[Kiloku]

In "Her Finest Hour", after I call in reinforcements, the game starts lagging in a curious and predictable pattern: close to 5 seconds of stable gameplay at 60 FPS, then 1 second of 0 FPS, and back to 5 seconds at 60 FPS. No matter how many objects are or are not in my sight, and even if the objects still exist or not (for example, even if all my reinforcements die or depart, the lag continues exactly the same) until the mission ends.

[General Battuta]

Are you playing with deferred lighting, or using a compatibility build to disable it?

[Kiloku]

Hmm, I'm not sure. I installed WiH through the "Complete Installer" and added the "Compatibility Package" available here. My FSO Build is 3.6.19 (Nightly 9610 SSE Enabled).

[Klaustrophobia]

sounds like a maybe more severe version of the stuttering i thought pretty much everyone got in that mission.  as it happens to me, it closely resembles the microstuttering in STALKER for anyone who has played those, or the loading hitches from not having much RAM.  you know, from years ago when 1GB was "holy ****, why do you have that much??"

[Kiloku]

Probably not RAM, unless the game is not using as much RAM as the computer has available. I have 16GB DDR3 of RAM, it's pretty much the best thing in my computer. I'm on my laptop right now, so I don't remember exactly, but I think the processor is a Core i5 2500, and the graphics card is a NVidia GTX 460 (768MB version), so they could be the failure point.
The whole of BP, both 1 and 2, worked fine except for this part of this mission.

[General Battuta]

I wonder if the insanely complex SEXP stuff going on in that mission is jamming something up.

[Kiloku]

Anything I could do to help diagnose?

[Klaustrophobia]

Probably not RAM, unless the game is not using as much RAM as the computer has available. I have 16GB DDR3 of RAM, it's pretty much the best thing in my computer. I'm on my laptop right now, so I don't remember exactly, but I think the processor is a Core i5 2500, and the graphics card is a NVidia GTX 460 (768MB version), so they could be the failure point.
The whole of BP, both 1 and 2, worked fine except for this part of this mission.

yeah i know lack of ram isn't the cause, i was just trying to describe the symptoms by relating it to that kind of lag that probably hasn't happened to anyone in 5 years.  ram size exploded way faster than games could use it.  i assumed similar to batt, that there is just an asston of calculations going on hosing up the CPU or whatever bottlenecks there might be in the engine.  it's a little weird that it sticks around after everything calms down though.

[Terminator]

I have the exact same problem as the OP.

Frameskipping in Her Finest Hour only after I signal the attack. The rest of the campaign plays normally.

I have a Core i5 2500, 8GB of DDR3 Ram, a GTX 560 Ti, and Windows 7 64 bit.

[WolfShepard]

Sorry, I think it might be RAM after all, you may just be looking in the wrong place. I've got the issue too. I think it's *video* RAM.
System:
i5 670
GTX 480
8GB 1333 MHZ RAM
DP55WG MOBO
I also have a G15 keyboard with a small LCD monitor on it. EVGA's Precision software(monitors temperature and other things) can output to that screen.
I have that set up to show GPU usage, temperature and Video Ram usage. The 480 has about 1.5 GB of video ram. The monitor was showing 1450+ (probably the actual upper limit is slightly under 1.5)

I think video Ram is the problem. Normally with Media VPs it's around 800 mb (at almost highest settings, AA sliders at about 3/4 maximum) Starcraft 2 at highest only uses 650-750 mb.
Until Her Finest Hour, I've been seeing around a Gig of usage. It spikes that mission. If a debug log would help, I'll see if I can post one asap.

PS: Sorry about the age of tne thread, I figured it'd be useful here.

[qwadtep]

I wonder if the insanely complex SEXP stuff going on in that mission is jamming something up.

It's probably choking on all the reinforcement death checks being evaluated every frame.

I assumed it was RAM/CPU since I'm playing on a toaster but apparently not.  I've also gotten a couple crashes of the VC++ redist there, as well.

[gloowa]

i know this thread is kinda old, but i just wanted to add that i get the same issue, and if i restart the mission after it begins (the stutter every x seconds), it stays until i restart whole game. (forgot to test if it carries on to other missions. will check that later)

[Lunadance]

Same issue here, the fps was about 60 then drops to 30 then freezes for 1 second every 4 or 5 seconds.
My machine: Win7 64bit, Geforce 330M(1G VRAM), 6G mem, i5 core

[TwentyPercentCooler]

This is really strange. Chiming in to say that I have a 1GB GPU (HD 6850) and it runs quite smoothly for me. Maybe it actually is a CPU thing? I know a lot of people are saying they have i5s/i7s, but since FSO isn't multithreaded...

My i5 is running a pretty heavy overclock.

[Klaustrophobia]

is it smooth for you even after calling all the reinforcement wings in a single massive wave?  i'm going under the assumption that it's choking under the massive amounts of calculations with that many ships present and weapons flying.  but that doesn't quite explain why it persists after the shooting stops.  i saw someone else postulate that the casualties check was running pretty much constantly and causing the stutter.  i don't know if that was a dev or not.  i get the stutter with an i7 2600k clocked at 4.6, a gtx 670, and 12 gb of ram, so i've got to imagine it's not a hardware issue.  it also doesn't look like normal lag.  it's very precise and cyclical once it starts.  same stutter time, same time between stutters, regardless of what is going on in the mission or what is on screen.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

is it smooth for you even after calling all the reinforcement wings in a single massive wave?  i'm going under the assumption that it's choking under the massive amounts of calculations with that many ships present and weapons flying.  but that doesn't quite explain why it persists after the shooting stops.  i saw someone else postulate that the casualties check was running pretty much constantly and causing the stutter.  i don't know if that was a dev or not.  i get the stutter with an i7 2600k clocked at 4.6, a gtx 670, and 12 gb of ram, so i've got to imagine it's not a hardware issue.  it also doesn't look like normal lag.  it's very precise and cyclical once it starts.  same stutter time, same time between stutters, regardless of what is going on in the mission or what is on screen.

Yes, it runs fine for me after I call in ALL the things.

One thing I just thought of: wasn't there a bug that showed an incorrect casualty report in the debriefing? I seem to recall people saying either they lost ships (I'm 99% sure I had this as well, but I haven't played through it again since it came out and there have been a lot of games between then and now), but the debriefing didn't mention it, or it would say total casualties when that wasn't the case. Sounds like perhaps there is something very weird going on with the casualty checks.

[Klaustrophobia]

yes, there is a bug with that.  i strangely didn't get it on this last playthrough, even though i used the same pilot.  still got the stutter.

[General Battuta]

I've tried to figure out that bug a few times and either I am a moron or there's a genuine code bug because I can't see what's wrong.

I suspect the solution is that I am a moron.

[Kiloku]

Considering you did and continually do an awesome job, I doubt you are a moron. Is there any way to profile the mission and send the data to the FSO coders?