@Dusk_Coven @Royaji

Royaji wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

What you are experiencing with disconnects is pretty straightforward. It is a connection issue so FPS is not affected at all. And since the game is unable to receive any information from the server it is unable to calculate and update latency.

Could be poor implementation but it makes no sense -- If they are calculated at their end and sent to be displayed at my end (instead of being calculated at my end) then surely at this end software could detect that it missed one or more updates and display something accordingly.

Latency can't be calculated on your end. Or server end. It's the time between you and the server. If one side does not respond this time is infinite.

And it does display something accordingly. The "connection to the server timed out" message after you get kicked to the login screen.

Okay, please stop the argument, which is not getting anywhere.

First, Network Latency can be calculated at either (or both) ends of the connection. As far as I know, ZOS has not publicly documented whether the latency number that is displayed is calculated by the game client or by the host software. However, it makes more sense for the game client to make its own calculation and display the results. Quite likely, network latency is tracked by both the game client and by the host software, respectively.

Second, please realize that there are many different network transmission protocols that are in use. Frankly, I don't know which one(s) ZOS and Bethesda, respectively, use for communication between the game client and the host software, or between the player's computer and the megaserver system. So what follows is simply a broad outline of a protocol that, to my knowledge, has been used -- the details vary with its implementation.

To wit: the game client records the time at which it sends a packet to the server, then records the time at which it receives an acknowledgement from the host software of the packet's receipt. The latency is the difference in time between arrival of the acknowledgement and sending the packet.

If no acknowledgement is received after a default amount of time (e.g., 64 ms.), then the game client re-transmits the same packet. If no acknowledgement is eventually received after two or more re-transmissions, then the latency becomes too long to continue (displayed in red digits as 999+ ms.). As to what happens when the latency becomes too long, ordinarily, the game client must drop its current connection to the game host, and establish another one.

Further, the host also records the time at which it sends a packet to the game client. Then it records the time at which it receives an acknowledgement from the game client of the packet's receipt. The latency is the difference in time between arrival of the acknowledgement and sending the packet.

If no acknowledgement is received after a default amount of time (e.g., 64 ms.), the host software re-transmits the same packet. If no acknowledgement is eventually received after two or more re-transmissions, then the latency becomes too long to continue. As to what happens when the latency becomes too long, ordinarily, the host software sends an error message to the game client, then simply drops the connection to it. Again, the game client must establish another connection to resume communicating with the game host.

Third, with regard to the two observations in the OP which the writer does not "understand":

1. - *sometimes* in starter zones like Bleakrock, my FPS jumps up and down by 10-30 points each tick, BUT ping is steady AND the immediate area is nowhere busy as an Alik'r dolmen. Last time this happened I was staring at a mountain face in northern Bleakrock and there were maybe 2 players idling at a nearby fireplace with some questgiver NPCs.

   As stated in Post #2 of this discussion, Frames-Per-Second (FPS) is a measure of the display output performance of the player's hardware, and it is not affected (directly) by Network Latency.
   
   However, low network latency implies that the player's computer more quickly receives the output from the game host which it must display, so the relatively higher "workload" can reveal performance issues with the player's computer system. Be sure that your computer meets or exceeds the minimum system requirements -- better if it can meet or exceed the recommended system requirements.
   
   High latency implies that the player's computer is not receiving output from the game host very quickly. The game client must be designed in to maintain a feasible FPS output rate when latency is high, aside from the obvious communication connection and transmission problems which high latency reveals. When the game client cannot do that, then ordinarily either it will "crash", or it will drop the connection (as described above), which will probably return the player to the game/account log-in dialog.
   
   Note: if the video display for your computer is not a cathode-ray-tube device, or is not documented to require it, then do not enable "synchronization" in the game software interface. With the exception of certain specific video displays, there is no need to synchronize the game client's display output rate with the video display "native" refresh rate when the display uses LCD or LED emitters.
   

2. - I frequently get disconnected, sometimes 10-20 times within an hour. When it starts to happen, often things around me just stop and I can no longer interact with anything. BUT FPS and Ping remain steady throughout even though the "freeze" can last upwards of a minute before the game disconnects me to the login screen

   As stated in Post #2 of this discussion, such events are most likely caused by poor connections and transmission between the player's computer and the host megaserver system. Be sure that your cabling, router, and connection to your ISP's network are sound. Then contact your ISP and ask tech support to examine the performance "stats" for the transmissions to and from your computer, to see whether there are any problems with their network or other hardware.
   
   Aside from that, though, frequent disconnects are often caused by a server becoming overloaded with incoming transmissions, i.e., it must serve too many player computers. Or they could be caused by performance issues in the megaserver system LAN and intra-server connections. Only Bethesda and ZOS can investigate and resolve those.

The reason the Ping spikes to a high degree on Zone Load is, well, the zone has to load and the game is kind of unresponsive during that time. Your Addons will have an impact on this.

The FPS goes up and down mostly due to the number of objects in view that have a script running on them. Sure, graphics can have an impact, but it is the scripting that is the biggest load. Which is why adjusting the view distance has such an impact on FPS, less scripts.

I have these numbers but tucked away in a corner. I stopped paying attention to them other than training myself to give the game 30 seconds to load everything including addons when i start it, and waiting 15 to 20 seconds on most zones before starting to move out.

ALWAYS UPDATE YOUR STUFF
Do this FIRST!
Essential Update Checklist - These contain invaluable hardware optimizations that dramatically improve performance.
DO NOT NEGLECT THESE THINGS - Very often running through this checklist will fix lots of problems and headaches!
-Windows
-Motherboard Firmware/Bios
-Graphics Card Firmware
-Graphics Card Drivers (Fresh Install in normal windows after Safe Mode strip down with DDU first)

The BIG culprits for FPS loss.
Shadows
Water
View Distance
HDR Lighting (IN SETTINGS INI)
High Resolution Shadows (IN SETTINGS INI)
GPU Smoothing Frames (IN SETTINGS INI)
Looking at any high detail scenes.
Being in cities or anywhere with lots of players.
Sprinting.

Big issues on lower end graphics.
Textures
Subsampling
AA
Lighting
Particles
Particle view distance
Particle density (IN SETTINGS INI)

Further Problems and Notes

Use medium shaders for best quality to performance. As I understand it, medium shaders only render in a cone originating in your visual field. Higher settings render shaders outside of your visual field (things you aren't looking at) and so place a redundant stress load on your videocard.

View distance and shader cache.
There is a shader cache problem I have discovered where if you increase your view distance and then decrease it, it seems to continue to render shaders at the higher view distance and permanently locks down your fps until you delete your shader cooked file (and I speculate also your usersettings.ini defaults in the ESO folder) and let them respawn.

I speculate this because last night I broke my settings.ini when I had deleted my shader cooked file and my standing fps jumped about 20.

I touched the view distance to test (which is optimized around 20) and frame rates dropped out, and never returned to optimized.

View Distance and Particles
With view distance being completely borked, there is no need to animate excessive particles for objects outside of your view distance anyway. Edit this in the usersettings.ini and reduce it to just slightly above your preferred view distance.

Cores and Thread Optimization
Also the jobthread and workerthread settings MUST be optimized according to your cpu specifications. Because of the nature of the evolution of the game's cpu usage, it is heavily optimized for max single core CPU usage, with only minor thread/multicore benefits.

So the settings

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "X"
SET RequestedNumJobThreads "X"
SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "X"

Should be set to

"[Your max physical core # NOT HYPERTHREADED, NOT -1]"
"[Your max physical core # NOT HYPERTHREADED, NOT -1 (again)]"
"1"

Why?
Max cores is obvious, you want to use all your physical (keyword) cores. You do not want to use hyperthreading, since as I understand it, hyperthreaded cores cut your cpu's maximum in half to create two virtual cores; this means your overall cpu per core performance will suffer. I don't own a hyperthreaded cpu but if you are going to follow my suggestion to see if it helps, I suggest disabling hyperthreading altogether for eso (only). My recommended configuration will allocate job or worker thread to occupy full physical cores.

Job threads refers to tasks that are independently processed, so you want every core to take on processes independently, and you want any physical core available to take on a task as they come up. So you set this to the same number as your physical cores.

For worker threads, since the game is largely optimized for single core performance, you want to optimize for single core performance by keeping your core loads as low as possible to maximize the availability of a core with full capacity for job threads. Since workers are slave to job threads, and multicore usage is minimal, you only want 1 worker thread to avoid bogging down more cores than are necessary with worker threads that would compound stress on job threads by being on the same core.

Now if I am wrong by all means correct me, but this optimization has substantially improved my performance.

CPU Affinity (Now Tested)
I am also thinking of shunting all other non ESO processes while playing to 1-3 dedicated cores with cpu affinity, and ensuring that eso job threads always have (for me) 5 fully available cores, and worker threads can be offloaded to the system cores if they have enough working space available.

Update: After doing some tests I determined that this was not a viable method of distributing the load, ESO naturally piles its processes onto the most occupied core, so to optimize the processes you have to physically separate them from other system processes, which doesn't work out too badly but ends up being about the same or worse in terms of fps as just naturally letting process lasso sort the processes (which is normal).

A Note About Overclocks
Manually overclocking settings is *always* *ALWAYS* better.
Read about overclocks, google "[Processor Series/Spec] Overclock Guide" and interpolate your suggested clock data from others. Only use automatic when you are missing data regarding your clock, always use a manually set cpu voltage at bare minimum, and don't sweat it if the voltage doesn't exactly match.

CPU optimization.
Overclock as high as you can. You want like 4.5ghz minimum for good performance. You must have overclock comparable hardware to do this. On laptops with locked processors & integrated CPU/GPUs, Throttlestop can be used to manipulate the CPU/GPU restrictions to varying degrees, along with stock driver software. Be aware that disabling temperature protections or putting more voltage on your CPU can damage or break it, and that this is at your own risk.

Download process lasso and set ESOs priorities to realtime and max io, memory that will retain your settings. Exempt ESO from memory trim and probalance restraint, and enable a high threshold for memory trim like 60%. Download their core parking utility, unpark your cores and set their capacity to 100%, and mirror these settings in the control panel power profile settings.

Google how to disable windows search profiler in the services menu if you did not do a process affinity shunt (using process lasso) as I talked about earlier.

Google how to enable HPET via bios and command line (this will give you a 10fps increase on a lower end system, but a negligible difference or deficit on a higher end system).

Shut down all non-essential programs.

Ram (Memory), Virtual Memory, and Storage
You will want at least 8gb of ram for smooth play. 4gb will work in a pinch. If you have less than 4gb of ram and you desperately want to play, get a 2gb, usb stick and set it up for Readyboost. I wouldn't even try under 2gb of physical ram, and ready boost effectiveness is deminished after 4gb total ram+Readyboost.

For virtual memory, your page file should be at least 1.5x to 4x your ram size. I prefer bigger, but it depends on your output performance. To set your pagefile open your file explorer, right click on the computer in the left side bar and select properties, select advanced settings in the popup and you should find the pagefile settings in there. Set a static page file size (so the same minimum and maximum values).

Lastly, use solid state drives configured for AHCI in the BIOS. Even discount solid state drives from a reliable brand will improve load times significantly. If you are not configured for AHCI, google how to change these settings in the bios without reinstalling windows (there is a procedure you must follow where you must boot into safe mode first after enabling AHCI that is simple, you do not need to edit your registry).

GPU optimization

Check your GPU usage with GPU-Z. If your usage is low, check the GPU-Z information panel to determine if your pci-e is running in x16 (and not lower), check windows performance settings and make sure they are set to maximum performance under the power settings in the new windows 10 settings panel, in the old control panel check to make sure your pci-e link state is not in powersave. Check your bios to make sure your HT transfer rates are at maximum (16 or 32 bit as available). Make sure your North Bridge overclock and HT speeds are optimized in the BIOS.

In Nvidia GeForce control panel, adjust video settings to taste (lower for better fps), but ensure that power settings are in performance mode, and prerendered frames is set to 1. Delete your shadercache.cooked file regularly.

You are now fully optimized. The remaining performance issues should be related either to improperly configured settings outside of this guide, hardware limitations, or server governed.

I plan to refine this guide further and provide a formal update in the near future, as their are certain implementations I need to refine.