Feedback on performance with map position and image effects

[anathemort]

I have a player with a 2014 Macbook Air (2.6 GHz Intel Core i5, 8gb memory, Intel Iris 1536 GPU) that has been struggling with performance issues in FGU since GA. She has a stable Internet connection with no trouble streaming other services like Netflix in high quality, but while in FGU, she regularly (every 5-10 mins) has disconnection issues where she will be disconnected on my side and, about 30s later, be kicked out on her side too. We spent some time on it today and found ideal settings:

• vsync 2 (previously 1)
• imagequality 3 (previously 2)
• image set to background (previously always foreground)
• lighting and LOS enabled (no change)

We tried imagequality first, and there was immediate improvement and she had no disconnections throughout our 30 minute test session from that point forward.

Now, if the image has several effects in play (partially masked Rain, Water, and Ocean), she has quite a bit of lag and difficulty with token movement only when the image is in the foreground. In the background it is smooth, and if I turn off all the effects, it is equally smooth in the foreground.

We started the map with ambient lighting set to Sunlight and no token lights besides Darkvision 60. When I turned off ambient lighting and gave her token a torch, there was a 30 second application freeze on her end, but after that passed it was smooth.

The list above is what she'll keep for now, and I will be cautious with the number of effect layers I use. With these settings, the player reports smooth dice rolling and "good enough" image and shadow quality. So I'm not really looking for a solution from SW at the moment, as these adjustments seem to be helping a lot. If, however, anyone has some ideas about other areas of improvement, we'd be happy to take a look.

We'll be having a full session tomorrow and fingers crossed that the disconnect issue settles.

[anathemort]

Following up to report that after a 3.5 hour session, this player had no trouble and no disconnects (first time in months!). She also reports not really noticing a difference in quality.

I think it's really important to recognize the value of adjustable settings for different hardware, and while we have these vsync and imagequality commands, they are not obvious to find and the impact is hard to foresee. I would recommend adding them to the client options GUI with a tooltip!