Framerate weirdness

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Solon Halwinder
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Framerate weirdness

Post by Solon Halwinder »

My laptop is kind of weird with most games; performance suffers in direct relationship to how long it's been since the laptop had a two- or three-hour period of downtime.

Now, when I use external view (F5) playing the Remake, I typically get very good frame speeds, probably about 30-40 FPS, even if it's been awhile since I last allowed some downtime. Using cockpit or HUD view, I get about 20 FPS on a fresh start and about 5 FPS if it's been on awhile. Any idea what the issue is here?

(ALSO: I have the torrent program Azureus running most of the time, but the effect is has seems to be minimal.)
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Post by klauss »

Azureus is likely to eat 5 to 10% of your processor.
But... I wouldn't worry.

Mostly, it seems that your graphics card doesn't like big textures. It's the only difference between external and cockpit view: the big sprite representing the cockpit's interior. It's not uncommon, what is uncommon is that it worsens over time.

I'd say your GPU is overheating, and to protect itself (or to cool down, rather), it lowers the clock speed. So... in external view, it doesn't overheat because of the lesser strain, but when it has to address lots of texture memory often (for drawing the various cockpit items), it flaks out.

Rather crappy design, if that's the case.

I'd suggest perhaps lowering the value in

Code: Select all

<var name="max_texture_dimension" value="..."/>
in vegastrike.config.

Make sure you lower the right one, there are several and not all of them are active - the uncommented one is the active one. Or... if it isn't there, add it inside the "graphics" section.

A sensible value, I'd say, is 512. I wouldn't go lower than 512 (256), because it looks like shit.
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Post by hellcatv »

you could also hit F1 repeatedly to turn off the cockpit graphic
it could be the cockpit that's slowing down your rendering

also turning off the bilinear filtering for the cockpit (ti's a config option somewhere---maybe smooth bases) would improve it as well
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Solon Halwinder
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Post by Solon Halwinder »

*shakes head*

I always use HUD view anyway; I got used to it with Freespace 2 and can't get re-used to having a limited field of view. Is it maybe because of all the indicators and gauges that the game has to render?
"Ever tried to count hyperactive schoolchildren while someone shouts random numbers in your ear? It's like that."
--Geetra, frustrated mage (Magic: The Gathering)
Solon Halwinder
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Post by Solon Halwinder »

I tested a few variables, and using Times font is part of the problem. Apparently, the game has an issue with readable text. ;)

(Seriously though, it runs considerably better when I use Arial, but it's barely readable.)
"Ever tried to count hyperactive schoolchildren while someone shouts random numbers in your ear? It's like that."
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Post by klauss »

Ah... you must have poor line support - it's usually true on old nVidia hardware. Times fonts, I think, are rendered with antialiased lines, which some cards do not support (and thus it has to be done in software - hence slow).

So... yes... your solution is to use Arial fonts - never mind readability.
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hellcatv
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Post by hellcatv »

you could turn off the antialiasing with the times font

BTW good catch
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