Hey there Epic community!
I’ve recently downloaded the Kite Demo to my computer, because I wanted to play around with it and see what I could do. I really wanted to get a better understanding of some of the rendering features in the demo. Before I go further, here are my specs:
Core i5 6600k quad-core CPU @ 3.5GHZ
32GB DDR4 RAM
GTX 1070 GPU with some light overclocking
Based on these specs, the Kite Demo really should be running alright considering what Epic recommended for specs; my GPU should actually be a little faster than the GTX980 that Epic recommends. The only thing I’m short on for the target spec is the 6-core CPU, but the demo never really utilizes more than 40-60% of my CPU. And yes, I updated my graphics driver.
I’m getting 20FPS with just the opening scene loaded (none of the background levels, or the rest of the landscape). I ran the GPU profiler, since I know the CPU and RAM aren’t falling short. It tells me that the BasePass is taking up most of the frame computation, at ~30-35ms/frame. Under that BasePass, ‘Dynamic’ takes most of its frame time, and the two ‘Static’ passes take a little time but not a ton.
Aside from that, the ShadowDepths takes a big chunk too (~10-15ms). There is only one 8k atlas, and there are four ‘WholeScene split’ parts to the directional light source. One of those is taking most of the computation time for this category. I think this category is for CSM from the directional light, but please correct me if I am wrong.
Then there’s the Lights category taking ~2ms. This category seems to contain Ray-Traced DF shadows which are taking just 1ms. There are several references to HFGI in this category too, but in all, it seems to be using a lot less resources on this than I was anticipating, assuming this Lights category is including all the calculations for DFGI and HFGI.
Finally, the last category that has a significant impact is SkyLightDiffuse at ~2-3ms. This category includes ‘DistanceFieldLighting’ which is mostly ‘HeightfieldIrradiance’.
So just from what I’m gathering, it seems like HFGI and DFGI/DFAO are only using 5-6ms of frame time. CSM (or whatever ShadowDepths is) takes a larger chunk, but what I don’t get is BasePass. Is this just mesh rendering? It seems like it’s too high for some reason, but I don’t know what.
Here’s a few screenshots of the camera angle I got my numbers from in lit and wireframe, plus some screenshots of the GPU Profile: http://imgur.com/a/aeQYf
PS: The shadowing on the landscape/trees on the upper right side of the lit image in the imgur link is pretty harsh. Is this normal behavior, or are those supposed to be a little softer?