Author Topic: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!  (Read 6053 times)

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My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Hi there!

First off - wow. Awesome work on the release! Read about it in PC PowerPlay, and it's every bit as frakkin gorgeous as they said.
So - I want to play this really badly, but only got through the first mission so far because of a weird issue I'm stuck on trying to solve.

THE ISSUE:
My framerate drops to about 3 - 5 frames per second ONLY when I'm pressing glide OR afterburner, and ONLY when I have my TrackIR enabled!!!
To clarify - I'm running solidly at over 60FPS in all other situations (well I've only done the 2 tute missions and first real mission so far).
I can use the TrackIR and get great framerates, except when I press the glide or afterburner keys.
OR, I can not use my TrackIR, and get great framerates all the time (even when using glide or afterburner).
BUT - I can't use my TrackIR as well as use afterburner or glide - because the framerate drops to 3-5FPS.
(Sorry if I labored that point a bit - but it's pretty weird and confusing).

WHAT I'VE TRIED SO FAR:
- Dropping all detail settings to Low
- Turning on just about all the Troubleshooting flags
- Turning on a few of the Dev flags (including Running in Fullscreen Window)
- Turning off "Truevision" option in TrackIR software (whatever that is).

Has anyone else had this issue? My searches have turned up nothing.

Can anyone suggest a fix??? Really want to play this game with my TrackIR!

Thanks in advance,

artemis_80

PS: My probably-relevant system specs are:
- Intel i5-2500K OC'd 4.2GHz
- HD 6950 2GB (MSI Twin Frozr II)
- SSD 120GB
- HDD 500GB
- Windows 7 64 bit
- TrackIR 4:PRO with TrackClip:PRO, using TrackIR software version 5.1.3

 

Offline newman

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
That's quite a weird issue. Have you applied the Diaspora 1.0.3 patch? I also use trackIR with that identical software version and haven't experienced any such issues, but due to the fact most people don't have trackIR we weren't able to test it across a wide range of platforms. Probably won't help in this case but making sure all your trackIR drivers are up to date wouldn't hurt (or video drivers, as long as you're updating, though your problem doesn't sound like it has anything to do with that). I doubt any of this will be of much help, though - perhaps one of our code wizards will offer something more useful :)

Also, on which drive did you install Diaspora? Just grasping at straws here, but I'm wondering if it's possible your SSD drivers / firmware don't much like something between trackIR and Diaspora processes? This is really just a wild guess, though.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2012, 08:29:36 am by newman »
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 
Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Hi newman, thanks for your quick and considered reply!
In response to your questions:

I applied the 1.0.3 patch as soon as I installed Diaspora R1.

My TrackIR software is up to date (downloaded & installed it yesterday), but my video card drivers could do with an update. I'm running Catalyst 12.2 from March 2012.
I will do the ATI driver upgrade dance shortly (including registry cleans etc).

Both Diaspora and my TrackIR software are installed to my SSD (C:).

Here's hoping a coding guru can come to the rescue!

 
Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Meanwhile - other things I've tried to no avail:

- Uninstall TrackIR software 5.1.3, then tried installing version 4.1.038
- Setting TrackIR process to "High" and "Realtime" priorities using Task Manager
- Running TrackIR and Diaspora as Adminstrator
- Running TrackIR software in compatibility mode, for Windows 2000, and XP SP3

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
I'm at a loss for what could cause this. And since I don't have TrackIR myself I think this is one for Swifty.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

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Offline FUBAR-BDHR

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Could both be fighting for the same processor thus causing lag issues only when both are in use?
No-one ever listens to Zathras. Quite mad, they say. It is good that Zathras does not mind. He's even grown to like it. Oh yes. -Zathras

 

Offline newman

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
I think Diaspora would still work if you physically moved it off the SSD. It's a long shot, but at least it would either identify or eliminate the SSD as the culprit. I also have one, trackIR software runs off it (though I use trackIR 5, not 4) but Diaspora is installed on a standard hard drive.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 
Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Whoa! Not quite solved yet, but had a major breakthrough - big thanks to Fubar-bdhr and newman for posting things to try!!!
I think I've nailed down the cause, and a partial workaround, but not a full solution:

I was in the process of trying out Fubar-bdhr's suggestion that TrackIR and Diaspora might be fighting for the same processor (by setting processor affinities via Task Manager), when I realised something by accident - The FPS drop only occurs using glide & afterburner when I am HOLDING DOWN their keys on the keyboard!! It went away when I moved the afterburner button to the joystick, and switched glide to toggle mode (I was using "hold while pressed").
I also noticed that the FPS drop happens when I hold down ANY key on the keyboard - for instance, thrusters.
The problem goes away when I map the thrusters / glide / afterburner keys to my joystick.

So it appears to be some kind of conflict between my keyboard (or its driver) and the TrackIR!
Seriously, a big thanks newman and Fubar-bdhr for keeping my hope alive long enough to realise this - without your helpful suggestions, I'd have given up before ever finding out what the cause was.

Newman, you definitely haven't got this problem yourself? Just wondering if it's possible that if you don't have thrusters or glide/afterburn mapped to keyboard, you may have the problem but have never encountered it?

Next up, does anyone have any ideas on how to solve this apparent conflict between my keyboard and TrackIR?
I'm going to go investigate this issue myself at the same time, and will report back with what I find in the hope it helps some poor soul like me in future!

 
Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Further narrowed down the cause - and it gets weirder:

Have discovered that every time I hit any key on my keyboard at all, there is a tiny hitch/hiccup in framerate!
But - the hitches/hiccups appear to be longer/more noticeable when there's a lot happening on-screen (eg. when pointing at battlestars and flak clouds, as opposed to an asteroid).
(I discovered this by facing the battestars & flak clouds in the first mission "Flight", and then just kept repeatedly hitting T quickly to cycle through targets. Framerate looks terrible when I do that. But I didn't see the same apparent framerate hit when I was pointing towards the asteroid behind the theseus).

The reason that the framerate was dropping to 3-5 FPS when I held down any key was because of the keyboard echo / keyboard repeat! I altered the repeat rate to be less frequent (via Control Panel), and immediately saw the change reflected in the 'hiccup' frequency in-game.
(I now realise that in fact it wasn't technically the framerate that had dropped - it's more accurate to say that there were frequent micro-pauses inserted into each second, with smooth motion between each! This was much easier to observe/distinguish once I decreased the stutter frequency via keyboard repeat rate).

That's good news and bad - presumably I can somehow turn keyboard echo/repeat off completely, but the bad news is that I've realised I'm getting a hiccup/pause every time I press any key at all.
Strangely, I don't think this happens when I press buttons on my joystick - I will confirm via further testing when I'm next at my own PC.
And it definitely doesn't happen unless I have the TrackIR plugged in.

FYI - I have my TrackIR, keyboard, and joystick all plugged into USB ports directly on my motherboard at the back of my PC.

Newman - hopefully I'm not going to reveal something that you were blissfully unaware of to date - can you confirm that this doesn't happen with your TrackIR setup? If you just go into a mission with lots happening on-screen (like Flight), then rapidly hit any keyboard key, you should see very quickly whether it's happening or not.

Any thoughts on why this might be happening, or how to solve it?
Can anyone else with a TrackIR confirm they do / don't have this same issue (tiny hiccup in framerate with every keypress)?

 

Offline Echelon9

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Based on this testing, I'd estimate it is something due to polling / queries by the keyboard driver.

Is you keyboard one with fancy softkey features, any sort of ppjoy style macro's or overlay? An other background program that might be inspecting keypresses and then doing something accordingly with them?

Do you use the default Microsoft keyboard driver (probably over USB) or a third party one specific for your keyboard?

 
Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Echelon9 -

I use a very basic Logitech keyboard ("Classic New Touch 200"), with the default drivers that Windows 7 detects/installs/uses.
No macros or overlay, nothing fancy at all.

 
Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Well, I think I've finally got a solution, providing it's OK to do this: setting the FS2 Open process to use all 4 processors (via "Affinity" in Task Manager), instead of the default 1 processor.

I noticed that CPU affinity for the FS2 Open process was set to use CPU #1 only.
I set it to use all 4, and magically - the issue is gone. The framerate is smooth as a baby's head, regardless of what keys I press when.

 :D

I also did some searching to see why FS2 Open is automatically set to use only 1 CPU, and couldn't find anything conclusive.
Is it OK to set it like this? Or is something going to crash later on?

 
Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Just did another couple of missions, with everything running smooth as silk!!!

Seriously, awesome job on this release - only 4 missions in, and I'm totally hooked! Already looking forward to replaying it multiple times :).

Thanks to everyone who helped with replies!

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
I seem to remember it was set to use only one core because of issues similar to the one you experienced actually being caused by it running on multiple cores. But who knows, perhaps whatever was actually causing the issue got fixed by accident and we can remove that code.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Is there a command line flag that allows it to be set to all 4 processors? Currently I have to do the Task manager thing every time I run the game.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
No command line AFAIK. I suppose we could add one. In general we're against adding new command lines but this is one of the few things that could use one.

Assuming that restricting to one processor isn't vestigial code in the first place and no longer needed.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

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Offline Swifty

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Processor Affinity just means which processor the game engine process runs on. When you set Processor Affinity, it's just telling which processors FSO will be assigned to by Windows. It doesn't necessarily mean that FSO will be using all CPUs simultaneously, especially since FSO is single threaded.

I remember Taylor setting Processor Affinity to 2 so it wouldn't have to be shoehorned into the overcrowded CPU 1. If Processor Affinity for FSO was set to 1 for FSO, then it was likely it was charing cycles with TrackIR or whatever keyboard drivers that was consuming resources when you were holding down the afterburner/glide keys.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Yes but not setting the processor affinity allows Windows to make the decision about where to stick FSO. With luck it might not keep sticking it on the same one that has Track IR or the keyboard drivers on it.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 

Offline FUBAR-BDHR

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Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
If I recall it's set via registry entry and is binary with 2 being processor 1 (there were very few processors above dual core when the code was added).   There is a thread in the SCP forum with all the info.  It was set up because not setting it was causing issues with certain processors/chipsets. 

Heck there may even be an override.  I asked for one so more then 1 standalone could be run on the same system. 


Found the old thread explaining the registry entries:  http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=55990.0

So 0 doesn't set, 1 sets to core 0, 2 sets to next available core (either core 1 of processor 0 or processor 1 depending on the type of CPU). 

« Last Edit: October 23, 2012, 02:45:56 am by FUBAR-BDHR »
No-one ever listens to Zathras. Quite mad, they say. It is good that Zathras does not mind. He's even grown to like it. Oh yes. -Zathras

 
Re: My FPS drops to 3-5, ONLY DURING glide or afterburner usage ONLY with TrackIR!!
Thanks for the tip re: Registry entries.

Currently playing happily :)   No crashes or issues, and I'm about 6 missions in.

I'd be happy for this thread to be closed now.