Some Performance observations re: Fortnite Battle Royale in macOS and Win10

[Irishman]

Mark,

Okay, a quick response and update this morning: Season 7 dropped yesterday as you know, and that seems to have fixed both my failure to connect problems with my Epic Account, and my performance issues once connected. As of last night, I'm noticing far better frame rate. Shorter load times. Only noticing a little hitching as I'm running through locations on the island.

I'll try to have numbers up later today.

Brian

 

[4Sirius]

You seem to be looking for allocation of staff directly to Fortnite and promises of a quick fix - that’s above my pay grade and not my place to say. I therefore won’t.

What I can say is that closing the gap to Windows means making changes deep in the Engine, not in the game. I’ve been aware of several for a while but it takes time and effort to make each change which then unlocks the next and so on. These changes have to go through the engine release process to reduce the risks of breaking the game. You better believe the goal is to improve Fortnite when they are all integrated and brought online - it is the best yardstick we have!

You’ve also got to realise that it isn’t only Epic. Apple and the GPU vendors also keep tweaking their API and driver code to improve things. There are lots of people who have have contributed and continue to do so whether you know or see or not.



Which is why it is good to know that, it gives us something to profile specifically and measure against. It is next to impossible to get 100% profiling coverage for any game from the last couple of console generations - they are too big and complex. So you need to find the outlying performance areas and target efforts on them.



If it gets better as you play then it is probably PSO compilation because we can never provide a 100% complete cache with the Mac version of the game (there are too many potential PSOs due to way UE4 is designed). The Mac version is meant to record any that were missed and the next time you launch the game they will be precompiled - making it less and less likely to occur. If that isn’t happening then something is wrong.

Thanks again marksatt for your response. I can’t imagine the work that goes into ensuring that a game of this scope is running effectively and efficiently for everyone. Knowing that there are strides being made and effort placed on improving the Mac client makes the difficult patches easier.

Another update on my performance - over time I did see improvement in the hitching that was occurring. As you described, it appears to be directly related to duration of play across an update. For example, prior to the most recent update, things had smoothed out for the most part. Following the update, the hitching in frames has returned. I anticipate that it will again improve as more time playing the update.

I continue to see the best performance I have had in the past couple of seasons with my FPS sitting around 90 now. I would imagine this is related to the introduction of the snow but the game feels really good right now.

 

[ursulahx]

UPDATE: I tried, as an experiment, plugging in an old (wired) Apple Mouse - not a Magic Mouse - and everything worked perfectly. So the problem is presumably lying somewhere in the mouse drivers? It's good that I've solved the problem, but it would be nice to know why this has happened.

UPDATE 2: Entire problem was fixed by purchasing a Logitech G602 and using that. Not my favourite mouse, but it works perfectly on everything. So it must have been a mouse driver issue.

New problem I'm having. Can start EG Launcher no problem. Once I'm in, pressing 'Launch' takes several clicks before it responds. Game goes through the loading screens OK, but when I come to select 'Battle Royale' again it requires several clicks. Once I'm in the lobby, buttons do not respond to clicks at all. Can't even quit the game through normal methods, I have to do Cmd-Q.

A similar problem is affecting me when I try to run the game through GeForce Now. Normally my MacOS pointer arrow will disappear from the screen once the EG Launcher screen appears, and will be replaced with a Windows-style pointer. For the past few days, however, my Mac pointer remains on screen and the Windows pointer doesn't appear at all. So the game doesn't respond no matter where I click.

My assumption was that my Mac is not communicating properly with whichever server it's trying to connect to, perhaps because of an internet connection issue, or because of the update to Mojave. However, I don't have any problem running Overwatch through GeForce Now. Furthermore, I can run Fortnite BR just fine on my iPhone (over the same internet connection).

Can anyone think what might be causing this, and what I might be able to do to resolve it? I'm using a 2014 27" 5K Retina iMac, with 32GB RAM and a Radeon R9 card with 4GB VRAM.

By the way, my mouse works perfectly the rest of the time in all other functions (except Steam, where I've been having a similar issue for months... I'm seeing a pattern here...).

[EDIT: Small update - everything worked fine yesterday evening, now today I've got problems again. Wondering if my internet connection - a 'mere' 40MBps - is to blame? I can play the game, but my mouse is unresponsive unless I hold down the RMB. ??? What I can't fathom is that no one else seems to be having this problem - although to be honest I don't know what to search for to find out who is.]

 

[4Sirius]

Any performance improvements expected with Season 8 approaching? The frame drops are as bad as they have ever been.

 

[4Sirius]

I can confirm that there aren’t any performance improvements. Appears to be only degradation.

 

[Irishman]

I can confirm that there aren’t any performance improvements. Appears to be only degradation.

Any numbers that you could post to document the degradation?

 

[4Sirius]

Nothing exact but I would approximate based on previous frame rates and current frame rates that there is a 25% decrease in average FPS ingame and a 35% decrease in average FPS on the new starting island. Considering building and rate of fire are influenced by frame rates, it makes it very difficult in close quarters. Also, the primary difficulty is with frame drops and hitches. These are consistent but have worsened where there are times the frame rate will immediately drop to 20s. Of course, this is the start of a new season.

 

[ursulahx]

Nothing exact but I would approximate based on previous frame rates and current frame rates that there is a 25% decrease in average FPS ingame and a 35% decrease in average FPS on the new starting island. Considering building and rate of fire are influenced by frame rates, it makes it very difficult in close quarters. Also, the primary difficulty is with frame drops and hitches. These are consistent but have worsened where there are times the frame rate will immediately drop to 20s. Of course, this is the start of a new season.

I just loaded a game in MacOS for the first time, and yes the frame drops are the major concern. I expect this to some extent when an update is launched, but this was significant drops of one to two seconds; which doesn't sound long, but is a serious issue in the context of the game. I didn't pay attention to FPS, I'm afraid, there was too much else to take in.

[EDIT: Lots of people on Epic's forums complaining that they can't log in at all, even people with high-end Macs. I haven't had this problem, but I wonder what could be causing it?]

 

[marksatt]

I wish I had something to tell you all but I’m so far removed from Mac Fortnite now that I don’t. My plate is full with just keeping the engine running on Metal as the rest of the company pile on the changes and drivers continue to be a source of pain...

I actually played a couple of matches last night on a consumer 5k iMac w/AMD 580 and didn’t hit these big hitches on Epic or Low settings. That machine has more RAM and VRAM but at low settings that shouldn’t matter - what it wouldn’t have is any saved user PSO data as it had never had a public Fortnite build on it before.

As it turns out we’ve not been invalidating user cached PSOs as we’ve moved through seasons so it probably has lots of invalid entries if you’ve kept playing. That will increase load times and might cause us to overflow the PSO disk cache which would cause these hitches to reappear!

That lives under ~/Library/Application Supprt/Epic/Fortnite (IIRC) and if you delete or move the upipelinecache file it will regenerate it but only with valid PSOs. I don’t know if it will help but not precompiling a load of busted PSOs from earlier releases shouldn’t ultimately hurt either.

 

[ursulahx]

Thanks for the help, Mark, really appreciate it. I'll report back if that makes a significant difference.

In addition, Epic's latest fixes to packet loss should (they hope) help, as detailed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FortNiteBR/comments/awagpo/packet_reordering_technical_post/

 

[Winterfibre]

Try out shadow gaming, here is a money off first month voucher DANMHNTV

 

[ursulahx]

That lives under ~/Library/Application Supprt/Epic/Fortnite (IIRC) and if you delete or move the upipelinecache file it will regenerate it but only with valid PSOs. I don’t know if it will help but not precompiling a load of busted PSOs from earlier releases shouldn’t ultimately hurt either.

Just want to check I have the right file:

~/Library/Application Support/Epic/FortniteGame/Saved/FortniteGame_SF_METAL_SM5.upipelinecache

Is that the one?

 

[marksatt]

Just want to check I have the right file:

~/Library/Application Support/Epic/FortniteGame/Saved/FortniteGame_SF_METAL_SM5.upipelinecache

Is that the one?

Looks right - just move it to the desktop and see if that has any effect. You can always put it back if it doesn’t.

 

[4Sirius]

Just want to check I have the right file:

~/Library/Application Support/Epic/FortniteGame/Saved/FortniteGame_SF_METAL_SM5.upipelinecache

Is that the one?

Any luck with this? Game will drop to 40 FPS constantly.

 

[ursulahx]

Any luck with this? Game will drop to 40 FPS constantly.

Can't say if it was removing the file that did it, but I tried a game just now and got FPS drops throughout. Game felt 'sticky', as if every so often it was pausing to think for a split second. Unplayable.

Of course the game has now generated a new upipelinecache file to replace the one I just removed. Don't know if putting the old one back would make any difference.

 

[Irishman]

For me, framerate isn't the problem - it's the hitching.

The hitching is much more prevalent than before Season 8, even after a few matches. It's more of a heartbeat rhythm and makes the game unplayable.

That, and the crashing out to the desktop happened on my first match , a few minutes after dying and going into spectator mode.

 

[4Sirius]

Thanks for the input. I completely understand what you are saying Irishman. Those hitches for me are directly related to the frame drops. The game is so poorly optimized for Mac that those drops in frames result in the game essentially feeling like you are in water all the time. I approached someone in Lonely last night and as soon as they were visible on my screen, I placed a ramp and attempted to weapon switch. I had to press the key for the other weapon six times before it switched. Thankfully his aim wasn’t the best but as someone who is casually-competitive, I lose matches because of this. It is also affecting the Windows crowd but they have such high frame rates and the game is better optimized that it doesn’t truly affect their gameplay.

 

[Irishman]

Thanks for the input. I completely understand what you are saying Irishman. Those hitches for me are directly related to the frame drops. The game is so poorly optimized for Mac that those drops in frames result in the game essentially feeling like you are in water all the time. I approached someone in Lonely last night and as soon as they were visible on my screen, I placed a ramp and attempted to weapon switch. I had to press the key for the other weapon six times before it switched. Thankfully his aim wasn’t the best but as someone who is casually-competitive, I lose matches because of this. It is also affecting the Windows crowd but they have such high frame rates and the game is better optimized that it doesn’t truly affect their gameplay.

For me, it's weird. I've gotten used to playing on MacOS in the lowest possible settings, so, in Season 8, when you jump from the bus, I'm getting about 150 or so FPS, but when I get to the ground level, it drops to 40 or lower. Still, 40 frames would be playable, but for the stutter hitching! Jeez, it feels like the game is getting worse on Mac for me, not better, and I no longer want to play the game.

As far as UE4 engine lock-down goes, does Mark have any idea when that's gonna happen? In terms of changing to hit a moving target, to trying to hit a still target?

 

[4Sirius]

It is definitely getting worse for me. I’m playing on low settings other than view distance and I have had to lower my res to 1080 on my mid-2017 4K iMac to maintain somewhat similar frame rates as the previous seasons.
[doublepost=1551801606][/doublepost]Irishman, do you still Bootcamp? If so, what differences are you seeing now? Really considering it now that Apex is out. Wanted to continue to encourage development of the Mac client of Fortnite but if it continues to be more stable on Windows with no light at the end of the tunnel and I can play Apex, it may just be the right time. I have wanted a great game to make it on Mac since the Bungie/Halo “theft” and truly thought Fortnite would be it.

 

[Irishman]

It is definitely getting worse for me. I’m playing on low settings other than view distance and I have had to lower my res to 1080 on my mid-2017 4K iMac to maintain somewhat similar frame rates as the previous seasons.
[doublepost=1551801606][/doublepost]Irishman, do you still Bootcamp? If so, what differences are you seeing now? Really considering it now that Apex is out. Wanted to continue to encourage development of the Mac client of Fortnite but if it continues to be more stable on Windows with no light at the end of the tunnel and I can play Apex, it may just be the right time. I have wanted a great game to make it on Mac since the Bungie/Halo “theft” and truly thought Fortnite would be it.

Nah, I don't still Bootcamp, cuz I was having some problems with Windows 10 following an update, that made me have to delete my BC partition.

 

[marksatt]

As far as UE4 engine lock-down goes, does Mark have any idea when that's gonna happen? In terms of changing to hit a moving target, to trying to hit a still target?

You’ve misinterpreted what I’ve said previously. Fortnite is a live service game and is continuously updated. New content, new code, including engine releases. That is the only way it can work and as such it can never be locked down - it will always be a moving target and you absolutely want new engine releases to be integrated because that is the *only* way that any Metal improvements can go into Fortnite.

The days of porting locked-down, boxed product games and being able to have them diverge from the original are dead and gone.

 

[4Sirius]

You’ve misinterpreted what I’ve said previously. Fortnite is a live service game and is continuously updated. New content, new code, including engine releases. That is the only way it can work and as such it can never be locked down - it will always be a moving target and you absolutely want new engine releases to be integrated because that is the *only* way that any Metal improvements can go into Fortnite.

The days of porting locked-down, boxed product games and being able to have them diverge from the original are dead and gone.

Marksatt, are there any expected improvements coming that may improve the performance of Fortnite on Mac? I seem to remember some months ago you reporting positively about progress that may find its way into Fortnite Mac.

 

[marksatt]

Marksatt, are there any expected improvements coming that may improve the performance of Fortnite on Mac? I seem to remember some months ago you reporting positively about progress that may find its way into Fortnite Mac.

No expected improvements from me for Mac Fortnite specifically that I am aware of, but there will be many changes. The next engine release contains a lot of work on the rendering code at every level for a variety of purposes so things will be different. There are too many variables for me to say whether any of this work will help you.

Also I can’t speak for Apple or the GPU vendors who continually iterate on the drivers. The work to improve Mac Metal doesn’t ever stop but it doesn’t move too quickly either.

 

[ursulahx]

The game has stabilised a bit since today's release (or it could just be that I was playing at a quiet time and my internet was running more smoothly). Only occasional hitching, much better than when I last reported.

 

[4Sirius]

Ursalahx, I experienced similar improvements in the constant hitching but the frame rate drops continued and have worsened again following today’s update.

Does anyone have current comparisons of Fortnite on Mac versus Mac Bootcamp?