Performance during rain in the RenderWare-era GTA games

[muh linucs]

I'm currently playing without a dedicated GPU out of necessity (Intel Core i7-4770K at 3.50GHz) and GTA III immediately drops to at worst 20 frames when it starts to rain. Do you know how the rain is implemented in the game and why it may have such a high performance-impact? Do the consoles drop frames as well?

 

I don't have any real graphics mods installed (only ThirteenAG's Widescreen Fix, SilentPatch, SkyGfx, GInput and CLEO), but have forced 4x MSAA in GTA3.WidescreenFix.ini (the rain effect is a transparent texture with a very high likelihood and not affected by multisample anti-aliasing).

[MrQuiche]

1 minute ago, muh linucs said:

I'm currently playing without a dedicated GPU out of necessity (Intel Core i7-4770K at 3.50GHz) and GTA III immediately drops to at worst 20 frames when it starts to rain. Do you know how the rain is implemented in the game and why it may have such a high performance-impact? Do the consoles drop frames as well?

 

I don't have any real graphics mods installed (only ThirteenAG's Widescreen Fix, SilentPatch, SkyGfx, GInput and CLEO), but have forced 4x MSAA in GTA3.WidescreenFix.ini (the rain effect is a transparent texture with a very high likelihood and not affected by multisample anti-aliasing).

Well rain is rendered using the GPU so it can be very taxing on a integrated graphics chip.

Edited August 13, 2019 by MrQuiche

[Max.pain]

all i can say is rain in gta 3 and vice city is not made in the game world. they are just pictures on the screen, at least that’s how i see it

[universetwisters]

10 hours ago, Max.pain said:

all i can say is rain in gta 3 and vice city is not made in the game world. they are just pictures on the screen, at least that’s how i see it

 

I mean the whole game is just pictures on the screen if you think about it

Edited August 14, 2019 by universetwisters
Accidentally ate my bathroom

[Max.pain]

1 hour ago, universetwisters said:

 

I mean the whole game is just pictures on the screen if you think about it

what i tried to say was it isn’t made as a 3d object in the world. it is like a copy paste

[H-G]

The rain in SA is quite ugly with that weird "noise effect" and "clouds of water" everywhere, these effects literally bog down the game's FPS like an angry monkey sliding down from a steep hill. I thank God there's MixSets to make it better.

[muh linucs]

I feel that disabling "trails" in the display options and installing Sharptrails have reduced the performance-impact in GTA III, the rain no longer exactly hammers the fps down — more of an occasional fluctuation now.