warehouses map fps goes to hell

For me the game runs smooth as silk in towns. It runs smooth (but not like silk) in most other areas. In some areas the fps is a little low but it's not a problem.

On the warehouses map and only the warehouses map my fps goes to crap in a weird way. Normally if the framerate goes down a game goes choppy. Something I've seen the same thing happen in PoE when there's a crapton of spell effects on the screen at the same time. However on the warehouses map it's not like a normal framerate drop but it's the best way I know how to describe it. It kind of delaces or goes blurry or something. Sometimes you can see this in movies when the camera pans very quickly. It's like that but all the time.

Whatever is happening makes it very hard to play but more importantly it gives me severe eyestrain. I can only be on the warehouses map for a couple of mins at a time. After that I have to rest my eyes. I don't have a 3d monitor but closing one eye while on the map helps a little bit but not a lot.

If someone knows a change I can make to my settings to improve the warehouse map specifically I'd appreciate it.

Not much going on in the warehouses, sounds like it might be screen rolling/tearing which would happen if your frames are running higher then your monitors refresh rate 30/60/75 are the common rates.

In some areas I get 20 fps in others i can get 75-80 but when it goes that high over my refresh rate<60> I will see the blurry wave roll through my screen until the frames come back down.

So you could try in-game vsync or use your GPU's tool to set vsync on and if you have vsync enabled then damn I typed all this for nothing lol.

Vsync didn't help. I didn't think that was it anyway. My framerate isn't too high. It's too low. This fps problem is even affecting typing into in game chat which vsync (and most other settings) wouldn't have anything to do with chat.

To give you an idea I have the following frametime/fps/latency stats in the following locations:

Catacombs:
17/61/100 Stationary
18/59/100 Moving

Market Sewers:
17/59/ 80 Stationary
19/53/104 Moving

Sarn Encampment:
23/43/ 93 Stationary
35/38/104 Moving

Battlefront: (with the screen covered in sparks cast by npcs)
21/48/ 84 Stationary
22/48/105 Moving
62/16/126 after alt tabbing*

Marketplace: (2nd worst zone and highly variable)
61/21/160 Stationary
60/16/ 98 Moving
89/11/150 after alt tabbing*

Warehouses: (worst zone and -extremely- variable)
79/13/237 Stationary
97/10/195 Moving
121/8/241 after alt tabbing*

All the numbers above exclude spikes and other outliers. These are the common stats and all are outside of combat. I'm happy with 40fps and I don't notice improvements past 60.

Combat in warehouses causes my fps to spike up and down. Spiking down to 3fps for a second is common, then spiking back up to 10, then 14, then 3, all within the span of 4 seconds. Latency also spikes up and down by 100 from second to second depending on what is on the screen again only on this map. It doesn't have to be a lot of combat either, 1 skeleton is enough for it to go wonky.

*Regarding alt tabbing: I play full screen. If I alt tab out of the game then when I come back then I take a performance hit of about 1/4 to 1/3 of what it was previously. I had not noticed that before this testing. It wasn't a large enough problem for me to notice on most maps. On the bad maps (warehouses, marketplace) it is very noticeable. If I go through a loading screen (change maps) and return then the performance hit from alt tabbing goes away.

Through more testing I've found that almost all of the performance hit is being caused by shadow mapping. The problem from alt tabbing remains and appears to be a completely separate issue. Basic shadow mapping causes the same performance problem as variance shadow mapping except basic is far worse than variance shadow mapping in every way. Basic is just as much of a performance hit on the frametime/fps numbers as variance, basic causes all animations to slow down (likely an optical illusion but still very noticeable) plus it looks all pixelated and terrible.

HOWEVER that's not what's causing my eye strain. All this testing allowed me to figure it out. The terrain has a noticeable blur to it when I'm moving. It's only happening on Marketplace and Warehouses maps. It's amplified by the poor fps problems caused by the shadows but this blur and eyestrain is a separate issue. My character is not blurred, just the terrain.

Any help would be appreciated in order to solve these issues, especially if there's something I can do client end. I'm going to keep shadows off on those maps and turn variance shadows back on everywhere else. Beyond that I think all the other issues are on GGG's end.

I notice the blur while running on some resolutions myself so I don't play on that resolution. The big thing I see is your ping is horrible for this game, most it would be fine but the times I've hit over 100 the delay was unplayable.

Not sure what your ip setup is but if your using wireless make sure your power plan is set to max performance and give the PoE.exe high priority in task manager. Overall you might have to increase your bandwith or are you playing on a far away gateway?

This game gets more demanding as the content grows, I get far worse FPS in act 3 compared to 1 and 2 as many people do so turning off shadows will help but with lat that high its going to be very noticeable until you resolve that.

Hope you work it out.

Thanks for your help SinSmooth.
I assume that I'm on a far gateway. My ping generally hovers around a little less than 100. I've found PoE playable at that level but when it gets higher it stops being fun. One of the reasons why I posted it is so others can note the change between maps. 80-100 is pretty normal for me in this game as is the higher numbers on problem maps. PoE is beta so I expect it will get ironed out as optimization occurs.

My point is there shouldn't be any difference in ping between maps. Warehouses isn't sending 250% more data nor data from farther away compared to the Battlefront. And yet the ping is 2.5x longer. Nor should there be any change in ping if I alt tab, but there is. That's not my internet screwing up, that's the client or the server or something else game related screwing up. I'm trying to report it as a bug. And if it's not a bug (doubtful!) then there's a setting that needs to be found and tweaked.