Per Pixel Lighting

[Left Over Pizza]

Can someone please tell me if the Per Pixel Lighting is necessary? Other people say there's a huge difference in quality but i don't see it. Is there something I'm missing?

My current settings:  Backbend: Direct 3D
                             Internal Resolution: Auto window size (1920X1080)
                             Anti-Aliasing: 4x
                             Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
                             Texture Accuracy: Safe

[Link_to_the_past]

There is a small difference in lighting and it is an enhancement, it is not necessary for anything.

[kirbypuff]

(03-18-2015, 10:13 PM)Left Over Pizza Wrote: Can someone please tell me if the Per Pixel Lighting is necessary? Other people say there's a huge difference in quality but i don't see it. Is there something I'm missing?

A small difference in lighting quality, but a huge difference in stuttering caused by shader compilation. If you want a smooth experience without frequent pauses, do NOT enable this option (enhancement).

Also disable aniso filtering (set it to 1x) - it causes various issues / removes certain effects.

[JMC47]

What does Per Pixel Lighting have to do with the shadercache O.o

I guess it could make different shaders, but would it actually make more shaders or larger shaders. I never really thought about that or noticed a big difference.

[The_Master_E]

It's a shame PPL became so taxing to my system as of a while ago.

On the subject, has there been any changes to the code in recent commits?

[kirbypuff]

(03-19-2015, 01:30 AM)JMC47 Wrote: What does Per Pixel Lighting have to do with the shadercache O.o

I guess it could make different shaders, but would it actually make more shaders or larger shaders. I never really thought about that or noticed a big difference.

More shaders (a whole lot more) and lots of disk grinding (rapid random writes to the disk).
Not a big difference with a decent quad-core CPU, a beefy GPU and a fast SSD.
Now try it on a PC with a dual-core CPU (Pentium G / Core2 Duo), a mid-range GPU and a standard hard drive.

[NaturalViolence]

CPU and GPU performance should not affect shader cache stuttering at all. The pauses are caused by disk access.

[Tino]

That is not completly true, at least on d3d you have a multi stage compilation, that is first microsoft compiler generates bytecode that then is passed to the driver (that parts is what is done in dolphin and the bytecode is then inserted in the shader cache). After that the driver in a secondary thread can use one or more iterations to re compile the shader in a more optimized shader for the current platform. So is normal to see increased cpu usage and gpu memory usage while you add new shaders. About the increased amount of shaders when using per pixel ligthing, is the natural result as per pixel lighthing translates ligthing calculation from vertex shaders to pixel shaders, so intead of habing X amount of shaders now you have X by the amout of ligthing convinations used by the game. When I originally introduced PPL is was meant as Eyecandy to enjoy wii/gc games with ligthing better than the original hard but it came with te warning that it was really gpu intensive, year has passed and that is still true, if you want full performance disable ppl, if you whant the best quality just enable it and enjoy

[Tetsujin]

What is your reason for having texture cache set to safe? If you are using texture packs you might see a slight boost in performance by converting to the new format (if the creator hasn't already done so) and setting it to fast.

[kirbypuff]

(03-20-2015, 03:53 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: The pauses are caused by disk access.

No, the one-second pauses occur when the disk is NOT accessed.