that's with a computer that is just left on without any internet connection (and thus no updates). You indicated that it had been a month or more since you had rebooted your system and typically every Monday Microsoft releases updated software and drivers, this results in what's commonly called Patch Tuesday.

Microsoft release patches once/month - patch tuesday is most commonly the second tuesday of the month...
:)

[Mirloc]

Sorry, it's been a while since I've been outside a patch management environment, but yes - patch Tuesday is once a month for standard security updates.

[Andraax]

All versions of Windows have an inherent memory leak.

Yeah, the memory leak is called "Windows". :-)

[damned]

Conversation with my son today:
Nick: Dad you need a second brain
Me: What? Mines not working?
Nick: Well its not working very well.
Me: Do you need a second brain?
Nick: No. My brain is young and learns things easily. Yours is old and too full of useless stuff.

[Callum]

Conversation with my son today:
Nick: Dad you need a second brain
Me: What? Mines not working?
Nick: Well its not working very well.
Me: Do you need a second brain?
Nick: No. My brain is young and learns things easily. Yours is old and too full of useless stuff.
You: Correct. Why do you think I had you? <Evil smirk>

[damned]

You: Correct. Why do you think I had you? <Evil smirk>

No. He is a very delightful and wonderful little boy :)
He might also be on to something....

[Moon Wizard]

As Trenloe mentioned, there are certain interactions that rely on prompt behavior from the GM side, but can be delayed by network or Windows performance. Also, in certain rulesets, especially older ones, I've seen cases where there is code that is constantly executing in a sort of delayed endless loop (via network updates triggering more network updates, or with certain windows open). This can dramatically impact the ability of FG to update frames in real time.

Long term, that's one of the reasons we are looking towards re-architecting, and specifically splitting off dice rolling, networking, and frame rendering into different threads to improve on-screen responsiveness.

In general, for any game when I see slower performance, I end up rebooting first as that solves most of the issues.

Regards,
JPG

[Callum]

No. He is a very delightful and wonderful little boy :)
He might also be on to something....

I'm sure that, like my own delightful and wonderful little boy, he'd understand your joke about him being your second brain!

[damned]

I'm sure that, like my own delightful and wonderful little boy, he'd understand your joke about him being your second brain!

Ohhhh - he might well have gotten it but I didnt! Doh!

[gamemasterbob]

Old thread. I stopped using FG a few years ago because of this problem and the lack of a fix. Did this ever get fixed? I recently got back to FG because I forgot about this problem. I spent $100 on D&D5 sups for FG. It ran for a while and then one day...frame rates in the single digits. I think it's simple but illusive. I started a thread about this today. Just thought I would jump in here. I really enjoy FG when it works. This problem has never been solved. As for the DEV saying he doesn't have the problem. Yea, so what's your point? We have it. I think there is something draining FR like a looping script or something NOT a weak or over worked system. Those of us who have this probably have a common ground. Help.

[damned]

It isnt possible for anyone to test an application on all hardware and software combinations. Far and away the majority of users dont experience this.
The OP stated that a reboot of his computer (that had been on for over a month) resolved his issues so its not likely that this is the same issue as yours.
I replied to you in the other thread asking for a couple of extra pieces of info.

[ddavison]

Which ruleset are you seeing this performance with? Moon Wizard was able to locate an issue that affected some users. See the thread below. If that is your issue, then please try testing it under the TEST channel and let us know if that resolves the issue for you.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?28619-WotC-5E-Theme-Combat-Tracker-open-poor-video-performance

[damned]

To access Test Channel go into Settings and you can switch there. If it fixes your issue switch back to Live channel next week once 3.1.7 goes live.

[demonsbane]

Far and away the majority of users dont experience this.

Somehow after the 3.1.6 release my performance with Fantasy Grounds, particularly the 3d dice, dropped a lot. Right now it's barely playable for me.

Before of this, waking the system from sleep or hibernation usually resulted in graphics performance reduction and it was solved by restarting, but this is a different issue.

Of course I've restarted many times and reinstalled updated drivers, started a new test campaign, but to no avail. I also reinstalled the FG app and joined to the test version 3.1.7, changing nothing at all.

I put the app in a Nvidia 3d profile for tweaking it, but it also didn't work.

So I'm wondering what to do. This app used to run perfectly, and on my end I didn't change anything in this PC (Windows 10 64, 8GB, Geforce GTX 470, D&D 5e ruleset) before stumbling with this sluggish performance, which by the way isn't happening in other graphically intensive apps like videogames (Dragon's Dogma is running great).

[Moon Wizard]

Are you running any extensions? If so, try disabling them.

Also, which ruleset are you running?
And what is the memory usage in task manager of FG after starting your campaign?

Right now, I can't think of anything done that would impact performance in v3.1.6. This, the configuration questions.

Thanks,
JPG

[Moon Wizard]

Also, do you see the same issue in a brand new campaign with no extensions?

Thanks,
JPG

[demonsbane]

Hi Moon Wizard,

In the first place, let me say that fortunately this afternoon FG has started to work 100% ok, without any bad performance.

It's fast and smooth again! Last thing I did was installing today's Windows 10 update (not understanding how it could have affected the issue, I don't know for sure if it's related).

Now, addressing these questions may be useful for other possible cases, so there I go:


Are you running any extensions? If so, try disabling them.

Also, which ruleset are you running?
And what is the memory usage in task manager of FG after starting your campaign?

Right now, I can't think of anything done that would impact performance in v3.1.6. This, the configuration questions.

After noticing the problem I disabled all extensions for doing checks.
The ruleset I remember testing was D&D 5e, with different themes.
The memory usage in the task manager in 5e Sample Campaign is, right now, 436,9 MB (however it's working well again, and I didn't check this before).


Also, do you see the same issue in a brand new campaign with no extensions?

Yes, it happened with new campaigns without extensions nor opened modules.

Now the problem is gone, even if I'm not sure why. Now, thank you very much for your patience and support!

[Nylanfs]

So, gremlins then :-)

[demonsbane]

Yeah Nylanfs, the nasty ones!