So here is what I mean when I talk about stutter and frame drops.
[video]https://youtu.be/kkyD3J74xJI[/video]
The graph at the bottom left shows the time between each frame.
Consistency is just as, if not more, important as raw framerate and this is something Dirty Bomb does a horrible job at maintaining. There are multiple reasons for this, such as poor optimisation, using the game engine in ways it was not supposed to be used and not building a system to adapt to frame rate variance.
This really needs to be looked at in greater detail because the game is built around 1 core skill (High Speed Tracking Aim) and that skill is very reliant on fluid movement and consistency. Something Dirty Bomb lacks greatly right now.
My major concern here is Splash Damages track record with performance (let’s just say its not good). ET:QW was horrible to run on launch, most of us know the issues with Brink, games SD had done as contract work (Doom 3 and Batman) also had some performance issues compared to their single player components and now with Dirty Bomb we are seeing the same thing.
What I am hoping some of you guys reading this could do is record and upload a video and leave you specs so we can see if we can pinpoint some sort of pattern here.
The commands you need are…
STAT UNITGRAPH
STAT RAW
Type these in the console once you are playing a game and record the graph, it is very important to type STAT RAW because without it the engine smooths out the graph to show average frame rates over a set number of frames, this hides any mirco stutter / frame drops.
My system specs are as follows…
CPU: i7 3930K (Hex Core) @ 4.7Ghz
GPU: Nvidia 980GTX
RAM: 64GB 1600hz
OS: Windows 8.1 x64
PSU: 800watt Corsair
GAME DRIVE: 2x 250gb SSD in RAID 0
SYSTEM DRIVE: 1x 120GB SSD
Please help out if possible guys, the game is barely playable in my eyes right now and I fear if we don’t pin point the issues soon, its likely never going to get fixed. Unlike games in the past, its also unlikely we will see massive increases in frame rate as new hardware comes out. UE3 is very dependent on single core speed and right now the industry is moving towards more cores at a slightly lower speed. Meaning, in future we could actually see DB performing worse on newer systems.