ess-Importer: Slow-downs in the Ashlands
When I enter the Ashlands, I get the "Loading area" pop-up, and then the framerate drops. The screen only refreshes every minute or so. The game is not totally unresponsive; if I take the minute or so to turn around and then several more minutes to walk back out of the Ashlands, the next region loads and framerates return to normal. I encountered the problem near Missamsi; if I take the time to go into the cave, then once it loads, framerates return to normal. But loading the exterior (Ashlands) region again by leaving the cave suddenly drops framerates down, so the problem seems specific to the Ashlands. If I try to load a game saved while in this area, I get a couple random sound effects playing during the "Loading Area" step, and then once the game loads, I get the same low framerates.
When the slow-down is occurring, I have to wait a minute or so between keyboard or mouse responses, and the game is unplayable.
I'm using 0.41.0 in windowed mode on Linux with an Nvidia graphics card and drivers.
The problem is probably related to CPU usage. In playable areas, my CPU's cores all share the load equally. When it becomes unplayable in the Ashlands, suddenly the game is only using one core at a time and CPU time spikes. The game seems to switch randomly between which core it's using, but use per core stays excessively high.
I've tried changing graphics settings and unloading different mods, but the problem is consistent. The only thing that helps is leaving the Ashlands. If I hit the escape key and then wait a minute or so, the pause menu comes up and I can exit. However, if I go to another window during this time, the game hangs entirely and my only option is to kill it. Also, while the mouse cursor is in the OpenMW window and the game is hanging, the cursor is invisible and unresponsive. I can only try to walk out of the Ashlands, or hit the escape key to hopefully exit the game.
I'm guessing the problem is related to problems with the ash storm animation.
(RM-3716 from redmine: created on 2017-01-07 by Rachel Kronick, )
Attachments: 2017jan07_in_missamsi.omwsave openmw.cfg