I do see some noticeable FPS downgrade for dynamic lighting. I am a professor teaching architecture and I build some Unreal games for students to study architectural forms. My scenes are typically very simple but feature a dynamic directional light for simulating daylighting (like the one shown in this demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t5BA6t0is8&t=62s). From 4.22 to 4.24. The average FPS of packaged games drops for about 2 to 5. For some students, that means their laptop with integrated GPU cannot handle the game very well.
I tested packaged games performance with MSI Afterburner. One interesting thing I found was that for 4.24 games, there was no FPS limit and your GPU load would soon go up to 99%. But 4.22 and older games would cap FPS at 60 FPS to lower GPU load. I am not sure if that has anything to do with the FPS downgrade in 4.24.
@fangchampaign As far as i recall the fps had always been limited at 120fps, so the 60hz update rate you saw earlier was probably the monitor vsync locking it for you. You can type in t.maxfps 60 to reduce the gpu load. Or, by changing the editor’s baseengine.ini (SmoothedFrameRateRange) allows you to set the limit to 60 fps of all recent and new projects.
Students try run the project on low quality settings (either change the inis to enforce it upon launch), maybe disable advanced (eg raytrace, blur, taa, etc) effects too on maps/inis, that should provide some improvements running it on outdated / low end equipments. FXAA is a viable alternative for TAA, and it happens to work out better for editing purposes anyways.
You need to consider if there is anything you absolutely need in a new version. To quote that little fat pink professor woman from Harry Potter: “Progress for progess’ sake must be avoided”. I am still with 4.22 because there is nothing in 4.23 ir 4.24 I would use and the bugs just aren’t worth it. Unless I read here that there is a version in the near future that is working without major problem, I will be releasing my game with 4.22.
The marketplace guys tell us that they are only allowed to post product updates for the last 3 Unreal versions and I suspect that is an underhanded trick by Epic to force people to upgrade just to be able to buy the newest assets.
I wouldn’t use smoothedframerate. This is not going to help…In vr where everything has to be optimal we have to disable the smooth because it causes hitches a bit. as that feature is a bit costly
I suggest turning that off and investigate a little more into the actual cause being either GPU bound or CPU bound.
and go from there. there are alot of things to cause frame drop ATM the main one is casting dynamic shadows.
There is a huge regression In dynamic lighting and dynamic shadows atm from 4.23 to 4.24.3 each version has got worse on handling these.
I’m hoping they will fix this issue soon.
best thing to do there would be to go into developer>device profiles, and set some cvars to lower overall scalability settings so once packaged for
your students it will lower the quality a bit. setting scalability options in there is project wide settings that compile. in editor changing them in the sliders in settings is only in editor.
need to set cvars for it to build the settings. this could help reduce the lag so their pc wont lag out
Thanks a lot for your reply! I am more interested in some console commands that can conveniently modify game performance in runtime. My students’ gears range from $2,000 Alienware with an RTX video card to $500 Lenovo with an AMD CPU. I would like the package game is more adaptable. The method I am using is to enable the View Mode Debug mode. But this feature has been buggy as well after 4.24. F1 for wireframe gives a black screen and F5 for shader complexity crashes the game instantaneously (error message shown in the screenshot below).
I have not changed my monitor or monitor settings. I am pretty sure the FPS limit is not 120 and MSI Afterburner reported over 150 FPS on my desktop with RTX2070.
You can use the console command: SCALABILITY 0 to set to lowest settings (0=Low 1=Medium 2=High 3=Epic) ETC
I could be wrong but to do this you need to set your game to scalable 2d and 3d instead of maximum quality. so make sure to change that.
TBH your Students are going to need better pc’s to develop games in ue4. time for them to get a student loan and upgrade to a better pc as you need a beefy PC to make games in industry today.
min specs
Processor: i5 or better
Memory: 32gig ram
Graphics: 1050ti or greater
Thanks! I will definitely give it a try. My students actually don’t develop games. They are architecture students. They just play my design games to learn architecture. Most of the time, they use CAD programs that PCs with integrated GPU can handle. Therefore, it is hard to convince them to get powerhouse machines.
Chaos was never intended to work with 4.24 (they never mentioned in release notes), it was allowed at 4.23 (mentioned in release notes), but since it is still in development you will need to wait for the changes to be available in future releases. UE 4.25 preview 1 is already available for download here: https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/releases, but it is a preview (the preview also does not mention it will work, but there is a post from saying so), so expect to have it unstable, don’t convert any project during preview and make sure to do your regular project backups.
I agree with this follow up, it is pointless to not trial release-functionality with the assumption that it will just work in future releases.
Very Good, A+.
I am using 4.24, and I am looking to import a .step file. The docs say that Datasmith (which is now part of UE4.24) supports this file format (Datasmith Supported Software and File Types | Unreal Engine Documentation), but there does not appear to be an option in the 4.24 install from Epic Launcher on Windows to import this type. Is there something I have to enable to have this format show up in the list or All files during Import? If I try to import from the directory where my .step, .igs, SLDPRT, or .stl files are, I do not see any recognized file in the folder.
I am trying to install 4.24. I have (and had after a complete uninstall multiple times) 4.20.3. The Launcher takes me to the 4.24 link after clicking on the “UNREAL ENGINE 4.24 NOW AVAILABLE!”, I see a blue download button on the top right. of the release notes page. That button only installs another Launcher which give two options for Enterprise or creator downloads. every time I have installed either one of the choices, version 4.20.3 is installed and not 4.24. May I ask what I am doing wrong and how may I install 4.24? I am also looking to install Datasmith to load my architectural models into Unreal. Any help would be truly appreciated. Thank you, Timothy
