I saw the releasal of the newest MediaVP in the news. 'OK, why not give it a try?', I said. After downloading the actual files, I wanted to unextract the zip(or whatever) file into a .vp. Suddenly, instead of WinZip, a self-unextracting something came. I gave it the 'C:\Games\FreeSpace\' as destination. It put a .vp and a readme file into the destination folder.
'OK, let's see what this .vp contains!'
I opened vpview and started to cruise throught the files. I clicked on one of the nebulae by chance(which was neb11, as far as my memory takes). I saw no change on the image itself if we disregard it became a 24-bit file. 'Why was this change necessay?' I asked. 'OK, let's open some more files', let's see the planets!'. Yes, these are definitely new. But ... what? 2048x2048 and 24-bit??. Launcher: I set the -glow and -spec flags.
'Let's see how this works in use'. I started the game. I noticed the lighting dots on the Ulysses. 'It's and overkill!' I said. But this one was enough to inspire me to cruise the tech room a bit. I opened the GTC Fenris entry, and I was pretty apparent it had new textures. 'But is this the hi-poly one? Will see.' I opened the mission simulator and run one of the Renegade Ressurgence missions. The first thing that became apparent is the EXTREME loading time. It took at least 45 seconds for the game to load up. Without the MediaVP, even FSO can load a mission in 10-20 seconds. Then, I started the mission. Here came to my mind the first thing I forgot: Displaying the FPS value! The game had an EXTREME slow-down, the FPS value may have been between 10-30 in most cases. The game was so slow that it became impossible to hunt down any of the fighters on my own. 'I think I'd better quit and erase this .vp. It has no use!'. I pressed ALT-J, but I changed my mind miliseconds before jumping out. I quickly slapped on ESC, and I said: 'Wait! There is something else I am curious about!'. I continued the mission. My wingmen took down all Mjolnir cannons, which allows a Leviathan-class cruiser to enter the area. I was curious if this .vp contains the newest Fenris/Leviathan model. It did. FreeSpace Open was so kind to quit at once I turned on that cruiser.
'Let's do some changes!'
Launcher: Video: Oh, got it! It must have been the problem: The resolution was 1024x768x32! I changed it to 1024x768x16. I was hoping that it would make the FPS values higher. What a blunder! It didn't. The same happened in the mission I previously described.
After all these, I decided to throw this .vp into the recycle bin. So I did. I was quite certain that not my machine configuration was obsolete. With HTL, I never had problem with the performance(merely with some of the SWC ships, but that's another pasta).
