FoundryVTT: For Best Results… (v.9)
Here are some steps to ensure you’re FoundryVTT server game gets the very best results for all involved. (FoundryVTT v.0.6.6 to v.9)
Prezi Foundry VTT Troubleshooting
Minimum Requirements
FoundryVTT has the following minimum requirements – anything less is just going to be trouble:
- Windows 10, MacOS, or Linux operating systems with support for 64-bit architecture.
- An integrated GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to enable hardware acceleration.
- 8GB of RAM A monitor no smaller than 1366×768. At this minimum resolution, many aspects of the UI will feel cramped.
- Chrome or a Chromium-based browser [that’s Up-To-Date].
- A mouse and keyboard.
Game Master Side (server-side)
- Run stable Full Releases: It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the Alpha and Beta releases but they do tend to have more unresolved (or undocumented) “bugs”. They’re versions specifically meant for ironing out any issues with upgrades.
- Updates: Ensure your modules are up-to-date for the FoundryVTT version you’re running. Disable any modules that could be the cause of any issues. This can take some time to figure out what might be causing any issues. I run 53 modules on my Gaming Servers – 3 of which are my modules (Ultramodern5 OGL, EPT5e-Tekumel, and Shared Data). I run 101 modules on my test server – where I commonly test modules and setup things for my games.
- Restart the FoundryVTT server: The number of times I’ve had my server up for hours before a game and then everyone fights with slowness issues or disconnections – all of which are resolved with simply restarting the FoundryVTT server.
- Image Conversion: Insure all your images are small sized *.png (under 5MB) and *.webp
– WebP Conversions: ImageMagic.org with PowerShell Script for bulk conversations
Player / Gamemaster Side (client-side)
Ensure your browser (Chrome or Firefox) are up-to-date. Perhaps restart your browser, or even computer, well before game time.
Ensure Browser Hardware Acceleration is enabled and Enable WebGL 2.0
Chrome or Chromium-Based:
- In your address bar navigate to: Chrome://settings
- scroll down to the bottom and click Advanced
- Ensure that “Use hardware acceleration when available” is enabled.
- In your address bar navigate to: Chrome://flags
- Check to ensure “override software rendering list” is enabled
- Select “Enable” next to “Webgl 2.0 Compute”
- In the lower-right corner select the Relaunch Now.
Firefox:
- Click the menu button and select Options/Preferences
- Select General
- Under the Performance heading, verify that “use recommended settings” and “use hardware acceleration” are both checked.
- In your address bar navigate to: about:config
- Click “I accept the risk!”
- In the search bar put in webgl.disabled
- double-click webgl.disabled if its value is “true”. If it says “True” under the value for “webgl.disabled”, double click it to set the value to false.
- In your address bar navigate to: about:support
- Check the graphics card next to “Webgl Driver Renderer”. Both “Webgl 1 Driver Renderer” and “Webgl 2 Driver Renderer” are listed below “Graphics”. If it displays a graphics card next to both of these, Webgl is enabled. If it does not display a graphics card, your graphics card may be blacklisted.
- If your graphics card is blacklisted, you can override the blacklist by typing about:config in the address bar and searching for “webgl.force-enabled” and setting it to “True”. However, this is not recommended.
Video Card Performance
NVIDIA Control Panel
3D Settings > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings: Chrome/Firefox = High-performance [might be listed as “Texture filtering – Quality”]
AMD Radeon Settings
Switchable Graphics > Current Applications (have Chrome open) Chrome.exe = High Performance.
Stuck or Slow Loadings Screen OR UI Loading Issues:
- The user has a “No Script” extension enabled on the browser; set the page to Trusted and press ctrl+F5 to refresh the page on Foundry.
- The host or user has insufficient internet speed to properly load data from the Foundry server before the WebSocket to their connection expires [internet speed issues].
Check your internet connection. We’ve had few issues with connection speeds of 20 Mbps or higher, but anything under 20 Mbps has had more drops from the server. Use https://fast.com/ or something similar to check your network speeds. - WebGL2.0 is not enabled on the browser [see above].
Within FoundryVTT
Framerate
Game Settings > Configure Settings > Core Settings > Maximum Framerate: set to 30 (or less).
Enable Soft Shadows
For older systems it might be needed to disable soft shadows – this really drops the visual appeal of dynamic lighting.
Module Issue (GM only)
Disable all modules and see if the performance issues continue. Enable a couple of modules at a time to see if you can narrow down the module(s) causing any issue.
Long Term Issue Remediation
Foundry is great but it does have some issues. The main issue is the world database’s (db) that increase over 5MB. Create and maintain Compendiums for your assets.
- create world Compendiums (Compendium Packs > Create Compendium > select compendium type (Actor/Item/Scene/JournalEntry/Macro/RollTable/PlayList)
- create Shared Compendium
- Ensure all image assets are *.png / *.jpg (under 1MB) or *.webp (up to 100MB)
Conclusion
FoundryVTT is fabulous but is not without its flaws. I finding restarting the server every 4 hours [min] has solved virtually any performance issues I encounter.
(update) Since FoundryVTT v.10 haven’t needed to restart the server after heavy usage.
Since v.11 I’ve only needed to restart the server after updates, however I have also switched from a paid hosting service to Always Free Oracle Cloud Hosting for Foundry.
