bug: General Issues when trying the Demo

[7ombie]

I just cloned Untold and ran the demo (swift run untolddemo), and had a bunch of issues out the box. The UI doesn't fit on the screen, navigation is unusable and the demo has z-fighting.

Maybe navigation works better with a mouse or a larger effective resolution, but if I try to orbit with my trackpad, the camera moves far too fast, and I immediately end up way outside the map.

I'm using an M1 MacBook Air, which has a 13.3" 2560x1600 display (1280x800 effective) with an Apple Force Touch Trackpad.

I was excited about Untold Engine. It sounded perfect, but running it's own demos on such a popular device should have just worked.

I just noticed the performance (45 FPS) is terrible too. I'm not trying to be rude, but that's really low.

[untoldengine]

Thank you for bringing this up. I'm going to give it a try on a MacBook Air and fix the issues you mentioned.

[untoldengine]

Quick update:
I checked the MacBook Air I have access to, but it turns out it’s an older Intel model, which Untold Engine does not support. Unfortunately, that means I can’t directly reproduce the M1-specific behavior on that machine yet. The closest model I currently have for testing is an M2 MacBook, where I haven’t been able to reproduce these issues.

That said, I’m not going to dismiss the report. The navigation issue sounds actionable even without the exact hardware, so I’ll start by tuning the demo camera controls for trackpad input: lower default sensitivity, clamped orbit/zoom deltas, and a camera reset option.

For the z-fighting and low FPS, I’ll need access to an M1 machine or help from someone who can reproduce it locally, so that part may take some time. I’ll still track these as real demo issues because the out-of-box experience should be solid on common Apple Silicon Macs.

[7ombie]

Thanks, dude. I appreciate your commitment.

The M2 has a very similar display, so maybe changing its effective resolution to be half of its native resolution would be close enough to 1280x800 to reproduce the res-based issues.

The baseline M1 isn't very powerful, compared to other M-series chips, but is still capable enough.

I'll double-check the FPS and let you know, as I just saw 45 in the screenshot. It may of dropped, because I was taking the screenshot. I didn't monitor it while the demo was running.

I'd be happy to check any changes you make, but can't promise I'll be super responsive.

[untoldengine]

Thanks,
I’ll ping you once the trackpad navigation controls are ready.

In the meantime, I recommend using the latest stable release instead of the develop branch. The develop branch is the bleeding-edge version of the engine and is updated frequently, so it may contain unstable changes or regressions. v0.12.10 is the latest stable release.

git checkout v0.12.10

[7ombie]

No worries. Thanks. Will do, mate.

[7ombie]

Yeah, it's at 51 to 54 FPS, before I even load anything. When I load Game Dungeon, it drops to about 45 FPS (with or without Geometry Streaming).

Oddly, it increases back up to about 51 FPS when I move the camera, and drops to 45 when everything is still, so there may be some optimization that updates less often when nothing changes.

Note: I'm still running the same build here. I'll try the stable release this evening

[untoldengine]

Hi,

I just pushed an update to the develop branch adding trackpad navigation support.
Current controls:
Two-finger swipe → Orbit camera
Shift + two-finger swipe → Yaw camera

Let me know if you still have issues with the controls.

[7ombie]

Just tried the trackpad support. It's nice. Feels good.

Thank you, mate. Much appreciated.

Let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

[miogds]

Hi @7ombie, can I ask about the FPS? What frame rate do you expect your computer should be getting?

[7ombie]

I was thinking 60, as the Game Dungeon and Cartoon City are relatively simple scenes, so it should be able to render them without dropping frames at all. However, does it run at native resolution? If so, that'd make sense.

I was assuming it was running at 1280x800 (because the UI doesn't fit), but the UI doesn't actually display the current resolution. If the 3D scene is being rendered at 2560x1600, then 50 FPS makes a lot more sense. It's hard to know exactly how fast it should be, but I'd be happy with that.

P.S. You should probably log the resolution in the terminal.

[7ombie]

Looking through the docs, I can't see any API for changing the resolution. Presumably, the engine just fills the given view with as many pixels as the view has. That would make sense. That's how Retina displays are meant to work. Everything's scaled to be the same physical size as it would be at the effective resolution, but it's always rendered at the native resolution.

If that's correct, then there are only two (minor) issues remaining:

• The UI for the demo is too tall for screens with such a low effective height (800px).
• There's some z-fighting in the Cartoon City demo (which may just be an oversight with that specific model).

In case it's useful to know... the display I have (13.3" 2560x1600) is the smallest, lowest resolution display Apple have shipped on an Apple Silicon Mac, except the Neo (which is 2408x1508). On the M1 MacBook Air, 1280x800 is the lowest resolution you can pick that actually works. There is one setting that blows things up even bigger, but that doesn't really work (the System Settings UI doesn't fit on the screen etc).

Edit: I tried the stable version (git checkout v0.12.10), and it was slightly better. I'm getting roughly 52 FPS, but it doesn't drop to 45 when the scene is stationary. It's consistently at 52 (occasionally dropping to 51 when the scene is moving). The Skyhawk demo runs at around 45 FPS.