"Verbose Logging" is harmful for game FPS. Should it be off by default?

[Arcitec]

Describe the bug

For a while now, the verbose logging flag has been enabled here:

HeroicGamesLauncher/src/frontend/screens/Settings/components/VerboseLogs.tsx

Line 8 in a5347f2

const [verboseLogs, setVerboseLogs] = useSetting('verboseLogs', true)

HeroicGamesLauncher/src/backend/config.ts

Line 362 in a5347f2

verboseLogs: true,

I have personally seen a game slow down to unplayable framerates with Verbose Logging, and come back up to working framerates after disabling the logging. I think the game was Nightingale.

Anyway, logging leads to extra traces being written all the time which has an impact on framerate. Since this is a gaming launcher, I think it should be off by default. Heavy logging makes sense as an opt-in feature after the user has an issue.

Steps to reproduce

1. Disable verbose logging.

Expected behavior

Verbose game log off by default to focus on game performance.

Screenshots

No response

Heroic Version

Latest Stable (Flatpak)

System Information

• OS [e. g. "Ubuntu"]: Fedora Workstaton 43

Additional information

No response

[Arcitec]

The default was changed as part of a refactor here, which was meant to get more logs from new users:

#4220

[Arcitec]

It's possible that this logging is only for Heroic and doesn't affect Proton/Wine, VKD3D, DXVK, etc. In that case, verbose logs should be almost zero-cost and you can quickly close this issue. But I bring it up because I personally saw a game (again, I think it was Nightingale) go from 10-ish FPS to a smooth 60+ by turning off verbose logging. But perhaps it was the mere action of restarting the game that fixed it instead of the logging. 🤷‍♂️

In short: If it only affects "Settings: Log" then it's safe to use by default. But if it also makes game logs verbose (Proton/Wine, VKD3D, DXVK), then it's awful and should be disabled. 😉

[arielj]

Verbose logs do have a performance impact only for games that have a lot of output.

I first implemented the option to disable logs to improve performance, then at some point I change the default to be disabled by default but it made support way harder because most users would send empty logs not understanding the logs were disabled

So my last iteration on this idea was to put them back to enabled but make it really easy to disable them (with the ^ arrow new to the Play (With logs) button to just Play without logs).

I don't think it's worth changing the default again knowing it makes support way more annoying (we had to ask almost every user to go and enable verbose logs after they shared the wrong logs), and it's also really easy to disable them once you know.

One idea I had for a long time though is to enable/disable logs with some heuristics like... if the game was executed 2 or 3 times for more than 5 minutes, disable the logs automatically and show a message to the user saying something like "It looks like the game works fine, disabling verbose logs" or something like that. And the same could be done if the logs are disabled and the game ran for less than 1 minute, enable the verbose logs automatically and tell the use "hey! the game closed too soon, looks like it didn't work, we are enabaling verbose logs". But I never got time for that and I'm still not sure if it's a good idea.

[Arcitec]

@arielj Hi, thank you for confirming that it affects game logging too. Now it makes sense why a game had unusable FPS with logging, and good FPS after disabling logging. It was most likely triggering a lot of trace/unimplemented function warnings in Wine, since I've seen those absolutely spamming logs in the past.

Your idea of using heuristics to disable logging sounds pretty good.

It's unfortunate that most users didn't provide logs and you had to waste time asking them for logs.

[Arcitec]

@arielj Perhaps a different solution could be made:

• Set Verbose Logging to Off by default again.
• Make Heroic remember which logging mode was used to create the latest log.
• It then has a big, red banner "You MUST enable verbose logging and run the game again if you want to submit logs to Heroic developers. The current logs below will not be accepted."