Star Citizen Alpha Patch 3.23 DLSS & Vulkan Renderer Tested

[wmk]

I finally managed to test DLSS and Vulkan in controlled environment.

TL;DR: 5-10 frames more on Vulkan renderer *
DirectX: 25 frames more with DLSS Quality vs. Off
Vulkan: 30 frames more with DLSS Quality vs. Off

For those not familiar with software testing techniques, a controlled environment is a dedicated environment with specific conditions and parameters maintained throughout the testing process. PU cannot be used for testing client framerate, as the server, backend and/or backend services have impact on it; lower server performance results in lower client performance; unstable backend servers and services result in delayed actions on the client side, which have impact on client performance too.

Therefore, I tested both the newly implemented Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and the new Vulkan renderer in Arena Commander, offline mode, free flight Engineering game mode with multicrew disabled.

Please note that despite spawning the test ship on the same map, in the same spawn point, the lighting was still slightly different; until I perform that test again, I assume Vulkan results are probably around 1-3 frames better, as the ship was slightly brighter during the test, compared to the DirectX test; brighter test subject = more details that need to be rendered.

* -- Please note that this is still an early version of Star Citizen Vulkan renderer; DLSS upscaling is still being optimized.

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DirectX 11, DLSS Off; Result: 48 fps

DirectX 11, DLSS Quality; Result: 75 fps

Vulkan, DLSS Off; Result: 53 fps

Vulkan, DLSS Quality; Result: 83 fps

The loss of details with DLSS Quality can be observed in the bottom left corner, on the space station part, as well as on both large asteroids on left and right,
Overall, the image generated by DLSS Quality mode looks very good.

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Hardware info and game settings:

Nvidia RTX 2070 Super on Intel i7 9700k
1440p, highest settings, gamma 40

DirectX renderer with ReShade levels and vibrance filters, with near-zero impact on framerate.
At this stage, ReShade 5.x and 6.x do not support SC Vulkan renderer.

 

[BUTUZ]

As someone from the compute world my question really is are we now able to access vulcan's built in multithreading GPU wise in SC or at this early stage are we still limited to only one GPU doing anything useful?

er..... asking for a firend .....that is saying back in the day we all thought one cpu with 1 core and 1 thread at the fastest possible speed was all we need - but advancements in technology has proven that we were deluded and 32 cores and 64 threads running 500mhz slower is actually better in most scenarios.

The graphics industry seems stuck where CPUs where in the 90s. :/

 

[wmk]

@BUTUZ Not yet -- multi-threading is coming later:

(...) Multi-threaded-rendering will unfortunately not be enabled for this release (3.23), and will come in a future release (either a point release, or the next major patch).

The rendering code mostly supports being run on multiple threads/cores in parallel (just a few small changes left to do), however the complexity comes in how we schedule this work in our job system. Currently the 'main' thread creates and schedules all 'jobs' for the game, and the jobs and other threads can't create new jobs themselves (intentional design decision which we want to keep for efficiency). However the rendering currently runs on its own dedicated thread, and because of this it can't create any jobs for splitting the workload of generating the Vulkan command lists. As such we may need to turn the render-thread itself into a job such that we can schedule it and all the Vulkan work from the main thread together, but this could have some unintended knock-ons that we couldn't prioritize fixing ahead of stability issues and hitting the 3.23 deadline (...)

Spectrum - v6.21.1

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[Ayeteeone]

@wmk What is this DLSS nonsense?! I PAID for 3686400 pixels, I want ALL of them doing honest work!

Seriously, nice done! With what little time I've had to put into it, the offline mode has been the most stable for testing MM changes. There is more work to do, but I'm liking the weapon updates.

 

[BUTUZ]

@BUTUZ Not yet -- multi-threading is coming later:

(...) Multi-threaded-rendering will unfortunately not be enabled for this release (3.23), and will come in a future release (either a point release, or the next major patch).

The rendering code mostly supports being run on multiple threads/cores in parallel (just a few small changes left to do), however the complexity comes in how we schedule this work in our job system. Currently the 'main' thread creates and schedules all 'jobs' for the game, and the jobs and other threads can't create new jobs themselves (intentional design decision which we want to keep for efficiency). However the rendering currently runs on its own dedicated thread, and because of this it can't create any jobs for splitting the workload of generating the Vulkan command lists. As such we may need to turn the render-thread itself into a job such that we can schedule it and all the Vulkan work from the main thread together, but this could have some unintended knock-ons that we couldn't prioritize fixing ahead of stability issues and hitting the 3.23 deadline (...)

Spectrum - v6.21.1

RSI’s Spectrum is our integrated community and player interaction service, including chat, forums, game integration, and Player Organization facilities. Player Organizations (“Org”...

robertsspaceindustries.com

I always get confuse when reading about that as it always seems to me like they are always taking about vulcan using CPU multithreading where as I am wondering about actual multi GPU's ex 2 c 2080ti instead of a 3090 ?

 

[wmk]

I always get confuse when reading about that as it always seems to me like they are always taking about vulcan using CPU multithreading where as I am wondering about actual multi GPU's ex 2 c 2080ti instead of a 3090 ?

You mean SLI? -- Forget about it; Nvidia SLI is deprecated, CIG would never support dead technology.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

This is indeed very interesting info, I didn't know CiG was trying to implement DLSS so soon. It's nice to see it doing it's part, thanks for doing a proper test @wmk !

Even though I do like to see all my pixels doing their job like @Ayeteeone , and with most games that I run at my native 1080p I don't ever really need DLSS, I also do appreciate having my room temps not rise by +20C just because I'm running a demanding game lol
Also it's quieter that way.

I know a lot of folk who hate it, but I learned to like the option of DLSS being there, with an FPS cap on top, cos it can make all the difference between a laid back chill gaming session, or sweating my ass off in a sauna while a jet is on full AB right next to my legs. For example I can run Cyberpunk at unlocked FPS with everything set to highest, rtx very on and oversampling to 1440p and get a great looking game and good fps, but I do prefer not having to change into my swim trunks just for a quick shootout session. After a 240+ hours I already know every pixel of the game, I can live with the slight loss in clarity to maintain my sanity.
I hope it will do the same for me in SC, although I haven't heard any of my coolers struggle when running the game.

 

[BUTUZ]

You mean SLI? -- Forget about it; Nvidia SLI is deprecated, CIG would never support dead technology.

If I plug a second GPU in then Montoya's YouTube video rendering down to 480p for the mobile phone people - runs twice as fast.

Why doesnt this work with games too in this modern multithreaded age? :/