Surprising FPS drop on Victoria 3 "paper" map when zooming out. [Linux]

[jaoschmidt]

I've noticed something when zooming out of Victoria 3's map that I didn't read about anywhere.
The game graphic seems to struggle more when zooming out compared to any other moment. In fact, it seems that it is the main bottleneck with the graphics.

For example, I've enabled FPS display using steam overlay on the bottom-left side of the screen.
You can see in the image that, when zooming out, the FPS hits the lowest value possible of 17.

By comparison, both zoom in "paper" map and terrain map have higher FPS as can be observed: 30fps and 24fps respectively..

I've noticed this after playing Imperator again after a long time. The map of Imperator is faster when zoomed out compared to a closer zoom, although that can be explained because it is chronologically the most recent map compared to other games and it is also using LOD to hide unit labels. When zooming in, I get around 34-40fps, however it hits the cap of 60fps when zooming out.

Using your profiling tools, is there perhaps a specific shader that can be causing this disparity with Victoria 3? If there is, then perhaps it could be possible to mod the problem out

 

[AndrewT]

FYI we in tech support don't have any profiling tools, maybe QA and/or the devs in Bug Reports might I guess.

Does the FPS drop actually affect gameplay? That is, are you also seeing other symptoms of poor performance such as slow time passing in the game, jerkiness while zooming or scrolling?

 

[jaoschmidt]

FYI we in tech support don't have any profiling tools, maybe QA and/or the devs in Bug Reports might I guess.

Does the FPS drop actually affect gameplay? That is, are you also seeing other symptoms of poor performance such as slow time passing in the game, jerkiness while zooming or scrolling?

Thank you for the reply. It doesn't have any jerkiness when zooming and also doesn't affect time passing performance. I do have a framedrop when moving the camera around the map, but this can happen in Imperator too if I force enough.

Here is some information about how each game runs on max zoomed out: compared to each other:

Because of this I believed that it is probably related to some shader pipeline consuming too much of the GPU

 

[AndrewT]

Because of this I believed that it is probably related to some shader pipeline consuming too much of the GPU

That is possible of course, although we'd then expect that to affect every player of these games, not just you or a few.


Right click on victoria3.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, cap refresh rate at 60.

If those don't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.
IF dxdiag.txt fails to attach here, rename it to dxdiag.log , or zip it up.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/pdx_settings.json .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log

 

[jaoschmidt]

That is possible of course, although we'd then expect that to affect every player of these games, not just you or a few.


Right click on victoria3.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, cap refresh rate at 60.

If those don't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.
IF dxdiag.txt fails to attach here, rename it to dxdiag.log , or zip it up.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/pdx_settings.json .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log

I'm on Linux at the moment. That might be the reason why it affects just a few. However, If you suggest I can install whatever tool necessary to replace DXDIAG information.

As you can see inside the pdf_settings.json, Vsync and fps cap are were already settled.

 

[AndrewT]

Ah, so this might only affect Linux users! Given how small that user base is this may well be a general issue there, I guess.

If you suggest I can install whatever tool necessary to replace DXDIAG information.

in Steam please click on Steam-Help-System Info, and paste everything there into a text file and attach that here.

 

[jaoschmidt]

Ah, so this might only affect Linux users! Given how small that user base is this may well be a general issue there, I guess.


in Steam please click on Steam-Help-System Info, and paste everything there into a text file and attach that here.

Computer Information:​

Manufacturer: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
Model: NP550XDA-XH1BR
Form Factor: Laptop
No Touch Input Detected

Processor Information:​

CPU Vendor: GenuineIntel
CPU Brand: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
CPU Family: 0x6
CPU Model: 0x8c
CPU Stepping: 0x1
CPU Type: 0x0
Speed: 4200 MHz
8 logical processors
4 physical processors
Hyper-threading: Supported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE2: Supported
SSE3: Supported
SSSE3: Supported
SSE4a: Unsupported
SSE41: Supported
SSE42: Supported
AES: Supported
AVX: Supported
AVX2: Supported
AVX512F: Supported
AVX512PF: Unsupported
AVX512ER: Unsupported
AVX512CD: Supported
AVX512VNNI: Supported
SHA: Supported
CMPXCHG16B: Supported
LAHF/SAHF: Supported
PrefetchW: Unsupported
BMI1: Supported
BMI2: Supported
F16C: Supported
FMA: Supported

Operating System Version:​

"Arch Linux" (64 bit)
Kernel Name: Linux
Kernel Version: 6.13.8-arch1-1
X Server Vendor: The X.Org Foundation
X Server Release: 12101016
X Window Manager: Xfwm4
Steam Runtime Version: steam-runtime_1.0.20250307.120442

Client Information:​

Version: 1745269938
Browser GPU Acceleration Status: Enabled
Browser Canvas: Enabled
Browser Canvas out-of-process rasterization: Enabled
Browser Direct Rendering Display Compositor: Disabled
Browser Compositing: Enabled
Browser Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled
Browser OpenGL: Enabled
Browser Rasterization: Enabled
Browser Raw Draw: Disabled
Browser Skia Graphite: Disabled
Browser Video Decode: Enabled
Browser Video Encode: Disabled
Browser Vulkan: Disabled
Browser WebGL: Enabled
Browser WebGL2: Enabled
Browser WebGPU: Disabled
Browser WebNN: Disabled

Video Card:​

Driver: Intel Mesa Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics (TGL GT2)
Driver Version: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 25.0.3-arch1.1
Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
VendorID: 0x8086
DeviceID: 0x9a49
Revision Not Detected
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
Primary Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Primary Display Size: 13.39" x 7.48" (15.31" diag), 34.0cm x 19.0cm (38.9cm diag)
Primary VRAM Not Detected

Sound card:​

Audio device: Realtek ALC897

Memory:​

RAM: 23749 Mb

VR Hardware:​

VR Headset: None detected

Miscellaneous:​

UI Language: English
LANG: en_US.UTF-8
Total Hard Disk Space Available: 238776 MB
Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 33702 MB

Storage:​

Number of SSDs: 2
SSD sizes: 256G,240G
Number of HDDs: 0
Number of removable drives: 0

 

[AndrewT]

Your Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics video system is well over the minimum Intel® HD Graphics 630 (although well under the recommended Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 1660!) and 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 CPU somewhat over the minimum Intel® Core™ i3-3250 (although a little under the recommended Intel® Core™ i5-6600K), so the hardware should be basically fine.

As you're on Arch Linux this can't be escalated to QA or the developers via Bug Reports here, as only Ubuntu is supported.

There's a slightly later Mesa 25.0.4 available but I doubt that will make any difference to this issue. If there's a later Intel video driver than 4.6 that might be worth trying, but aside from that I don't think we're going to be able to help you much here I'm sorry!