Oolite Bulletins

What are the minimum specifications for Oolite these days?

A lot has been added to the project lately, and I was wondering what sort of performance impact they are having. One of the things that attracted me to Oolite was the accessibility of the game, especially with the fact that it could run on pretty much any system (once the PC version was finalised).

Now, with shaders and proper lighting and the rest of the stuff, how much of an impact does this have on peformance?

Also, does anyone think that scripting is starting to get too complicated? There are so many options now my head spins when trying to remember how to put a plist together! Again, the relative simplicity of scripting was one of the things that made me want to get involved in making OXPs.

Selezen wrote:

Also, does anyone think that scripting is starting to get too complicated? There are so many options now my head spins when trying to remember how to put a plist together! Again, the relative simplicity of scripting was one of the things that made me want to get involved in making OXPs.

That's basically the reason why I am still scripting plist-style.

Nobody has to use the new implemented methods, so you still can use the 'old' ones (except some renamed methods).

I think we all need some time to sort all the new stuff to get an overview, but just wait a few days/weeks. Then you will love it. :-)

Selezen wrote:

What are the minimum specifications for Oolite these days?

A lot has been added to the project lately, and I was wondering what sort of performance impact they are having. One of the things that attracted me to Oolite was the accessibility of the game, especially with the fact that it could run on pretty much any system (once the PC version was finalised).

Now, with shaders and proper lighting and the rest of the stuff, how much of an impact does this have on peformance?

None, since shaders aren’t used on systems that don’t support them and are optional on system that do. Overall performance should be better in 1.71 than it was in 1.65 for systems at either end of the scale, for a variety of reasons.

So will shaders automatically disable on systems that can't cope? What's the minimum requirement for shaders?

I think shaders require hardware support. If you dont have the right hardware, then the option isnt there.

Cmdr James wrote:

I think shaders require hardware support.

Indeed. However, I should point out that overly complex shaders will result in a software fallback. There is no standard way to detect this. It can be detected under Mac OS X, but currently isn’t in Oolite. Anyway, if you’ve got shaders enabled and stuff is slow, try turning them off. :-)

Ahruman wrote:

Cmdr James wrote:

I think shaders require hardware support.

Anyway, if you’ve got shaders enabled and stuff is slow, try turning them off. :-)

But be aware that some materials entries will be executed even with shaders = off. To really turn it off you have to delete the entries from shipdata.plist.

Svengali wrote:

But be aware that some materials entries will be executed even with shaders = off.

No.

No.?

On my computer all materials-entries without ..._map (ambient, specular, shininess,...) are executed even with shaders=off and even after commenting out the keys. Only by deleting the entries in shipdata.plist I've got the 'normal' result. Just tested it again.

I'm on Win, so this is possibly the reason:-), but I don't know.

Svengali wrote:

No.?

On my computer all materials-entries without ..._map (ambient, specular, shininess,...) are executed even with shaders=off and even after commenting out the keys. Only by deleting the entries in shipdata.plist I've got the 'normal' result. Just tested it again.

I'm on Win, so this is possibly the reason:-), but I don't know.

Oh, those. Those are unrelated to shaders, and are part of the standard OpenGL lighting model. They should have little to no performance impact even on positively ancient graphics cards (and they’re actually being used even if you delete the materials dictionaries).

Ahruman wrote:

Oh, those. Those are unrelated to shaders, and are part of the standard OpenGL lighting model. They should have little to no performance impact even on positively ancient graphics cards (and they’re actually being used even if you delete the materials dictionaries).

Thanks Ahruman, that clears my mind. I thought that maybe my computer is somehow stupido,eh?

BTW: I'm beginning to love the (for me) new stuff. Muchas gracias.