[asyikarea51]

Granted I have not touched FSO in forever, and damage/degradation over time across all the storage media I have might add on to the issue, but...

So I copied what's left over of my crap-messy install (i think only retail is left of it + own abandoned table-only mods) from an old laptop to my new PC on Win 10, I get it running on some old 3.7.1/2(?) build and the FPS is 500-something although guns fire oddly slow. But when I switch to a 3.7.3 AVX nightly, the weapons fire normally but the FPS just tanks straight down to 5-20FPS with crazy spiking, and this is on retail missions retail data. And the view is as though the top half of the screen is normal, while the bottom half is darker with a very visible cut-off line.

"Intelgrated" 530 (which I am making do since I don't have a dedicated gfx yet. Well it does run some other things fine... must be DirectX domination)

This caused by purely messed up files somewhere? Or W10 and an obsolete Launcher (registry issues on that)? Or something else? I won't bother with logs / screens etc for this, seems better to start over from scratch, but just want to know what's going on.

[niffiwan]

Shadows were added in 3.7.3; if you have an Intelgrated then that's probably the cause of the framerate tanking. There should be an option to disable them in the launcher.

[asyikarea51]

Wow that helped a lot, and the dark bottom half went too. Now it's within the 320 mark, me guessing there has to be a few other things I need to switch off for it to hit the 500 mark?

And either something went bork with my install, or I simply forgot how fast (or how slow) a Fire Wait of 0.2 really is.

EDIT: okay, so if I cap the FPS, the Subach seems to fire normally, but if i let the engine run free at 470+ it slows down? 

[AdmiralRalwood]

EDIT: okay, so if I cap the FPS, the Subach seems to fire normally, but if i let the engine run free at 470+ it slows down? 

The obvious solution is to disable -no_fps_capping (and/or -no_vsync). No, seriously; it was originally a hidden commandline parameter, but it wound up getting added to the list of options exported to the launcher during the 3.7.1 nightly cycle. It's not intended for normal usage, and weird things can happen as a result of enabling it (presumably timer abnormalities as a result of the extremely low amount of time passing between frames).

EDIT: Also, the other thing slowing down your framerate compared to before would probably be deferred lighting, but there's no reason to disable it if you're getting triple-digit FPS with it on.

[asyikarea51]

Hrmm, I always thought the vsync/FPS cap options (or at least one of them) had been there from even before 3.7.1. Was mainly out to see what option does what, slows down what, etc. 

One big jump from a laptop 520MX, and to some extent the destroyed ATI 5970 before that (in terms of generation), caught me off-guard when I gave the 530 a go at the old stuff I'm usually playing.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Hrmm, I always thought the vsync/FPS cap options (or at least one of them) had been there from even before 3.7.1.

Oh, -no_vsync has been exported to the launcher for forever; I said "it" to mean -no_fps_capping; if I meant both, I would've said "they". But without -no_fps_capping, -no_vsync will still run into a limit of... 120 FPS, IIRC. I just mentioned it because removing it from your commandline would obviously result in a framerate cap again.

[asyikarea51]

So anyways, regardless of what happens, in any... e.g. standard gaming / FRED mission testing scenario, do I keep it hard-capped at 60 because of the timer?

When I was on worse systems back then I unlocked the vsync (assuming the cap only came from 3.7.1 onwards as you say) because somehow IIRC capping it down made it difficult to play... at least for me, especially gun aiming since it slows down for smooth frames and I'm not good a player. I still run these old laptops though, so hardcap at 60... oh well. <--- neutral

The last set of MediaVPs I could run on the two old laptops I had access to was pretty much 3.6.9 with the FPS never reaching 30 anyway.

[General Battuta]

Why not turn off vsync but not use no-fps-capping? Then you can play at 120.

[asyikarea51]

Does timer/weapons etc go nuts in some way even between 60 and 120? lol sounding like a total n00b here, this is probably something that affects almost any game especially the really old ones.

But I take it that stuff like that shouldn't be happening, since it's you suggesting it... I dunno, you keep your frames locked somehow when you test-run your FREDded stuff, right?

[General Battuta]

120 should be safe, as far as I know.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I don't see the point in subjecting yourself to screen tearing just so your FPS counter hits triple digits, but hey; you want what you want, you do you.

[asyikarea51]

The FPS cap part was mainly for the older/obsolete laptops. Right now on this desktop I'm keeping the caps on but with as many things disabled as possible since I don't have anything besides retail and maybe INFR1 at this point. I'm not some crazy FPS-seeking nut, okay! It's the situation!

That said I think this thread's served its purpose, so thanks guys. Don't know if I can actually do anything worthwhile with FSO nowadays though, don't really have the time for it anymore. I haven't touched it since my completely pointless playthrough of the initial release of BP:WiH (how many 5-mission skips was that, getting wasted on just Medium)...