CF Launcher Low-Spec Option

Is there a possibility in future the launcher could have an option to disable the visual effects, music, etc. that just chew CPU?

I know it's not affecting the game or anything, and "it's only 4%", it just irks me that it's >0%

Quote from Huor

Well i can look for it. Not sure what takes that much ressources yet. Could be the news network that is included via webview or something else in the launcher. I dont assume its related to the music, but i can try to look for that as well.

I'm not a smart man, but the launcher music cuts when launching the game so it's not that.

My money's on either the pulsing Patreon/Discord logos or CF News Ticker.

Maybe piggyback the "CF is running" status string to sleep else?

Again, real world inconsequential, merely a bugbear, and not a smart man.

Quote from Huor

I meanwhile found out that the performance usage and with that the increased power usage comes from the webpage. I found a way to disable animations and reduce power consumption to a minimum. So far i didnt found any big troubles navigating through the pages and displaying its contents - its just that we dont have the animations. I added already an option in the settings for it. Also am putting the launcher on idle when freelancer is running. This should give notebooks users running on battery some more play time, before plugin the power again By default however the page is loaded as is.

Maybe we can check in detail with OP what causes exactly the bigger computation times and power usages.

It's obviously Webview2 as Elk1989 said. here's my Process Explorer with the launcher up and then minimized.

EDIT: I notice the I/O write is increasing, at time of writing it's up to 49.5GB which seems just insane. Does the launcher cache the ticker or anything or is it just constantly reading from the server?

EDIT 2: Turned on Reduced Animations, CPU usage is way down and I/O Write seems to have stopped too.

Quote from Huor

Did you check in the new version under settings there is a a performance switch.

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Yessir, see second edit of my post.

Can I request a custom forum rank of "Not A Smart Man"? xD

Also, thank you. It's a rare thing to have devs so accessible, let alone responsive and taking action so quickly. It's a small thing but I truly appreciate it.

Quote from Huor

No worries Thank you too for reporting

The reading could be indeed very high at the start as it tries to verify the cached hashes. There is a lot of I/O taking place - and as there is running much in parallel with double buffering to speed up this could be the case. But i wont change it as it then just lowers user experience.

But what the WebView2 is doing i out of my knowledge. I even dont know why its that enormous read/write operation. Maybe due to a similar case... I would need to google for it

Happy to help in my zero education just winging it way.

As far as the I/O Write after sitting and watching for a few minutes it's looking to be the ticker, BUT Process Explorer is showing cumulative totals.

So every time a new CF News Network comes in it ticks up but isn't actually storing anything, in case you were worried about that.