Visual Studio 2013 Intellisense is REALLY slow

[Voutan]

Hey guys,

like the title says, I've got a pretty serious problem with the intellisense from Visual Studio 2013.
At launch it's indexing the files and after that it should run fine, but it doesn't.
Every time it should come up (automaticly or invoked manually) there is this little loading battery icon in the down right corner and it says it's just parsing the one file I'm in.

After 10-40 seconds it kicks in... way too late to be of any productive use.
But not enough so, that behavior recurrs just the next time I want to invoke the intellisense, after I save a file, tabb into or open a different one.
And sometimes it runs just fine for five minutes.

I already searched for more information on that and did everything recommended here:
https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...ompletion.html

and here:
https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...c-project.html

and stored the project on a SSD, but still no luck.
Unfortunately buying Whole Tomatos Visual Assist is not an option for me, since I'm a poor student ;-)

[Minalien]

Welcome to Visual Studio. :P

As a fellow student, I definitely do recommend Visual Assist -- they've got student licensing options that are quite affordable (that's what I'm signed up for right now), and VA's done a great job of keeping up with UE4 with its auto-completion (intellisense) features.

[Nexelen]

The same problem... =(

[Voutan]

Welcome to Visual Studio. :P

As a fellow student, I definitely do recommend Visual Assist -- they've got student licensing options that are quite affordable (that's what I'm signed up for right now), and VA's done a great job of keeping up with UE4 with its auto-completion (intellisense) features.

I will try the 30 day trial though that can't be an official and appropriate solution to the problem as a whole ;-)

[Skwillions]

VS 2013, here are a few solutions I found to speed things up, but take note, they may not work, seems to be quite slap hazard as to which do and don't. Firstly switch source control to none, apparently there may be a problem with Git. Secondly, toggle around with the hardware rendering under settings, this seems to be random with peoples install as to whether on or off works best. Lastly reset import and export settings under tools, this did nothing for my install, but some are claiming is worked for them. Also this slow down has been going on since VS 2010, so it appears Microsoft are ignoring the problem.

[Voutan]

VS 2013, here are a few solutions I found to speed things up, but take note, they may not work, seems to be quite slap hazard as to which do and don't. Firstly switch source control to none, apparently there may be a problem with Git. Secondly, toggle around with the hardware rendering under settings, this seems to be random with peoples install as to whether on or off works best. Lastly reset import and export settings under tools, this did nothing for my install, but some are claiming is worked for them. Also this slow down has been going on since VS 2010, so it appears Microsoft are ignoring the problem.

Sorry, but non of your suggestions helped =(
But thanks anyway.

[maikklein]

I think that's just how it is. VA makes it better but it is still very slow.

[sandboxgod]

In previous revisions of Visual Studio I recall we used to disable intellisense and rely on Visual Assist which is much faster and less crappy. In Unreal I did notice it would take awhile to lookup entries. Funny, I just chalked that up to intellisense fail and tried to avoid using it. One of these days need to buy Visual Assist for home use. I swear Microsoft & Visual Assist guys must have some sort of understanding. Intellisense has been horrible for way too long in C++. Works almost decent in C# tho

[Straits]

This has more or less always been the case with reasonably large C++ projects. I don't know of any developer that doesn't use Visual Assist as a wholesale replacement to intellisense, it is better than intellisense in every way and absolutely worth the price.

Commands you will use all the time with VAX:
"Alt + G" : Go to declaration/definition of functions, variables, types etc. It also shows you all variations of the function if it has overrides. Unlike intellisense this is INSTANT even in huge projects!
"Shift + Alt + O" : Searches all files within your project in real time as you type with no delay.
"Alt + O" : Toggles between header & cpp files.
"Shift + Alt + F" : Finds all refernces to the variable/function/type you have selected WITH context, so if you search for a common function name like "Tick", you will only get the tick uses for the class you are searching from

[Antares]

Hi think this is realy amazing that a software like Visual C++ 2013 wich is quite expensive didn't have a good intellisense !

This is one of the most important feature of IDEs, and Visual have a slow and poor intellisense.

I cannot understand what people like in Visual ?

Personnaly I usually use QtCreator wich have a better and faster intellisense, which is simplier and have better keyboard shortcuts (Who say you need two shortcut to switch header and implementation ?)

Can't wait to use UE4 with another IDE...

And by the way for your problem I think you have understand that there is no good solutions... You can pay VAX but its slow too (have better intellisense yes but slow anyway)

[arkenthera]

Dont expect UE with another IDE.It's not gonna happen.

BTW

I'm using VS since version 2008 and I never experienced a slow intellisense issue like this.It's on Epic's side not the VS.Try creating another project templates like C# Windows Form and see Intellisense never delay on those.

[sandboxgod]

You were lucky then. At my old job Intellisense was so bad we had to yank out the entire DLL and relied solely on Visual Assist. Intellisense is just plain awful in big projects. It's a little better now in Visual Studio 2012 though

[Minalien]

It's on Epic's side not the VS.

Actually, it's mostly an issue with Visual Studio's Intellisense for C++. It really just struggles with large C++ code bases (which UE4 definitely is).

[roxez]

Dont expect UE with another IDE.It's not gonna happen.

I'm sorry as I haven't bought UE4 yet, therefore I'm not sure if there is any restrictions that would not allow to work on other IDEs.

but why should one not expecting it? there are few good IDE that can be used as an alternative.


regardless, I never really liked VAX for its slow parsing. but I still use it for UDK projects, and since adapted to it.

[sandboxgod]

Hm, maybe this is because I am now accessing the same .cpp/.h a lot but Intellisense appears to have sped up for me in a lot of cases. Not all- but a lot.