Hello Devs.

Back to report another find: On some areas with large nebulas, like the Nephtys mining station, and also in the map screen, there's a noticeable slowdown on the frame rate.
Specially when trying to open the map in an area with heavy nebulas.

Also, map takes time to load, aprox 30 seconds.

I'll post here my pc specs again:
Intel I5-5200U Quad 2.29Ghz
8 GB RAM
GEFORCE 930M
HD Toshiba 1TB

I think this issue is connected to old GPUs and their handling of shaders and dynamic light/shadows.
It would greatly help players with weaker Pcs if there were options to disable post-processing, anti-alias, number of dynamic lights, and volumetrics.

I know this is the trend on modern games, but think about it, look back at Everspace 1. You can ramp up effects as much as you like, but you will hardly achieve something more beautiful than Everspace 1. For me, it is an example of aesthetic quality. And it plays smoothly on my PC.

Cheers.

I noticed it when trying to open the map when docked on the station that is very close to a thick green nebula.
FPS went down a lot, much more than normal when opening the map on a clear area.

Just trying the area Carrier Holdup in Union System. The fog there is very thick, and performance drops to unplayable levels. Forced some shadow values on the scalability file, and it's fine regarding FPS, but the fog is extremely thick and light is so bright that I cannot see anything until it pops right on my face. Could disable fog on the Egine.ini file, but that kills the whole area mood.
Everspace 1 nebula areas weren't this heavy, unless those very dark ones that I loved. The problem here seems the light intensity. Too bright, almost white. Anyway, some players will probably have the same issues I have, so I'll leave here some tweaks I used to make the game fluid for me:

Add to the Scalability.ini file at C:\Users\***\AppData\Local\ES2\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor (path may be different for others)

[PostProcessQuality@0]
r.BlurGBuffer=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=0
r.AmbientOcclusionRadiusScale=0
r.RenderTargetPoolMin=100
r.EyeAdaptationQuality=0
r.BloomQuality=1

[ShadowQuality@0]
r.ShadowQuality=0
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=1
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=128
r.Shadow.SpotLightTransitionScale=60

[FoliageQuality@3]
foliage.DensityScale=0
grass.DensityScale=0
foliage.LODDistanceScale=1

[TextureQuality@0]
r.Streaming.MipBias=2.5
r.Streaming.PoolSize=200

[EffectsQuality@0]
r.SSR=0
r.MaterialQualityLevel=0

On extreme cases, you can add to the Engine.ini file
[SystemSettings]
r.ViewDistanceScale=1
r.Fog=0

That will remove fog completely. But it looks awful. XD

Attached images show the tweaked result. Awful. The other 2 images is the same area without changing the scalability file.
I'll try to remake the file step by step and optimize it for potato PCs.

This is a problem of itself. Lots of hiccups you see is due to very limited specs of this particular card, i believe. Times move on, ES2 is not, and can not, be created to run perfectly well on exactly same kind of hardware ES1 was able to run perfectly well on.

In the same time, from what i see (and am about to soon report), delays to open the map is a part of optimizations not yet implemented into ES2 (remember, this is Early Access - can't have everything). In your case, the two interact to create that massive delay, on your hardware - which modern hardware largely overcomes with sheer processing power.

P.S. It is a massive compliment to Rockfish you just did right there with that "930M" line of yours, you know? For a beautiful modern 3D game to anyhow run on 930M - is a feat of itself, as this mobile core has most of its core characteristics being very humble. Wow.

Tested the scalability values, and find out that r.EyeAdaptationQuality is connected to auto exposure.
I'll leave that untouched since it doesn't seem to affect performance.
I'll keep playing with the other values in different areas to make sure it works.
So, Potato fellow players, if you want to have fun with Everspace in current development, try this:

Add these lines to Scalability.ini:
------------------------------------------------------
[PostProcessQuality@0]
r.BlurGBuffer=0
r.PostProcessAAQuality=0
r.AmbientOcclusionRadiusScale=0
r.RenderTargetPoolMin=100
r.BloomQuality=1

[ShadowQuality@0]
r.ShadowQuality=0
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=1
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=128
r.Shadow.SpotLightTransitionScale=60

[FoliageQuality@3]
foliage.DensityScale=0
grass.DensityScale=0
foliage.LODDistanceScale=1

[TextureQuality@0]
r.Streaming.MipBias=2.5
r.Streaming.PoolSize=200

[EffectsQuality@0]
r.SSR=0
r.MaterialQualityLevel=0
----------------------------------------------------

Oh, and put all your graphic settings in the lowest value.

Cheers. Thanks for the compliment, Fins_FinsT. My Potato PC has played so many games, one gets attached to it. He knows all the tricks of Everspace 1. ;P


Attached image is with scalability tweaks.

Hi again.
New report about performance:
The Prescott Starbase, even with all the tweaks I did, takes VERY LONG time to load.
It's unplayable in dx12, extreme stuttering due to texture stream.
It plays well in dx11 after the ridiculous long load, though.

Hello to all
This is a report about the Zharkov update.
Ceto and the system Map don't seem to lag as they did before.
I still use the tweaks to scalability and engine files, and am able to play the game with proper fps in my potato PC.

Thanks for the great game.
I'll post later about the other systems, and how they perform after Zharkov update.

I have been to Prescott now. The loading time persists beyond the 5 minute mark. 2 crashes, had to play in DX11, and reduce affinity to only 1 core, or the pc would hang. There's something very heavy in Prescott. FPS drops and stutters when the camera turns to the floating base.
Other than that, I only notice FPS drop in heavy nebula areas. It's that damn volunetric light/shadows.

Update: checked the process, while loading the area physical memory went to 7.9gb, the pc hang for a while, then it drpped to 5.4 gb. In an open space area, the game holds at 4.7gb
Prescott freezes my pc because it's loading Huge amounts of data. 8gb physical memory are not enough, it seems.

Hello again Devs.
Performance Report about Noah Damaris starport, Union system.
Like Prescott, when loading, the game jumps up physical memory to above 8gb, and hangs the pc for several minutes.
Changing affinity to 1 core helps a little, at least stopping a crash.
After loading, and initial stuttering while the physical memory goes down, it stabilizes at 6,7gb, and becomes playable.
Do note, that I use a lot of tweaks to reduce post-processing, dynamic light/shadows and volumetric effects to a minimum. I also reduce the mipmap max level of textures and meshes.
After these loading incidents, the game is quite playable, with minor stutters from time to time.

It seems to me that it could be either of these things:
-huge textures that don't have pre-computed lower mipmap levels.
-Same with high density meshes without lower LOD.
-Too many objects on scene, or many that are behaving as unique (loaded multiple times), instead of instances of the same.

Also noticed that during explosions, there's very serious stutter if one keeps the camera focused on them (drone carrier is a good example)
I am using the lowest particle definition, and yet this happens. Seems like the number of particles used by the game in those explosions is HUGE.

Cheers.

I made a post about it on Steam also. But I'll ask wiki admin to see if it is an interesting idea.