[craprica]

first, congrats and thank you for release 1!

The start-up movies and credit sequence plays beautifully, but when it comes to actual gameplay beginning with the training missions, my frame rate goes way down and the game becomes unplayable. I've lowered all the detail settings, but though it is slightly better, this does not solve the problem.

I'm running an imac:

Processor: 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac
Memory: 3 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT

I've seen what seems to be the same issue discussed in another thread, but that person was on a PC and the solutions do not seem to be ones that will work on a mac.

I am very much a nugget when it comes to gaming, and I may need some handholding (for instance I have seen people ask for a debug log, but I don't know how to create one on a mac,) but I very much appreciate any help and can't wait to play the game!

so say we all

[The E]

<hyneman> ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT </hyneman>

There's your problem. The 2400XT is not a very good chip; It's a low-end GPU out of a 6-year-old line, and Apples' ****ty drivers won't help either. As such, its performance is slightly below that Diaspora requires in order to run well, I would recommend turning off most of the performance-hungry features like post-processing and fxaa.

[jg18]

Based on my experience with a late-2007 iMac with a slightly better card (ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB VRAM), I'd suggest making the following changes in the list of checkboxes in the launcher's advanced settings tab:

Under Graphics, uncheck:
"Enable post processing"
"Enable soft particles"
"Enable FXAA anti-aliasing"

and then check:
"Disable environment maps"
"Disable normal maps"
"Disable lightshafts"
possibly "Disable specular".

Probably don't check "Disable glow maps", though, since as I remember it's very hard to see inside the Theseus (such as for landing) without them.

Also under Dev Tool, check "Show frames per second on HUD", which'll display a number near the upper-left corner of the screen while you play, indicating what FPS you're getting. For the game to be enjoyable, I'd say that number should be at least 20 or so, and the closer it is to 30, the better, but you can decide for yourself.

You might want to try "Disable vertical sync" under Game Speed to see if that helps.

[craprica]

Fixed!!!

thank you both so much for your prompt and helpful replies. I'm now getting around 25 fps during gameplay, even with detail set to high. (with detail on very high the game slows down again, but alas i'll survive without it)

the game is beautiful and everything i hoped for, 3 missions in.

thanks again

[swashmebuckle]

I've got the same computer and have managed to get Diaspora to a playable (though certainly not spectacular) framerate while keeping most of the bells and whistles on by turning the resolution down (usually to 1344x840).  It's a pretty small sacrifice compared to losing awesome stuff like normal maps and soft particles IMO.

I've found over the years that the only thing that really singlehandedly destroys FSO's performance in this machine is anti aliasing (even FXAA, though that is a lot faster than the built in option).  The graphics card just can't quite hack it with Diaspora at 1680x1050.

[jg18]

Yeah, that's a good idea, swash. It didn't occur to me to try lowering the resolution so that you can keep most graphical enhancements on.

[KyadCK]

Yeah, that's a good idea, swash. It didn't occur to me to try lowering the resolution so that you can keep most graphical enhancements on.

Keep in mind that non-native res on a LCD screen is ugly as sin, so it's a tradeoff.

Or play in windowed mode, either option works.