Time for action – enabling and reading display info

As mentioned previously, this is usually enabled in the CryENGINE Sandbox by default. For any real values to be displayed, however, you need to open a level, otherwise it will just display the values of rendering a blank image.

1. Open the console within Sandbox using the View menu and selecting Show Console.

2. Type the r_displayinfo = 1 command. This command displays important information concerning the engine's overall performance. Some of the major values, which you should be able to identify, are:

   • CamPos

   • Tris

   • DP

   • Mem

   • DLights

   • FPS

   These values are important because entire projects set budgets around these values.

   Other than the camera position, if you notice abnormal values or activity in any of these values, you can be sure that you are experiencing some sort of performance loss.

   The most effective measurement of performance is the frame time. The reason for this is that frames per second (FPS) is defined as 1 / frame time and is hence a nonlinear...