So, I realize that it’s supposed to be wonderful that fab will now open in the launcher, but it’s slow AF, so I’d love the option to disable the launcher version, or at least choose to open a link in your browser.
Another issue that I thought was already solved, but probably just got reintroduced with fab… there’s no way to show only content that is already downloaded and living in your Vault Cache. Can we get that functionality back (or for the first time if I’m misremembering)?
Hello @TorQueMoD
Could you tell us a bit more about the slowness issues you’re seeing?
We’re aware that it can take a few seconds to switch over to the Fab tab in the Launcher, but once you’re inside Fab, do you still experience lag or slow performance?
You also mentioned wanting to see assets already downloaded. Inside the new Fab library, you can filter for assets on disk to view your local content.
Regarding opening links in a browser: while we’re actively working on adding an option to open Fab links directly from the old Fab library under Unreal Engine tab, you can already do this from the product page in the new Fab library.
Finally, we’d love to understand your workflow involving Fab and what’s stopping you from using the new version of Fab in Launcher right now (apart from the slowness issue you’ve mentioned)?
Hi @KomalOffice, thanks for writing.
So the slowness I was referring to was the time it takes to launch fab from the Unreal Engine tab. The fact that it’s now it’s own separate tab instead of being integrated into the Unreal Engine section is really undesirable for me (and I’m sure others as well). It doesn’t make sense to have to constantly be switching between those tabs. Anyone using fab for non unreal projects would use the web version, but anyone using it with Unreal Engine should have access to it via the Unreal Engine tab without having to switch. It should be seamless like it was prior to fab’s launch. Granted, I do like the improvements you’ve been making to fab overall, it’s just seems that with every new update I want to go back to how it behaved previously. lol.
Once I click on the Fab tab in the launcher, it is nice to know I can filter to on Disk, but I can’t do that with the vault cache inside the Unreal Engine tab which makes me sad. Why not integrate Fab into the Unreal Engine tab instead of giving it its own tab where it’s slow as heck to load? It currently takes between 10 - 15 seconds every time I have to switch between the Fab tab and the Unreal Engine tab. This is unacceptable. They should be the same tab really. There’s no need to have to unload and reload constantly. It seems like a case of over-organisation if you ask me.
As for the open in browser functionality, the only reason I want it is because it loads faster and then I can leave fab open in Chrome and my Unreal Engine tab open in the Epic Launcher, and not have to switch between the two incuring that horrendous loading delay. If you’re going to bring open in browser functionality back, please just let it work with a middle mouse click as it did previously. Better yet though, merge the Fab and Unreal Engine tabs and make them work together.
Oh, and for the love of all that is holy; get rid out the duplicate categories on fab. Don’t let users create their own. It just becomes a mess. Youy guys specify the category names, and let users choose the category their items belong in. I’m tired of filtering to Environments, realizing there’s two that seem indistinguishable, and neither of them have the environment I’m looking for listed. Again, there is such a thing as over organising things.
It takes a few minutes here each time something from Fab is clicked via Epic Games Launcher (just reinstalled to get sure it’s the recent version). Either clicking on the Fab button after the launcher started or if you go to Unreal Engine → Library → Click on any asset from “Fab Library”. Note: I’m pretty sure I could improve the loading speed from minutes to the still slow 15 secs like TorQueMoD mentioned if I would put everything that I’ve downloaded from Fab (VaultCache) onto my SSD instead of my big but slower HDD but I would not do this for GBs of unimportant data which is usually used once or just a few times a year (each time you add some already downloaded asset to a new UE project). 15 secs is still way too slow anyway…
@Neutronux @TorQueMoD sorry to hear about the slowness you’re experiencing on clicking the Fab tab in Epic Games Launcher. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to reproduce the issue. To help us diagnose the issue, could you please follow the steps below and share the Lighthouse performance report with us:
-DebugToolsAccess and click on OkI tried but the report does not finish on “Fab” tab or it takes “forever”. It only finishes on the “Unreal Engine” tab in time but gets stuck on the “Fab” tab:
Anyway the issue is caused by the VaultCache as mentioned previously. I’ve just moved it to an (almost empty) location on the SSD and startup from Fab went from 4 minutes down to roughly 5 seconds (as predicted).
The problem is “listings_v1.db-journal” in the VaultCache\FabLibrary folder. While Fab is loading and get stuck in a grey screen this “listings_v1.db-journal” file gets rewritten again and again and again (changing from 21k → 0 → 17k → 0 → 33k → 0 → 17k → , …) until Fab finally is loaded and the “listings_v1.db-journal” gets deleted on the drive.
This is how Fab looks like (either clicking on “Fab” tab or if I click on an asset on “Unreal Engine Library tab” (few minutes - each time):
If you wanna reproduce it then download plenty of assets (>= 640GB) on an HDD as the download vault (Fab Library Data Cache Directory) location and watch the FabLibrary\listings_v1.db-journal file.
For me the report finished. Got a score of 73 on performance.
LighthouseScore.mkv (2.3 MB)
I also did an actual timed test for how long it takes to switch between the unreal and fab tabs. It seems to be about 7 seconds to load and not the 15 I originally mentioned. Still, it feels pretty slow.
I think originally it was closing the Fab tab after every asset I added to a project, but now its remaining open so I can queue up multiple assets which is far less annoying. The back and forth between the two tabs is less necessary.
Any idea if you guys will be able to fix all of the unnecessary duplicate categories for products? Oh, and I’d love to get a “Network Replicated” category in the Technical Features filters. It’s really irritating when I type Multiplayer or Replicated with my search and still get shown hundreds of single player templates. Maybe it’s because there’s a lack of distinction between results based on my search term and when it just starts showing less similar results? It would be less irritating if you could clearly see where your specific search results end.
I kept the lighthouse fab auditing window and the EpicGamesLauncher running over night just in case the report takes a bit longer but it did not. Still the same screen with an almost finished audit progress bar after more than 8 hours. So for me the only clue I got with that test is that listings_v1.db-journal is involved. That file is barely readable but the few human readable ascii parts look like it’s parsing some UE assets and it is not caching that if it’s done (as it’s doing the same next time you switch to the Fab tab again). I guess in my case it’s doing that a few hundret times and this costs time.
@Neutronux Thank you for sharing the details! It was very helpful for the team and they’re working on a potential fix.
I would like to Echo the OP… I much prefer to have both options: “open in Launcher” and “open in Browser”.
The reason for this is that for whatever reason, when I attempt to “Open” from within the Launcher, and it decides to open itself in the Launcher (not the browser), it almost always take several minutes to do so. And I have a freshly installed Launcher. This behavior has not improved at all with the updates. Having the option to “Open in Browser” also gives me much better filter control and ease of browsing that simply is not available in the Launcher.
Did I forget to request the ability to categorize our assets ourselves? I find a lot of my assets are miscategorized and I’d love to be able to set user overrides for the categories for easier filtering.
Oh, another awesome feature would be a “Install to last project” button. I’m currently adding a ton of assets to my project, and it’s so tedius to have to point to my project every time I want to add another asset to it. Also, along those same lines if there’s an asset that hasn’t been updated to my project version, why do I have to manually pick the latest version before it will add to my project. Why isn’t this automated?
For example my project is 5.6 but a lot of assets are only updated to 5.4 so I have to manually turn on the checkmark for “Show all projects” and then when I select my project I get a warning and have to click on a drop down and select 5.4 as the last compatible version. Why? It would be trivial to automate this, especially for art assets.
@Neutronux @TorQueMoD can you update to the latest 19.0.3 version of Epic Games Launcher and check whether the loading speed has improved when opening your Fab library? We’ve worked on some potential fixes.
Please note: you may still experience slow loading if you have a large library (+3000 items). We’re aware of this issue and continuing to work on improvements
Tested it for a while. It’s a lot faster now. But it’s still not 100%. In a nutshell: I got caught now in Fab tab from time to time. This makes switching back to the UE tab impossible. It keeps reopening the Fab tab after trying to open the UE tab but only at some assets (others are ok).
A bit more detailed…
What:
I click on an asset from UE Libary in the Epic Games Launcher.
After the asset is shown successfully in the Fab tab I would get back into the UE library tab.
I click on the UE logo on the left as shown in the screenshot below.
Result:
I get back to the Fab tab about 70% of the time and the remaining 30% of the time an Oops screen instead. It does not matter how often I try to push the UE button at the left side - it’s always bringing me to Fab tab instead the UE tab.
Expected:
I would get back to the UE library tab after the loading cycle finished - instead of remaining in Fab or getting an Oops forever.
Further notes:
Restarting the Epic games launcher allows me to open the UE tab again. Using a different asset seems to work fine so it seems asset related. Some assets work just fine and I can switch back to UE tab from Fab tab without issue.
Step by step:
From UE tab Library I click on the asset.
I get to the asset in the Fab tab after a few seconds … so far so good.
I would switch back to UE Library.
But I get Fab or an Oops! instead (even after multiple tries). Its impossible to get back to UE tab without reopening the Epic Games Launcher in that state.
…randomly Oops or Fab tab (but not the UE tab anymore).
