Why has the Fallout 3 world worse performance than New Vegas? [WITH TTW!]

Post by **Postal-Dude** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 12:06 pm

Hi!

I noticed in general that I have around 40FPS in the DC Wasteland usually. Which is fine by me, and Im used to it anyway. However, I always wonder why because when im in the Mojave I nearly never have FPS drops. Not kidding. 60FPS all the time. In general I have the feeling that the Fallout 3 world is less optimized in terms of performance compared to the Mojave. I just noticed it now being in Point Lookout. Believe it or not buy I have mostly around 15-30FPS which is nearly unplayable for me. Also sometimes I use a gun, it stucks 0,5 seconds to load the bullet projectiles. :'D

May sound funny, but for me its not and really annoying and fun breaking.

Actually I think that the Fallout 3 world performance is the same than in the vanilla Fallout 3 without TTW. Point Lookout was also horrible in the vanilla Fallout. Why is it like that? Is it really that much more demanding or simply bad optimized? Seems like TTW doesnt really improve the performance aspect of the Fallout 3 world. Fixed contant crashing, Codec problems and added FNV features though.

Is there any way to improve the performance? Btw, no tips like, use less demanding mods or dont use NMCs texture. Believe it or not but it doesnt make a single FPS difference to my rig. Either way its running quite bad, at least the Fallout 3 world. Addionaly I sometimes get long inventory loading. However, could be mods fault. Think I improved it a bit. But that was another thread.

Whats your experience? Am I alone with that issue? Also read that Fallout is finicky about Hardware. Some peoples reported Performance issues with several Hardware combinations. Also read its the fogs fault etc. Especially in Point Lookout. But then I wonder again, why doesnt FNV has this issues and only Fallout 3? Even with TTW... So either way it must be something in the gameworld.

Regards.

Post by **RoyBatty** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:54 pm

The world spaces in F3 are much more complicated than in NV. There are some things you can do to improve it, they are in the performance thread. I have a pretty beastly computer other than my video card, and I too get low performance in the wasteland. I also get bad performance in certain areas of NV, particularly near Gun Runners.

I found that textures and stuff make no difference in performance either. The game seems entirely CPU bound to me. I get solid 60 indoors too, except a few places like Vault 106 are bad for some reason. The game is full of buggy meshes, bad optimization and a gazillion other things. Be happy it's playable I say. :D

Post by **TrickyVein** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 5:43 pm

Oddly enough, more of Obsidian's meshes in New Vegas are in a worse state than most of Bethesda's are.

Really, the DC wasteland just has more stuff. More patrols, random encounters, creatures, NPCs, clutter meshes (rocks, trees, bushes), just more things and scripts running in the background, all of the time. Also, the DC wasteland is 6x6 quads compared to the Mojave's 4x4.

Post by **KeltecRFB** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 6:29 pm

Makes sense to me since CW has more going on than the Mojave.

Post by **Risewild** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 1:03 am

I see no difference in my game between wastelands, but I play pretty much vanilla TTW and rarely spend any time in the Mojave .

Post by **Postal-Dude** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 2:46 pm

Yup, that makes sense and explains it pretty much.

As long as its no Hardware related problem.

Elder Scrolls Oblivion didnt had much performance problems for me. Actually like 60FPS all the time. Even with the mod Oblivion Reloaded. Actually Fallout 3/NV and Oblivion have the same engine. Fallouts is more advanced though, graphically mainly.

Still, the issue is extremely annoying especially when the game, if properly optimized, ran with 100+ FPS and no stutters but I guess we will have to life with it. Got used to it pretty much anyway but in the case of Point Lookout with 15-30FPS I just wish it would be better. Funbreaking, really.

Still waiting for a Fo3/NV or TTW in general port of FO3 and NV to the upcoming Fallout 4 Engine. :'D Maybe in a few years, or probably never...

I still hope that Fallout 4 shares many similarities in performance and system requirements to Elder Scrolls Skyrim. Would like to max it playable out on a FX 8350, 8GB, R9 280X. But well see. There are no infos concerning System Requirements from Bethesda. Pffff. But I never take them too serious anyway.

Post by **RoyBatty** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 5:42 pm

Fallout 4 is next gen, 64 bit. System Req will be higher than Skyrim.

Post by **Postal-Dude** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 9:16 am

Yup, it will be. The question is more like how big the difference will be. The Engine will be the same. Further developed though. 4 years advantage. Also many developers oversize the Requirements... Anyone played Mad Max? The requirements are way too high. I can max it on Maximum settings 60FPS+... And maybe Fallout 4 will share graphically demanding much with Mad Max. I use that game as comparison because of the Apocalyptic Wasteland.

Fallout 4 could have the same requirements, counting in that Fallout 4 wont really have much Gras, trees, leaves moving and that stuff. If properly optimized.

I just hope we wont get something like Fallout 3... It wasnt properly optimized and the Engine was pretty much raped for the use. But what I have seen from the Creation Engine is positive and that its not like Gamebryo.

Also I hope because I can max it out without getting FPS drops. I thought about upgrading in the next months maybe... AMD is just slow with their new processors. Yeah, Im loyal to AMD. Always went good with them. However, I may consider getting a Intel i7 6000 DDR 4 Ram instead. And maybe a Nvidia. If AMD brings out Zen processors and they are good I will buy those. But I heard it will be end of next year which takes too long... Main reason im still waiting. As of now my FX 8350 and R9 280X are still fine. Wanted to give the PC to my girfriend though which pushes me further to buy a new one.

Lets see. Cant await something official from Bethesda and the first benchmarks.

Post by **Finnen** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 11:51 am

@Postal-Dude

I've been experiencing similar performance problems in FO3 Wasteland but it seems that it's not the fault of TTW, it's more the fault of (upgraded?) engine that New Vegas has. I posted similar topic a few days ago because I thought that maybe there's something wrong with my PC. But for me it's a bit different - I get solid 60 FPS on Fallout 3 engine with no FPS drops (at least not yet) but I get mid 40s with TTW on New Vegas Engine in some places (Springvale, SuperDuper Mart, The Pitt). This happens only in Capital Wasteland (and FO3 DLCs).

As RoyBatty said, it seems that Capital Wasteland is more "complicated", less optimized and full of clutter that eats your CPU power. I haven't played all DLCs fully yet, but I heard that "The Pitt" was kind of cluttered place so I used "coc" command to teleport into some tunnels. In tunnels the FPS was OK but when I reached some kind of maintenance room (with trogs) my FPS started to drop dramatically - exactly as I expected. The place was cluttered, there was another big room behind the wall with lots of stuff and the CPU has problems with keeping up. Maybe, just maybe, some mod that removes clutter items would fix the FPS problem but as far as I know these kind of mods can cause problems, depending on the way the author removed/disabled objects. Anyway, while the Capital Wasteland somehow worked well enough with "older" engine, it seems to have problems with New Vegas engine. Or at least that's my experience, I'm not a programmer so I don't know what's under the hood and what changes had been made in New Vegas.

As for what you can do, a lot of exterior FPS drops are caused by water shaders, at least in my case. If you go to your INI files, you'll notice under [WATER] section a setting called bUseWaterShader=1. Switch that to 0 and test your FPS in exteriors. For me this fixes all exterior FPS drops, even when I'm not looking at the water. The water looks horrible, though so it's not really a fix unless you don't care about the water ;)

Post by **RoyBatty** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:08 pm

It is not the amount of objects, it's the lighting engine that is different. The amount of objects and textures make little difference with modern graphics cards. It's more physics (Havok) calculations, and AI, and as mentioned the lighting engine. Shader complexity is what kills the FPS in my experience.

That said, the game doesn't exactly detect the right shader sets for modern cards either, and you can fix this your self with a bit of experimenting with the shader packages. This is outlined in the Performance Thread. Bear in mind that Boris broke SM3 support in the latest ENB versions if you use ENB.