Vulkan API – Feedback, Known Issues, and FAQ

My game has very low FPS in Vulkan mode and Vulkan + Safe mode as well.

Normal: 60/ 60+ fps
Vulkan: 6-7 fps
Vulkan + Safe mode: 3-4 fps


My specs:

GTX 1050 OC
i3-6100@3.70 GHz
GSkill DDR4 16 GB RAM 3000 MHz
M.2 NvME SSD 250 GB

LATEST Nvidia drivers

Windows 10 Enterprise N

 

Same issue here.

 

So to get Vulkin to work, it has to manually be picked from the util at launch each time ?

 

Yes, or you could make a shortcut with parameters to bin64/BeamNG.drive.x64.exe -gfx vk

There parameters -gfx vk tells executable to use Vulkan, so you don't need to use launcher necessarily, although for most it is probably preferred way.

 

The game crashes when using lowest settings, haven't tested which setting exactly is the culprit

 

Same issue, looks like it's the Lighting setting.

 

This is my main issue currently it only happens when using the Vulkan mode also it happens in safe mode.

 

Thanks !

 

I get pink artifacts when moving the camera fast.

running on ultra

 

Win 10 64 bit on 16gb of DDR4 at 3200mhz with an APU Ryzen 3400G slightly overclocked, the game crashes as soon as i click start with vulkan with error 0x000001

 

same issue as well, my game runs about 40-50 fps normally (ultra) while on vulkan its around 3-6, lowering my graphics didnt help at all.

 

Am i missing something? Game starts fine with vulkan but is noticeabley lower frame rate. Not so worried about but i cant change resolution from 720p to my normal 1080p and can only full screen by hittin maximise on window. And refresh rate is always 0hz wif no other options to select

 

Same here, monitor not recognized, 720p resolution, 0 Hz.

System:
Intel Xeon E5-1650 v2
Radeon RX 570 4GB
Latest AMD drivers (21.6.2)
Windows 11 insider dev build 22000.51

 

I can't execute the game in Vulkan mode for some reason, I tried using Vulkan + Safe mode ( I also have no mods installed). I reinstalled the game, Updated my GPU drivers, and it still crashes for some reason, I don't even get to see the main menu lol.
RX 5500 XT, Ryzen 1600, 2x8GB Ram, all stock.
The game works fine in DX 11.

 

This Vulkan seems to be very sensitive to CPU or GPU clock speed changes as I have noticed large part of the hiccups happen with clock speed switching.

When I set GPU and CPU to single clock speed mode there is certainly less of hiccups.

Have to test more G-Sync, I'm thinking that it might reduce hiccups too as unlike vsync it should not drop to super slow fps for split second.

Anyway, with balanced power plan, I see lots more hiccups, so there is something to that I believe.

 

On the new map I am making, the waters reflection is flickering pretty badly with Vulkin. Will boot it up later and make a video if its still doing it.

I see same thing. Full screen won't work for me, but borderless window will. I get weird window swapping hitting Alt-Enter to swap between the modes.

 

This is my user experience.
First off, Vulkan or not, PBR or classic texturing looks SO much better and really pops, asphalt looks gritty, plants look real, the color palette and filtering is awesome, distant roads are MUCH clearer (texture detail setting non-withstanding / unchanged), even DX11 mode is a few (10%~12%?) fps faster in areas of high CPU load render. Looks like there is a lot of room left to optimize for Vulkan and not just for using PBR textures to cut draw calls by 1000 or more per scene (due to less layering and re-drawing the same texture's different layers), but even to optimize the engine. Hopefully you can check on the resources from AMD and such on Vulkan specifics and techniques how to get the engine to draw most efficiently without having to lock poor Luis in the basement of the office. He's doing a great job as are the others on the team, so thanks.
That out of the way, tried it on my two larger map mods:

Vulkan on 23.1 available from Steam, load Roane County TN map mod (one of mine) = CTD when loading after about 3~5 minutes. This is the first load of the map and looked like it got botched up on imposters (this happened before a long time ago around 0.8 or 0.9 or shortly there-after. I should have expected something to break sooner or later, as this has happened before due to older things in the map not being updated.

Keep in mind also that Roane County has much worse models than Los Injurus (almost nothing of mine except bridges, some of the 'other' models might be poorly formatted or cause an issue, specifically the train tracks), and the textures (some of the normals) may have png format yet (resulting in broken normals and specular textures). Ignore the visual errors if in the map as it will be fixed by end of summer, just haven't had time to update it yet. Maybe if CrashBoomPunk gets on me about it, it will get updated sooner.

Runs Los Injurus and the stock game just fine. Loading 14~15 AI vehicles plus player brings FPS to 1/3rd what it is in DX11 (too many state changes as they're called, with lots of vehicles and expensive rendering with PBR?). With one vehicle though FPS is notably higher if a bit unstable, bounced from 45~50 to 120+ fps while sitting still. Water flickers a LOT, and definitely could trigger those who are Epileptic (good for warning on that). It's as if the water isn't holding it's reflection between updates e.g. if you get 60~100+ FPS, and the water updates 30 times a second, the water reflections only show for the frame it updates on and does not carry over between frames as the scene is redrawn. You can check this field in the water plane properties (it's named Agua in Los Injurus, and the water plane in Roane County is named Car_Killa / Car_Killer or something like that, because that's what it does, I listed this in case you need to debug).
But sorry my Roane County map has fallen so far from grace, it's an unmaintained steaming pile right now! For those who want to see it updated or have comment, please go to the Roane County resource thread to post or flame me for not having it updated yet (not here!). If anyone has any idea (besides the railroad tracks) what might be gumming up the works & keeping Roane County from loading properly, do give a shout in my direction.

Keep up the great work guys/gals! I know I can speak for many modders to say I am / we are impressed with the latest update.
Vulkan and DX12 is the future of rendering tech and open world games, to give us true freedom of immersive scenes without being limited to 4000 draw calls on DX11. Now if someone could just get rid of VRAM limits, we'd be set (or get models to unload if stale or unneeded for the scene without hitching too badly while traveling about). If y'all do manage to code in better streaming and model unloading, just sync a second thread for the unloading of models/streaming VS the rendering threads and don't render a model (skip it) if it's not in VRAM yet and/or is busy being loaded in, it's better to skip it and not hitch VS holding up multiple cores of rendering (like a 'what's the better of two evils' type of saying).
--Cheers!

 

Not sure if 4000 is still the limit, this game is hugely optimized from those days

Ultra graphics...

DX11, 69999 drawcalls, not a typo, about 20fps at max:


With Vulkan about 30fps, but GPU is working quite hard:


Turning dynamic reflections off and setting shadows to partial gives even up to 50fps peaks with Vulkan, but with DX11 there is no any change to FPS, so Vulkan can get over twice the fps if GPU has grunt and CPU is being punished really hard:


This is of course insane worst case test with about 40 000 000 polys, no LODs or anything, but the fact that this kind of torture test actually runs and even somewhat playable levels is amazing, with Vulkan one can create so much more or alternatively get away with so much sloppiness in map optimization that it is incredible boost, not necessarily visible straight away, but it does a lot to make CPU be able to feed GPU properly.

Something like 20 000 drawcalls seemed to be nothing at all when I tested, it is absolutely hilarious.

Optimizing is of course good, but with this worrying about drawcalls is probably history.

 

Draw calls and VRAM limits* are really what's holding us back. I already did a big write (not here) up on what can change with the engine, to handle complex large scenes and VRAM limits better with modern tech, by using a lot of 'tricks of the trade'. You and I had gone over this a lot in 2018 with Los Injurus.
Draw call limits are really dependent on what's being rendered, as you know. You can have a ton of draw calls but if a lot is batched, it's nothing for the GPU to handle that and the CPU doesn't sweat. If it's all different things then you might have an issue - but batching really REALLY saves the day!
I use 4000 as a general limit in Los Injurus, as I didn't really know as much making Roane County and THAT got over 10,000 draw calls in one spot IIRC. It was BAD (somewhere by the default spawn, I'd check but the map is currently broken on 0.23). This 3950x will handle a lot more than 5000 until it starts getting close to 60fps in Los Injurus, but I try to use 4000 as a 'reasonable' limit there for more modest PC's.
Vulkan handles stuff so much better as it uses our many-core CPU's a whole lot better, as you well know, and like DX12, it is the current and forseeable future render tech. Better than beating the dead DX11 horse. My video card from 2013 touted DX11 and future DX12 capability, and it was only 150$ on sale back then. That was 2013. It's now 2021.
*OK, I am sure Luis and the other engine render guys have some optimization tricks up their sleeves yet, but seeing things in Vulkan already really gives me so much hope. I was a bit worried I was talking to a wall about it until they surprised us with this new render engine. It's certainly one of the best things to hit BeamNG Drive in quite a time.

I also want to take the time to thank the devs for the following:
Walking mode
Traffic signal "brains"
Speed limits (though I haven't had time to delve into this yet)
Removal of 65535 limits for nodes (was 16 bit!) back in 2018
Employing Mr Gull for his traffic app
Vulkan renderer (of course)
All the new maps over the last year or two, new and reworked vehicles, what a big upgrade!

This game is so much better for it.
Thank-you also dear devs for being so in-tune with the community, because it matters.