Ambient Occlusion Downsampling Feedback

[Arnei]

Sirlin wants some feedback on the “Ambient Occlusion Downsampling” setting in the debug portion of options menu. Valuable information includes:

• FPS for all three settings.
• Whether “horizontal lines” occur during normal gameplay and/or cinematics, and which settings remove them.
• Which OS and graphics card you use.

Note: The horizontal lines look like the picture below. They most prominently occur during certain cinematics (Jaina Ground Super, Midori Victory Pose), but can also exist during normal gameplay. Whether they occur for you and in what situation seems to be system specific.
EDIT: SUPER ANIMATION THAT OCCURS PRE-HIT IS NOT COUNTED AS A CINEMATIC, AND THEREFORE “Off (Only Cinematics)” WILL NOT REMOVE HORIZONTAL LINES IN THEM.

So, my report looks like this:
FPS:

• Always Off: ~112 FPS.
• Always On: ~154 FPS.
• Off (Only Cinematics): ~152 FPS.

Horizontal lines (Occur only during cinematics):

• Always Off: Removes horizontal lines during super.
• Always On: DOES NOT remove horizontal lines during super.
• Off (Only Cinematics): DOES NOT remove horizontal lines during super.

System Information: Windows 10, NVidia GeForce GTX 570, FS Version v0.15582
Additional Notes: Windowed Mode, Resolution 1504x846, Anti-Aliasing Off, Valerie vs Jaina on Morningstar

[Sirlin]

The “off (cinematics only)” setting really shoul dremove the horizontal lines during Jaina’s super. And I’m guessing it really does for you. If you say it doesn’t, maybe you’re talking about the very beginning before the cinematic part. I’m talking about when the camera moves after she has actually hit with it, and a fire dragon is flying upward. Also surely this setting removes the horizontal lines during Midori’s win pose.

Wow the “always off” setting gives a huge hit to fps, you’re saying. A whopping 26% during all gameplay? That’s a ton. I’m not saying it’s wrong or anything, my point is we can’t make that the default if has such a huge performance cost. So that’s good to know.

Other people please report their fps changes amongst the three ambient occlusion settings in the debug options too. And which settings fix the lines during cinematics (jaina’s super hitting or midori’s win pose for example) and which fix it during gameplay (valerie’s idle for example).

[GRAG]

Running 2013 15" MacBook Pro with discrete graphics (GeForce GT 750m) on macOS Mojave, and the lines seem to have disappeared on their own at some point along the way, inasmuch as they no longer show up regardless of whether ambient occlusion downsampling is on or off.

On the other hand, I don’t seem to have any meaningful performance difference on here between on and off. Not sure exactly what might be behind that — maybe it’s just because there’s no longer the bug causing the stripes?

[Arnei]

It seems you were indeed right, I mistook the pre-hit animation for Jainas ground super for a cinematic.
I made some example pictures so you can take a look at it yourself (although that is probably hardly necessary as everything is as you said).

(Please ignore any FPS numbers, they’re probably not representative as I was installing something when I was taking the screenshots)

By the way, since you mentioned Valeries idel, is her scar also related to ambient occlusion?

[Sirlin]

When I said to check Midori’s win pose, I meant human midori. You showed the dragon’s win pose and it doesn’t look like it has the horizontal lines in the first place, so we can’t tell if the other setting fixed them or not.

Valerie’s idle. I don’t know what her “scar” means and I don’t see a “scar” in the tiny picture you posed. What I meant was horizontal lines on her like in your jaina picture.

All of this is overwhelmed anyway by one thing thing: you said you lose 25% of your fps during all gameplay when downsampling is set to always off. Can you confirm that? If yes, that’s so absurdly bad that we cannot even consider this setting. Can anyone else reproduce that result?

On Mac, I’m not sure but I think those horizontal shadow lines just aren’t there in the first place. I’d actually expect it to have about the same performance hit as on Windows when turning downsampling off though. So it’s a bit surprising Grag gets 0fps loss during gameplay while Arnei loses 25% of his fps with that same setting on.

[GRAG]

The horizontal lines used to be there for me on macOS (and on Windows 10, if memory serves), which is the odd part. Dunno if it’s some new Metal code in a newer version of Unity or in Mojave, or what, but they do seem to have fixed themselves for me at some point along the way.

[Remy77077]

Jaina vs Midori on Morningstar.

Off (Only Cinematics): FPS: 77 to 158, Always see horizontal lines at all times including during Supers.
Always Off: FPS: 77 to 181, never see any horizontal lines, including during Supers
Always On: FPS: 82 to 235, Always see horizontal lines at all times including during Supers.

Hard to give an “average” FPS estimate as they are fluctuating constantly, but it was always averaging over 100 and Always On was generally giving better FPS numbers.

System Information: Windows 10, NVidia GTX 980M
Additional Notes: Fullscreen Mode, Resolution 1920x1080, Anti-Aliasing Off.