[Antares]

With FS_Open being improved as it is, it's also growing more demanding for system resources.  My current system is pretty low-tech (P4 1.8 Ghz, onboard graphics (32 MB), 128 MB RAM) and while it could once run FSO pretty well, some enhancements are just too hefty for it to handle.  My video isn't compatible with HT&L, playing in 32-bit mode makes things sluggish to the point where I have to turn off things like background effects to make up for lost framerate, and I can't even consider using extras like Lightspeed's planets and nebulae.  It's reached the point where I've stopped using FSO, until the purchase of my new system in June.

My question is this: provided I wanted to play FSO with all the bells and whistles (Lightspeed's stuff, HT&L, fully-rendered modeled-to-scale Shivans that drift out of damaged ships, and so on), what kind of system requirements would I be looking at to ensure that everything runs smoothly?

[Flipside]

I would say the main weakness in your system there is the graphics card, it's that which is taking most of the strain, especially since the introduction of HT&L.

I run a 1700XP, which is roughly 1.4 Gigs, and I recently changed cards from a GeForce4 MX440 to a FX5600. The difference was very noticeable. I would say the game would run sweet as anything on a 1Ghz pc, probably slower, as long as it had a good amount of memory and a good graphics card.

[Starks]

FS2 Vanilla Minimum Requirements:

Pentium 200Mhz

32 Mb RAM

Win 95/98/ME/NT

3D Graphics Accelerator (supports Glide or D3D)

250Mb Hard Drive Space

8X or faster CD-ROM Drive

Direct Sound compliant sound card

100% Microsoft-compatible mouse (joystick recommended)


FS2_Open RECOMMENDED Requirements:

Pentium 733Mhz or Athlon equivalent

128MB RAM

3D Graphics CARD (supports OGL or D3D)

300MB Hard Drive Space

8X or faster CD-ROM Drive

Direct Sound compliant sound card

100% Microsoft-compatible mouse (joystick recommended)

[Fractux]

I would put Fs2_Open's minimum requirements higher with respect to the amount of RAM needed in the system as well as on the video card. [like 256MB of Ram as an absolute minimum, and 32MB absolute minimum on the videocard]. Although, I for recommend  requirment would put more than 256MB of ram and a 64MB graphics card.

As far as hard drive space goes, i would add like 500MB, because when I play, the memory usage goes up to like 700MB's, though I haven't checked on recent builds.

[Starks]

My specs are as follows.

--------[ Summary ]-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Computer:
      Operating System                                  Microsoft Windows XP Professional
      OS Service Pack                                   None
      Internet Explorer                                 6.0.2600.0000 (IE 6.0 - Windows XP)
      Computer Name                                     EAPPLE
      User Name                                         Eric
      Logon Domain                                      EAPPLE

    Motherboard:
      CPU Type                                          Intel Pentium IIIE, 733 MHz (5.5 x 133)
      Motherboard Name                                  Intel Cayman CA810  (4 PCI, 2 DIMM, Audio, Video)
      Motherboard Chipset                               Intel Whitney i810E
      System Memory                                     384 MB  (SDRAM)
      BIOS Type                                         AMI (09/05/01)
      Communication Port                                Communications Port (COM1)
      Communication Port                                Printer Port (LPT1)

    Display:
      Video Adapter                                     NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200  (128 MB)
      3D Accelerator                                    Intel i752
      3D Accelerator                                    nVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
      Monitor                                           Dell E770s  (2010V07VB7RY)

    Multimedia:
      Audio Adapter                                     Creative SB PCI128 (Ensoniq ES1371) Sound Card

    Storage:
      Floppy Drive                                      Floppy disk drive
      Disk Drive                                        Maxtor 6E040L0  (40 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
      Disk Drive                                        QUANTUM FIREBALLP LM10.2  (10 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/66)
      Optical Drive                                     AXV CD/DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device  (Virtual DVD-ROM)
      Optical Drive                                     LG CD-RW CED-8080B  (8x/4x/32x CD-RW)

    Partitions:
      C: (NTFS)                                         9718 MB (1127 MB free)
      D: (NTFS)                                         39205 MB (26911 MB free)

    Input:
      Keyboard                                          Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
      Mouse                                             Logitech-compatible Mouse PS/2
      Game Controller                                   Microsoft PC-joystick driver

    Network:
      Primary IP Address                                192.168.1.100
      Primary MAC Address                               00-04-5A-8B-D5-2C
      Network Adapter                                   PCI 10/100 Fast Ethernet Adapter(9513)  (192.168.1.100)

    Peripherals:
      Printer                                           Auto HP DeskJet 895Cxi on JAPPLE
      Printer                                           HP DeskJet 930C/932C/935C
      Printer                                           Microsoft Office Document Image Writer
      USB Device                                        USB Human Interface Device

[redsniper]

we didn't need to know

[phreak]

integrated graphics chipsets are a big no-no with any new game coming out these days.  I'd also recommend adding another 128MB of RAM just to speed things up

[Bobboau]

absolute minimum memory would be 128, recomended would be 1 gig

[[BoA]_Scoob]

SCP will also hopefully become more efficient and fix the memory leaks and speed things up so virtual memory wouldn't be needed.  I'm getting VM usage using 512mb of RAM.  Usually it is the builds that test new features that are slow.

[Bobboau]

when you have 100 ships each one haveing an average of 2.5 materials, each of them haveing three textures averageig 768^2 with 32 bits per pixel, there is only so much memory you can clean up

textures alone is takeing up, 442 megabytes of ram

[Singh]

maybe that is the problem then? The number of textures need to be reduced....my poor old 64Mb card wont stand up against the onslaught of features for very much longer

FS2 used to be a game for the poor......now its becoming one designed only for those with $$

[Liberator]

When DDS is fully implemented we could possibly look at including the various effects textures into one or two files instead of five.  That should be a major memory savings.  

I know this is possible because they do it in HW2.

[ChronoReverse]

You know, all those textures are floating around uncompressed right?  Is there any way to use some sort of compression on them?  Even a "light" compression would help a lot.

[Bobboau]

that's less developer frendly though, this is a game used mostly be people who know how to mod the hell out of it.

[Terorist]

However, it's meant to be played, by as many ordinary people as possible. Currently it isn't too appealing due to the growing requirements and resource hogging. It's an area that always calls for improvements, everywhere (except at Redmond).
Btw, Bob, for the sake of our sanity, please try to conjugate "having", "taking" and others right! *bangs head on wall*

I haven't tried several of the latest builds, but the general feel I have is that 256 megs of RAM is the minimum (which is what I have, running Win2k, and GF2 with 32 megs). I wouldn't want to imagine running FS2_Open with half of that!

[ChronoReverse]

@bobboau

I meant internally; it may take more time to load in the load screen, but in-game it may be a lot better (the little pauses when a new texture is loaded may be reduced and overal memory usage may be reduced).

I'd imagine using light DXTC compression (to avoid artifacts) would help if the game did it internally for formats that aren't already compressed.

Of course, this is based on a vague recollection of someone saying that DXTC compression isn't uncompressed into memory in-game while everything else is.

[Bobboau]

I don't think we can compress other textures on the fly

[ChronoReverse]

By "on-the-fly", do you mean "during-the-loading-screen"?

Darn.  But now that I think about, it'd take far too long to load anyways

[Starks]

Originally posted by Singh
maybe that is the problem then? The number of textures need to be reduced....my poor old 64Mb card wont stand up against the onslaught of features for very much longer

FS2 used to be a game for the poor......now its becoming one designed only for those with $$

I can feel your pain, but all these new features do come with a price... I bought my GFX 5200 PCI just to play Halo PC...

[kasperl]

i have a Radeon 7k and can run the SCP at a  framereate of about 30-40 wiht everything except pcx32 enabled. spec mapping doesn't work on my card, so that  might be it.