CoH2 interface causing performance issues

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere here, so I wanted to point out something I noticed the other day in case it gives Relic another clue in their quest to improve performance. For some reason, actions that cause changes in the data being displayed on the UI in-game also cause major drops in framerate.

When I was streaming the other day, I was getting a solid 80 or so FPS at the start of matches. However, if I forced multiple interface display changes in a short period of time by rapidly tapping, for instance, F1 and F2 to cycle between the USF T1 and T2 buildings, I would experience obvious stuttering and framerates that dipped to 30-40FPS. The moment I stopped forcing the interface updates the performance would recover to its previous level.

I also experienced microstuttering whenever I selected a tier building. Even if I didn't cycle between multiple buildings, just selecting one caused a noticeable stutter and large dip in the FPS graph for a fraction of a second. Furthermore, opening the tactical map for the first time or after not having opened it for a while is far from responsive.

I was only able to reproduce these performance issues when selecting tier buildings, not when selecting units, but I did not test unit selection thoroughly. I also think it's weird that the CoH2 menu interface is locked at 20FPS, since it makes the menus feel sluggish and extremely unresponsive, but that's a different, though potentially related, issue. There seems to be some major optimization issues with the user interface that should really be addressed if the issue of overall performance is ever going to be improved.

There is definitely something weird going on with the UI. There is also a small freeze when you hover through maps in the lobby.

I get 15 FPS increase if i Disable the UI in observer mode.

Similarly, in OBS mode switching from a player to another, or switching to the old UI causes stuttering, same with opening and closing the tacmap.

such a shame that what should be the simplest part of the game to render causes such issues

CoH2 uses Scaleform - basically it renders a Flash stage over the active 3d context. Not very performance friendly. But it allows for all the bells and whistles ...

... which nobody likes anyway. Whoops.

I think it's incorrect to blame the platform they use, since that platform is in tons of modern games that do not have the same issues.

Yeah, CSGO uses the exact same system and the interface in that game is responsive and doesn't cause any noticeable issues. The CSGO interface also has a lot less going on though, pretty much just plain text with a bit of polish. CoH2's interface is very busy in comparison.