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Author Topic: parallelization  (Read 9852 times)

Ric

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parallelization
« on: December 08, 2013, 11:49:46 am »

greeting to all , i am new here  :)
I have seen this engine here and there over the years and thought it is quite amazing. What brought me here today was the miG29 video as I am a big flight sim fan , WW2 to be specific and am very disappointed as to what is being offered these days on old outdated engines and questionable business models.

My question today is about  parallelization if I read a post in here correctly the engine is not in any state of  parallelization but still reliant on a single core and thread(s) is this correct? and how would the engine do compared to the likes of what ARMA 3 does?

thnx, Ric

p.s love watching the videos :)
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cameni

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Re: parallelization
« Reply #1 on: December 08, 2013, 03:34:30 pm »

Unlike old engines OT already uses several threads that run in parallel: the rendering pump runs in a separate thread from the application thread, and resource loading jobs run separately as well, not blocking the two main threads.
Also, OT offloads lots of the stuff to the GPU which is inherently parallel.

I don't know what's causing the slowdown in Arma. I guess it's not the rendering itself, and the GPU is underutilized, waiting for the CPU. It's hard to optimize their existing architecture since it was not designed with parallel processing in mind ...
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Ric

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Re: parallelization
« Reply #2 on: December 08, 2013, 05:14:19 pm »

Unlike old engines OT already uses several threads that run in parallel: the rendering pump runs in a separate thread from the application thread, and resource loading jobs run separately as well, not blocking the two main threads.
Also, OT offloads lots of the stuff to the GPU which is inherently parallel.

I don't know what's causing the slowdown in Arma. I guess it's not the rendering itself, and the GPU is underutilized, waiting for the CPU. It's hard to optimize their existing architecture since it was not designed with parallel processing in mind ...

this is really nice to hear :):) now i will be able to recreate the battle of kursk 5000 tank A.I with 256 players  ;) ;D thnx for responding cameni and as for Arma 3 it is my understanding that in a nutshell everything in the engine is waiting for a main thread thus the performance issues...of course i may have misunderstood the explanation :)
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Ramjet

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Re: parallelization
« Reply #3 on: December 08, 2013, 07:59:42 pm »

Hey, Ric. Just wanted to say hi :) I recognize you from the bohemia forums (I go by a different name there), and it sounds like we both found outerra out of a similar motivation :)

I have heard that they are planning on moving to pure 64-bit with outerra (correct me if I am wrong) in the future. 3d trees are supposed to be on the way, and other encouraging goodies. My impression as a new, and semi-casual observer at this point is that, while the wait may be long, things sound promising over here. From my initial observations of cpu and gpu utilization in Anteworld (purchased version) it does still seem to use 1 core very heavily, and the rest of the cores/threads almost not at all (about 5-15%). But, I think what we have currently is primarily a GPU based rendering engine at this point. But, that is uninformed speculation from me.

As far as GPU usage, it seems to behave much more predictably and appropriately than A3 (meaning, it doesn't use full GPU b/c it doesn't need to at times, but it doesn't tank my fps along with it, and it isn't acting like my GPU usage is being crapped upon by CPU factors, etc).

That said, being able to go from space to grass waving in the wind in a matter of a few seconds while maintaining good framerate is quite encouraging.

Though, transitioning from different elevations or into different areas of the world sometimes requires loading which can be very slow (KBs/sec, making it take 30 seconds to buffer 5MB of data). I'm not sure why that is, or if it is a problem on my end, or just the nature of this engine being very much in a pre-release state. But, I am, so far, encouraged, and this is one of the engines that I have been keeping an eye on in hopes of some future forward progress that will offer potential for worthy alternatives to Arma 3, and DCS, for example, at some point down the line.
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James

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Re: parallelization
« Reply #4 on: December 08, 2013, 09:29:53 pm »

The performance is really amazing. When I had a 430 GTX the FPS lag would be minimal, but now I have a 760 GTX and never experienced FPS lag.

Though, transitioning from different elevations or into different areas of the world sometimes requires loading which can be very slow (KBs/sec, making it take 30 seconds to buffer 5MB of data). I'm not sure why that is, or if it is a problem on my end, or just the nature of this engine being very much in a pre-release state.

It isn't really slow, but when you quickly transition from place-to-place it takes some time to render. If you've noticed, it usually renders fine when you're going maximum speed in the MiG-25.
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SpaceFlight

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Re: parallelization
« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2013, 03:07:47 am »



That said, being able to go from space to grass waving in the wind in a matter of a few seconds while maintaining good framerate is quite encouraging.

Though, transitioning from different elevations or into different areas of the world sometimes requires loading which can be very slow (KBs/sec, making it take 30 seconds to buffer 5MB of data). I'm not sure why that is, or if it is a problem on my end, or just the nature of this engine being very much in a pre-release state.

If you have the HDD space, you can download the standalone elevation data and global color data (about 14.5 GB) from here: http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=645.0

After installation, OT wont have to download the different world parts from the server anymore, thus no more loading.
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cameni

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Re: parallelization
« Reply #6 on: December 09, 2013, 04:30:27 am »

Though, transitioning from different elevations or into different areas of the world sometimes requires loading which can be very slow (KBs/sec, making it take 30 seconds to buffer 5MB of data). I'm not sure why that is, or if it is a problem on my end, or just the nature of this engine being very much in a pre-release state. But, I am, so far, encouraged, and this is one of the engines that I have been keeping an eye on in hopes of some future forward progress that will offer potential for worthy alternatives to Arma 3, and DCS, for example, at some point down the line.
It's only a first-time download of the world data, as they aren't included all in the initial download. No streaming. We are working to serve these data from a faster server.
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Ramjet

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Re: parallelization
« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2013, 11:01:40 am »

Ah. ok. Thanks for that info.
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Ramjet

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Re: parallelization
« Reply #8 on: January 14, 2014, 10:22:43 am »

Man... I downloaded the world data the other week... That is impressive.

While I know it may still be a good distance away, due to other "unseen" work that it may rely on, I am very excited to see the result of 3D trees being added to the world.

Just being able to make a very fps fluid flight from a tennis ball sized earth down to grass waving in the breeze level is a feat worthy of recognition.

Given the scale, the LOD is pretty impressive as well, but I do look forward to seeing how that improves over time.
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