Command Room lag on GWX 2.0

[Sirkam]

Hi guys (im a new one :p ), i have a bug to report...

Sometimes, the Command Room have a lag (from 80-90 fps to 20-18 fps).
I tried the first single mission and this bug appeared when i have close with the convoy. But the lag dissapear in a few minutes (even standing close with the convoy again). Is it a bug?
My specs are P4 775 3,2 Ghz, 2Gb Ram DDR400, GF 7600GT.

[Pablo]

Hi guys (im a new one :p ), i have a bug to report...

Sometimes, the Command Room have a lag (from 80-90 fps to 20-18 fps).
I tried the first single mission and this bug appeared when i have close with the convoy. But the lag dissapear in a few minutes (even standing close with the convoy again). Is it a bug?
My specs are P4 775 3,2 Ghz, 2Gb Ram DDR400, GF 7600GT. Hi!

It is not a bug - It sounds like the game is loading all the ships in the convoy and setting up their 3D models. Once they are loaded and their models are set up, the game does not have to load them again and so the lag does not appear again.

Pablo

[Sirkam]

Ok, i thought it is a bug (the lag is only in the command room, outside runs fine).
I'll try other missions without convoy's to view the results.
And another question, the load times of GWX are eternal (compared with the stock SH3), Is it normal?

[danlisa]

Yes, everything you mention is normal.

Once you have the 'lag' once and al the textures & models are loaded, you will not get it again in any view. They have been loaded into the games/PC's memory.

[melendir]

Ok, i thought it is a bug (the lag is only in the command room, outside runs fine).
I'll try other missions without convoy's to view the results.
And another question, the load times of GWX are eternal (compared with the stock SH3), Is it normal?

I have SH3 patched to v1.4b and GWX 2 installed.
I too have very long load time when starting patrol. I think it's because of all the extra material.
But I don't mind, because once it's loaded, it's all joy :D

[Sirkam]

Thanks Pablo. I have more questions for you :arrgh!:

I activated the Mod "Merged campaign"...What is it?
The next version of GWX (2.1) will be compatible with the spanish traduction of GWX 2.0 (made by the 24Th Flotilla team)?
How can i enable the position icon (the orange icon) when the sub is sumerged?

[Turm]

I will beg to differ on the command room lag issue. I have a fairly low spec PC now (Athlon XP3000, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, 1.5GB RAM) and often have lag in the command room. I also experience it on the bridge. (And occasionally in a storm when looking through the scope, but I think that's the extra wave textures' fault).

Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a feeling it's down to the crew uniforms or general resolution increase of textures. For example, loading a fresh save in a storm. All the watch crew wear regular clothes (old bug). Framerate is very sluggish and laggy. If I swap the crew so they're all wearing their identical heavy weather gear, the frame rates come back up to normal. Also if I remove a crewman or two from the bridge all is back to normal. So I'm assuming it's due to the variety and resolution of the crew uniforms in my case, due to my card struggling. Happens at any time, no matter if I am near a convoy or not. Also happens in the training missions when the loading time is short (hence not all .mis layers loaded I guess). After playing for a long time when the memory is more used up, it tends to be a little worse, naturally.

I use 2x AA, which makes the difference. Without it I have almost no lag, but I have ugly graphics which make for ugly screenshots, so I can't bear to switch it off!

I think I'll try lowering the res of the crew uniforms, assuming Paint Shop Pro will cope with any layers and transparencies that might exist. I'm not experienced in the ins and outs of .tga files.

[Abd_von_Mumit]

I have a fairly low spec PC now (Athlon XP3000, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, 1.5GB RAM).
This is low, you say? :hmm: So mine is stone-era one. :damn:

[HW3]

I activated the Mod "Merged campaign"...What is it?


That adds the Black Sea and Indian Ocean campaign files to the sim which will make for longer load times. If you are not doing any missions to those areas, uninstalling the Merged Campaign should decrease your load times somewhat.

[Sirkam]

Thanks :D . I'll unistall the Merged campaign. I realized myself that the new ocenan waves have a "blank" zones than the older ones can't have.
And Can i activate the orange position icon that still missing?

[Turm]

I have a fairly low spec PC now (Athlon XP3000, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, 1.5GB RAM).
This is low, you say? :hmm: So mine is stone-era one. :damn:
It's not the slowest PC ever, but these days it's rather far behind. Until recently I only had 768MB; minimal for running SH3 + GWX and rather painful. It's about 3 years old now.

I'm a bit of an eye-candy addict, so I can't bear to turn down the particle density or the anti-aliasing.

I'm curious - how well does the game run on your machine & what is it? If it's a lot worse than mine how do you manage to play? :hmm:

For me, the framerate goes from smooth (60-80fps) to very sluggish (<20). The thing is, when other games run at around 20fps they are a little jerky but still playable (Flight Simulator would be one example), but when SH3 gets down to 20fps it's incredibly laggy, sluggish and rather unplayable. Quite different! I don't quite understand what causes it or how to fix it. But I will try lowering the texture resolution of the crew when I get time.

[snwcrsh]

Turm, that's interesting what you say. I have a *very* slow spec system, A 1,7 MHz Pentium M with 2 Gigabyte RAM (only 1 being cached!) with a crappy onboard Radeon Mobility M.

In almost all 3D screens the frame rate is displayed as being below 20. But I dont believe it. Actually it's pretty smooth (I can move the view on the bridge with no bothersome lag, even with ships & smoke in view).

I remember that in Enemy Territory a framerate of below 20 was not playable at all. The only thing which is kinda annoying is that mouse lag: If the mouse is a pointer it really behaves like it's framelagged. That's especially bad when you try to set up the whiz wheel in OLC GUI).

But apart from that SH3/GWX is very playable for me on my low spec notebook.

[danlisa]

Firstly, GWX's graphics are as optimised as we can make them while keeping image clarity. Ship skins are at 512x512, Aircraft are 512x512, the player boats are 1024x1024. So, you could try to reduce them further but you will lose quality.

The biggest FPS killer in SH3 is AA & AF. AA = The smoothing of jaggies & AF = Quality at distance. Now, if you don't like jaggies, your only option is to reduce the AF which will help alot.

On most GFX cards there is 4 stages of AF and if you imagine breaking the SH3 visible environment into 4 distinct stages, close, close medium, far medium & far, can you understand the rendering GPU usage with AA turned up and AF on full. Effectively meaning no jaggies & best texture quality on all objects viewed/rendered at the furthest distance you can see. So, pull it back a bit on the AF.;) The effects of reducing AF are most noticable when using the F12 view and at high altitude, however it's hardly noticable on the bridge view.

Now, just to throw this into the mix, there is a very strange occurance in SH3 that when looking (even in open sea, with no other vessels) at a certain bearing (in U-Boat or not) there is a very noticable FPS hit. For example, I can run at full AA & AF with 100-120 FPS but if I look to the horizon on this specific bearing, my FPS will drop by 20-30.:-? It's even worse when rendering 15m/s winds & high waves. Many people have tried to track the reason down but nothing has ever been found.

[Turm]

Thanks for the post, danlisa. I don't care much for AF - only helps when looking along the length of the boat so the holes in the side of the casing don't become a blur - but 2x AA is nearly essential for me. It makes a huge graphical improvement with little difference to performance in practically all games. 4x on the other hand is quite a killer and not worthwhile on my card.

To be honest, the only reason I haven't well-tested different settings is due to the time it takes to load SH3. I don't mind the load times at all (just 1 min to the menu + 2-3 minutes to campaign), but for graphics testing it's a bit of a nuisance. That said... I think I can change settings on the go with Alt-Tabbing :hmm:

I don't want to reduce the ship/aircraft/U-boat texture quality. After all there's only one U-boat and convoys don't pose such a problem for me either (maybe a little slow down, but no view/mouse lag). The command room is the main problem and no ships are rendered there. Due to the 'specific bearing causing lower frame rates' issue you mentioned, I feel the crew might be responsible. They're the only consistent thing through all the scenes. Ah, must be Bernard :doh:

I'll try to do a little testing later and post back if I find anything useful - don't hold your breath ;)

[snwcrsh]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is AF & AA (anti aliasing?) and where do I change that?

[Jimbuna]

Thanks :D . I'll unistall the Merged campaign. I realized myself that the new ocenan waves have a "blank" zones than the older ones can't have.
And Can i activate the orange position icon that still missing?

Welcome aboard Sirkam http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

I'm not sure if your queury for the orange icon (UMark.tga) has been answered. Just in case your not yet sorted, here is a link to it:

http://files.filefront.com/UMarktga/;6543635;/fileinfo.html

Download it and copy and paste it into: C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\GWX 2\data\Misc.....overwriting any files if prompted http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/thumbsup.gif

[Turm]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is AF & AA (anti aliasing?) and where do I change that? They are normally changed in the advanced section of your graphics drivers, or sometimes from the icon in your system tray near the clock if there is one, but basically in a non-technical sense:

AA = anti-aliasing = smoothing of pixels on the screen around [usually] 3D objects, to remove the 'stepped' appearance
AF = anisotropic filtering = improves the clarity of textures on a surface when viewed from shallow angles, preventing it becoming too blurry

For more details and some example images check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti_aliasing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filtering


Right, now all the chores are done I'm off to tinker with SH3 and graphics settings.

[Sirkam]

Thanks Jimbuna :sunny: .

[Jimbuna]

Your welcome http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/thumbsup.gif

[Thomas Ravick]

GVX 2.0 is extremely slow. It is nice and decent but crashes all the time. Game became very unstable especially when you attack ships in convoy or in port. There is no fun waiting 10-15 min to load the game up. All improvements are great but game just does not run properly. I spent around £2000 for my laptop and I am quite experienced using it. This game just does not work for me and I rather play it with its latest original patch Mediterranean than any GVX add-ons. I got 27 patrols so far.

Best regards,
Tom R

[Penelope_Grey]

Your computer obviously can't handle GWX.

Pity. My laptop runs it perfectly.:hmm:

[danlisa]

GVX 2.0 is extremely slow. It is nice and decent but crashes all the time. Game became very unstable especially when you attack ships in convoy or in port. There is no fun waiting 10-15 min to load the game up. All improvements are great but game just does not run properly. I spent around £2000 for my laptop and I am quite experienced using it. This game just does not work for me and I rather play it with its latest original patch Mediterranean than any GVX add-ons. I got 27 patrols so far.

If you have a copy of SH3 & the MED expansion ( :nope: ) and then put GWX over it, it will crash all the time.

If it's just a case of system instability after correctly loading GWX, increase your paging file (aka Virtual RAM).

It's all very good saying you spent £2000 on a laptop but what's the specs? It's quite easy to buy a laptop for that much but monetary value is not an indication system resources.

[Jimbuna]

Welcome aboard Thomas http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

£2000 for a laptop and a preference for the Med add-on eh....I admire your candor http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/thumbsup.gif

[Sailor Steve]

Thomas Ravick, WELCOME ABOARD!:sunny:

I was going to post a quote from the SHIII manual about laptop cards not being supported, but some people do run the game quite well, including, from PG's example, GWX.

I have a Radeon 9600 card, but only 512MB of RAM, of which only 256MB is cached. Some graphics mods reduce my game to an unacceptable 12 FPM or less, but normally I get 30, even in GWX's harbors. My game also loads in 5-7 minutes, which is long but I can live with it. I also get extreme lag and jerkiness in the control room, but only for the first couple of minutes after the game starts. Once everything is loaded I can play it without complaints.

My upgrade is just around the corner, though.

[Thomas Ravick]

Hi guys,

Once again I would like to say that GVX 2.0 is great because it brings lots of things that do not exist in original game. It works but the time you spend on waiting is ridicules. I tried to study this game against U-boats by Clair Blair and other works related to WWII. I myself missed lots of things in SSIII and was always wonder how stupid developer was. Add-on is great but not professional and not fully integrated into an original game. Idea is good but still everything slows down dramatically. Maybe one day someone will realise that there is a need to create a remake SS5. Maybe then player will be able to shoot survivors or take prisoners or just help them. Germans did it few times and on the Pacific killing survivors was a rule against crazy Japes. Will see what happens next. I am sorry GVX 2.0 sucks. Aces of the Deep was far better than the original SS3.

Best regards,
Tom

[Sailor Steve]

The long loading times happen because of SHIII's design, which wasn't really the fault of the developers either, because they probably had no idea how much the modders were going to try to add. They learned from their mistakes, though, and SH4 has divided up the way things load, so it's faster, and with the U-boat Add-On out it won't be much time before SH4 has a full Atlantic u-boat campaign as well, along with its better graphics and crew management.

I'm sorry GWX sucks for you as well, but it doesn't suck for me, so I don't sympathize too much.

[Jimbuna]

GVX may well....'suck'. But I'm confident GWX doesn't http://imgcash3.imageshack.us/img412/4774/thumbsuplargeon1.gif

[Marko_Ramius]

Hi Thomas,

Really, you should buy a decent rig, and you will see that SH3 GWX doesn't sucks :o

If the mod doesn't run well on your machine, i'm sorry, really. But please, be kind to admit what really sucks ..


Anyway, Welcome on board :cool:

[Sirkam]

Welcome aboard comrade.
What are your specs?
SH3+GWX2.0 runs fine for me (I have a P4 3,2Ghz LGA775; 2Gb RAM DDR400 and a GF 7600GT 256Mb).
The loading time is normal because the game have a lot of ships, aircraft, subs, the campaign upgrades, etc...).
Maybe...Did you upgrade your video drivers?

[Azrael Valedhel]

£2000? It's a heck lot of money... My rig is hardly worth 1/4 of this sum (pc, not a laptop) and SHIII+GWX2.1 is working like a charm (besides "never-ending" loading times^^ But at least I have the time to make myself a tea (or coffee even better, as I use my pc mostly at night).

You really should try it out on some other hardware, it's far better than stock SHIII overall. Are you sure you installed it "the proper" way? Also:

If you have a copy of SH3 & the MED expansion ( :nope: ) and then put GWX over it, it will crash all the time.

If it's just a case of system instability after correctly loading GWX, increase your paging file (aka Virtual RAM).

It's all very good saying you spent £2000 on a laptop but what's the specs? It's quite easy to buy a laptop for that much but monetary value is not an indication system resources.
I don't know much about the Med expansion, but the GWX instalation notes are pretty much simple about the version - "vanilla" SHIII installation patched to 1.4b. So I would guess it's the expansion that is incompatible with GWX mod is causing trouble.
All other quoted statements are true, in the meaning, you could have troubles 'cause of not enough page file size, or because your laptop is overprised (or it's great, but not that great ;) ). As for me, I wouldn't buy a laptop for playing any game, for working or surf the net while in travel - yes, but playing games? Noo...
But what do I know, I'm just a landratte ;)

Btw, I never experienced Command Room lag... Yes, in harbour after loading save game its a pain for a few seconds, but when all the objects are loaded to memory then its okay.