Author Topic: Frame rate tips (Read 450 times)

flakbait · « **on:** July 18, 2001, 07:07:00 AM »

A few things I thought I'd share about getting higher frame rates. Laugh all you want at my system specs, but I get 22 frames a second in the P-38 with the clipboard up (a bug).

Desktop icons. Hmm, how to put this gently....KILL 'EM!!! I've got five (yes five) on mine, with everything else I need in the Start menu. The more crap on your desktop, the slower it goes, so keep them to a minimum.
Fonts. Yep, if you have 500 fonts installed on your system it'll slow down a smidge. I must have about 280, with a noticable system choke if I pass 290. Naturally this varies from system to system, but generally keep them under the 300 mark. Less to load on boot up anyway!
Background crap. My biggest gripe of all. "Run this program at Winblows startup"....NOT! You might as well try towing a 65 foot boat with your Honda Civic!! Use the three-finger-salute (ctrl-alt-delete) just once to find out what's going on. Or better yet, snag Tweak All from www.abtons-shed.com and tab over to "Run Programs". From there you can dictate exactly what runs at start up. On my comp I've got the following to run at start up:

Explorer
systray
point32 (intellimouse software)
Mswheel (mouse again)

Yeah, anti-virus stuff at start up or auto log-on might be nice, but they're both resource hogs. Turn 'em off.
Background stuff. I've seen guys read the boards while flying, crank MP3 players, and do other things that would make my skin crawl. Yeah that P3 933EB with a half-gig of ram might be killer, but your FR can and will dump from that. Want music to fly by? Pick up a CD burner and burn a few "Aces High Fight Tunes" disks to listen to. It'll save resources and get you a slightly higher FR to boot.

That's what I've found helps most people get a slight increase in frame rate. Hopefully this will help someone out there!

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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"With all due respect Chaplian, I don't think God wants to hear from me right now.
I'm gonna go out there and remove one of His creations from this universe.
And when I get back I'm gonna drink a bottle of Scotch like it was Chiggy von
Richthofen's blood and celebrate his death."
Col. McQueen, Space: Above and Beyond

Westy MOL · « **Reply #1 on:** July 18, 2001, 07:44:00 AM »

Thanks for the tips Flakbait. A couple I never thought of nor heard about but I'll try em!

Westy

flakbait · « **Reply #2 on:** July 18, 2001, 09:04:00 AM »

System specs, just for laughs

200MHz Pentium
64 megs SDRAM
Creative 3D Blaster Banshee w/16 megs SDRAM
Lucent Win(blows) modem (typical connect 38,666)
512k cache (yep, half meg)
Dx 6.1a (os & vid card hate anything beyond this)
52x CD-ROM

Average frame rate? Thanks to a clipboard FUBAR the FR strike is applied to the cockpit when the c-board is not in view. With it up, I average 22 in flight NoE with the Arado taking me 30+. Drop the clipboard out of view, and the FR goes with it!! Usually down around 13 or so. Funny thing is, this never happened before 1.07 P2. Something to do with the flickering clipboard glitch many were reporting. When that got fixed, my FR died cause ol HT reversed the clipboard's FR hit. Now I take the hit with the darn thing down, but with it up my FR jumps! E-mailed shots and a test to Superfly earlier this morning. Hopefully they'll fix the blasted thing before 1.08, cause it also might be causing the "fragile" frame rates some are reporting.

Quickie test for anyone to run:

Blow up a field, get down low, and fly through the smoke. Then do it again with the clipboard up and see if there's a difference. If you see one, e-mail Pyro with screen shots to put a patch out before 1.08 gets released. It'd be nice to have a normal FR before I have to call it quits due to an old system. Being unemployed sucks at times.

-----------------------
Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"With all due respect Chaplian, I don't think God wants to hear from me right now.
I'm gonna go out there and remove one of His creations from this universe.
And when I get back I'm gonna drink a bottle of Scotch like it was Chiggy von
Richthofen's blood and celebrate his death."
Col. McQueen, Space: Above and Beyond

Lephturn · « **Reply #3 on:** July 18, 2001, 03:00:00 PM »

Wow... time to turn that into a Linux box with no GUI.

Your easiest best upgrade would be RAM. It's so cheap right now it's almost free.

sprint · « **Reply #4 on:** July 18, 2001, 03:14:00 PM »

Flarbait - I have a question about your statements on "fonts". Where would I find the settings for this? (Something new for me)
Btw .. what resolution do you fly in .. do you have high terrain on (Shft-F1) and ground clutter on? Flying DX Beta ?

I like to use Process Monitor .. to kill every thing in back ground ..For me, I just use
explorerand Kernell32dll when playing AH.

Get a process monitor that allows you to kill processes. I suggest Process Monitor from here.
http://www.leinen.com/software/system.htm

I Will Try This
Blow up a field, get down low, and fly through the smoke. Then do it again with the clipboard up and see if there's a difference. If you see one, e-mail Pyro with screen shots to put a patch out before 1.08 gets released.

Thanks for the Tip

sprint
*MOL*

flakbait · « **Reply #5 on:** July 19, 2001, 01:18:00 AM »

Leph I just stuck another 32 megs in it, and since it's an old system it maxes out at 64 megs. Blame Dell, but at least the ram only cost me about $15.

Sprint, I've never used anything like that before. Never heard about it either. I'll stick to Tweak All, but thanks for telling me about that program! One of these days I'll give it a shot. I use Shift F2, clutter off, 1024x768 with 16 bit mode and unlimited FR. If I go down to 800x600 I lose 5-8 from my frame rate, and any higher doesn't do any good. So 1024x768 works best for me.

As for fonts, follow this:

Quote

Start menu > Control Panel > Fonts. If you can't find this, go into C:\Windows\fonts and you'll get the same thing. At the bottom of the screen, in the gray bottom border, you'll see a total files count. Make sure this is under 300 to accomplish two things. First off, the fewer fonts you have the less Winblows has to load. Which means the system should load just a tad quicker. Second off, it's fewer that the system has to keep loaded, so you have a little more free resources.

To remove fonts, do the following:
Get a program that will let you browse fonts. If you don't have one, you can use Paint Shop Pro to get a look at them. Hit the text tool button and click somewhere on an image. Type in text, then highlight it. Click on the font drop-down box on the left, move the mouse off to the side, and hit the UP arrow key. You can browse the fonts doing this, but it takes time. Microsoft Publisher lets you actually see an example of the font in the drop-down box.
Take down the names of the fonts that are identical or the ones you no longer want in Notepad. I use Post-it notes for this, but Notepad saves on those quite a bit. Then go into the Fonts directory and locate files that have a similar name to the ones you want to kill. Double clicking on the font file will bring up a nice window with an example of the font's look.
Kill off the fonts you don't want!

Got an e-mail from HiTech this morning, he found the problem with the clipboard FR strike and fixed it. Now to wait and see if a patch comes out in the next few days. Hopefully they'll put one out before 1.08, I sure could use it and it should fix the "fragile" FR problem.

-----------------------
Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb

[ 07-19-2001: Message edited by: flakbait ]

Nifty · « **Reply #6 on:** July 19, 2001, 09:35:00 AM »

you can use msconfig to control what starts up on windows launch. don't even have to download it.

sprint · « **Reply #7 on:** July 19, 2001, 11:19:00 AM »

Flakbait ... I just checked .. I have 89 fonts listed.

thx for tip

jk

Westy MOL · « **Reply #8 on:** July 19, 2001, 12:32:00 PM »

Damn flakbait. I wish I had the means or the stuff to help you out with. I'd hate to see ya go

I'll try that test and see if I can help that way.

Westy

flakbait · « **Reply #9 on:** July 19, 2001, 01:13:00 PM »

Westy I appreciate it, really. Locally there aren't many open jobs, and even the fast food guys are hiring less. The money I do get comes from mostly amature web work here and there. It's enough to keep this thing running with a little fun money left over, but far from enough to buy a new system. Even at Dell's low prices. I picked up a spot recently working for a friend on a few sites, and hopefully that'll bring in enough. I don't know if AH will require Dx 8 or if it'll be a recommendation. If it requires it, then I'm stuck with 1.07 patch 3 in offline mode. Hopefully HT or Pyro will caugh out patch 4 to fix this "fragile" FR glitch, and my low-end clipboard bug. But I've got a nasty inclination to think it won't happen since the DX8 beta's are going pretty smoothly.

-----------------------
Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"With all due respect Chaplian, I don't think God wants to hear from me right now.
I'm gonna go out there and remove one of His creations from this universe.
And when I get back I'm gonna drink a bottle of Scotch like it was Chiggy von
Richthofen's blood and celebrate his death."
Col. McQueen, Space: Above and Beyond