Author Topic: Skins Caching / Limits (Read 215 times)

EagleDNY · « **on:** May 25, 2007, 10:56:23 AM »

Hey folks,

Well, I love the new skins, but I have to say that I'm starting to get some stuttering action as they load. From what i understand there are some practical limits as to how many skins I should keep and that I shouldn't really let them all download automatically (especially since there are plenty of rides I don't fly / skins that I'll never need).

I'm set to cache skins, so I'm assuming that anything that doesn't load into video memory causes a hard drive access when it needs to go get a custom skin. Can someone provide some quick and dirty numbers as to how many skins I can safely cache (I've got a 256 Mb video card).

EagleDNY

The Fugitive · « **Reply #1 on:** May 25, 2007, 11:52:32 AM »

I may be wrong, but I think you can cache as many skins as you want, what you can't do is pre-load the skins into memory.

You can set your game NOT to download skins while playing, and when not playing you can go to the AH main page for a link to the skins download page. There you can pick and choose the skins you want to download, when you want to download them.

EagleDNY · « **Reply #2 on:** May 25, 2007, 12:13:14 PM »

I know I have both enabled (caching and pre-loading).

When the game loads, everything loads up (skins, terrains, etc). What I'd like to know is what goes into System RAM, and what goes into Video RAM depending upon my settings. I've got 2Gb of RAM in the machine, so I don't mind it loading up stuff from disk into System RAM, but I think that the stuttering I was starting to see was from the Video RAM being overwhelmed and swapping stuff in and out - but that surprised me since I would already (theoretically) have everything in System RAM and it shouldn't require a disk access to move into the Video RAM if it wasn't already loaded.

Krusty · « **Reply #3 on:** May 25, 2007, 12:30:41 PM »

Pre-loading textures only loads "defaults" like terrain, objects (hangars, towers, trees, etc).

I don't believe you can pre-cache skins anymore, unless you have more than 2GB ram or something, the option doesn't show up.

You can remove the .res files for the skins you don't use, or don't use often. Then disable the in-game download.

Also, going from 1024 to 512, or from 512 to 256, allows you to store 4x as many textures as before in the same space. If you're running at 1024 (and quite a few are, just because they can) then drop it down to 512 and you won't notice much difference. Going from 512 to 256 you WILL notice a difference, but you have to balance "looks" and "performance" in that case.

EDIT: P.S. A few folks had stutters and did a full disk defrag, and that fixed it (sped up their read time, to the point it doesn't stutter)