How do you get good frame rates in Oolite?

[luminous]

I am sitting here playing the game on a Quad core machine. Overall CPU usage is about 60% and spread nicely amongst all my cores. My GPU has a temp sensitive fan, but it NEVER ramps up when playing Oolite. However, I do suffer some dropped frames and lag when near stations.

This only happens with OXPs installed. I have nice nebular effects, griff ships and stations etc. So I know I have added a lot to the demands of the game. The question is where is the bottle neck in my machine? If the CPU is not flat out, and the GPU is not ramping up, there must be something else slowing things down?

[JensAyton]

Most likely loading. Textures and sounds are loaded on demand (sounds will be preloaded in 1.75; texture loading is asynchronous, but you only get the full benefit of that for ships that appear completely out of drawing range). The first time a particular type of ship is loaded, its model needs to be parsed and its collision volume needs to be calculated, which is one of the biggest hits. (This was done at loading time in an experimental branch, but there was some problem I don’t remember.)

At this time, my best tip for minimizing loading stutter is to let it run through the entire set of demo ships after loading when you’ve added or removed OXPs. Not ideal, I know.

[luminous]

Most likely loading. Textures and sounds are loaded on demand (sounds will be preloaded in 1.75; texture loading is asynchronous, but you only get the full benefit of that for ships that appear completely out of drawing range). The first time a particular type of ship is loaded, its model needs to be parsed and its collision volume needs to be calculated, which is one of the biggest hits. (This was done at loading time in an experimental branch, but there was some problem I don’t remember.)

At this time, my best tip for minimizing loading stutter is to let it run through the entire set of demo ships after loading when you’ve added or removed OXPs. Not ideal, I know.

Yes, that could fit in nicely with my experience. When my box is doing heavy IO doing network backups etc there is noticeable stutter. It most probably is when new things are being loaded.

How do you let the game run through the demo ships? Mine seems to let the Cobra spin for a long period of time without changing. Is it this screen that I can try leaving running for longer?

[Cody]

How do you let the game run through the demo ships?

At the 'Load Previous Commander', press no... Oolite will then cycle through the demo parade.
When done, press space, F2, load commander.

[DaddyHoggy]

How do you let the game run through the demo ships?

At the 'Load Previous Commander', press no... Oolite will then cycle through the demo parade.
When done, press space, F2, load commander.

You can speed this process up, by tapping the Right cursor key a moment after the ship has appeared on the screen... (and left if you want to see a particular ship again)

[luminous]

Cool, thanks

[Killer Wolf]

what is the collision volume, is it a set of coordinates of a box around the ship or something?

[Makandal]

Talking about the demo run at the beginning, I play the game normally, all ships are there. But I can't see the Griff's ships in the demo. Why ? I am sad.

[Cody]

That can be done, but it shames me to admit that I've forgotten how... summon a wizard.

[Commander McLane]

You need a demoships.plist, preferably in the OXP's Config-folder, containing all ships you want to be seen.

[Cody]

Griff's all-in-one shipset already has a demoships.plist... you should see them Makandal.
Try the 'left' cursor key, instead of the 'right'.

Oh and thanks, McLane, for jogging my memory.