Oolite Bulletins

Is anyone else having the same problems as me??
I.6....whatever it was worked fine...I uninstalled and reloaded the latest version...and everything stalls in game play...it's really juddery!
What should I do....
PS ELEITE RULED on the beeb....I bought it originally when I was 10...my Grandad helped me afford it!

Welcome to the forums.

OK, we're gonna need some details before we can help.

CPU
RAM
GFX Card
Hardware/OS (PC/Mac M$/OSX/Linux?)
Any OXPs installed?
Anything else running in the background? (Virus checker, firewall, etc)
Copy of Stderr file - how this is generated and where is dependant on answer to HW/OS question.

There will be an answer out there for you - this is the best forum I've ever been on.

CPU - erm?
RAM - how do i work that out?
GFX Card - dont know
Hardware/OS (PC/Mac M$/OSX/Linux?) - PC
Any OXPs installed? - er...LOADS!
Anything else running in the background? (Virus checker, firewall, etc) - don't think so
Copy of Stderr file - how this is generated and where is dependant on answer to HW/OS question. ....erm......

OK if you're running a PC then I'm going to presume you're running XP until you tell me otherwise.

To find out some of the answers to the questions I asked you could go to Control Panel->System (from the start menu)

THis should tell you at least what cpu you've got and how much memory,

For the gfx card - if you right click on your desktop (somewhere where there's no icons!) and click "properties" you should get something like ("plug and play monitor on XXXX" where XXXX is the details of your graphics card.

Failing that, if you are running M$ then you could either the crucial website who as well as checking your memory also check some of your other system components out too, or you could download and install the BELARC advisor which will tell you everything about you PC.

You say you've got loads of OXPs - which ones - that's almost certainly playing a part in your issues.

The Stderr report (in M$ Operating Systems) I believe is generated at the start of the game and resides in the same directory as your oolite exe.

Hope that helps

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
http://www.crucial.com/uk/

here we go...

Windows XP SP2
1GB RAM
Plug and play on....RADDEON X550....don't know if that means much!
Is that any help?
It does seem that almost any OXP i add causes the "judder"

OK,

that's a start - CPU would still be a help and the actual amount of physical memory the X550 has (not a great card but probably several generations better than my FX5900XT).

With NO oxps installed - start the game - press SHIFT+f - this should put the frames per second (fps) up on the screen - fly around as you normally would - note the fps - note if/when it drops off dramatically, this will give us a baseline for how well your PC handles the basic game - then we can work out which OXPs you can actually install (I know you say "any oxps" but oxps such as "clearskies" actually make the game run faster, so there will certainly be some oxps you can run with).

Good luck.

DH

Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz
3.42GHz, 1.00GB of RAM

Don't know how to find out the memory of the Graphics card.
I do have Windows Firewall on....

Baseline average seems to be about 32 FPS.
Cheers for helping!

32 FPS for the X550 seems to be a more or less expected result. Now you can start adding OXPs one at a time and launch the game each time you add one to see if and how performance is affected. If you use Realistic Shipyards, keep it for the end, it is known to cause performance drops in pretty much anything but the top spec configurations.

What card would you suggest?
I've become a bit of an Oolite whore! want it all...and badly!

You will probably get a temporary pause when hyperspacing, but even high end systems do this.

Your CPU is plenty fast enough! (I'm running on an Athlon XP 2800+, 1GB RAM DDR333 running dual channel on an nForce2 mobo with a 128MB FX5900XT 8x AGP)

Could you list the oxps you plan on reinstalling (one at a time as another_commander suggests) and we'll try and spot any obvious culprits!

As for how much memory you X550 has, erm, it may appear very briefly when you first turn your PC on even before the PC tells you what processor it has, etc. You may be able to find out from the ATi Catalyst Centre (I'm presuming this is installed by default nowadays) - and as suggested before BELARC advisor should tell you a lot about your system including gfx memory.

Finally, what to upgrade to depends on how much you've got to spend and what you want to upgrade. It might be cheaper depending on what motherboard you have and if you have any empty slots to upgrade main memory (Crucial website should be able to help with this). Upgrading your gfx card will depend on whether you've got AGP or PCI-E slot - AGP cards are getting very expensive now and aren't as new as PCI-E card chipsets. Personally, I've always preferred nVidia for OpenGL compatibility and speed over ATi graphics cards - but others have no issues - I guess its a case of YMMV.

Hope this helps.

DH

Start > Run - type DXDiag <enter>

This will tell you how much video ram your graphics card has.

I can confirm that there are moments of terrible framerate in 1.71.2. I haven't played 1.65 as much but noted much fewer "terrible framerate" modes compared to 1.71.2

The framerate on my system is a solid 60+fps typically. On a reasonably modern GPU this is as it should be: without custom pixel shaders, space sims should never be limited by the GPU since mostly they render a whole lot of black or only a few levels of depth complexity. But there are times, e.g., when approaching the space station, and the planet is close and partially or mostly offscreen so that it is clipped, that the framerate drops to around 10fps or slower.

Also, in combat, with a lot of ships on the screen, for no apparent reason, the framerate will drop from 60+fps to < 10fps. Then, without any simplification of the environment (all the ships, etc. still there), in a few seconds, the framerate goes back up to 60+fps.


My platform:

windows xp professional SP2
Intel duo core 2.13Ghz
2GB RAM
Graphics adapter: nvidia GeForce 7300LE 512MB

Solution here:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... 9&start=30

You will have to wait for v1.72, though.

Thanks. This is annoying enough that I'll build from source and apply the patch as noted. I may take a look at the SRC as well to see if I can find the problem there as well. I'm a lifetime C and C++ (etc.) developer but never used objetive C, I'll probably be able to slog my way through, though.