Framerates, Fire Trucks and FiveM: Why (most) FiveM Servers Are Laggy (for some people)

SanAndreasRepublic · 2018-11-14T00:26:21.818Z

Anyone who has been on a FiveM Roleplay server, and uses a lower end PC, knows how it is: You’re fine when nobody’s around, but the instant you look at too many police cars or a single fire truck, it all goes to hell. If this was just one server, this might be explainable - they can afford to lose some people who can’t handle the framerates. However, it is server, after server, after server, who all have this problem - it’s clearly an issue that seems to affect everyone.

Anyway, here is my take on why it happens, why it doesn’t stop happening, and how it could be fixed.

Why it happens

The reasons behind it can be summed up by one word: optimisation. Or rather, lack thereof.
You see, most vehicle mods you see on 5Mods and such are converts from other games, such as Forza. Indeed, it is mostly racing games, which leads us on to why it will cause people issues.
Games like Forza are made differently to other games; them being racing games, the main focus is on the car. Therefore, most of the polygons go into the car, and the terrain (and other cars) are left relatively bland. Furthermore, these games usually have a well optimised rendering system, which is different to GTA V’s.
This is not an issue for these games; nor is it a huge issue for GTA V singleplayer, where chances are you will have just the one custom car at any given time, and if it’s laggy you can uninstall it.
For FiveM, though, the situation is different; you can have as many of these cars, usually in a small area, usually all being driven. While high end PCs can cope with this just fine, anyone on a lower end PC will notice the dips in their framerates - and occasionally, having the game feel like Powerpoint.

Why it doesn’t stop happening

So, why does it happen on every single server? Well, to put it simply, it’s when democracy goes wrong.
In the end, every FiveM server is a democracy; people vote with their feet. If a server is ran by a tyrannical dictator who forces everyone around, people will leave.
The first reason is that people who play FiveM on lower end PCs are a minority - after all, it is a mod that you have to install, and requires basic technical knowledge. This means that, in a debate, people who don’t notice the framerate drops will always vote to keep the cars, and win; those who are lagging just have to put up with it, or get lost.

The second reason is that there is no compromise here. If you want real life vehicles, with cool lights, you have to get models that are ported from another game. To have a real life car (more on that later) that looks good, and is optimised for GTA V, would need to be modelled from scratch - good luck with that. Furthermore, most custom models are locked, so you can’t even try to manually optimise them.

The last reason is probably the worst, and hopefully least common: Server owners don’t care. After all, server owners have enough money to pay for a server; they also have enough money to have a high end gaming rig. This means they have no incentive to care about those on lower end machines when they’re downloading vehicles from XBR or Captain14 - hell, most don’t consider it.
And when the issue gets brought up, it gets shut down - after all, no need to start a massive argument.

How to fix it

As with all big problems, there is no easy solution; after all it’s a big problem. There’s only a few solutions I have seen, or can think of:

Everyone should get a better PC.

The issue with this is, if every server went for this option, then those who cannot afford a better PC would have nowhere to go. Plus, it means disenfranchising players who might be good at roleplay, but just can’t cope with the lag.

People should just put up with it

This is just a bad solution. After all, a bad framerate is enough to ruin a roleplay session; plus it gives a “I don’t care” attitude.

Straight up pretend the problem isn’t even a problem

“It’s not a problem”
“I don’t get bad framerates”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about”
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And if it is broke, pretend it ain’t broke.

Use lore friendly, optimised vehicles

This solution is helpful, even if it makes people feel uneasy. Of course, this doesn’t mean we all need to get inside of a superlight with an awful black and white skin; instead, there are packs of lore friendly, well optimised vehicles out there such as Vanillaworks and RDE.
However, it does mean giving up your CVPIs and Chargers, and replacing them with Staniers and Buffalos; and if you’re on a high end PC, why bother?

So yeah, no perfect, magical solution. Oh well.

If you have a magical solution that is perfect and will fix everything, do leave it below.

JnKTechstuff · 2018-11-14T04:57:46.174Z

I laugh at those who pay for models from so called “vehicle developers” and the models are 100% un-optimized. They are something like 500k polygons. Not only does this cause issues with frame rate it can cause texture loading issues.

SanAndreasRepublic · 2018-11-14T04:59:06.165Z

Aka texture loss, aka the subject of a massive argument in a server that I’m in, which essentially turned into a shouting match between fire and police over who is causing it.

JnKTechstuff · 2018-11-14T04:59:53.617Z

Models that are below 150k tend to not be an issue. Also texture size can cause issue.

cyclohaxne · 2018-11-14T07:52:43.120Z

I have a solution, stop putting a 1000 un-optimized resources, then complain about lag, problem fixed.

fauconjona · 2018-11-14T08:17:40.967Z

I don’t understand why some RolePlay have a lot of modded vehicles. Is it really necessary for roleplay? In the game there’re all kind of vehicles and it’s immersive enough, why are they need to make them more realistic?

It’s a RP server, not a Racing server. If you want a good server, it’s not with vehicles, it’s how players play on it.

Murkoz · 2018-11-14T09:23:14.975Z

The server I play on (which I love) we run a custom LEO pack where every department has the same cars with different livieries and we run the XBR trucks. No Civ cars what So ever. I play on.l a potato and don’t notice many problems

localhost · 2018-11-14T14:10:46.669Z

The problem is usually not even the models on the server, it’s just the scripts. A good example is that fivemqueue resource which apparently uses 0.30 ms even though it’s just a queue system and a lot of servers use it.

If you are getting resource time warnings that’s because the resource is doing much more than it should be, not just a little bit.

MoravianLion · 2018-11-14T14:19:20.082Z

That’s exactly why I am trying to get decently optimized assets on my server. Including vehicles, textures etc. - only when I consider it as beneficial at the end.

I am retexturing a lot of cars, just because they are 4K tires (…F, rly?!) and other non sense.

Same for polygons, if the car has like 500k polygons - why?! You won’t even notice the difference in 90% of cases when you will compare it with 250k model.

And scripts… Oh, those scripts. I love how community for FiveM is being active, but I still find myself optimizing community’s scripts and I don’t even have coding background. That’s a bit sad. (Thank you very much for Resmon!!)

At the end of the day, there is still hope that there will be decent RP servers out there. We are getting there, I believe.

SanAndreasRepublic · 2018-11-14T14:21:29.591Z

Those script issues usually affect all players, because everybody notices the lag. The models and such only really affect the sort of person who’ll get ~ 30fps on singleplayer, at the lowest settings. Then, they will really notice when the game becomes slow after a few firetrucks have been spawned.

I could do a whole seperate thing on scripts, but I imagine it would dissolve into a rant about ESX, so I’d best avoid it.

IceHax · 2018-11-14T15:03:25.701Z

localhost:

0.30 ms

… that’s a really good cpu time tho

IceHax · 2018-11-14T15:04:23.026Z

MoravianLion:

At the end of the day, there is still hope that there will be decent RP servers out there. We are getting there, I believe.

FiveM doesn’t need decent RP servers, it needs any other gamemode, except rp.

SanAndreasRepublic · 2018-11-14T15:06:17.843Z

It needs less of the terrible RP servers, and more people working on unique gamemodes. RP is much easier to set up with zero coding experience, hence why it’s so common. I’d like to see other gamemodes (cough cough battle royale)

MoravianLion · 2018-11-14T15:16:49.667Z

True, my mistake. It has decent RP server and communities. Just not exactly what I was looking for.

FiveM doesn’t need anything, it just matter of taste. I am perfectly fine with RP direction in traditional sense

For any other game mode, I believe, there is a better alternative as standalone game already. But having an option to combine world of NFS:U2 with GTA framework (in any sense) and with more realistic feeling? That’s what I was dreaming since like 10 years ago… But this kind of game would never sold as good as it’s mediocre derivatives. Thus it would never been made as standalone commercial product.

But I think I get your point, @IceHax. FiveM looks like really great platform for community to create on. Hope we will see more resources that we all will like!

hallux · 2018-11-14T18:31:49.653Z

While you are accurate with the poorly optimized vehicle additions, you also should probably mention the fact that poorly optimized scripts like every single ESX and many vRP resources cause issues.

SanAndreasRepublic · 2018-11-14T19:36:58.956Z

It would just dissolve into a rant about how much I hate ESX as a general concept, which nobody here would want. Unless they do, in which case I’ll leave ESX rants to other people. This is mostly about how unoptimised vehicles affect those on lower end machines, rather than how FiveM development is an inefficient mess.

fauconjona · 2018-11-15T07:53:09.628Z

We’re not here to blame anyone or any framework, just to prevent server to not use too many vehicles.

I think using some optimized modded vehicles for specific services would not cause a lot of issue on lower end machines.

Mart475 · 2019-12-03T12:43:13.228Z

You’ve got to be joking.

Isaac_Ocean · 2020-05-10T21:59:27.206Z

I recommend optimising scripts as well. For example: Joining servers and seeing you have to load 500+ resources. That is because they have each vehicle not in it’s own folder. I would recommend have a folder for fire/ems scripts, highway cars, sheriff cars, civ cars etc. It’s a good option. Hope this helped.