Squeezing performance out of Oolite on the ASUS eeepc

[JonB]

Hello Commanders

I'm trying to run Oolite on the Asus eee PC, but it's a bit slow. For example, when docking, the view of the Coriolis station gets 4 fps. I want to strip out some of the more advanced graphics features in order to be able to play it on the eee.

Any suggestions as to how I might do this?

These machines are a new class of ultra portable and there will be a demand for decent playable games on it. I reckon with a bit of tweaking, Oolite is a fabulous candidate. What we need here is a sort of Oolite "lite". Can it be done?

Oh, I should say that it runs Xandros Linux out of the box, has a GMA900 graphics chip, 512 Mb of memory and an Intel Pentium M running at 630Mhz (but it can be clocked up to 900 with a bit of tweaking). The full spec can be seen on Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eee_pc).

Thanks

JonB

Moderator: linkified URL

[davcefai]

Caution: This may crash your system.

You could try renicing the game. ie increase the priority it runs at. Obviously other stuff will slow down and if you overdo it all sorts of problems could crop up.

First thing to try is running glxgears. See what frame rate you get. For comparison, on an Athlon 3200 based PC running Debian, with an Nvidia PCI express 8400GS I get 84 fps full screen and OOlite runs at 50-70 fps most of the time.

You can try to renice the X-Server, the game, or both.

Read the man page for renice, it's not complicated.

[JonB]

Caution: This may crash your system.

You could try renicing the game. ie increase the priority it runs at. Obviously other stuff will slow down and if you overdo it all sorts of problems could crop up.

First thing to try is running glxgears. See what frame rate you get. For comparison, on an Athlon 3200 based PC running Debian, with an Nvidia PCI express 8400GS I get 84 fps full screen and OOlite runs at 50-70 fps most of the time.

You can try to renice the X-Server, the game, or both.

Read the man page for renice, it's not complicated.

There was another poster who asked about stuttering and low frame rates. The suggestion was to renice some of the other processes. I tried that and sadly it didn't work.

I think what's required is a bit more configurability in Oolite, so the user could trade off certain processing intensive features (like those planet textures) for others. It's a shame it can't be played on slower machines.

[JensAyton]

Oolite doesn’t use textured planets by default. I assume you’ve noticed the Reduced Detail setting on the configuration screen?

Still, I’d have expected somewhat better performance on that spec, assuming proper drivers (and the GMA 900 driver for Linux is supposed to be OK, judging by a quick google). I suspect it’s more powerful than what Oolite was originally written on.

One thing I want to add before the next stable release is frustum culling. This is an optimization which should improve performance, particularly near the station, and particularly for low-end hardware. It will also reduce texture-loading stutter, especially on multi-core systems… so it’s a good idea for just about every situation.

[JonB]

You can't mean to say that Oolite is performing some graphics processing on objects that aren't on screen? Or have I got the wrong end of the Pulse Laser?

I've tried using the reduced detail option, by the way, but it doesn't make any difference. The funny thing is, I cannot detect any difference in the quality of the picture, either - but then, I only have 800x480 pixels to play with.

Hmmm. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be playing Elite - TNG on here. The machine is much more capable than that.

Might it be in order to allow the user to turn off textures (replacing them with solid colours) and the background starfield? I'm sure there are other effects that cost processor cycles that could be cut without affecting the gameplay too much. That way, we could choose what effects we wanted according to taste and available computing power. Even if this were only available through command line arguments, I'd welcome it.

Thanks

JonB

[JensAyton]

You can't mean to say that Oolite is performing some graphics processing on objects that aren't on screen? Or have I got the wrong end of the Pulse Laser?

Yep.

I've tried using the reduced detail option, by the way, but it doesn't make any difference.

The major effects are that there are less nebulae, ships and subentities cut off at a closer range, and the planets are drawn with lower detail. In 1.70, the default lighting properties of materials are simplified – or rather, not complicated, i.e. handled the same as before 1.70.

Might it be in order to allow the user to turn off textures (replacing them with solid colours) and the background starfield?

But which colours? There used to be fields for polygon colours in the data files, but they’ve been recycled for other uses.

On the other hand, as of 1.69 it’s possible to change ships to use solid-colour materials using an OXP.

I'm sure there are other effects that cost processor cycles that could be cut without affecting the gameplay too much. That way, we could choose what effects we wanted according to taste and available computing power. Even if this were only available through command line arguments, I'd welcome it.

Possibly. You may even be able to find someone who wishes to spend their time doing it, but it ain’t me. I’ve got too many features lined up before the next stable release as it is.

[ArkanoiD]

Caution: This may crash your system.

You could try renicing the game. ie increase the priority it runs at. Obviously other stuff will slow down and if you overdo it all sorts of problems could crop up.

First thing to try is running glxgears. See what frame rate you get. For comparison, on an Athlon 3200 based PC running Debian, with an Nvidia PCI express 8400GS I get 84 fps full screen and OOlite runs at 50-70 fps most of the time.

You can try to renice the X-Server, the game, or both.

Read the man page for renice, it's not complicated.

It is harder to estimate the resources you need to participate in big space battles like Assassins "Invasion in Geteve system". 512Mb is definitely not enough for Unix systems, you need at least 1Gb.. CPU matters less..

[davcefai]

I agree with the above to some degree. However IIRC I played Assassins with 0.5GB and it was one of the reasons I expanded my RAM! Certainly, when playing Oolite with 1GB or less it is necessary to shut down everything possible.

[JensAyton]

Looking back on this discussion, I’ve been just a teensy bit more acerbic than is strictly motivated, so I shall rephrase:

There is definitely room for improvement in terms of performance. However, options to turn of further details are not a prioritized approach at this time, in part because there aren’t really many details to turn off beyond what reduced-detail mode already does.

[JonB]

Thanks for that, Ahruman. I imagine you're extremely busy. I'm still experimenting with the Oolite install myself. It just locked my little system up, ha ha! Never mind.

[Wolfwood]

Darn, I was so hoping to make my future Asus Eee my main Oolite platform, but this thread makes me think twice of that plan...

[JonB]

Wolfwood, we (in the eee community at eeeuser.com, not the Royal "we", ha ha) are still coming to grips with the potential of the little eee. Don't give up hope yet... I haven't!

[Wolfwood]

Wolfwood, we (in the eee community at eeeuser.com, not the Royal "we", ha ha) are still coming to grips with the potential of the little eee. Don't give up hope yet... I haven't!

Hehe, I know that - I'm also a member of that community

And, given that they've got Civilization 4 - of all games - working on EeePC, I find it pretty difficult to understand why Oolite is so hard to get running properly...

[JonB]

Hehe, I know that - I'm also a member of that community

Ah...well, I'm a moderator on eeeuser, so you can take a guess at my username...

Are you in possession of an eee, and are you trying oolite on it?

[Wolfwood]

Nah, no Eees in Scandinavia yet. The last time I called the local Asus representative, the word was that it will be a couple of months into 2008 before we get them here. Which is a shame, since I'd need a few of them professionally as well (for a project that we just started where mobility is a concern).