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

[ursulahx]

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

Funny you say that, because I thought performance had actually improved since today's update! I didn't want to post anything in case it quickly stops being the case... Although having said that, things are usually worse as soon as a new update appears and then they settle down.

 

[4Sirius]

Yeah, performance is at its worse following updates and I only played two matches this morning but I have seen no improvement whatsoever in the frame rate drop. I can’t locate any pattern to the continual decrease in frames. I know in particular that Lonely shows tremendous decreases and spikes but that is only because I frequently land there during pop ups.

 

[ursulahx]

Yeah, performance is at its worse following updates and I only played two matches this morning but I have seen no improvement whatsoever in the frame rate drop. I can’t locate any pattern to the continual decrease in frames. I know in particular that Lonely shows tremendous decreases and spikes but that is only because I frequently land there during pop ups.

To be fair, I did get a lot more hitching/dropping when I was in the middle of a crowded battlefield, but I've started to get used to that. Only really an issue in LTMs, of course.

I did lower my view distance from 'Far' to 'Medium', but other than that I haven't made any changes to the settings. I don't know why everything seemed better today, except perhaps there's less internet traffic in the area on a Tuesday morning.

The fans are still going wild when I play on MacOS (GPU temperature peaking at 107ºC), but I don't suppose there's much that can be done about that.

 

[4Sirius]

Extremely hopeful for tomorrow. With a more than 7GB download, there should be a great deal to be excited about.

 

[Irishman]

Extremely hopeful for tomorrow. With a more than 7GB download, there should be a great deal to be excited about.

Let us know how you feel about it afterwards.

 

[marksatt]

Extremely hopeful for tomorrow. With a more than 7GB download, there should be a great deal to be excited about.

This update includes an entire UE4 engine release and as a result there may be more shader hitching in this update than normal. In the past we’ve waited until a new season to integrate an engine release because they are such big changes - but not this time!

 

[4Sirius]

This update includes an entire UE4 engine release and as a result there may be more shader hitching in this update than normal. In the past we’ve waited until a new season to integrate an engine release because they are such big changes - but not this time!

Is there any expectation that the increase in hitching initially that are related to the new engine release will decrease over time and the engine update will ultimately increase performance and remedy the frame drops, etc.?

 

[4Sirius]

No such luck. Even with the worst performance coming immediately following an update, the frame rate drops and hitching has not improved in any way. The best part of the update so far and the most interesting aspect of playing today has been seeing how low the FPS will drop. It’s gotten down to 3 FPS for me a couple of times but I’m sure it can get down to 1. This is early, mid, or late game in public matches.

It is truly remarkable to me that my son’s PS4 runs the game with higher graphics settings more consistently than my iMac.

 

[Irishman]

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.

Mark,

I am sorry for the long delay in my response on this question , but I did want to make a small point of clarification: I am not referring to Fortnite specifically, when I asked about hitting a sitting target at some point in the future,. Rather, I was speaking about the underlying engine, UE4.

Have you guys gotten any indication from the engine team, regarding any sort of feature lockdown that they may be reaching?

 

[marksatt]

Mark,

I am sorry for the long delay in my response on this question , but I did want to make a small point of clarification: I am not referring to Fortnite specifically, when I asked about hitting a sitting target at some point in the future,. Rather, I was speaking about the underlying engine, UE4.

Have you guys gotten any indication from the engine team, regarding any sort of feature lockdown that they may be reaching?

I work on the engine team - parts are constantly being rewritten or refactored. There is not and never will be a feature lockdown for the engine. That is what makes UE4 compelling to licensees - it is constantly pushing to be at the forefront of games technology.

As a result every engine release means more work on Metal support to keep pace with the changes made at the higher level and the ever increasing use of newer GPU features.

Fortnite being a live, multiplayer, service rather than an offline, single player boxed product means that it is constantly taking those new engine releases so they can upgrade the game and benefit from all the new features.

On Mac and iOS this is in fact absolutely essential as each new OS release requires an all new set of workarounds for the latest slew of Apple/AMD/Intel/NV bugs. Without taking the engine release they’d have *real* problems just shipping on newer OS releases.

 

[4Sirius]

Mark, Can you provide any information related to the performance fix or change that was made most recently? The reason I ask is because I have been dealing with frame drops and hitching for the past couple of seasons, which worsened with the most recent update to the point that there was stuttering every few seconds in the game. Once there were more frequent complaints from users on other platforms of similar behavior, there was a change that was made yesterday afternoon which drastically increased my performance in the game. What is really interesting to me about this change is that it required no download. Any information that you can provide would be great to help in my understanding of some of the performance difficulties that I have been having.

 

[marksatt]

Mark, Can you provide any information related to the performance fix or change that was made most recently? The reason I ask is because I have been dealing with frame drops and hitching for the past couple of seasons, which worsened with the most recent update to the point that there was stuttering every few seconds in the game. Once there were more frequent complaints from users on other platforms of similar behavior, there was a change that was made yesterday afternoon which drastically increased my performance in the game. What is really interesting to me about this change is that it required no download. Any information that you can provide would be great to help in my understanding of some of the performance difficulties that I have been having.

Nope, I honestly have no idea on that one. I'd just enjoy the improvement

 

[4Sirius]

Nope, I honestly have no idea on that one. I'd just enjoy the improvement

Oh I am! The update that is coming in the morning makes me a bit afraid but I know a lot of others are dealing with similar performance problems as Mac users have faced. The game feels pretty good right now though.

 

[Irishman]

I work on the engine team - parts are constantly being rewritten or refactored. There is not and never will be a feature lockdown for the engine. That is what makes UE4 compelling to licensees - it is constantly pushing to be at the forefront of games technology.

As a result every engine release means more work on Metal support to keep pace with the changes made at the higher level and the ever increasing use of newer GPU features.

Fortnite being a live, multiplayer, service rather than an offline, single player boxed product means that it is constantly taking those new engine releases so they can upgrade the game and benefit from all the new features.

On Mac and iOS this is in fact absolutely essential as each new OS release requires an all new set of workarounds for the latest slew of Apple/AMD/Intel/NV bugs. Without taking the engine release they’d have *real* problems just shipping on newer OS releases.

So, in a practical sense , UE4 won't be feature-locked until UE5 comes out?

 

[4Sirius]

Nope, I honestly have no idea on that one. I'd just enjoy the improvement

Early games after today's update are back to constant hitching and freezing. Severe frame drops.

Mark or anyone else, perhaps you could help me with this question. I have yet to update to Mojave due to concerns that were related to Fortnite performance. Is it now safe to update? Thanks.

 

[Irishman]

Early games after today's update are back to constant hitching and freezing. Severe frame drops.

Mark or anyone else, perhaps you could help me with this question. I have yet to update to Mojave due to concerns that were related to Fortnite performance. Is it now safe to update? Thanks.

4Sirius,

I wouldn't update to mojave with the expectation that it will fix your Fortnite problems. I'm running Mojave and I'm having the same unpredictable problems you're having.

Frame-rate is fine, but the hitching and hanging, and crashing out ruins it for me.

I'm about that close to uninstalling the entire launcher.

best,

Brian

 

[4Sirius]

4Sirius,

I wouldn't update to mojave with the expectation that it will fix your Fortnite problems. I'm running Mojave and I'm having the same unpredictable problems you're having.

Frame-rate is fine, but the hitching and hanging, and crashing out ruins it for me.

I'm about that close to uninstalling the entire launcher.

best,

Brian

Thanks Brian. I wasn't so much hoping that Mojave would fix problems as much as I was concerned that it may introduce others. I have been holding off because I read other users had difficulty with Fortnite after updating. Hate you are seeing the same issues. I've played quite a few matches today and while things have improved, there continues to be frame drops and hitches. Just not as frequently.

 

[Irishman]

Thanks Brian. I wasn't so much hoping that Mojave would fix problems as much as I was concerned that it may introduce others. I have been holding off because I read other users had difficulty with Fortnite after updating. Hate you are seeing the same issues. I've played quite a few matches today and while things have improved, there continues to be frame drops and hitches. Just not as frequently.

For me, the current state of the game is unplayable.

 

[marksatt]

For me, the current state of the game is unplayable.

If you are still on the same 2012 iMac I’m not surprised. My 2012 15” MBP has 1GB VRAM but also only 8GB RAM and it spends inordinate amounts of time paging to and from disk because it runs out of RAM which causes the symptoms you describe.

All the extra content that has been added since launch has increased the RAM usage quite strikingly. It may also need more VRAM for the same reason - and 512MB was problematic to begin with.

Obviously this won’t apply to Macs with more RAM and VRAM unless people keep web browsers or other RAM hungry apps open while playing.

 

[4Sirius]

For me, the current state of the game is unplayable.

It was that way the first 30-40 matches for me but it has smoothed. There continues to be the frame drops but it isn’t resulting in hitching for me any longer. Now, high point arena end games and heavy traffic in Tilted result in severe lagging but the things I experienced before are no longer happening.

 

[Irishman]

It was that way the first 30-40 matches for me but it has smoothed. There continues to be the frame drops but it isn’t resulting in hitching for me any longer. Now, high point arena end games and heavy traffic in Tilted result in severe lagging but the things I experienced before are no longer happening.

I'll try it out again later and see what I can see.

Thanks

Happy Easter, guys!

 

[4Sirius]

Brian, have things improved for you as you have played more matches? I ask because the next update will be coming soon and historically, performance is always at its worst immediately after an update.

Hope you had a terrific Easter.

 

[Irishman]

Brian, have things improved for you as you have played more matches? I ask because the next update will be coming soon and historically, performance is always at its worst immediately after an update.

Hope you had a terrific Easter.

Hmm, I'm seeing an incredibly improved framerate, well over 60 average FPS at the lowest settings, and the stutter from before is nearly gone. The problem now is I'm having crashes out of Fortnite, to my desktop, after every second match.

So, it seems that stability is the compromise for this.

 

[4Sirius]

Well, it is done. I have decided to cross over to the darkside and for the first time ever in my life, I am running windows. It is somewhat outrageous for me to imagine that a game has resulted in me turning but the performance difficulties for the Mac client have resulted in more and more frustration. Remarkably, on the same hardware and only a change in operating system, I have a 40 frame per second increase and there has been absolutely no hitching. It has practically taken me a full day to accomplish this and I am still working toward getting the colors in windows to match those of the Mac OS but it is done. Sensitivity settings will take some time (impossible to find some way to calculate the differences) but all other aspects of the game just feel so much smoother. And don't worry, I burnt sage in my office and immediately took a shower after installing.

 

[ursulahx]

Season 10 requires that our graphics cards be capable of running Microsoft DirectX11. While I don't suppose this impacts on our systems, how could this potentially affect Mac users?