[Kayroe]

I dunno I heard people having 6800GT's had slowdowns in SCP with all the things on high.  I have a Geforce 4 Ti 4400, and I beleive I have everything set up right. It looks about as good as the screens you have posted and it runs flawlesly.  Wondering if i'm missing something huge visually that I don't know of cuz i'm new or what.

3.6.9.
3.4 Launcher
I beleive I have thew new media vp's even the cell shaded one. (ofcourse I leave that off.)

I even turned on anistropic filtering at 4x, still perfect frames.

Personally I think all these builds are very confusing.  Why are there so many different ones floating around, shouldn't we all be on the same build?  Put in tick options for like P4 Optimization and what not.  Host a thread with the download link with an installer that sets you up for the newest SP/MP releases and fixes with all the bells and whistles?  I dunno i'm just so confused at this point. 
If anyone wants to see a screen just ask, i'd be more then obliged to share.

[karajorma]

I presume you mean Launcher 5.4 not 3.4

What command lines options have you activated in the launcher? Have you placed the VPs in a folder called media VPs and then forgotten to go to them mod tab in the launcher and pick it as your chosen mod? Cause if so you'd be running with only the retail data.

The latest media VPs are the 3.6.9 Zeta's along with the 710 patch VPs. mv_adveffects is the cause of most slowdowns. If you missed that then it's probably the reason everything is working so well for you. If not just consider yourself lucky that somehow your machine is performing with more power than it should have


As for all the builds floating about that's a temporary problem. When 3.6.9 is released everyone will be using that except for people developing mods for FS2_Open.

[SadisticSid]

Just a note, you can't put P4 optimizations as a tick box in the launcher because it's not something the SCP guys have control over. The compiler produces executable code which may run faster on P4s, but the source code is the same as for the unoptimized ones.

[Kayroe]

Well I didn't know about the 3.6.9 Zeta until last night.  I used them and the 710 files? Do they just go in with the rest of them?  Anyway I didn't notice much of a difference from the old ones I had. (Mind you I never played freespace before, thank  StarFox: Shadows of Lylatt for it so i'm not very far in the game.)

But yeah some screenshots I see look worse then my setup.  But some look nice with like HDR kinda lighting, heavy bloom.  They look pretty nifty too.  Personally Bump Mapping would bring the look of the game completley right up to games like x3.  I can hope that will ever make it.

But anyway, it just runs fine, I only get a stutter kinda thing when like a capital ship exploses.  Something about that shockwave makes it stutter a few frames but it's not bad.

[ME$$ENGER]

Actually there has been some development in the shader department. Although it's still early, you can pretty much expect some really sick advancement in terms of graphics.

BTW, there is one thing that you might be missing and can also bog your system down: the adveffect media vp. Since you only have a geforce 4, I strongly advise you NOT to use it. Well, you can use it if you want, but don't be shocked when your system hangs for a good three seconds everytime a shockwave goes off.

[Zacam]

Unless you manage to surgically remove the 3D shockwave, that is. (Definately an advisement if you like the enhanced Nebulae and Planets and Explosion effects available from the adveffects, which I do.)

[Kayroe]

I've been using adveffects.  It doesn't hang when shockwaves go off.... it's more like a split second screen jerk.  It's not that bad considering shockwaves are few and far between.  But yeah runs great, wish for bump mapping and pixel shading that would be hot stuff.... :-)

[Mars]

This is probably somwhere really obvious, but what are the minimum requirements for the mv_advancedeffects? Would an X1300 Pro cut it?

[neoterran]

The stuttering with the 3D shockwaves is caused by lack of graphics card memory size, you need a 256 MB card to minimize or reduce the effect. You can fix this by replacing the high shockwaves with the medium shockwave (look around the forum they're in a sticky'd thread somewhere) or using the 2D shockwaves, if you have access to them, which completely elminates the stutter steps.

[CP5670]

The shockwave stuttering occurs on any card, even 512MB ones. It may be due to a bug though, as there is an entry on Mantis about the game not pre-caching that effect properly.

[neoterran]

Oh, okay, i stand corrected.

Well, the 3D high shockwaves are like, 80MB of data, and I think that it has to be copied from system memory to local VRAM, which causes the delay. I personally don't use 3D shockwaves or animated beams which really helps to keep the performance in line and It really doesn't look that much worse.

If the game ends up precaching the effect properly later, that would be cool. I wasn't aware it was a bug, i thought it was simply a limitation in the engine's effect loading system. After all, it wasn't designed for effects as large as the ones we have made for it.

[CP5670]

The animated beams are okay, but I have also removed the 3D shockwaves. I remember seeing 512x512 versions of that effect at some point which should work better, but I can't find them anymore. Those really should have been included in adveffects instead of the 1024x1024 ones.

[Kayroe]

So, then it is running perfect on a GeForce 4.... I have a P4 3.06 ht 1 gb of ram.  Used to have a 6800GT but it died on me.

[Dark Hunter]

:Grins broadly because his comp doens't hang at all, even with super-high end shockwaves on:


Since I tripled the RAM on my computer, it has handled everything I've thrown at it.... It's been months since it hung up in mid-mission. 


3.6.9 Zeta, eh? Maybe those will fix the damned black box thing.... for some reason even the mp-710's failed to do that.

[ME$$ENGER]

3.6.9 Zeta, eh? Maybe those will fix the damned black box thing.... for some reason even the mp-710's failed to do that.

No wonder. The media patches are for zeta not anything else.