"I cannot play this game!" ‼️ X4 Performance Explained

💜 Watch the Twitch stream here: / captaincollins
💙 Discord: / discord
💛 Find all other channels: linktr.ee/CaptainCollins
☕ Buy me a coffee: ko-fi.com/captaincollins
Ko-fi takes 0% cut (Twitch takes 50%, KZbin 30%) and everything arrives at the creators, which makes Ko-fi the best place to support.
⌨️ The Bridge is now outfitted by NYFTER. Use code CAPTAIN to get 10% off on everything here: CaptainCollins.tv/nyfter *
🎮 My game store to buy the recent games I played: www.nexus.gg/captaincollins *
Yes, you can even grab games for Steam and other platforms you use :)
🎮 GOG Creator Link: adtr.co/LLa63l *
(Get games like X4 and DLC's or Cyberpunk without additional costs, but with support for the channel)
💻 My gear: CaptainCollins.tv/hardware
Check out the current stuff the Captain uses. If you have questions, drop them in the comments.
💎 Use this Amazon affiliate link to support the channel: amzn.to/3GRu3Eo *
(Everything will count, with no additional cost to you, thank you!)
Thank you for watching!
* Those are affiliate links. You don't pay more, but I get a share.

[@CaptainCollins]

The Bridge is now outfitted by NYFTER. Use code CAPTAIN to get 10% off on everything here: CaptainCollins.tv/nyfter * * This is an affiliate link. You don't pay more, but I get a share.

[@DanielFrost79]

Very good explanation. It is very surprising that so many people that are playing games on a daily basis don't actually knows how X4 works. Like an MMO Server is a very good way of explaining. Only that your PC is acting as the "Server". Well done. And thanks for the video. o7 from 🇸🇪.

[@kohlrak]

@@DanielFrost79 That's typical of gamers, even developers like EgoSoft. I'm not one of those complainers, but as i plan to buy my next gaming computer, i'm keeping one of egosoft's terrible practices (to be fair, most devs do it) in mind: i need to focus on single-thread performance. If egosoft added 2 features (i understand they're not small), it would infinitely improve the performance of X4. Let's face it, the "map FPS" is the biggest problem in the game. First, OOS stuff needs to be multi-threaded. To make it easier, just make every sector it's own thread, i'm sure under the hood they already have a setup ready for that but don't realize it (you gotta keep sector data separate to calculate collision properly). The challenge comes in when you have cross sector messaging, which could be solved by using buffers or something. Secondly, multiplayer. It sounds like it would be a problem with added complexity, but it would allow people to offload the calculations to another computer. I'm not talking MMO levels of multiplayer, either (tried posting this theory before and people couldn't tell the difference and even described my idea saying they'd like that better than my idea). Even if you are the sole server user, if you can offload all the calculations to another computer. In my house, in another room, i have a very noisy machine that supports 24 threads at once. If I could have that baby running my OOS stuff, or all the game entirely, i don't think i'd have any FPS issues what so ever: my computer could focus on getting the results of those calculations and putting it on my screen, while that beast does all the hard work. I'm sure someone could figure out how to offload those calculations to a second GPU as well. The idea of offloading calculations to something else is why we have graphics cards in the first place. The idea works, and it's time for egosoft to accept it.

[@Muddysoap14]

I find if you pause the game when your either on the map or building a station, that can help a lot with you fps 😊

[@bangbinbash]

Every game needs a Captain Collins.

[@CaptainCollins]

🥰

[@steemlenn8797]

Oha! Ich hab ja jetzt nicht sonderlich viel erwartet, aber das sieht noch kleiner aus als gedacht. Entweder quetschen die sich ordentlich da drin oder eben Home Office.

[@r4plez]

and at least 3/4 of all cpu cores utilization

[@Hunpriest]

Good explanation. As a software engineer I get that simulating this much in real time consistently is really not an easy task. It will be demanding no matter how far you go with optimization. Older X titles were a lot more simplistic in this regard. Its a bit like Crysis, where you can cry about "bad optimization", but in reallity it was just using more performance demanding effects by design (and they also had to do tons of optimization to make the it work on hardwares of that era).

[@Gomorragh]

there is also the current fad of people building pc's based on youtube videos that leave out essentials like "install motherboard drivers" or "make sure the system has fully updated" or worse "ignoring windows updates for several months while windows slowly kneecaps your system trying to force you to update" ive had several arguments in the past with streamers that it wasnt the game that was the problem, but thier setup, only to be proved right 6 months later when they went and paid $500 to get it fixed and then had to rebuy parts because they didnt know the motherboard had certain specifications and that getting the top cpu switched off certain ram ssd and gfx options

[@3komma141592653]

If the average player had lots of performance left unused we simply would cry for a bigger galaxy and a bigger game and would want more in general. I play on a fairly new system and i have almost no performance problems at all. Some people play on a 1080 or even 980 and expect it to run super smooth.

[@monstrosity8855]

Old X titles didn’t have a legitimate simulation. A lot of things were spawned. X4 is the first true simulation of the series.

[@kohlrak]

@@3komma141592653 i'd love t have my hands on a 1080. I just don't have the money to replace my computer every 2 months.

[@kohlrak]

@Hunpriest the issue with X4 is it's trying to live in a single-threaded world when the nature of x4's calculations are just begging for threads.

[@_why_3881]

Beta 7.0 is a game changer. The performance increase is gigantic. I don't experience the map and interface lags. Neither in game. Even with Shift + 4 speed up everything runs more smooth then before the beta. It is crazy❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[@torgrim123]

Well TAA and DLSS tend to do that BUT the graphics takes a hit with blurry when you move, general looking bad.

[@noname-ov8lm]

@@torgrim123 dlss? There's no dlss in 7.0 sadly

[@Osmone_Everony]

9:10 "Too much stuff around you", that's exactly why I don't like mega-factories. Why many players build stations with dozens of wharves and hundreds of other modules and even brag about it but then complain about bad performance is beyond me.

[@Rakshasa84]

I've struggled with this game for performance reasons as well, and it's the mid-late game that seems to absolutely kill the experience despite my hardware. CPU: 5800x, GPU: 6800, 32 GB RAM and PCI-E GEN4 nvme drive. I feel like I shouldn't have any issues even at late game with that setup. But who knows, maybe I have a config issue somewhere I haven't tracked down yet. Anyway, what's your advice? If you don't build mega stations, then the alternative is to build a vast amount of traders to move resources between each other. If you want them to produce then you need a bunch of medium miners and trader doing there thing. Isn't that more of a "same but different" problem? I haven't really understood what the optimal setup is for stations versus traders. Not to mention that traders require every station to have a satellite near them to update pricing? Don't all these things kill you performance wise? The other issue is that because the patrol sector order doesn't respond to friendly ships being attacked, protecting traders doesn't really work either. It's been a little bit since I played so I don't remember sector names, but the HAT region that links to the Xenon sector (Tharka's Cascade?) for me is a good example of how the game just starts to tank. From what used to be 60+ fps or even more becomes sub-thirty later on when fighting around there. I've personally attributed that issue to the amount of trade ships I have going in the background and the satellites revealing the area that's tanking my CPU.

[@jasonwright8546]

I am one of those guys that enjoys building enormous shipyards and mega factories. Though I try, mostly, to not complain when the game curses my existence, lol!

[@zooleebest]

@@jasonwright8546 i was one of those with closed loop shipyard HQ mega station. i dreaded going inside my own sector XD

[@nachomahn]

Interface lag in the map is my only performance complaint … right click a station to trade with and it can take a bit to happen. Pausing helps a LOT, and it hasn’t stopped me from logging over 1200 hours, and in the last year the graphics have improved so much that I went from medium preset to ultra on the same aging PC

[@CaptainCollins]

that's impressive

[@boreasreal5911]

I agree with the UI lag being pretty much the only annoying part. Although at least to me that only happens late game when I have hundreds of ships and satelites floating about.

[@tonechild5929]

I use a keybind to pause tthe game, and tend to pause it in late game when in map mode. ANother thing I do is turn off show orders and show allied orders in the filter option, that gave me a 30+ fps boost (from 20 fps to 50 fps) in mid to early late game. eventually though once you have hundreds and hundreds of assets on the screen it can get laggy even with that, and the pause is my best friend.

[@meneldal]

There are definitely compromises that could be done to decouple the interface fps from the simulation tick. People are probably fine with their ships position updated once a second (or even less), especially if it means the interface would run smoothly.

[@kohlrak]

@@meneldal Honestly they need to decouple sectors, too. We don't live in a single-core world anymore, and it's time egosoft takes that plunge.

[@PandarN]

TAA makes moving objects blurry, but it requires less resources than SSAA, and visually almost the same

[@valid_name_taken]

I have over a thousand hours in the game and never had problems playing the game

[@purpleey]

you must have a nice PC

[@valid_name_taken]

Not really I got a 1080ftw with a 8th gen i5

[@laserak9887]

My only complaint is the lack of better multi-threading in such a perfect game for it. All else, yeah more people need to understand. Thanks Capn

[@meneldal]

Probably too many things that would race condition everywhere if they were run in parallel when it comes to stuff like ship orders and you need a huge rewrite to make it work.

[@laserak9887]

@@meneldal Sure, but why wasn't it done that way with this Engine? It was a foundation after all.

[@monstrosity8855]

@@laserak9887the new engine introduced in 6.00 did improve multithreading. Is it the most utilized optimized thing? No. But people don’t realize most games still run with very low thread counts.

[@meneldal]

@@laserak9887 Because they build up from X Rebirth and previous games? Rewriting the whole engine would be a lot of work.

[@laserak9887]

@@monstrosity8855 Most games don't try to simulate a whole universe. Multithreading isn't new by any stretch of the imagination.

[@guillaumefavier9640]

That's one of the reason i built my empire with seperate stations. It requires more ships for logistic, but it's way more fluide than a méga complex. Thanks for this clear explanation.😊

[@ghostfacedninja1000]

You are missunderstanding how it works. Megaplexes are only bad if you are within 40km of them. If you simply don't go within 40km of them they will be better for your overall game fps as you will need less ships/objects to service them.

[@kdog3908]

Well, we live in a world where people consider significant dips below 60fps to be 'game breaking' and 'unplayable' It's a an expectation and perception issue, as well as technical consideration. I'm a bit older so recall a time when 30-45 fps was the norm. The game being playable is my overriding concern. This means my standards are lower but it spares me the imagined, from my pov, stress of playing a game that runs at less than 60fps.

[@-drey]

mid-late game is at 10-15fps. and that's on a 13th gen i9 with a 4090 monster. I mean older systems have it worse than that.

[@kdog3908]

@@-drey I was making a general point about expectations rather than a specific point about X4.

[@-drey]

@@kdog3908 yeah and I agree - it's not the FPS it's FPS consistency - you can play 30fps and be just fine if the frame render times do not vary. your eyes just get used to it after a few minutes and that's that.

[@RaymondThierry]

@@-drey yep, I agree. Large battles are at 10-15. But if you play yourself, this isn't enough to control smaller ships, for example. That is why I think DLSS is really needed.

[@boreasreal5911]

akshually OOS is a term from the older X games, up to and including X3 AP/FL and possibly X Rebirth, although idk wether they still used that system there or not. The low attention simulation X4 uses is quite similar, although there are some differences, like for example it being applied in the same sector the player is, just outside of the players viewrange, while the old X titles used the IS simulation on everything that was in the same sector as the player, regardless of wether the player could see it or not. Tbf the sectors in the old X games also were a lot smaller.

[@Rhapses]

Could just start referring to OOS as Out Of Sight. Then OOS still applies no matter which game.

[@roberthohlt469]

Have a question for you Sir Captain. I watched your review of vkb gladiator nxt evo with "star citizen". What was the result when you tried (7.00 X4) with the Gladiator nxt? Any issues? I see you have a real expensive HOTAS now.

[@mikalcobbs9402]

I have no problem playing it and my computer is a potato

[@CMDROldDuck]

I don't understand the complaints about performance, because I have no performance issues myself. Granted, I play on a 1080p screen with graphics settings in the medium-high range (ultra does slow things down a tad), but I'm using laptop Nvidia 1660ti graphics, so that's to be expected. Yet my gameplay is smooth 99% of the time (there is an annoying pause when NPC voice comms first trigger). I'm not sure why I'm lucky and others aren't. I do run 32 GB of RAM with swap disabled, and my version of Windows 10 (1909) is highly optimized with very few processes running in the background and any performance "nerfs" like the Spector Patch disabled. That said, this unique setup does not benefit me with other poorly optimized games like Elite Dangerous Odyssey, so I really don't know what my secret is.

[@ZlothZloth]

You never said exactly what framerate you're getting. People who complain say, often times in GREAT detail, what their framerates are. I expect that the secret is that you're simply playing the game and only worrying about framerate if it gets in the way of having fun. These folks have tools running to display stats at all times showing just how well the game is running. Getting the game to run as well as possible is itself a big part of the fun for them. Then this game comes along and puts demands on their computer unlike any other game they've played before. They make a bunch of assumptions (which, to be fair, have worked beautifully for the past 100+ games they've played) and we get an explosion on one of the forums.

[@kohlrak]

Your secret is probably the lack of things in your universe.

[@LushContrive]

A while ago I had some problem with the performance on Manjaro Linux. The reason for this was that the default scheduler was set to "powersave" per default. The solution, every time I start X4 I set the scheduler to "performance" and now all problem I had are gone. I don't know if there is a setting like this on Windows.

[@dichebach]

Good effort and good information! Doubt it will win over those who are bound and determined to complain.

[@CaptainCollins]

Was never made for them. It is for the people willing to think about the tech and reasons behind.

[@jan_raynor_sereda]

Very nice Explanation video. I must say that since the latest 'Pre-Timelines' build game runs a lot better ... at least on my Rig

[@brianaylsworth9159]

How do you feel about the minimum/recommended settings on Steam? Thankfully my PC exceeds the recommended settings, but sometimes it struggles. No idea what it would be like playing with the minimal hardware. Maybe people have different definitions of what is playable.

[@spiderron1463]

Haven't played in a while. Are they going by single core performance or is multi threading utilized. Never had issues with my ancient processor [Xeon Quad-Core Processor E3-1230 v2 3.3GHz]. Time to jump into a cockpit again.

[@somnorila9913]

Both i think. As it is multi core capable but reliant on core speed too. From what i found it's still proper for quads and not so much for anything more. I tend to believe that because i can see the history of my cpu utilization where the first 4 cores are used extensively but the rest are pretty much dormant. The overall utilization of cpu and gpu are low in my system yet fps wise is not that good. Have some places where i have over 100 fps, most of the times the fps are about 50 and some times goes to 30 and few times even under 10 fps. It's all over the place and quite annoying. I would not mind playing even at 30 fps if it would be stuck at that all the time. But i desire to play at 80-100 fps like in any other game i play in 1080p at high-very high or ultra settings. Granted that my cpu is not that young anymore but still good enough i think (R7 3800x) and my gpu is fine too (RTX3080ti), have enough RAM 32GB and run everything from a gen3 NVMA SSD. Still, should probably not have any issues as the specs are over recommended ones and tend to set my PC and games for fps first rather than visuals. Anyway it doesn't really matters as from my testing with other games my PC would rather be CPU bottlenecked and i can pretty much play at ultra visuals as dropping them most of the times doesn't improve fps in a way that matters too much. And this game is the same, i still get bad fps and fps drops even if i go all the way down. And also playing at 1080p i have no use for upscaling settings as it just makes the visuals worse and get no fps improvement. Maybe a 7000 series cpu would help a bit but i don't really think it's time for an upgrade just now as my current 3000 still can hold its own just fine in the games i play. So i put the responsibility with the game optimization not my gear just yet.

[@pnksmigge5324]

just drove through würselen seeing the egosoft building, what a shock :D

[@CaptainCollins]

noice :)

[@Osmone_Everony]

You mean it's shocking that its's not a shiny high-rise with glass all over it? :)

[@pnksmigge5324]

@@Osmone_Everony let's just say it helped keep some things in perspective :)

[@Velerios]

If somebody wants to see it, here's the link to google street view: www.google.com/maps/@50.8408709,6.1093512,3a,75y,224.64h,94.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1stW3K07oxcqUu74cx7w3xXw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

[@DarthFiscus]

whenever Distant Worlds 2 chokes my system out only the ship icons start to move choppy while the camera scrolling remains smooth. A potential solution for the X-series?

[@joeyharper4052]

I have noticed in my first play through which is at like 500 hrs I have map lag. It doesn’t bother because it’s the map but I was worried my out of map view would be laggy. But even with a few hundred ships on screen it runs well in first person

[@FaratiaK]

Thank you, this totally explains why my Hub or gigantic station at Getsu Fune is super laggy, since I built an everything-in-one station, lol.

[@chrisnaumann6169]

The explanation of TAA was very good. I have actually some short frame drops in 7.00. especially in sectors with a higher asset density. In the first years of x4 there was a memory leak and you had to restart the game after 1 or 2 hours, but that is fixed. Now i have no other performance issues. I play on a laptop in 1k with 64 gb ram and intel 11th series.

[@CaptainCollins]

Thank you, I got it explained by Bernd himself and how they did it.

[@chrisnaumann6169]

@@CaptainCollins Frag doch mal Bernd ob es Pläne gibt X für die Zukunft zu sichern. So als Stiftung oder so. Ich spiele die Games seit dem 1. Teil. Wäre echt blöd wenn Egosoft mal aus personellen oder wirtschaftlichen Gründen dicht machen muss. Es ist immer noch das beste Game ever. Trotz Bugs.

[@Cipher991]

good points thank you for the clarification particularly with the whole idea with the map, I never stopped to consider the server idea honestly tyvm

[@MyRkAcc]

Upgraded from a 2600 to a 5600 Ryzen just today, and it does seem to help a lot l so far, at least around stations. Will need to see how larger battles do hah, especially since I'm doing the Star Wars mod. 7.0 beta ran perfectly ok tho in battles even with my old 2600

[@Gneeznow]

I was playing X4 on a first gen i7-950 with 12 gigs of DDR3 up until recently, it was a bit janky but entirely playable and that's a 15 year old machine.

[@karlkani80]

I love the game so much, but sometimes in my late game I hit 10 FPS in my own System because I put like 10 station in a cluster and it's insane.

[@sage3595]

So, we have online - 40km radius offline - when we see icons in map offline offline - when map closed We know, that battle calculations are different for "online" and "offline". And i ask you: have we are differences between "offline" and "offline offline"?

[@Gomorragh]

i had this described years ago that the old anti aliasing and the rest of the settings were made for up to 1080p, the dlss and amd equivalents are for 1440p upwards, there was a graphics settings indepth dive a few years back somewhere on youtube that explains it all properly indepth, but a lot of settings will try to use both and cause massive problems when one is meant to replace the other, or just doesnt actually work unless you are on the higher resolution screens. What you forgot to mention here is that the engine also changed in 6.0, where they went from an engine they have been used to and updating since 1999 to the blender based system they are now using, so all the updates took several steps backwards. There was always the in sector (IS) and out of sector (OoS) calculations where it swaps between physics based calculations to purely mathematical calculations, but now there is also in sector out of sight (ISOoS) calculations where positioning is needed to be a little more accurate and 3 dimensional while not needing all the physics, non of these calculations have reacted well to people thinking that they can run 3 to 6 screens all at 2k to 4k resolutions with maybe one set to 1080p for watching twitch and chatting ... the more screens you have at different resolutions also causes your OS to say "wait, we need to juggle this"

[@OldManGibb]

Great explanation, well done Capt. Thanks a million for this, I hope this helps some players understand how the game works in the background.

[@CaptainCollins]

Glad you agree on this

[@janovmi2]

i spend more time on the map managing my fleet than i spend in cockpit flying myself thats where the problem is

[@leadiususa7394]

You are correct. You must really control things and keep the number of ships down in quantity to keep refresh FPS at a good level. It kills my game at some point once I explore to much or build to much. graphic card is already set low. But still it fails over time

[@teric2]

Game Dev here (I work as a programmer for Bethesda), and I love X4. I have more than 500 hours in this game already. In my experience with X4, especially within the last few months, I have seen that the game tends to use 4 threads on my home CPU (10 cores/16 threads). When I watch my task manager during gameplay, I see that 4 threads are constantly utilized at or near 100%, while the other 12 threads are mostly idle. This is normal for most of today's PC games, even AAA titles, which tend to use between 4 and 8 threads on your CPU and leave the rest idle. Even our game Starfield, which can be very CPU-intensive in some areas, only uses a limited number of threads on my work CPU (32 cores/64 threads), with the majority of them at or near idle. This is why, in most cases, having a CPU with a high number of cores/threads isn't going to help gameplay performance all that much. What really boosts performance in CPU-intensive games is the single-thread performance rating. To illustrate this point, my home CPU (Intel i5-12600K, 10 cores/16 threads) runs X4 much more smoothly than my work CPU (AMD Threadripper Pro 3975WX 32 cores/64 threads). The single thread rating on my home CPU is 3954, while the single thread rating on the Threadripper is only 2660. (source: www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4603vs3851/Intel-i5-12600K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-PRO-3975WX )

[@snaphaan5049]

Very interesting. Will seriously take this into account when I upgrade next time. I usually can't afford these 10 core CPU's 😅

[@alux948]

I run the game on a 6800k and a ref GTX1080. Pre V6 on old saves where I had stations and ships all over the place my FPS used to drop to

[@kevinmalisek9353]

little correction here.. the game HAS TO calculate the position of any ship at any given time even outside of map, just a simple timer won't do. Those who delved into mods and map structure will most likely agree that the game actually does ship positioning with an extremely simplified model of the universe, which literally just puts the ship to certain coordinates within the entire universe (NOT WITHIN A SECTOR) all this while the "Map universe" is flattened to 2D so the calculations are basically made on a plane. Then maybe (I'm going off of gut here) adds a 3rd dimension to tell how far from the ecliptic plane the ship is located. In the end you only need 3 numbers to precisely position the ship ANYWHERE in the universe and only really start rendering the ship stuff when you, the player get within 70kms of it (In my experience the particles, weapon lasers and the like get rendered before you actually see the ship itself at 40kms). Let's be honest here, calculating 3 numbers isn't really a problem even for 10k ships in the entire universe, say, 5 times per second. that said, if you take the time to investigate the save files, you'll notice that there are actually also velocities being saved, so it is not unreasonable to assume that the game also calculates velocities when determining where the ships (all of them) will be on the next tick. Again, velocity is a vector, so 3 numbers, not that heavy of a calculation, even for thousands of ships. Another consideration (judging again by what one can read from save files) is that landed/docked ships do not need to have their position calculated at all. They just need to say they are docked at "that" ship, which will have its position calculated. Whenever the docked ship undocks, it gets its position copied from the larger vessel it undocked from and starts being calculated on its own. This appears to be the reason why, when you launch 21 ships from Raptor while sitting inside it, they will get all confused and launch in all sorts of weird angles, but when you launch then from OOS, they will launch pretty much instantly without any issue whatsoever. The fact that there are no collisions being calculated (and therefore also not trying to be avoided) while OOS also helps.

[@mur80mur]

Anyone have an opinion on where the diminishing returns on CPU upgrades would be? What I mean is, I have a r5-3600 and I started a game with no dlc's and it's a lot smoother then when I had 3 dlc's loaded. Makes sense since there's less races/ships/stations. I've read on forums that people with 13/14th gen i7/i9's and 5800x3d's have stuttering issues when on the map screen. So would it be worth it for me to upgrade to a 5700/5800x3d or jump up to an am5 platform? Let's assume I'm not worried about cost of going to am5 for discussion sake.

[@steemlenn8797]

I have a slighly slowed (undervolting) ryzen 5600 and I get just double digits on map late in game, with lots of satellites etc. Stuttering? I didn't even have that with the 1600 before.

[@nickf9862]

7950x3d and 7900xtx, it still lags mid-endgame.

[@rodcameron7140]

Now I better understand what is happening when I'm flying around my 30,000 module mega station. 😂🤣😂 ...I do like to build.

[@CaptainCollins]

Never stop building :) Embrace the impact ;)

[@aldumnarx56]

I don't understand much about it, but shouldn't the game run with the entire CPU of the PC? Since with that it would run much better, since I saw that only 1 CPU process works instead of all of them, I have an i5 13600k with an RTX 4070 and in bases it goes to 40 to 55 FPS and I have it in medium quality with fsr 1 in quality Correct me if I'm not right with this since I don't understand much, I only know that the game is dependent on the processor more than the graphics card😅.

[@teddp]

Never faced any performance issues with my Intel i9-10850 k running at 1080p at reasonable settings. Only when I'm near my one mega complex factory only then my FPS drop and again it is very playable.

[@nou8257]

I wonder is the game performance just about as optimized as egosoft can get it to at this point or is there more they can keep fine tuning.

[@DanielFrost79]

They can always make it better. But is it worth 100s if not 1000s of hours for that 1-2% for a minority of players?.. probably not.

[@nou8257]

@@DanielFrost79 Yeah kinda what i figured

[@Rastayeti666]

taa gave me a HUGE performance boost. Could make multiple settings higher and still got better performance

[@ShadowWalker2006]

Hmm, I'm playing this game on my Laptop with an external 2k Monitor with high settings and I don't really have that many performance issues. When I load my 100+ hours Save it stutters a bit at the very beginning, but that stops rather quickly. Other than that I only have very few micro lags here and there, nothing that would ruin the game experience for me. And for those who want to know my specs: - RTX 3080 mobile (16.000 GDDR6) - Intel I7 11800H (8x 2.30 GHZ) - 32 GB DDR4 (3200 MHz) - 4 TB M.2 SSD

[@ValosarX]

Your laptop has the same specs as a gaming PC I built last year for 1700 USD and you play at the same resolution as I do. What a bizarre coincidence

[@OrinThomas]

I'm always confused about the writing on the top being backward and the writing on the hat being forward.

[@CaptainCollins]

I like my image mirrored, so if I point right, it's right on screen. But I also don't want to wear mirrored clothes :D

[@martinhorner642]

I've played since the beginning of X2 and can say that X universe games are the most amazing sims I've ever experienced. Every thing they do is F'ing Magic (FM). I can do some impressive software design. I can't even begin to explain how they manage the simulation of an entire universe.

[@Tpachal]

I got an amazing deal on a R7 5800x3D and a 6950xt and now I just brute force any performance problems I used to have on my old R5 chip and 2070 super combo. I still suck at the game though.

[@kaldo2113]

If the trader is just a timer when calculated in the background how can then they tell that it gets attacked? Wouldn't they need to still track at least its position and movement even before we open the map? AI has to make decisions on whether to attack it or not, whats closest or how big of a target it is? Secondly, just because the calculations are done at a lower frequency than the render rate doesn't mean the UI should be sluggish too... the map could maybe be rendered at 60fps so we can move it around and click around pleasantly even if the data is actually updated every 10 or 5 or even 1 fps? They could also have better LOD for the map so it only starts calculating stuff that you are currently zoomed into instead of everything, or we could have filters to hide all ships and only render stations for example. Some other games also use a slowdown effect so the calculations can catch up (riftbreaker or eve online) in these cases. Like I get why it's difficult but it doesn't make my frustrations go away, especially when you spend most of the time just interacting with the map that feels bad to use. Good video and I'm glad for some dev insights though!

[@Hyperion1722]

Good info but the real issue is that the old engine can only use at most two cores where the data is further distributed to the other cores. This produces the lag. Once these 2 cores are choked so goes the game performance as the GPU will just be waiting for data from the CPU. I noticed this even if I lower the graphical settings, the GPU usage goes as low as 30% while my CPU is about 20% ( 2 cores sweating it out while the 6 cores are twiddling their thumbs waiting for the data) and my fps is still tanking at 30fps. Try doing a battle scene - an 8 core cpu with HT would reflect low overall CPU usage, low GPU usage and fps is still crawling at 30fps. The game should be able to use all cores simultaneously but it is not. This is an engine limitation. It is what it is because of an old engine. So the strategy game could now become think most of the time, explore - to a limited extent, build - uh oh, fight - duhhh, trade - ooops...

[@Rhapses]

My issue is more surrounding core optimisation. Right now it is too heavily dependant on a single core. I'm hoping they can eventually change this. I proposed a while ago that in future iterations they could split the game into slices/quadrants where they each get their own core, then have a single game core that only focuses on exchanging data between those cores/slices. Could even further refine it with another core dedicated to just the sector you are in. Essentially though, the idea is that the game breaks itself up into smaller 'servers' and then meshes them with a single core for handover. Would allow scalability where performance then becomes strictly dependent on how many cores you have.

[@iamthewolf7277]

how is ppl having issues with performance iv been playing it and have no issue's im usieng an i9 9980hk 2.40GHz with an 3080 on have no issues with performance

[@MegaBronko81]

Hallo Captain Collins, Erstmal danke für deine Videos. Wäre es eventuell möglich das du die Entwickler beim nächsten Treffen mal fragst ob diese bei den Stationseinstellungen eine Bedingung "Überweise alle Credits auf das Spielerkonto ab Betrag X" einbauen könnten ? Danke dir 😃🖐

[@x64600]

I like to teleport to a ship parked in the middle of nowhere when I'm using the map for management. Not that my FPS has ever been really bad. It's just peaceful. and there are some pretty views in X4, I'll just orbit Earth. Which is why I wish there was more ship intiriors like with the Astrid. It's the ship I use most often because you can actually walk around it. Hang out at the desk and manage the fleet from the map, or just stand there by the bed watching Earth rotate, Or tyring to find that little valley colony on mars, & wondering what that white pimple on the planet is.

[@AbsurdShark]

Although i haven't played recently, i did not had any major problems with performance. And i have a low-mid pc.

[@3rdcain356]

friend of mine asked me why i have framedrops at high traffic stations, my answer was: dude im like... the server and did you see the 500 XL-Traders here? not to mention all the dude flying from and to this point? i think i never ever again will build the "Hub"

[@CaptainCollins]

Or: build it and never visit it (like a true CEO xD)

[@pliniocarvalho6288]

My processor isn't very good, but I can play reasonably well if I take a few precautions. On the maps I deactivate all icons, I try to keep my view close to the sectors, thus avoiding taking the image of all sectors, which slows down the map, I also avoid showing the menu that shows commercial ships, mining ships, etc.. already that on my PC this seems to require too much. As for the game itself, I have always liked factories that are focused on just one type of production and are more compact, never build a factory that produces several things because I know that this would affect my fps, small factories, even though they are close together, almost do not affect my fps .

[@mattronin2647]

What I have noticed is once you have A LOT of ships, the game really struggles and became more or less unplayable in map view. When I say a lot of ships, I'm talking about 5000+ ships. So one tip here is to start replacing smaller ships with larger ones, for example L miners and L traders instead of only M miners and traders (not to mention S ships...). Use carriers for your S and M fighters. And for stations, you don't need connectors everywhere so that can save up on FPS with megaplexes, especially in-sector. So far, this current game is running fine for me with most settings on max (although I did recently upgrade my PC... Helps).

[@CaptainCollins]

Your 5000 ships PLUS all the ships that they see. Yes sir, that's a heavy load for a simulation.

[@kohlrak]

@@CaptainCollins would be easier with multi-threading.

[@elianos1]

Pause the game while on map or just put offline trade and mining if you dont need it. Most of ressources while on map are taken by the trade and mining filter which, lets be honnest, takes a lot of ressources

[@brandongarrett2309]

Very interesting and informative - thanks Cap.

[@Zerenco]

6:35 and thats why it would be cool to have COOP with dedicated Server. To get the load of from the players PC Let a Server handle the load from the simulation

[@daiyousei3847]

I thought this but then I played the game with zero mods. It performs great even in large battles even if I spam a sector full of stations and ships. You can't get 144 fps when it's under that level of load but it's not running at 30 fps like it is when it's heavily modded.

[@nospamas8926]

One further thing that I've noticed that you didn't seem to cover in this video; In sector collisions seem to take up a lot of CPU power, particularly in asteroid heavy sectors. If you choose not to drive your own ship (IE hire a pilot and let them fly you around while you do empire management) these collisions aren't calculated in the same way and my FPS goes up a ton.

[@Jcewazhere]

I've got an R7 5800X, and an RTX 3080 and it runs well for me. 45+FPS even by my bigger stations. I've got ultra settings, except fog. I think I turned on FAA. 1440p. It ran decently on the 1060 and i5 I had before finally getting my hands on the 3080. Medium-high gfx and 30ish fps by stations. Still looked quite pretty. 1080p I'm an old gamer so anything above 24fps is fine by me, great game.

[@CaptainCollins]

I like the last sentence, maybe this IS a generational thing :) I can still remember games that looked like slide-shows (thinking of Prince of Persia for example).

[@Samilion]

Another thing is X4 never utilises more than 5 threads. Currently I have i7-12700f and when I played X4 5.0 with my old stock cooler my cpu temperature was at ~70-90 C. I looked up why that's the case and discovered aforementioned problem. Now I have big tower cooler so I need not worry about my cpu overheating and manually assigning threads to X4 via task manager, but still I would like for X4 to use full capability of my CPU. P.S. It was at the time of 5.0, so maybe Egosoft have solved it, but I stopped looking into it for the reasons above =/

[@bigbangerz5856]

It could be far more multi-threaded though, I appreciate that is not an easy thing to do but I guess from the player and consumer’s perspective that’s not their problem they buy the hardware and they expect it to be used i.e. if I have 8 cores I want to see the load split across 8 cores as much as is possible. Tbh though X4 runs pretty well now Egosoft have improved things over time and it would be unfair not to acknowledge their progress ❤

[@tonechild5929]

This is a common misconception. multi-threading doesnt always mean more speed. Even with multi-threading many things like calculations and simulations have to be done in sequence. YOu can do them in multiple threads but you still have to wait for one thread(or calculation) to finish before you start another, otherwise you have waht is commonly referred to as "race conditions" which can cause crashes or bugs. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant, some things simply take time and must be done in specific order.

[@bigbangerz5856]

@@tonechild5929 isn't that what well architected software is supposed to do i.e. remove race conditions and sequential processing locks? Either way as a player, consumer, user its not our problem to solve is my view.

[@tonechild5929]

@@bigbangerz5856 Yes, but that doesn't mean more speed. As a player or consumer, seeing not 100% thread utilization and saying that's the problem is a red-herring. It's the dunning-kreuger of pointing the blame. THat's not why the game is slow.

[@GatisKaulinsh]

Ryzen 5700G CPU runs this game perfectly with all million fleets arround or whatsoever. Basicly I am saying You need little modern computer - that's it.

[@Iluvantir]

For me, I only need decent FPS when in first person and flying or fighting in my ship. I don't even care (nor even notice) when I'm sat in my HQ Office playing Star-Manager for my empire. I know my PC is now showing me all the details of all the systems and all the ships and all the stations and calculating everything at every step... why would I also expect (or even NEED) 60FPS at that point? I'm looking at little ants crawling around interacting with each other half a universe away.

[@dazzzmanschannel]

Capt. Iam currently running Ryzen 3 with 16 gb ram RTX 1060 video card absolutely 👍 no issues at all 🎉

[@HighLigerBimBam]

Dude, when the game is only using 1 CPU and 31 are idle... Its the games issue honestly.

[@teric2]

As the game currently stands, it should be using at least 4 CPUs, not 1. I constantly have the task manager open while I'm running the game, and I see 4 threads at or near 100%, while the rest of my CPU is near idle. This is normal for AAA games--most PC games of today use between 4-8 threads, leaving the rest of the CPU idle. This is why having a 20+ thread core doesn't really help all that much with game performance; you really want to be focused on the single-thread performance rating of the CPU.

[@ivanrivera777]

that's how almost every single game works, the overhead of multiple threads and switching between them is pretty bad for calculations

[@steemlenn8797]

X4 uses 4 threads imho. Which is not surprising since it was started to be build when nobody had more than 4 cores at home and it looked like more would never happen. You know, the pre-Ryzen era when Intel said they make good profit with immensily expensive 4 core CPUs, no reason to invest in making more cores.

[@celchronicles]

​@@ivanrivera777 not necessarily - depends on how you'd schedule and distribute each task. An Example would be DOTS (or ECS in general), which builds a graph to execute naturally, which is great for parallel execution. SIMD helps even more if you can batch similar tasks together and execute them simultaneously. To take things to the extreme, we have Dyson Sphere Program as a prime example of leveraging GPU to calculate massive amount of similar tasks without using much of CPU

[@CMDROldDuck]

Sounds like your CPU is broken :p

[@dominiquesavoie568]

Uh, I always figured that the reason why the ships more distant to you where not appearing to move smoothly was just because you where receiving the position with some lag (as in a in universe reasoning for this) and not because the game was "badly optimized" or something... As for the "lag" on the map (as in the time to react to your input), I never noticed any but then again I tend to give up the game after a while and start anew so I never have a massive super space empire going on...

[@Kloashut]

I havent got a state of the art PC: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor 4.20 GHz with 64,0 GB ram, Nvidea Gforce RTX 4060 Ti. No issues at all tbh🤔

[@PocketsandOutlaw]

I think a big issue is that they have SOOOOO many resources that are just kind of being underutilized and just keep adding more and more and more. Honestly if they gutted the code and broke savegames it would anger a bunch of people but I think that's probably what needs to be done to really fix things.

[@kohlrak]

i don't think it'd require that, given saves are in XML format. Using that format to handle savegames more or less ensures you can do just about anything other than changing the name of ship types and it won't break saves. They just need to implement multi-threading.

[@Chris2000SP]

Your Server Explaining is good. But i run a Ryzen 5800X3D and have no FPS Drops on the Map. When I still had a Ryzen 5700G, I was also at 20 FPS. I solved that with the new CPU.

[@jasonwright8546]

I love to build massive shipyards and manufacturing Starbases, and the game lets me know it does not appreciate that, haha! That is my fault, and I cannot expect different results, unless I forked out the cash for a super computer. If you build like a reasonable person, and don't try to field massive fleets around enormous space fortresses, the game tends to run pretty well. I would love it if the game could support that, but with limitations of hard and software, that isn't going to happen with the game looking as good as it does.

[@christopherpollard3809]

I've got over 1500 hrs in this game. I've never had any serious problems with this game. I've only ever once built a mega complex and it was in Faulty Logic. It was about 500km from the gate. I put it out that far so I didn't have to worry about the highway or anything else causing my game any problems. I'm also playing on a laptop that's 5 years old that came out a year or two earlier. It should be common sense that if you put a bunch of stuff somewhere in ANY game it's going to cause problems. How many sandwiches did someone spawn in Stanfield to make the game crash? Same thing.

[@donaldfarquar]

My computer is mid at best now. It runs an unmodded game absolutely fine, unless I leave the game running on SETA for like 12 hours and it struggles. Even then, if I save it and restart my PC and take a break for like 20 mins it runs fine again. I never really have fleets bigger than 10 destoyers a carrier and maybe 100 fighters, which is already massive overkill for anything you'll face and can kill stations in non-glacial pace. If you mod the game with say Star Wars Interworlds (which is amazing) my game will lag at times but hardly the games fault.

[@omarkamel3662]

Finally, somebody's talking about that!

[@CaptainCollins]

Right?! :)

[@davidareeves]

My PC server is run by a "Happy Happy guy" ;)

[@Dhaghologh]

I started playing X4 on an i5-2500 processor and I didn't have much issues. But perhaps I'm a bit...generous in my expectations since I also played X3 Litcube's Universe on the same computer. Playing X3 Star Wars LU however...well, my system simply told me "No can do!"

[@matthewbeck4753]

Mods can heavily impact the game too, if your running mods that increase even just the economy you will lose FPS They build more ships, more activity... guessing you can see why mods can lag, pick and choose carefully... start stacking the wrong mods even though they might seem usefull and you will end up losing up to 40 fps I love modded experiences, most games I can install up to 400+ mods without performance issues but you can't with X4 If your FPS isn't the best with vanilla definelty don't add anything to do with "economy boost" and "heavy war starts" just do gameplay and balance changes

[@zontarr8812]

Can they just implement FSR 2.0 or 3.0 ? that will be the biggest performance upgrade for anyone, Nvidia and AMD. For anyone that wonders what's the best upgrade: I swap my old 4 cores i5 3570K to a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the FPS from 20 in the map with full empire and economy jumped to 50FPS in the map, SO SAY WE ALL!

[@TheBlackmagic1988]

No performance issues at all. uwqhd constant about 100+ fps.

[@Assassin5671000]

I honestly think Egosoft should make a smaller scale of the already existing game. There is just so much empty space in sectors that I don't think it's worth having just because of scale ,as well as reduce the sector count. It should exist like a new game smaller so it doesn't bother people who have the computing power for the bigger game. So the smaller one will have less populated areas with less space so it doesn't feel like a flying in the nothingness for hours. And since there will be less stuff simulated then the fps will be stable for a lot longer unless the players let the universe run for long periods of time. The other option in my opinion could be custom sliders where they can set a limit to what the ai can build and do so it doesn't go above a certain threshold.

[@charly6719]

Absolutly right. For the X Games you need high end CPU for calculating the whole universe. The Ryzen 7800X3D is very very good for X4. And nobody really needs high FpS on a map.

[@kohlrak]

A high-end CPU that won't be used properly. Its still single-threaded, so you need to focus on single-thread performance, so fewer cores to allow for higher clock rates. Better off actually nerfing that CPU.

[@temhirtleague-chess]

Absolutely agree!

[@HalkerVeil]

The only game that punishes you for buying more DLC going on at once.

[@VaImorian]

To be fair in 2024 games not having multi threading, especially a game like this needs to be checked. I have 16 cores, bloody use them! not just 2!

[@tonechild5929]

This is a common misconception. multi-threading doesnt always mean more speed. Even with multi-threading many things like calculations and simulations have to be done in sequence. YOu can do them in multiple threads but you still have to wait for one thread to finish before you start another, otherwise you have waht is commonly referred to as "race conditions" which can cause crashes or bugs.

[@moo6080]

In my experience, TAA makes everything look blurry and fuzzy.. Really the only anti aliasing i can tolerate is SMAA.

[@ghostfacedninja1000]

Soooo what I am hearing is I need to run X4 on my own server and connect to it with my gaming PC. I then also get my friends to also connect to the same server... :D

[@CaptainCollins]

Please contact me when that mod is ready to publish :)

[@kohlrak]

I've been saying this for a while, but when i proposed the idea on reddit, the playerbase strawmanned me saying i was trying to turn it into an MMO.

[@kohlrak]

@@CaptainCollins If they made the game multi-threaded and multi-player, it would solve 90% of the performance issues. The game is single-threaded, which means if someone has a quad-core CPU, it's only using 25% of the CPU's capabilities, and it'll still have slowdowns.

[@SanctusDemonus]

only 5 mins in, recently got into this game, so take my words with a grain of salt if you like, but i also have had years in the industry, so i would note, satellite coverage, is stopping it from being a fully simulated travel to being seen/known by the player, this had the greatest impact on performance in my honest opinion, i had to destroy around 30 percent of my map coverage, because my game was just down to a 1980 cpu. and it tore my FPS no matter what sector i was in, from being a solid 120, to under 50. this is where they need to do the most optimization, my cpu and gpu are not really going past 40-60 percent usage, and gpu isnt going past 30 percent, the only time it does, is why i am near a mega factory, which i have learned, so i place them, far out of the way. the game DOES have SEVERE issues on optimization, its not just random that 30 percent of the comments on steam releases are this game is slowing down, buggy etc, they DO need to do work, while it is nice, that your standing up for them, they need to be realistic about what DOES need fixing. ive put 440 hours over past 2-3 weeks, yeah i know, i no life things, but i live on the pc. i work on the pc, it just is what it is, but again, they need to do some optimization, and yes, that does take man power, and yes, it will take away from them doing other things, in a temporary sense, but they do need to fix it, x4 games, strat games, are usually some of the easiest to run, BECAUSE the are 80 percent or 98 percent in some cases simulation, as long as the cpu can handle it, your good to play, as big of a gam as you want, if i put more then 200-300 or god forbid 500 ships, in a sector, moving, this game CRAWLS!!!!! this can be better, but on a differnt note, i love your videos, they have given me so much help over the past 2 or 3 weeks leaning this game. and understanding lots of the nitty gritty, one thing, they also need to work on, is this, modified game doesnt get support crap, because of their own arbitrary rules, only currently 8.9 percent of their player base, is able to forward gamereports for optimization, they by their own hand, are hurting them selfs, just because a game is modded, or "modified" certainly does NOT mean, all of their data, is useless to put into fixing the game, THAT IS THEIR BIGGEST MISTAKE IVE SEEN YET, absolutely deplorable choice. and in turn, they have under ten percent of an "official" player base, the rest are all called modified players. and all that data, is THROWN OUT.... this is terrible. i can only imagine, the number of things, that could be fixed, if that had use atleast some of that data. sure, a mod, will throw some red in the mix, but players who use, modified starts... or players who use trainers, for what ever their own reason is.... that DATA is 100 percent good. maybe 99. again, love your stuff, love this game too, its tons of fun!!!! but, they are making some terrible choices, so im just saying, dont defend them blindly, this company isnt THAT transparent, or amazing. they could be, but they choose NOT TO BE.

[@kohlrak]

1 word would make all this lag go away: threads

[@CreatorOfWorlds]

Personally, 99% of the time i use the map i pause the game. Hence no fps issues.

[@reggie368]

Captain Technical Yay ! 😀

[@frag0mat1c]

In your discussions with Egosoft, have they mentioned any limitations on use of cpu cores? Is there a max the game uses or will it use all available?

[@CaptainCollins]

Yes, and I am thinking about doing an explanation video about that together with Bernd Lehahn.

[@steemlenn8797]

@@CaptainCollins That would be very nice. It is the one big thing that was always bothering me. Why, for example, can't you run one race on one core or one sector on one core or...

[@vladislavdzeta8906]

how about a challange??=)Play 2 insane mods:xenon hell and Xepocalypse.That would be a deathrun

[@nils4088]

The bottleneck of this game really is the amount of CPU calculations in the background. Lowering the graphics settings has only a tiny impact on performance, at least on my system.

[@oliverk.9542]

12900k, 4090, 32 GB RAM , 10 Hours in the Game , watch a little fight in my ship. CPU bound to hell, 50 FPS. LOL ! not even opened the map. This Tec ist decade old

[@powerpc6037]

I don't really care about having super smooth graphics, I care more about the content of the game and how smooth it runs. So I have always turned off any anti-aliasing in every game and have never had issues with performance, unless my pc was really underspecced. Turning on TAA and such new AA features has some weird effects on fast moving stuff. In Satisfactory, they have implemented the same stuff by going to Unreal engine 5 but all your items on conveyor belts have weird graphical artifacts because of this. Turning off TAA and such fixed that for me and even gave a performance boost at the same time. So the term "better or smoother graphics" also has a downside when moving things become too blurry and makes it less good-looking.

[@fallenlight5744]

Remove satellites will make he map running better is what I noticed.

[@cnewtonc]

Captain, you are correct, and here is another solution that will help many players. The solution is simple... VERY SIMPLE. There is a mod called *Dynamic War* on NEXUS. BTW: I also have over 1500 hours in the game. The problem is that there are 1000s of objects in the simulated game. Whenever there are over X number of objects, the CPU has too many calculations, and the game begins to be very slow. The solution is to have 3 or 4 factions have War with one another. THE WAR WILL DESTROY(REMOVE) MANY UNNEED SHIPS AND OTHER OBJECTS THAT ARE *OUT OF SECTOR* Within 10 to 30 minutes, the performance will return to the game! This ALWAYS works. THIS SOLUTION HAS SAVED MY GAME. The Dynamic War mod will remove the unneeded ships so the CPU will have less calculations to perform. Once again, Captain, you are correct; the best solution I have found was the Dynamic War mod. It is on NEXUS. Thanks and keep up the good work!

[@ArthurOseven]

that's why we even need the Khaak and Pirates to reduce the S/M/L class ships :D

[@CMDROldDuck]

This sounds fun even if our performance is good! Is there a setting to allow a player to customize alliances? Argon vs Terran war and Split vs everyone makes sense, but I wouldn't want Argons fighting Antigone, that would feel "weird".

[@tonechild5929]

You don't need a mod but that mod sounds awesome. Right now I have shut down a lot of other factions shipyards and wharfs, and Xenon are running a tear through the gate network, I also incited the terran conflict, and I also helped the yaki. Also I have a wharf that builds exclusivly for the Yaki and they terrorize the gate network as well.. its good times..

[@ArthurOseven]

@@CMDROldDuck Yes. if you install the cheat mod, you can setup the faction to be at peace, neutral and at war. You can change the ownership of stations and give a administrative station to a faction that will own that sector. Make your own universe. O7

[@cnewtonc]

@@CMDROldDuck YES, the mod gives you the ability to control who is at WAR and who is at Peace.