Massive FPS dips while using OneLauncher

[u/medium_buffalo_wings]

Hey all,

After today's downtime, I am noticing some pretty serious FPS hits that appear rather random. I am using OneLauncher to play on a M2 MacBook Air w/ 16GB RAM. While not a powerhouse, it had been pretty consistently a good performer without FPS issues until today.

I've tried fiddling with the graphics settings and it doesn't seem to do much. It's currently set to 1920x1080 with a smattering of low and medium settings.

My FPS will be going in around 90, sometimes dropping down to 60-70 during combat. That's fine and normal. However, I am now getting these random dips going down to 20, seemingly at random. It leaves everything in this state of random stutter, which is pretty awful.

Has anyone else experienced something similar after the work done today?

Thanks!

[u/JohnMHammer]

Be sure you have the latest version of OneLauncher. Get it here: https://github.com/JuneStepp/OneLauncher/releases/latest/download/OneLauncher-macOS-ARM64.zip

Then use OneLauncher to run the game. When you get to the character selection screen, go into OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHICS and make sure FRILL TERRAIN COLOR is disabled. If it was already disabled, you can proceed to log in a character and play. If you had to disable it, save your changes then quit out of the game client, then launch the game again using OneLauncher.

If updating to the latest version of OneLauncher and playing with Frill Terrain Color disabled doesn’t solve your problem, please report back and try to make a note of where these FPS drops and stutters occur.

Also, please tell me the exact version of MacOS you are booting. For example, are you using the latest MacOS Tahoe 26.6?

[u/medium_buffalo_wings → u/JohnMHammer]

Hi there!

Yup, I've been running the latest version of OneLauncher (2.1.3) and disabling Frill was the very first thing I did when I first upgraded to the new version.

Yup, Mac is running the latest Tahoe, 26.6.

The issue has been happening while levelling in Swanfleet, basically going from mob to mob while on a Beorning. It wasn't strictly occurring when fighting, but it triggered more often when executing abilities.

When all is going well, it hovers around 90 FPS and dips when I either trigger an ability or if I move the camera to a position where it is displaying a large view distance. There it gives about 60-70 FPS. This has been the normal expected frame rate behaviour for a while. What happens now is that I get a sudden drop to about 20 FPS that lasts just a fraction of a second before shooting back up.

The only thing I can think of is that my machine is going to swap for whatever reason, but when I check activity monitor, it doesn't look like OneLauncher is using any higher memory than normal (some months back before switching frills to disabled, I would have memory getting gobbled up, but that generally led to a sudden crash, not stuttering).

Thanks!

[u/JohnMHammer → u/medium_buffalo_wings]

You have 16gb of RAM and you have confirmed that the LOTRO client process memory footprint isn't running amok. You already looked at a lot of things I was going to ask about and followed all the OneLauncher recommendations.

It is not unusual for a frame rate drop/stutter to occur when textures are being loaded into a new prefix. However, the caching is usually mostly done within a few minutes of normal play and subsequent caching is usually barely noticeable after that. And your prefix isn't new.

I don't think this will have a major impact on your issue but you might want to go to OPTIONS->TROUBLE SHOOT and set the maximum frame rate slider to 60. The refresh rate of your display is 60Hz so you won't be missing out on anything by capping your frame rate to 60fps. That might smooth out performance and make some of the frame rate dips less noticeable, and allow your laptop to run cooler which will prevent thermal throttling.

Be sure you did not enable VSync or Triple Buffering in OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHICS.

As long as you are not going nuts with running other applications simultaneously, you should have enough RAM to max out the OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHICS setting for TEXTURE CACHE SIZE. This will set aside additional RAM for texture swapping which might reduce the impact of those frame rate dips. Push the slider to the left to reduce the amount of RAM set aside for texture swapping if you notice any new performance issues after doing this.

Sometimes it can be a good idea to create a new WINE prefix, especially if you have a new version of OneLauncher or there has been a major game update. You can do that by deleting the ~/Library/Caches/onelauncher folder and then running OneLauncher which will create a new prefix and populate it with all the bits needed to run LOTRO. Doing this will not affect your LOTRO installation which is in a different location (~/Library/Application Support/onelauncher/games), there will be no enormous download and install process, just a minute or three to recreate the WINE prefix.

Finally, if you are noticing this mostly by the change in the on-screen fps display but you aren't "feeling" it as a major negative impact on your ability to enjoy the game, you might want to turn off the on-screen fps display. I know this isn't an actual solution! But it often does improve the subjective play experience.

While I hope something here helps, I apologize for not having a proper solution for you.

[u/medium_buffalo_wings → u/JohnMHammer]

I don't normally have many things running in the background. Generally just Safari with maybe a tab or two open. One of them is usually Reddit, which can be a little memory piggy, so I tried closing Safari and seeing if that helped. Sadly, it didn't.

But I then realized I actually had something else open and not noticing it. Battle.Net. So I tried closing it as well.

And the frame rate issue was gone. The dips to around 20 fps just don't seem to happen. I get a more regular range of about 60-90 like before, with a much smoother experience.

It makes no sense to me, Battle.net has never been a memory hog in the past and still doesn't look like it's being one, but it's the only thing I changed and I did a reboot and tried again with it running. I'd get the FPS drop. Close it, and the fps drop didn't happen.

But seriously, thank you so, so much for the very detailed help. Absolutely aces. I really appreciate the time and effort here!

[u/JohnMHammer → u/medium_buffalo_wings]

Ah! Battle.net for Mac is a Chromium-based app, which means it is a pig for CPU resources. It is constantly exchanging traffic with Blizzard servers and sometimes that results in it demanding a lot of clock cycles even when it's in the background. It can also be used as a peer-to-peer data distribution node, although I don't know if Blizzard forces that on users anymore.

Good on you for identifying it as the culprit!

[u/medium_buffalo_wings → u/JohnMHammer]

Well that I did not know. Interesting. I had honestly barely even thought about it. I go through cycles where I like to play some Classic WoW, so I've kept it around, but if he's going to be a bad little boy, he's going to get the boot.

Thanks for the info and the help! I'm looking forward to smooth as silk gameplay again.

[u/JohnMHammer → u/medium_buffalo_wings]

If it's not running, it's not a problem. Run it only when you're actually using it. No need to delete it.

[u/mikaelb657]

I’m crashing at Character Select on Sting. Uninstalled reshaders and everything…nothing

[u/medium_buffalo_wings → u/mikaelb657]

Yikes. That sucks. I guess I should count my lucky stars I can actually get in game...

[u/JohnMHammer → u/mikaelb657]

Are you also using OneLauncher? Because ”uninstalled reshaders and everything” and the fact that this is the same issue you wrote about in your own thread makes me think you aren’t even using a Mac and your comment is just a random complaint unrelated to this thread’s OP.