[Selectah]

Oi y'all (mainly Bobboau, I guess),

Where can yours truly find the latest and greatest Aurora POF editor? I've been looking, but all the links seem to be dead. I had it once upon a blue moon, but I lost it due to a double hard drive failure a long, long, looong time ago. Now I seemingly miss it. For old times' sake, I guess.

Cordially,
~Selectah

[Bobboau]

it's dead, use PCS2, if you were a fan of Aurora you'll find many similarities to it, except it's a lot more stable and has a model converter built in. you can get the most recent posable build in my sig.

[Selectah]

Thank you Bobboau,

Okay, I'll try rummaging thru my Olde CD Stacketh once more to see if I can find it. Cheers anyway.

Cordially,
~Selectah

[Bobboau]

no, seriously, you don't need it, just get PCS2, it's got all the features of Aurora and PCS and anything else that has ever existed and then some. it makes Aurora look silly and childish, and that's coming from the guy who wrote it. if there is ANY thing from Aurora that is not in PCS2 tell me and I'll pop it in post haste.

[Selectah]

It's cool, Bobboau. Thanks for the reply. I'll dust off my CD's and commence looking. I might still have it somewhere. Don't worry, I'll find it. PCS2 is surely cool and that. Cheers for the ongoing development. PCS2 is, however, slow as a glacier on Prozac™ on my system, that's why I'm looking for Aurora. Auto-create shields is one thing I'd like to see, btw.

Cordially,
~Selectah

[Snail]

Auto-create shields would be really handy.

Incomprehensibly,
~Snail

[Kazan]

PCS2 is, however, slow as a glacier on Prozac™ on my system, that's why I'm looking for Aurora.

are you confusing PCS1 with PCS2?

PCS1 = OMG I'M A CPU HOGGING WHORE when the render window is on
PCS2...not so much

[Bobboau]

have you tried PCS2? it is a bit slower, granted, but it shouldn't be unusably so.

[Selectah]

PCS2 is, however, slow as a glacier on Prozac™ on my system, that's why I'm looking for Aurora.

Yes.

Perpetually,
~Selectah

[Vasudan Admiral]

System specs?
If this is happening in spite of a good enough machine, then it's a bug and to get it fixed you will actually have to report it.

Never ever refuse to use a piece of open source software because of a bug if you haven't reported that bug, or at least made sure someone else has already reported it.
Otherwise the poor devs get blamed for not fixing the bugs no-one ever told them about.

As good as Aurora was, PCS2 is better in every way now, so you should make sure it works for you.

[Selectah]

Thank you all for heartily for your replies.

The slowness is happening because my compie, and I'm really just looking for Aurora. I'm not trying to get PCS2 to work on my compie, I'm looking for Aurora.

Where can yours truly find the [...] Aurora POF editor?

Cordially,
~Selectah

I'm looking for Aurora.

Cordially,
~Selectah

Don't worry y'all, I'll find it eventually. Consider this issue dead. Thank y'all for keeping the FreeSpace community alive and kicking, especially you guys who keep coming up with new and improved tools and whatnot. Keep up the good work.

Cordially,
~Selectah

[Bobboau]

well, I'm trying to get PCS2 to work on your computer, please help me. you can consider PCS2 to be the successor to both PCS and Aurora. (now that I think about it the icon I made looks like a hybrid between PCS's and Aurora's)

exactly how is it slow, is it the rendering or is everything just slow, I have plans for some significant improvements to rendering speed, but if the UI is slow, I need to work on that.

[Selectah]

Yo Bobboau,

Ya, the UI is slooo-o-o-ooo-o-ooo-ooow. Frankly, it's too slow to be useful. Sure, I'm working on a 266 MHz Pentium right now, but I've tried it on 2000 MHz boxes as well, and it's painfully slow. Don't worry tho, I already got Aurora (cheers, you lot, I knew I could count on you), so I'm happy as a clam.

Cordially,
~Selectah

[Vasudan Admiral]

Mate, are you even fully reading these responses?
PCS2 is better than Aurora.

Bobboau, the developer behind Aurora and now one half of the PCS2 team is trying to help you get PCS2 working properly on your machine. To do that, he's gonna need more information than 'it's slow'. Especially now that you've said you tried it on a 2Ghz machine, because it means something is possibly wrong with PCS2.

Is it the 3d render window that is slow? Is it that all the buttons respond slowly? Does it happen even before a model is loaded? If not, what model are you loading that causes it? Did it happen in the same way when you tried it on the 2Ghz machine? Stuff like that is really nessecary if you want them to be able to fix it.

What you're currently doing - by using Aurora and completely ignoring PCS2, means 1) no-one gets the problem fixed, 2) you yourself don't get the power and features of PCS2 and 3) you're indirectly insulting PCS2 by implying that it's not worth the small effort it would take to give a proper bug report. It's silly!

Sorry to sound like this, but I do feel quite strongly about this kinda thing with open source stuff - please post something more descriptive here or in Mantis so the issue can be addressed? It doesn't take much and could end up benefiting everyone.

[Kazan]

PCS2 is literally the usability of Modelview and Aurora squared with the power of PCS1 cubed.  Bob has done a very damn good job with the UI, way better of a job I could ever hope to have the patience to do and at the same time pretty much what i had envisioned the UI to be.   I have to get around to coding ONE feature and we're going to RC builds - i'm taking a break from PCS2 for a few days and working on the SCP and i think bob is straight out taking a break - but it'll be done soon.

We need to know what exactly is slow about it because I run a Athlon 64 x2 4200+ w/ 2GB of ram and a Radeon X1900XT - there used to be some really slow parts of conversion but those have been sped up (conversion is still slower than PCS1, but it's also a hell of a lot more accurate) - i think bob has a similiarily beefy system.  However if i run it on my Mobile Athlon XP 2800+ 512MB ram and no-HTL video card it still runs reasonably fast.. a bit of slowness when first loading and when using the open file dialog but then i was running it over the network so it was doing network file lookups.

[Bobboau]

I'm in the middle of coding in that little undo thing people have been asking for. so I'm not takeing a break, though I've been fairly busy the last few days, and I got sort of bogged down trying to make a better convex polygon filter (I think I'm pretty close)

if he's on a 266 I can see how it could be slow, but I can't imagine Aurora would be much better there. but on a 2 ghz machine it should run fine (that's what I use basicly)

I hope he is aware that Aurora was abandoned due to the fact that there was a rather nasty bug I couldn't quite fix that made any model it opened virtually unusable in game. it would **** over some header data, MOI and most importantly the model radius.

[Selectah]

Thank you all for your responses to my tinyesque query.

While I appreciate the effort(s) and the time that has gone into making PCS2 a fine piece of coded instructions, I believe it's time for a verbose response a la Selectah:

Mate, are you even fully reading these responses?

Yes, I am. I am literate and I possess the mental faculties required to both internalize and ameliorate the denotative semiosis of the replies.

PCS2 is better than Aurora.

What "better" means in any given context is subjective and thus governed by both value theory and the pragmatic maxim. When stating "PCS2 is better than Aurora", you -- dear Vasudan Admiral -- are not presenting any meter by which to judge this subjective "betterness". What I am left with is simply an axiom: "[the presented instant] is better [by arbitrary evaluation] than [any other instant]". This, I gather you agree, does not help me. At all.

When I've tried to use PCS2 on my current rig, the performance of the software is slow to the point of being non-functional for the purposes I employed it for; mainly writing down the data of the given model. Nothing more, nothing less.

Is it the 3d render window that is slow?

Slower than GWB's brain.

Is it that all the buttons respond slowly?

Those are just fine.

Does it happen even before a model is loaded?

Nope.

If not, what model are you loading that causes it?

Any and all.

What you're currently doing - by using Aurora and completely ignoring PCS2, means 1) no-one gets the problem fixed,

I quite sincerely believe I must be in the absolute minority in the FS community demographics. I'm using (subjectively) old gear -- what with 266 MHz CPU's, 8 MB Voodoo cards from the 90's, etc, etc -- and I'm of the opinion that hardware limitations should dictate the functionality, not software needs. Et cetera. Meaning, of course, if it doesn't work on a (say) 800 MHz rig w/ 16 MB of GFX RAM, it's no longer interesting to me.

I am a luddite, I am. Pertinacious. Stubborn. Mulish. Hardheaded. Obstinate.

2) you yourself don't get the power and features of PCS2 and

I seemingly have no need for all the functionality imbedded into that fine piece of code.

3) you're indirectly insulting PCS2 by implying that it's not worth the small effort it would take to give a proper bug report.

While I can appreciate your stance, suffice it to say that you and I have remarkedly different concepts regarding insults.

It's silly!

I hear you.

Sorry to sound like this, but I do feel quite strongly about this kinda thing with open source stuff

Noted. I do not for a second doubt your veracity.

please post something more descriptive here or in Mantis so the issue can be addressed?

The issue is probably one of having a not-up-to-speed rig (see above).

If I recall correctly, I only asked for a file. That's all I did. How that can be construed as insulting a community, is beyond me.

It doesn't take much and could end up benefiting everyone.

I understand your point of view. However, please do not doubt my veracity when I for the record state that solving any and all of my "problems" would hardly do the community any good. I sincerely believe those efforts are better focused elsewhere. The community has done -- and continue to do -- a brilliant job with the FreeSpaceOpen project. The on-going efforts to bring all players, within or outside the community, the absolutely finest SciFi simulation experience is an endeavour worthy of applause and recognition, and is yet another testament to human perseverance. You are the best of the best, the creme de la creme. Keep up the brilliant work.

In humble admiration,
~Selectah

[Vasudan Admiral]

Thank you - just that expansion of the problem - that it happens with any model, doesn't happen before a model is loaded, and that the buttons themselves are not slow, pretty much indicates that it is just a matter of the 3d capabilities of the rig it's being used on. (One more question to confirm it - the 2Ghz machine; do you know what graphics card it had?)

What we were more worried (or me anyway) about here is if the interface itself was slow even before models are loaded, which could imply memory leaks, endless loops or something out of the ordinary going on in your case that hasn't yet been encountered elsewhere.

And yeah, sorry I came on a bit too strongly, but my reasoning is this: I know from experience (briefly trying to mod freelancer years back) that if I had first started out modding in a new engine, and the supposed primary modders tool of that community ran as you originally described - slow to the point of uselessness, it'd strongly discourage me from continuing to learn to mod that particular engine. Since the FS modding community is already relatively small, the last thing we'd want is to scare newbies off with something like that happening.

Another part of the reasoning was that I have now a number of times in the past seen cases where some coder will code an app or a new feature that has great potential and then ask for testers. None or too few come forward and in time the coder moves on to other stuff, and a catch-22 situation arises where no-one uses the feature because it's too buggy, so the coder has none of the test data they need in order to fix the bugs!

[Kazan]

it is not subjective that PCS2 is better than Aurora - PCS2 doesn't corrupt models, aurora does.

As for the renderer being slow.. if the PCS2 renderer is slow how are you playing FS2 at all?

[Selectah]

it is not subjective that PCS2 is better than Aurora - PCS2 doesn't corrupt models, aurora does.

Au contraire, dear Kazan, to state that something is "better" is, for better or for worse, subjective. To state that Aurora corrupts models is objective. But I understand what you mean.

(Ah, don't you hate it when someone (me in this instance) picks nits? But hey, I've been told that everyone loves a Smart Alec™.)

how are you playing FS2 at all?

FreeSpace 2 retail. Works on a 200 MHz rig. No probs. FreeSpace 1 works on a 486. And yes, I still have one of those, too. Yah, I think it's pretty apparent by now that I'm not a techno geek. If it does what I want it to, why upgrade? In other words; if it's not broken, don't fix it.

Cordially,
~Selectah