[MiniSiets]

Alright, so I just upgraded today from 3.6.7 to 3.6.9 RC7.8 for FS2 SCP and I have to say that there are some very significant improvements that have been made. I haven't had any crashes yet as opposed to 3.6.7 where I tended to have many, and cutscenes will actually play now. The new models and effects are also nice. That aside though, there is only one major problem that I've had with it. Every time a large ship explodes and releases the blue shockwaves, my game literally freezes temporarily for 3 seconds before resuming the game, which becomes very annoying and tedious, and also frustrating because I can't ever even enjoy the beauty of watching the ship explode because by the time it unfreezes the ship instantly appears already broken into a thousand pieces. This should not happen given my rather high-end specs on my computer now:

- NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256 MB PCI-Express video card
- Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz processor
- 1 GB RAM

So is there any way for me to not have these massive drops in framerate without having to lower the graphical quality of the game? (Side note: I'm running FS2 in OpenGL)

[Ferret]

You're not the only one, many other people have ridiculous framerate problems when shockwaves show up, myself included.

There just needs to be a lower res version of the textures put into the mediavps.

I'ld like to be able to download them on their own to replace the shockwaves but personally haven't been pointed towards anything yet....

[DrunkenPirate]

Shockwaves are a little ridiculous with regards to performance yea.

[MiniSiets]

Well damn I wanna watch the satisfaction of the massive explosions, someone upload a lower res version soon then lol. It's just kinda ridiculous at this point that not even a top of the line PC can render it decently.

[DaBrain]

Yeah, I still think it wasn't a good idea to include the super-high-end version in the advanced effects vp. It's really ment only for people that have no other chance to put their PC power into good use. Which might be 1% of all players or less...

This time, the high-end version will be in the advanced effects VP. It uses only 1/4 of the memory and 1/4 of the bandwith and still looks almost like the super-high-end effect.

The difference isn't big.

[IPAndrews]

You get to see the spectacular explosion in slow motion. i fail to see the problem here

[MiniSiets]

Thanks DaBrain. I appreciate it.

[DaBrain]

Don't thank me too early.

So far I've been too lazy/busy to complete the VPs, although I did at least pick up a bit of work for it yesterday again. 

[wtf_cl0vvn]

I have RC7.9, almost the same specs, and not a problem...

[MiniSiets]

Hmm.. well I'm using 7.8. Where can I download 7.9? I'll bet that probably fixes the issue.

[Turey]

Latest version: 7.9x.

[Cobra]

Yeah, I have no problem with them, either. The shockwaves in the mediavp's are either DaBrain's medium quality or low-res quality.

[off topic]Speaking of those shockwaves, where can I find an animated version, the one with the glowy bits?

[MiniSiets]

So I don't need to install any new media_vps, just the rc7dot9x.rar file?

[karajorma]

Personally I reckon your best bet is to extract the shockwaves from mv_effects.vp to mediavps\Data so that they override the ones in mv_adveffects. You'll need a VP tool of some sort though for that.

[MiniSiets]

Meh, that's too much effort. Besides, I don't have a VP extraction program nor do I know how to get one. Chances are that this latest version probably fixes the issue with my computer anyway. But seriously, do I need to download any extra VPs for RC7.9x or just stick with the VPs from 7.8 and download the single RAR file for 7.9x?

[karajorma]

No need for anything new.

The issue will be fixed in the official 3.6.9 VP release anyway.

[MiniSiets]

I downloaded and gave RC7.9x a whirl today. It's still having the massive drops. -_-

Oh well, thanks guys for trying though. I'll just wait for the final version of 3.6.9.

[MiniSiets]

Hey, sorry for the major bump and double post, but I just thought I'd inform you guys that I got it working properly now. It turns out the problem was that the game was installed to my secondary hard drive, which for whatever odd reason, seems to be very slow at processing and loading files off of it. I reinstalled it to my main hard drive and now it works like a charm - no frame rate drops. Guess I don't have to worry about a lower resolution version of the shockwave afterall.

[misterQ]

Hey, sorry for the major bump and double post, but I just thought I'd inform you guys that I got it working properly now. It turns out the problem was that the game was installed to my secondary hard drive, which for whatever odd reason, seems to be very slow at processing and loading files off of it. I reinstalled it to my main hard drive and now it works like a charm - no frame rate drops. Guess I don't have to worry about a lower resolution version of the shockwave afterall.

I hadn't thought of that, since my specs are much lower, I just figured it was my rig. I tried a reinstall on my primary drive, and no more shockwave problems!
Thank you very, very much!

[Huggybaby]

For those that have problems regardless:

Download and unzip shockwave3d.tga.

Put it in your "FreeSpace2\data\effects" folder. It should override the big slow shockwave in the adveffects file.