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low fps count in VS level

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 8:51 am
by nicolasc
A problem which we encountered before the presentation, if some parts in the oxw are action the game slows down to an unplayable level... I encountered the same problem on my notebook no really sure what it was, with an additional FglManagedSurfaceSomething error... removing the first NPC (a human frigate in my case, a superscaled noxon bombing a few day before) raises the FPS count to a bearable level. Interesting tough, that we did not encounter such an error during the presentation.

I'll do some testing later this weekend, to find out whether this is a hardware problem (ATI cards sometimes cause weird problems), or just a over extensive use the resources available (64MB video ram might just no be enough)

cheers
nico

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 11:12 am
by x3n
Just a simple and most probably wrong guess: Too much debug output?

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:52 pm
by patrick
if some parts in the oxw are action
What do you mean with this?

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:21 pm
by nicolasc
if some parts in the oxw are action
What do you mean with this?
??? What the hell...!!!

I cannot remember what I wanted to say exactly, but probably if some parts are active, or in a strange order, the entire game slows down.
Too much debug output?
hmm... might be a side effect, as while being unbearably slow, it also gives an awful lot (error) output


and this would be the output I get.... (one print per tick??)

Code: Select all

fglX11AllocateManagedSurface: __FGLTexMgrAllocMem failed!!
cheers
nico

[edit: typo]

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:48 pm
by patrick
it would be interesting to find out how much of the graphics memory actually is used. Perhaps we will need to think about switching to compressed textures.

I don't know if atm the texture system is actually sharing textures across different models...

If it's a mem limit problem it should be easy to reproduce...

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:20 pm
by Nowic
Some of our object textures are way too big (1024x1024 or 512x512). Just resizeing them could also help.

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 3:10 pm
by nicolasc
Some thoughts...

Running on my desktop, similar setup to my notebook, the presentation branch works out of the box, using the same setting as on my notebook.

As I do have a 9600Pro in my desktop (9600 in my notebook), I guess the problem is not the card itself but more the video ram (128MB vs 64MB.)
[and as I guess that the tardis' have at least 128MB VRam...]
If it's a mem limit problem it should be easy to reproduce...
Judging from the game itself, and that resolution changes did bring any improvements, I guess once more that it has to be a memory problem.

On the other hand, I changed the texture of the noxon fighter to 256, and no improvement there, so shared textures might already be used.

I run a few more texture tests now.

cheers
nico

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 3:16 pm
by nicolasc
Definitively a Texture size problem... I reduced the sizes for the ASSF and the frigate (both from 1024 to 512) and it started working again...