[AJ]

Hey everyone, I'm a total n00b here, and I've been trying to play Freespace all day, but I've been having problems.

I have a high end gaming machine, with 1GB Corsair RAM, a Dual core 64Bit 3.4GHZ AMD Proc, and 2 NVIDIA 7900GT vid cards on SLI. My OS is Windows XP Media Center Edition.

With all that stuff, whenever I try to run Freespace 2, I get freezeups. And not just tiny freezeups, I mean the game stays frozen for 40 seconds at a time.

I've tried playing on all the lowest graphical settings, without any of the advanced graphics files, but I still get the same delays. If anyone can help me figure out why my game is so laggy, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm sorry if this a n00b question, I did a forum search for freeze ups and didn't find anything relevant.

[General Battuta]

It's definitely not the machine specs, I can tell you that - you should be able to run smoothly.

I'll leave it up to someone who knows more, though. 

[Turey]

I think you have to set it to use a single processor by setting the processor affinity.

I can't remember how to set processor affinity though. 

[Wanderer]

New FreeSpace Open 369 shouldnt suffer from that problem any longer..

[karajorma]

It's definitely not the machine specs, I can tell you that.

Actually it is. As Turey points out the problem is caused by the two cores. You have two solutions

1) Press CTRL+ALT+DEL after starting FS2 and set the processor affinity for the FS2.exe process in the task manager to only one of the cores
2) Get Turey's installer from the link in his signature and upgrade to FS2_Open

The second one is the better solution as that PC will do a good job running FS2_Open and it looks much better than retail FS2 but the 1st one is quicker.

[AJ]

Ooooh, Processor core affinity! Why didn't I think of that?! Duuuuhhhr duhr duuhr. 

Thanks for the help everyone. I'll try this solution out when I get home tonight.

As a quick side question, does the online installer provided in the sticky here also have the same workaround as Turey's installer? If not, I'll have to dump that install and switch. I'm obsessed with milking the best graphics possible out of my games, and a big part of that is utilizing both cores to their fullest.

[Turey]

As a quick side question, does the online installer provided in the sticky here also have the same workaround as Turey's installer? If not, I'll have to dump that install and switch. I'm obsessed with milking the best graphics possible out of my games, and a big part of that is utilizing both cores to their fullest.

My Open Installer should work on top of any pre-existing install.

I really need to fix the retail installer (The one I made with [DW]-Hunter). There's a few things I need to put in, put I haven't had the time...

[AJ]

My Open Installer should work on top of any pre-existing install.

I really need to fix the retail installer (The one I made with [DW]-Hunter). There's a few things I need to put in, put I haven't had the time...

Sweet, that's totally ace bro! Saved me a decent hunk of time! 1000 cool points for you! 

As a sidenote addon to this thread, I'm wondering what kind of control setups you guys have? I just got a joystick with 10 extra programmable buttons, 4 of which are in the thumb area. I saw that the game has a hueg pile of control buttons, so what would you guys reccommend that I map to my joystick's extra buttons for quick access?

[Mongoose]

The controls I have mapped to the five buttons in the thumb area of my Cyborg Evo are secondary fire, target nearest hostile, target ship in reticle, target closest attacking ship, and equalize shields.  I also have the afterburner, countermeasures and target nearest bomb/bomber mapped to base buttons.  These are the functions that I find myself using the most, but your mileage may vary, so try playing around until you get a control scheme that works for you.

[Bob-san]

i gotta logitech wingman force 3d...

Trigger is primary fire.
Upper-right thumb is countermeasure.
Lower-right thumb is secondary fire.
Upper-left thumb is target escort.
Lower-left thumb is target attacking ship.
Thumb HAT is looking around.
Far Base is equalize shields.
Near Base is afterburner.
Throttle is set to relative.
Twist-handle is rotate.
Left-right axis is turn without rotating.
Forward-back axis is up and down.

That should be about all... You'll probably definately want primary, secondary, CM, attacking ship, equalize shields, and afterburner... at a minimum. My joystick has just enough buttons for me.

[jr2]

You are running FS Open, right, AJ?  With those specs, it'd be a crime not to... 

Also check out this thread, to see if you can solve some of the problem with a little targeted defragging.