[MC-5169] Huge FPS drop in areas with a lot of signs and hanging signs

The bug

Basically, signs and their characters are rendered over a very large distance. Now, this is fine for small stuff, like Survival Single Player, but for servers using iConomy chestshops, and building markets out of them, this turns into a nightmare.

I've witnessed fps drops from 134 fps to 5 fps due to this annoyance. There is a mod that fixed this problem, but not everyone is capable of modding that easily. Mostly happens on computers with low-end hardware.

Example

Below you can see a screenshot of a server-market I mean. It might not look that impressive from that angle, but believe me, walking through it reduced fps by something around 90%.

Now look at the second screenshot. Imagine the market filled.. Each shop averagely has about 15-20 chest-shops. that's about 15-20 signs each having at least more than 20 characters on em, averagely 25. The grid is 10x10 minus lets say.. 9 shops (middle and corners), makes 91. About every sign's text gets rendered when standing in there. There are probably like 75 random signs with other text spread through the market, each definitely having more than 40 chars, say 50 averagely?

Calculation: (20 * 20 * 91) + (50 * 75) = 36400 + 3750 = 40150 characters.

Potential fix

Please make a slider in the options menu that adjusts the character-on-sign rendering distance, perhaps make it change along with the "fast/fancy" render setting, it would be a huge relief to those that don't have the processing power to draw all those signs in a server-market. This would make a server-market a lot more viable use, instead of scaring people away because their computer can't handle it.

Linked issues

is duplicated by 4

MC-56615 High Framerate Drop In the Presence of Tile Entities Resolved

MC-62936 Horrible Frame rate when alot of maps are in item frames Resolved

MC-73277 signs do not seem to participate in occlusion culling, lowering FPS in regions with many signs Resolved

MC-100019 End Gateway FPS drop Resolved

relates to 3

MC-226966 Signs increase lots of lag when using glowing ink sac Open

MC-1138 Item frames cause lag / huge FPS drops when rendered Resolved

MCPE-186385 Multiple signs take a large toll on performance Open

Attachments

Sign Shop.zip

world.zip

Comments 68

kumasasa 2012-12-22T07:49:27Z

This site is for bug reports only. For feature suggestions/changes please use the MineCraft Forums: Suggestions.

and

This ticket is invalid as it relates to a modded or 3rd party client/server.

Any non-standard client/server build needs to be taken up with the appropriate team, not Mojang.
Any plugin issues need to be addressed to the plugin creator.
This site is for addressing issues related to the base unmodded MineCraft

Tenebrae 2012-12-22T10:02:57Z

Can this be re-opened please?

This is not a feature request.. It is a bug, because it makes the game unplayable for various people with slightly lower end systems in specific areas while it shouldn't.

Secondly, this is not about modded stuff, this already happens on a vanilla client, and the plugin creator had been asked already, but it's not a plugin issue, it's an issue with the allowed rendering of so incredibly many signs because the render distance is large, check the links I provided, there are people with the same problem.

This was tested on a bukkit server, and I will now try to prove this on both vanilla SP and vanilla MP, if I can find proof of the same sluggish performance, I want this ticket to be re-opened please.

I can tell you 100% it's true, because if a mod that reduces the render distance of the characters on signs actually helps, it would have NOTHING to do with the server being modded/bukkit/whatever.

kumasasa 2012-12-22T10:07:20Z

Reproduce this issue with vanilla client and server.
At best you'll attach the created world here, so everyone can reproduce and confirm this.

Tenebrae 2012-12-22T10:12:24Z

Will try to do so, thank you for the quick response

Tenebrae 2012-12-22T10:56:55Z

I reproduced it, will post the results asap, got me from 104 fps to 9 fps this time, with sluggish mouse response while walking, making the game barely playable.

EDIT:
-Confirmed on bukkit server 1.4.6
-Confirmed on vanilla SP 1.4.6
-Confirmed on vanilla MP server 1.4.6, will upload world and screenshots now.

58 more comments

Tenebrae 2012-12-22T11:10:52Z

world is attached, check world.zip, just consider it as a "save" and load it in minecraft SP. First screenshot is on SP, second one on MP, both on vanilla 1.4.6.

There were about 30 signs per structure, and there were 42 structures.

If you don't spawn near it, look for a 128 blocks tall glowstone tower

Can somebody please put this back to "unresolved"?

kumasasa 2012-12-22T11:23:06Z

Can confirm in SSP.
~40 FPS outside the structure, ~8 FPS inside.

kumasasa 2012-12-22T11:29:21Z

Does it make a difference in FPS, if there is text on the signs or if they are blank ?

Tenebrae 2012-12-22T11:38:16Z

There's an easy way to test that, will try it out, because I was wondering the same thing.

I'll just save the entire thing as a worldedit schematic, and then paste it again, it won't copy the data on the signs, so they will be blank.

I'll post the result asap.

EDIT: meh, it didn't work, will do it the hard way then.

EDIT: found another way, just turned all signs into signs again, now they are all empty, will show you in a screenshot asap

Tenebrae 2012-12-22T12:06:50Z

As you can see, performance has improved a little bit, lets say 3 times the fps, but still pretty low.

The sluggish mouse movement is still there when walking though :\

kumasasa 2012-12-22T20:18:10Z

Thanks for your work, creating a ticket with a good documentation and reproduction steps.
My work is done here, the rest is up to Mojang.

Tenebrae 2012-12-22T21:07:20Z

I'm happy to help making this a better game 😛

Hope Mojang will consider fixing this.

Matteo 2013-02-22T13:51:05Z

I really hope to get this problem fixed in 1.5, the fix is simple, just make a configurable option that when you approach renders the signs.

I know that SpoutCraft client has an option like this and it optimize a lot the FPS drop! Also because many signs can be not renderized as they can be far from you and you can't see them.

Tenebrae 2013-02-22T14:35:16Z

The most awesome solution would still be.. To only render signs when they are within line of sight, with an addition of a slider for the maximum render distance.

Same with itemframes, they seem to cause similar lag issues for people.

Wulfdao 2013-07-17T09:02:45Z

I ran into this problem as well. The FPS drop is significant even when all signs are blank, and it gets measurably worse when each sign text is unique. The two attached schematics files can be used to demonstrate this.

Riking (Kane York) 2013-08-20T04:33:52Z

It appears that this issue has resurfaced in 1.6. I would implore the developers to examine the diff in the sign renderer, as this has been corroberated by multiple server owners - areas with 200+ signs cause FPS drops in 1.6 compared to 1.5 when they were fine.

Darren Straight 2013-09-13T11:54:28Z

I can confirm this is a massive issue in 1.6 and wasnt in 1.5. I have gone back to test the same copy of worlds in 1.5 and indeed no issues.

The main culprit as said above is signs with text on, blanks signs are not as bad on lowering FPS.

I went out in the wild where I was getting 80-100 FPS and generated a 255 block high wall containing wall signs (totalling 10200 signs) and measured the FPS, it was low but not as bad as I thought it would be, 25 FPS or so. I was getting worse in areas with less signs.

So I then decided to do the same again, 1 wall containing 10200 wall signs, but this time with every sign containing 4 lines of random text, as soon as I generated this my FPS decreased drastically, ranging from 2 - 8 FPS.

This of course was a bit of an overkill on signs, but it was an interesting test and made me find out that it was indeed signs with text on that caused the problem.

The problem is Minecraft seems to render the text even if you cant actually read it from far away, which in my opinion is pointless.

Ive been using optifine as a solution which only renders sign text when you are actually near enough to be able to read it but as we run a family friendly server with people of all ages, some of the younger ones are unsure how to install this or not allowed to by their parents.

it would be nice if the default client, did what optifine does.

Darren Straight 2013-10-25T08:23:55Z

Been hoping this issue would disappear in each snapshot and the latest 1.7.1 pre-release, unfortunately however the issues persists. Such a shame as fixing this really would solve a lot of issues for players. Just need to stop text on signs being rendered when at a distance that you can't actually read the text.

Grahame Skeavington 2013-12-06T14:23:10Z

This is correct and has been a problem for a long while. When I was building my 'Rise of the Rebellion' map the Tie-Fighter bay was made up of hundreds of pictures, the lag was terrible. I ended up having to remove all the pictures.

Andrew Po 2014-01-03T14:01:55Z

This is an incredibly irritating issue on my Multiplayer server, players report FPS drops of 70-90% in areas densely populated by signs.
Adding a mod called MinecraftLFM ( http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1547522-162 ) fixes this problem and also fixes the sign colour rendering on certain laptops with Intel HD 3000 graphics.

Please look into this!

Carl Wiles 2014-02-13T00:56:51Z

This is certainly still an issue as of 1.7.4. Huge FPS drops in densly populated signage areas rendering "storage houses" useless.

Darren Straight 2014-02-19T12:10:17Z

I would also like to confirm this is still an issue on 1.7.4.

Wulfdao 2014-07-02T21:52:16Z

Still exists in 14w27b.

Wulfdao 2014-07-11T18:10:33Z

Still exists in 14w28b.

Wulfdao 2014-07-19T01:17:15Z

Still exists in 14w29b.

Carl Wiles 2014-07-25T00:18:18Z

Even with the wonderful optimizations in 14w30, this still exists in a, b, and c.

Wulfdao 2014-07-30T21:26:01Z

Still exists in 14w31a.

Wulfdao 2014-08-07T04:17:47Z

Still exists in 14w32a.

Wulfdao 2014-08-18T23:35:50Z

Still exists in 14w34b.

Wulfdao 2014-08-21T19:47:34Z

Still exists in 14w34d.

Wulfdao 2014-09-20T21:58:51Z

Still exists in 1.8.

Machiel van Dorst 2014-10-15T12:15:23Z

So signs and banners and the like (tile entities right?) are renderend no matter what once their chunk gets loaded. So it seems to mee that this issue won't be fixed until the way this stuff gets rendered is changed.

Wulfdao 2014-12-03T02:20:27Z

Still exists in 1.8.1.

Wulfdao 2015-01-04T22:31:51Z

Still exists in 1.8.2 pre1.

Wulfdao 2015-02-23T22:06:18Z

Still exists in 1.8.3.

Wulfdao 2015-04-18T04:15:46Z

Still exists in 1.8.4.

Wulfdao 2015-05-23T21:19:23Z

Still exists in 1.8.5.

Wulfdao 2015-06-14T21:03:58Z

Still exists in 1.8.7.

Wulfdao 2015-09-03T05:09:03Z

Still exists in 15w36c.

Machiel van Dorst 2015-09-03T06:17:27Z

Some guy on reddit examined why text rendering is bad and how to fix it. I'm not that technical, but could that be the underlying issue here?

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/3ek0o7/why_text_rendering_is_horrible_how_it_can_be

Wulfdao 2015-09-11T23:05:39Z

Still exists on 15w37a.

Wulfdao 2015-09-16T20:54:14Z

Still exists in 15w38a.

Wulfdao 2015-09-17T21:30:58Z

Still exists in 15w38b.

Wulfdao 2015-09-22T21:53:52Z

Still exists in 15w39b.

[Mod] redstonehelper 2015-09-23T12:27:08Z

Wulfdao: Gave you the issue since original reporter is invalid. Now you can update affected versions yourself.

Wulfdao 2015-09-24T21:04:47Z

redstonehelper: Ok.

Wade Davis 2016-05-02T16:25:50Z

It's 1.9.2 and it's becoming more important to fix this since you can reproduce this in Vanilla Singleplayer
Extreme FPS drop only when within a few chunks of JSON sign shop AND looking towards it... Heard it could be a few different reasons now (Lighting issues, Too much JSON, Due to loading text) and I've concluded it happens to all tile entities that store data (Item frames, Chests, etc.) even if there's no data stored.

This really needs to get sorted out if we're ever going to have a fully functional Vanilla Economy/Sign Shop alternative!
Here's my economy and sign shop I've been fiddling with for weeks (Reproduces Issue)

Forgot to add... Decreasing the distance they render at WON'T make a difference in my circumstance as I need all my 200 or so signs loaded and in clicking reach.

wobst.michael 2017-01-08T14:35:31Z

Relates to MC-1138

TwinShards 2017-02-03T22:24:17Z

I don't really know how they could/would fix that...
Because the real reason of why the Signs does make frame rate fps drop is because each sign have a texture.
If there is 700 Signs... it's likely like spawning 700 zombie...

Meri Diana 2017-06-25T17:36:15Z

Confirmed for 1.12 release.

Maybe the title could be changed, as there are generally FPS drops with all amassed block entities, as far as previous tests throughout the community yielded? And e.g. chests + end gateway portal block bugposts with this FPS drop issue were resolved as duplicate of this bugpost that only got "signs" in the title.

Would it be maybe good for a better overview to have a collection post that lists all block entity FPS drop issues?
Maybe with a FPS drop test analysis with all block entities in the same test setup, to figure which drops could be seen as "within normal range" and everything that goes above a certain amount of block entites as "Won't Fix" (analogue to MC-98822 with regular entities that got resolved as such)?

Meri Diana 2017-08-06T12:08:22Z

Confirmed for 1.12.1.

Oscar Abrahamsson 2017-09-24T03:49:15Z

Issue remains in version 1.12.2.

qwerty23495 2018-06-23T06:07:05Z

Can confirm in 1.13-pre3.

Iosiv Visokogorskiy 2020-07-02T15:50:09Z

still happens in 20w27a

Josiah Altschuler 2020-07-16T23:37:22Z

Can confirm that it happens in 1.16.1. Using an R7 1700X and RX 5500XT and my FPS was cut in half with about fifty signs in one area, some with text, some without (water elevator). FPS boosted back to nominal levels.

pulpetti 2020-08-07T19:26:32Z

In 1.16.1 and 1.16.2 RC-1