HUD/UI makes my game almost unplayable.

Several users have posted this on the forums for a long time, some time ago, along time ago. Its time it gets fixed.

UI/HUD slows down my, and couple of others, the game down SIGNIFICANTLY in terms of FPS.

- Show inventory, minus 10 FPS
- Show Character/ship stats, minus 10 FPS
- Show Configuration/Options screen minus 10 FPS
- Alot of overlays in the game, especially reticles on ships, npc's, mines. Names on ships, NPC's. Minus 20 FPS!!!


And now it comes:
- DISABLE HUD/UI via keybind: FPS increases to 60FPS+

Im really really getting sick of this, I can barely play PvP with this crap. It has something to do with the overlay engine or such? It seems like its mostly affecting Nvidia people.

People complain that the game goes very slow and drops FPS like crazy with alot of spam on the screen. The funny thing is, this most likely does not have ANYTHING to do with the rendering of the 3D models and such which are present on the screen. Its the **** UI thats slowing the whole game down.

It almost looks like this part of the game is not Hardware accelerated or something?...

My information for Developers:
- Nvidia Mobile GT 330M (256MB Dedicated memory)
- Having this issue since i play this game since December. My drivers have been updated all the time and are up to date as we speak
- I can even put everything on the lowest of the lowest qualily, the game FPS still drops SIGNIFICANTLY with alot of crap on the screen (again refering to windows, transparent windows, inventory window, ship overlays, etcetera.

Is there any chance the Developers might look into this soon?
Thank you very, very much.

Edit: Ive done some additional testing which might be useful for the Developers; Ive enabled Ambient Occlusion, which makes the FPS go down to 22FPS or so (Not nice to play this way). But when I now try to reproduce this problem, opening up Inventory, adding alot of overlays to the game in a high spam area or something, the FPS does not drop because of it. Nor does it increase for even 1 FPS when i disable the whole HUD. This almost makes me believe this has something to do with each other?

i have made a thread about this a long time ago... nobody cared.
i'd be surprised if anybody reacts here.

it is 100% correct what you say.


...ultimately i got sick of it and just threw more Hardware at the Problem
(actually Shooter Mode with 30 - 40 FPS just sucked donkeyb***z , so i blame shooter mode for my decision to waste money on my latest hardware upgrade ;P )

got myself a new CPU,
now i rarely fall below 60FPS (only the exchange still sucks up FPS... but who cares)

it's silly that i needed to upgrade from a Q6600 @3,1GHz to a i5 6500K @ 4,6GHz...
which officially does not even *exist*, you have to overclock to even get there

requirements on the DVD Box:
Minimum: Core 2 Duo 1,8GHz (lolololol)
Recommended: Intel E8400 (= 3,0 GHz)


i guess this is correct if you deactivate the UI ?


well, now i am happy with the game as it is.
60 FPS around ESD, in ESD, on SFA, PvP.... nice (only Quo'nos is around 50-55 FPS)

btw. GPU is a GTX460...


Of course "MMO's are optimized for low end systems"...
that is why we have Polygon Budgets on our spaceships... and can only do so much with textures.
...funny enough

haha lol sure whatever you say sir.

All i see is a obvious excuse to not make awesome looking Spaceships or Detailed Interiors,
while the crappy looking UI eats up half the Framerate...



also... go to the HUD options and deactivate all the needless UI spam.
i do not display, names, boxes etc.
all i dipslay are healthbars *if needed*
and only boxes of enemy ships + team members + friendly NPC ships.



you also can hide the XP bar on top of the screen (at VA1 you don't need that thing anymore)
and every row in the Powertray LESS means more FPS
so try to keep it at 2 rows + the BOff Tray.

With my old system i could even see 5 - 10FPS difference if only my Inventory was full or empty! (while opened)


//edit:

here is my old thread, even the pictures still work:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/sho...d.php?t=183283

question how do you turn off the XP bar?

Yeh but still, come on. I have Anti Aliasing on 4x, Anicostropic filtering on 16x. Lightning on High, Shadows on High. Post processing on. Literally everything is high except for Ambient occlusion which REALY slows down the game.

Even with these settings I can play a really messy match with dozens of mobs, mines, spam. At long as the UI is off. But without it, the game is hardly playable. I mean u dont know what ur doing. lol

Probably nobody else cares, or doesnt even seem to notice its actually the HUD which slows down the game considerably. (They always blame the spam, but not the real reason its getting choppy).

I get the same thing too

turning the HUD/Ui off there is a noticeable increase in FPS.

If it helps I use an AMD 6870 1GB

Same problem.
I have a crossfire of HD 5850.

Same issue on a Radeon 5870. They really need to optimize the UI.

To OP.
In regards to your problems. Honestly it sounds like you have something else going on with your system for your fps to drop so much.
Honestly I would try this before spending a ton of money.

1. turn off background programs (taskbar items, like steam, camera software, even some anti-virus programs like norton tend to slow down systems)
2. Don't run browsers with multiple tabs open at once.
3. itunes is a system hog if you have it, the same about real player.
4. extra trash programs put in by computer maker (unless home built)
5. kill any unneeded programs that are running in task manager. like many software updaters, java, logitech, adobe. Before starting STO.

Also you might check if you have multi-core rendering enabled in options under the video tab in the troubleshooting area.

As a gamer from way back when windows 95 had memory and video problems out the ying yang. Anything you have running in the background takes away from your cpu and gpu ability to run the game properly. So I turn off everything that my system doesn't need to run while I'm gaming. Thus I never have slow downs like your are having.

later I hope this helps with your problems.
Just so you know my system specs.

AMD II x2 550 @2.8ghz
8 gigs ddr3 ram
ATI 6670 with 1 gig ddr3
500gig WD hard drive.
Realtek onboard sound.
21inch monitor.

I do all of that and the UI does lag to hell and back, especially when there are a lot of objects on the screen. This is the only game apart from RIFT that give questionable performance at all settings.

Their UI has always been garbage. I remember when looking through the accolades window would slow down the game bigtime. But now it's manageable. So they have done some changes, just not enough.


Edit:

It seems that the lag for me is no longer there when a lot of objects are on screen.

I was in a match earlier with 5 carriers (lol) with no discernible lag.

I guess that mid-Sept patch did its job. Here's hoping it stays that way.

FYI, this is what the OP is talking about. Its bad programming short and simple, and it needs a fix.