Guild Wars 2

I’ve been noticing that when I have reflections on, I get horrible fps spikes. I looked at the stickied fps issues thread to see if there was an answer to this. In the thread it says to turn off reflections.

Why are reflections so unoptimized in this game that anet even says to turn them off? Is it a bug in the engine that they just haven’t gotten around to fix or what? Can any of you run reflections without the spikes?

It isn’t a huge deal, but the reflections look pretty and I would love to have them on without bad fps spikes.

PS: Sorry if this has been mention before, I tried searching for “reflections” but nothing was showing up.

Klinch.2964:

I’ve been noticing that when I have reflections on, I get horrible fps spikes. I looked at the stickied fps issues thread to see if there was an answer to this. In the thread it says to turn off reflections.

Why are reflections so unoptimized in this game that anet even says to turn them off? Is it a bug in the engine that they just haven’t gotten around to fix or what? Can any of you run reflections without the spikes?

It isn’t a huge deal, but the reflections look pretty and I would love to have them on without bad fps spikes.

PS: Sorry if this has been mention before, I tried searching for “reflections” but nothing was showing up.

The terms that likely bring up a lot of threads are ‘kitten’ and ‘Umbra’. Umbra software is software ArenaNet uses to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfpe2g9SexA
except its not working properly. Basically the story IIRC is that ArenaNet is pointing fingers at Umbra and Umbra is pointing fingers at Nvidia/AMD, and AMD/Nvidia are trying to help ArenaNet but someone(s) at ArenaNet decides they don’t need help, even though I guess most gaming companies invite them in to optimize the game and make drivers for the game, etc, etc. So…its a vicious cycle that I don’t see being resolved any time soon.

The problem revolves around objects behind other objects (out of sight to the player) are still being rendered. In the case of reflections, if you ever happen to get lucky and fall through a map like I have. There is water underneath the map acting as a ‘sea level’ so-to-speak. So the base level of every map (my guess) is water and land is placed on top of that to create terrain. The terrain is supposed to block water you can’t see, but the software doesn’t work so reflections are everywhere all the time. Turning them down from ‘All’ to the next level makes it bearable for most graphics cards.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

The terms that likely bring up a lot of threads are ‘kitten’ and ‘Umbra’. Umbra software is software ArenaNet uses to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfpe2g9SexA
except its not working properly. Basically the story IIRC is that ArenaNet is pointing fingers at Umbra and Umbra is pointing fingers at Nvidia/AMD, and AMD/Nvidia are trying to help ArenaNet but someone(s) at ArenaNet decides they don’t need help, even though I guess most gaming companies invite them in to optimize the game and make drivers for the game, etc, etc. So…its a vicious cycle that I don’t see being resolved any time soon.

The problem revolves around objects behind other objects (out of sight to the player) are still being rendered. In the case of reflections, if you ever happen to get lucky and fall through a map like I have. There is water underneath the map acting as a ‘sea level’ so-to-speak. So the base level of every map (my guess) is water and land is placed on top of that to create terrain. The terrain is supposed to block water you can’t see, but the software doesn’t work so reflections are everywhere all the time. Turning them down from ‘All’ to the next level makes it bearable for most graphics cards.

Cool, thanks for the explanation. I took an opengl class and for the final project we had to choose a rendering technique, study it, and try to replicate it. I chose something like the video you linked. Really interesting stuff, but I’m a bit of a slow learner and a lot of stuff went over my head :P

Interesting. However, when I switch reflections off, I only get a 4-5 FPS increase. Are they really that demanding?

Flatley.1620:

Interesting. However, when I switch reflections off, I only get a 4-5 FPS increase. Are they really that demanding?

Depends on the area you’re in, even though most, if not all maps, have an initial layer of water covered by raised land, but that is another conversation altogether about Umbra’s software.

For instance, I sometimes have the reflections set to ‘All’ and cap my GPU usage out, this really hinders my frame rate in swampy areas due to the more graphical intense water effects. If I turn it down from ‘All’ to the level below that, my GPU doesn’t use 100% and goes back to my frame limit cap at 60. In this situation I gain about 25 fps, but this is an extreme, the other extreme would be what you mentioned, it’s all about where you are in the game.

Off topic:
It would be neat if this engine had a benchmark test, I’m sure the enthusiast crowd would love it and perhaps this would be a tool to better explain to people that even the most ridiculously specced machines have trouble with this engine.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Klinch.2964:

I’ve been noticing that when I have reflections on, I get horrible fps spikes. I looked at the stickied fps issues thread to see if there was an answer to this. In the thread it says to turn off reflections.

Why are reflections so unoptimized in this game that anet even says to turn them off? Is it a bug in the engine that they just haven’t gotten around to fix or what? Can any of you run reflections without the spikes?

It isn’t a huge deal, but the reflections look pretty and I would love to have them on without bad fps spikes.

PS: Sorry if this has been mention before, I tried searching for “reflections” but nothing was showing up.

The terms that likely bring up a lot of threads are ‘kitten’ and ‘Umbra’. Umbra software is software ArenaNet uses to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfpe2g9SexA
except its not working properly. Basically the story IIRC is that ArenaNet is pointing fingers at Umbra and Umbra is pointing fingers at Nvidia/AMD, and AMD/Nvidia are trying to help ArenaNet but someone(s) at ArenaNet decides they don’t need help, even though I guess most gaming companies invite them in to optimize the game and make drivers for the game, etc, etc. So…its a vicious cycle that I don’t see being resolved any time soon.

The problem revolves around objects behind other objects (out of sight to the player) are still being rendered. In the case of reflections, if you ever happen to get lucky and fall through a map like I have. There is water underneath the map acting as a ‘sea level’ so-to-speak. So the base level of every map (my guess) is water and land is placed on top of that to create terrain. The terrain is supposed to block water you can’t see, but the software doesn’t work so reflections are everywhere all the time. Turning them down from ‘All’ to the next level makes it bearable for most graphics cards.

Has this actually been proven? A similar case exists with Crysis 2 and its DX11 Tessellation (there’s a river of invisible tessellation), but this was also backed by pictures showing it in wireframe.

Espionage.3685:

Has this actually been proven? A similar case exists with Crysis 2 and its DX11 Tessellation (there’s a river of invisible tessellation), but this was also backed by pictures showing it in wireframe.

Not sure about reflections but take a look at this:

http://www.umbrasoftware.com/en/clients/case-studies/guild-wars-2-case-study/