[DaBrain]

It's too easy to change anything in the MediaVPs.
Just download this small file:
http://www.game-warden.com/starfox/Non_SF_related_stuff/SW3D_Low-End_blue.rar

And up the "data" folder in your FS2 root directory. Just 'replace' the exsisting data folder.

The low-end version is really awesome. I think it looks really nice, while it needs a lot less memory than the stock effect. It's my most efficent effect.

[karajorma]

If you're using a mediavps folder you should put that in medavps\data instead BTW.

[Mongoose]

I have an A64 3500+, 1gig of Ram, X550 Radeon.

With me it's a little different. The FPS slows to a crawl (and by crawl, I mean 1/2 second 2 FPS)  only with the first four or five explosions and then all the rest of the explosions work fine after that.

I gather they need to be written to memory or something first, and then after the game can quick-read them or something, they cease to be a problem.

Weird ****.

I happen to have the X300, and I just usually end up slogging through those first few shockwaves.  The beauty of that high-end shockwave is worth the rampant slowdown created by the first few 'splosions.

[Mars]

Freakin' broken search, I knew those were somewhere I just didn't know where... thanks.

[BlackDove]

Again a really slow GFX card.

The X550 is a refresh of the X300, which was a low-end card. You can't use the high-end versions of the shockwaves with these cards. They can't handle it.

The mid-quality version needs a gfx card with at least the power of a GF4 TI, GF FX 5700 or Radeon 9600 Pro.

Are we talking about the same thing here though? As much as I'm aware, the PCI-E X300-550-800 versions are way faster than any AGP Radeon 9600pro or GF FX 5700.

What are we talking about when it comes to the "high-end" shockwaves? 7800GT? X1900?

[Wanderer]

I think this question would go quite nicely into this thread...

Is there a way to get 2D shockwaves to be used instead of 3D shockwaves when mediaVPs are in use? Other than removing the 3d shockwaves from mediavps and all data folders? I tried to set the 2d shockwaves with $Shockwave name: field and end result was that according to the FS.log 2d shockwave was loaded (eff ani) but 3D shockwave was shown ingame instead.

[neoterran]

personally, I think that the shockwaves in the mediavps are too high. They should be replaced by the mid range shockwaves, which look almost as good (in combat, it's really hard to tell the difference anyway) and they're much faster on a wider array of cards. Then, those of us with higher end cards can always add the high or super high end ones in.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Ok, something has to be wrong here - if you total up the file sizes of all the frames in the shockwave, it ammounts to a mere 5mb. Considering many effects and other textures have a considerably larger memory footprint, and will thus be harder to swap in and out of video memory, there is something else at work here. There are just too many people with machines that should be easily capable of handling the shockwave effect having problems with it. :\

I'll do some digging today and try and figure out what in the world is going on with them.

[StratComm]

Problem is that in order to play the shockwave, all of the frames must be paged in at once, and 5MB is a little more than you usually want to be paging in.  Actually what I suspect is happening (as it only happens the first couple of times the shockwaves play, maybe just the first) is that the game simply has not loaded those frames yet at all and it has to retrieve them from disk.  That's going to be slow, no matter how small the files are.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Are there similar pauses when a ship with a big 2048 res texture warps in? I don't recall hearing about any, but if not, why not?

[StratComm]

One file as opposed to 128?  Remember that each frame of an EFF is a discrete file on the disk.

[WMCoolmon]

@Wanderer: Unfortunately not with current builds. I added something in CVS that will do it if you use "$Shockwave model: none". Untested, but it was simple enough.

@Vasudan Admiral: How large is your video card memory? 5 MB could be quite a bit when you consider all the other ship textures and effects onscreen. Remember that all the HUD textures must be in memory, plus background, plus ships, and all of that will be stored in uncompressed 24-bit (or 16-bit?) PCX, unless they are DDS to begin with.

[Fenrir]

personally, I think that the shockwaves in the mediavps are too high. They should be replaced by the mid range shockwaves, which look almost as good (in combat, it's really hard to tell the difference anyway) and they're much faster on a wider array of cards. Then, those of us with higher end cards can always add the high or super high end ones in.

If I recall, it is the mid-range ones that are in the VP's. You should only get the super-high if you're using Adveffects.

[Vasudan Admiral]

My cards a 128 meg Radeon 9800 Pro, making it roughly mid range nowadays, and thus I can't really speak for the lower end cards, but I've played with only slight slowdowns in a mission consisting of every HTL ship so far.
Each 2048 res main texture I've made weighs in at 5.4 megs, with an additional 1-5 megs for the glowmap and/or shinemap.

My question is, why is it the shockwave in particular that a fair few people are having trouble with, while these other hefty ships and textures - which need lighting calculations and multiple render passes, are apparently not causing similar problems?

If Strat's right, and it all comes down to the fact that it's multiple frames being used, well, not much can be done about it for now.
However, why is a similar problem not occuring with the warp map - which also ammounts to 5 megs? It just seems strange to me that the shockwaves are the ones to cause the problems when there is so much else that runs fine on the same systems.

[StratComm]

I'm not sure that it doesn't happen with the warp map, actually (is it EFF or ANI, because that matters for disk access; I can't remember which it is offhand) it's just that the warp animation happens at a time you don't notice it as much.  Warp maps may also be properly preloaded while shockwave maps aren't or something.

[Vasudan Admiral]

If the latter is indeed that case, then we should probably make sure the shockwaves get preloaded too - as even a bit less lag just on the first one would mean a lot less complaints about them.

The warpmap is EFF - DDS, but I now notice that though it's DDS files are bigger, it only has 30 frames in it compared to the shockwave's 159, so that could be a factor also.

[taylor]

The shockwave should be preloaded.  There was a bug not too long ago which prevented that from working properly but I fixed that (hopefully).  The big problem is just the number of frames.  If the shockwave has 159 frames then all 159 have to be available for it to work.  If the game can't get all of them in memory at the same time then something else has to come out of memory (effects, ship textures, etc.) to make room.  If whatever got kicked out is still needed, or soon will be, then something else has to get kicked out to make room for it again (which could mean ditching some of the shockwave frames).  This constant back and forth is what tends to kill performance.  I have thought of prioritizing effect textures so that they would be preferred to stay in memory at all times, but just haven't gotten around to that yet.

And with a 128meg video card you will only be able to get a max of 90-110 meg of textures in video memory (could easily be less), depending on the mission.

[StratComm]

Thanks for clearing that up taylor.  I knew it had something to do with the shockwaves' absurd animation length, but I wasn't exactly sure what the game was doing about it.  If the bug with preloading was recent then it's quite possible that much of the complaints related to the shockwaves is related to that, as that update never got a lot of attention and people may not have noticed a behavior change.  At any rate, I still think the shockwaves (and animated beamglows), while pretty, aren't realistic for real-time rendering and so shouldn't really be used unless people know to expect slow performance.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Hmm, ok - thanks Taylor.
Well, what alternative ways are there of creating such a cool shockwave effect without incuring the same problems?

One option is to use a combination of a vaguely shockwave/doughnut-shaped 3d model, a very short animated texture (or possibly the materials system - can that be applied to effects?) and on the coding side of things, that overexposure thing that was shown ages ago. That way it actually is a 3d model, but the overexposure removes the hard edges that geometry will inebitably create.

Any other ideas? Particle based perhaps?

[StratComm]

Well for one thing, the shockwave really only needs to expand in one "dimension", i.e. texture OR model, and not two.  That's a big cause of the number of textures that are in use now; they account for growth when in fact the model itself also grows.  It should be possible to create a simpler animation that cycled (if that were possible) that would use fewer frames and look almost as good.