50-100% longer load-times compared to FGC

[Weissrolf]

Hello.

It takes 50% longer to load a campaign as GM in FGU (21 s) vs. FGC (14 s), it takes 100% longer to load a campaign as localhost PC in FGU (28 s) vs. FGC (14 s).

Same Campaign files, same modules, same extensions, same everything, files pre-cached by Windows.

Side-note: Connecting as a PC in FGU starts the UI quicker than 100%, but then it takes more time until the UI becomes responsive (buttons can be pressed and thus character selected, "no response" vanishes).

Is this considered an issue that qualifies for the House of Healing or a general discussion for the Tavern or Workshop? I can provide logs if necessary.

Thanks and regards.

[Valyar]

Yes, this is very annoying at the moment and it is causing huge delay while we develop content and test things. :(
I find working directly on unity sub-optimal as it just eats too much time in loading. For now we develop in Classic and move to unity for the fine-tuning and polishing. I hope this changes or we have some QoL improvement for developers.

[bmos]

Interestingly, it seems surprisingly hardware dependent. I remember there being a substantial decrease when I built a new computer with an NVMe boot drive (previously I had a SATA SSD).
It is still slower than Classic in regard to initial load time, however.

I'm just speculating here based on my experience (along with a few hints dropped on the forums here over the past year), but I think a big part of what is happening is that more content is being loaded proactively in Unity since there is now RAM to spare and average read/write speeds are much better than when Classic was created.

I find a computer with a HDD (poor random read/write performance) is now greatly disadvantaged compared to an SSD (especially an NVMe SSD which can perform much better by bypassing the SATA controller) for this reason. Classic doesn't seem to care so much about SSDs (still much better of course, but not as massive of a difference).

Also, despite the long initial load time, a lot of the in-game load times seem much shorter (primarily as a result of 64-bit i would think, but I'm sure there are other data-processing improvements implemented in Unity also).
This part holds true on SATA SSDs and hard drives, which seems to support the theory that much more is being kept in RAM.

Maybe I'll do some A/B testing by comparing a 160GB HDD, a 500GB SATA SSD, and a 512GB NVMe to test this theory...

[Weissrolf]

For my test disc access is irrelevant, though. Not only am I using a NVMe, but I also load the same files via NTFS hardlinks and load several times in a row to make sure everything resides inside the Windows file cache already.

Most of the extra time seems to be either CPU processing or waiting for something to happen. Network response might matter (see my other thread about launch times), but I specifically started a LAN game and connected via localhost.

There is kind of a red flag hinting at what the main culprit may be: memory consumption (private bytes).

Loading the same campaign as GM uses 600 mb in FGC, but 1450 mb in FGU. That's nearly 2.5x as much data that needs to be processed. Even with 64-bit applications (ab)using more memory, this still is a significant increase.

And loading an extremely large test image in FGU leads to 9 gb private bytes memory allocation (including the aforementioned 1.4 gb, so 7.6 gb for the image). For the same file Photoshop peaks at 5 gb and then drops down to only 2.5 gb (once the JPEG was decoded to uncompressed bitmap in memory). Unfortunately FGU does not allow to load uncompressed TIFF files anymore. It does really work well for zooming and scrolling through that large image/file, though, specialized image viewer software can do worse than FGU in that regard.

[Valyar]

It does not matter what your hardware is. Unity loads much slower than classic and this is not nice at all. Even my players complain and they are joining once or twice per week. It is not subjective issue, it is very very objective. I hope now when the product is stable and all bugs squashed, this is something they will look at. I am very eager to test various builds to improve my life as user. :)

[Jiminimonka]

This thread is essentially the same as the FGU-Multi-thread conversation.

The developers are constantly working on streamlining the code, and eventually things will improve, probably in slow steps. Do you imagine that the Smiteworks developers don't know there is a bottleneck and it needs improving?

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?63470-CPU-multi-threading-planned/page4

Same discussion - in the Tavern.

[Zacchaeus]

Unity loads more stuff that Classic does. It handles images, and tokens differently.

[Weissrolf]

Do you imagine that the Smiteworks developers don't know there is a bottleneck and it needs improving?
You are correct. I provided too much information on my own, which is unsuitable for the Healing forum. Let me correct that:

Help! Everything somehow loads vaguely slower on FGU than it did before on FGC, I promise. My players are slapping me left and right for asking them to change to FGU. I am sure that this is my own vault, so what can I do to make this right?

[bmos]

You are correct. I provided too much information on my own, which is unsuitable for the Healing forum. Let me correct that:

Help! Everything somehow loads vaguely slower on FGU than it did before on FGC, I promise. My players are slapping me left and right for asking them to change to FGU. I am sure that this is my own vault, so what can I do to make this right?There are only two fixes if you're already running good hardware. Patience as the codebase improves or loading fewer things (extensions, modules, images, tokens...).

[Weissrolf]

And for the codebase to improve we need to provide extensive feedback, preferably with measured numbers. But you cannot please everyone. Be vague and you get "you didn't prove this", be specific and you get "do you imagine the developers don't know".

Frankly, I would happily apply any fix on my side to make FGU not take double the time for my players to load the same stuff we did a week before in FGC. For the time being they are distracted by the graphical goodies (wow, rain), but eye candy can only get us so far.

[Zacchaeus]

You aren't comparing like with like. FGC is a simple 32 bit program that doesn't do a lot graphically. Unity is a complex 64 bit program that needs to load a lot more stuff and do many more operations than Classic. It's like comparing loading up a game of Solitaire with Photoshop.

[Weissrolf]

Of course the difference and complexity between FGC and FGU is not comparable to Solitaire vs. Photoshop, that's a very gross over-simplification. Furthermore Photoshop loads a lot faster than FGU.

For my players the only obvious difference between FGU and FGC is the inclusion of LoS, weather FX and 100% longer load-times.

Anyway, it seems that 50-100% longer load-times are not considered report-worthy here, so I will not spent more effort into this unless being asked for log files by developers.

[LordEntrails]

MOD:
I'm closing this thread as it seems to be a duplicate with very little difference to the other threads talking about performance and appears to just be aimed at making a lot of noise and drawing attention to a set of issues that are already well understood and have been discussed extensively already.

For other threads see;
- https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?63858-NETWORK-STATUS-Error-at-startup
- https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?63697-Slow-Connection-and-Load-Times
- https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?63760-FGU-running-slower-then-FGC
- https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?63470-CPU-multi-threading-planned