[MentalPower]

Hello guys,

My problem is simple, the ingame movies will not play if I have FreeSpace running in Direct3D mode. They will run in OpenGL, but that mode presents performance issues in my system. I am running FreeSpace2 Open 3.6.9 installed with the installer provided at http://www.fsoinstaller.com/ The DXDiag and Caps stuff is included in the attachment. Any ideas?


EDIT: Crap, just saw the "Post bugs in MANTIS" thread, sorry guys.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[chief1983]

Not only that, D3D isn't a supported mode at all anymore and the option to use it will be removed in the future.  You're better off getting your OpenGL to run better than mess with D3D.

[MentalPower]

Ok then, how would I increase OpenGL performance on my system?

[karajorma]

What system do you have?

[MentalPower]

Dell Inspiron 6400

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon x1300 64MB (+767MB from RAM)
Windows Vista 32-bit

[chief1983]

Well, since everything else about your system seems top notch, you should probably make sure you have the newest video card drivers installed.  The development for Vista hasn't come along as fast as it could have, and there's been a lot of bugs that make getting FS2 running in Vista a bugger.  So if you haven't gotten new drivers from ATI, I would do that first and see what happens.  Your system should be more than capable, I can only imagine it's Vista and ATI's drivers causing the hiccups in OpenGL mode.

You might also try removing the adveffects files if you got those with the installer.  Look in your freespace2\mediavps directory, and there may be two files, adveffects and 710_adveffects, or something like that, you want to put those in a new directory in that folder to disable them, so I'd just make a new folder called disabled_vps and put them in that.  They have high-memory usage enhancements, and since your video card only has 64 built in MB, the lag of accessing the rest of it in DDR2 could be causing some slowdown as well.

[jr2]

... Has anyone tried running FS2 Open in Vista using XPSP2 Compatibility mode?

[Sphynx]

If I might add something:

I notice that when I run things in OpenGL that things don't run as well as in D3D. There are intermittent framerate drops that make for a sort of visual "clicking" effect, and don't seem to have any correlation with anything particularly resource-demanding being rendered on-screen.

[diceman111]

... Has anyone tried running FS2 Open in Vista using XPSP2 Compatibility mode?

I have didnt really notice anything different, then again I usally have between 60-120 Fps, but the drivers for the graphics card are still the same and that might be the biggest problem if you are running Vista and having performance issues.

I am currently using Nvidias 101.41 Beta Drivers

[MentalPower]

If I might add something:

I notice that when I run things in OpenGL that things don't run as well as in D3D. There are intermittent framerate drops that make for a sort of visual "clicking" effect, and don't seem to have any correlation with anything particularly resource-demanding being rendered on-screen.

This is exactly what happens in my system.

[chief1983]

Well, from what I've heard, ATI has crapped on OpenGL support in its Vista drivers for the time being, opting to focus more on getting D3D support optimal, and OpenGL has taken a backseat to that.  There's numerous other threads around here about how OpenGL runs far worse on vista than it did on XP because of this.  It's not necessarily ATI's fault that they haven't had the time to fix it, I'm just saying this is what has happened, according to the reports I've seen around here.  Only option I know of then is to wait for better drivers, or try a OpenGL to D3D wrapper.  I just dug one up for another guy who has an S3 card with no opengl support, it's called GLDirect, might offer better performance than the native OpenGL mode, although I can't promise there won't be a loss in quality as I haven't tested it.  I have a copy of 5.0.3 if you can't find it and are interested.

[MentalPower]

My roommate has an nVidia card and has the same performance drop when using OpenGL vs D3D

Pentium 4 D 3.2Ghz
3GB DDR2 RAM
nVidia GeForce 7300 256MB
Windows Vista 32-Bit

[chief1983]

Is he using the newest drivers?  Nvidia is still ironing out bugs in theirs as well, and I doubt each card is going to get the same fixes and boosts with each new driver set.

[Sphynx]

I'm actually running an Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS with the latest drivers on a dual-core Pentium with 2 Gigs of RAM, and still see the problem. Gevatter Lars of the Saga team has also noticed it, and he's running a similar rig. Also, my brother who has similar (but weaker) hardware has noticed it.

[chief1983]

It looks like both companies still have some bugs to iron out in their drivers.  Unless there's something the SCP code is doing that Vista doesn't like, but I'm still betting it's the card's OpenGL support in Vista to blame.

[MentalPower]

Just out of curiosity, why are you discontinuing D3D support?

[chief1983]

Not enough coders to work on both.  OpenGL is cross platform, so requires the most of the effort, and D3D would only be useful to windows users.  No one wants to code D3D fixes, so it's being removed.  That's what I've read anyway.

[Turey]

Just out of curiosity, why are you discontinuing D3D support?

If you want to code D3D support for us, go ahead. Otherwise, there's more important things to be done with the limited number of coders available.

[Sphynx]

It looks like both companies still have some bugs to iron out in their drivers.  Unless there's something the SCP code is doing that Vista doesn't like, but I'm still betting it's the card's OpenGL support in Vista to blame.

Actually, I'm running XP.

[jr2]

...And you have the latest drivers?  Yea, I just checked, you said you were...hmm.
What version of OGL does FS use, anybody?  2.0?  VS DX 8?  or was it DX 5?  I would expect the DX8 would work faster, but with the graphics not looking as nice as FS running in OGL with the proper command line switches... (if you need them, I can look them up for you).