Slow frame rate in Penang port

[Sirkam]

I decided to start a career in the German side. When i am docked, i turn the view to the right and i have a horrible poor performance. Is it normal? (however, never i started a career before).

[Fortune]

Same problem here. In all axis ports. When I look towards the village/harbour(those old and chinese(?) looking houses) the framerate decreases dramatically. But the weird thing is when I keep looking towards the village and move my "head" a little bit, the framerate gets back to a normal level for harbours after 10-20s. Just like nothing happened.

My System:
Athlon A64-3000+@3,5Ghz
2GB Ram
Sapphire HD2600XT
Windows XP-Pro

Runs fine with all turned on + 4xAA/8xAS, even in harbours.

[Sirkam]

My specs are similar: Happend the same thing in allied harbours?

P4 3,2 GHZ (LGA775 2Mb Caché L2).
2Gb RAM DDR400.
GF 7600GT 256Mb.

[Rockin Robbins]

I thought it was just something us owners of lowly graphics cards experienced, but an owner of a shiny nVidia 8800GT, said no, it came with being in port. It's the increase in objects your computer has to keep track of at one time that the slowdown occurs. The most congested place is a harbor, so that is where we see the slowdowns. You can help it a little, and this applies to fleet boats and U-Boats.

Turn off your radar. That will cut the number of contacts greatly. Reduce time compression. There's nothing like the resounding crash of entering a harbor at 2048x with your controls frozen and that look of horror on your face won't save you!:rotfl:Other than that, slowdowns there are a fact of live. That's why originally harbors were so empty. The slowdowns are due to populating the harbors in response to players' complaints.

Must be hell to be a developer.:doh: Hat's off to all of them!:up:

[EAGLE_01]

3.4 Dual, 8800GTX 768, getting around 80 FPS there in Panang harbour, free cam, on the bridge, wherever. I'd look elsewhere for your bottleneck...:down:

[Rockin Robbins]

And an 8800GT owner reports slowdown as well. Of course with high-falootin' graphics cards, slowdown has a whole new meaning, like 80 fps! We're running about 30 fps in open ocean in bridge view and more like 25 with the 7600GT. A slowdown from there is a different situation.

Please reflect that people with modest equipment buy enough games to make them profitable. Without those players, those of you with high end cards would have no games to play. Hardcore gamers are a minority that cannot economically support game companies, even though they are prepared to spend more money.

[Wilcke]

I think its normal to go down to 20-25 FPS in ports like Penang. My rig is about 3 years old and I run a BFG 7950 GT OC, I am not shooting mutant spiders here so I don't need 150fps. You can always back off on the LODs and that other slider in Graphics Options, which I do, I really dont care what the docks look in fact I just bypass that and start at sea, I really like that option.

Plus, what are you doing hanging around the harbors, get out on patrol!:up:

I plan on building a super rig as soon as I hear that Knights of the Sky is coming out or SOW: Battle of Britain, till then pfffffffffffffffffffft the Frame Rates.

[peewee]

I have an Nvidia 6600gt. I can play the american side fine.......slows down a little when theres lots of stuff around like in ports but otherwise ok. To give you an example, I played a single mission where you intercept a japanese fleet, Palawan Passage? ON THE SURFACE just to see what happened and there was hardly any loss of frame rate at all. when I try to play the u boat missions its virtually impossible.......frame rates below 12. I wonder if its the old 'spray and limber holes' problem again........ or something to do with the type IX model..........it certainly isnt anything to do with the performance of the video card...............

[Wilcke]

I have an Nvidia 6600gt. I can play the american side fine.......slows down a little when theres lots of stuff around like in ports but otherwise ok. To give you an example, I played a single mission where you intercept a japanese fleet, Palawan Passage? ON THE SURFACE just to see what happened and there was hardly any loss of frame rate at all. when I try to play the u boat missions its virtually impossible.......frame rates below 12. I wonder if its the old 'spray and limber holes' problem again........ or something to do with the type IX model..........it certainly isnt anything to do with the performance of the video card...............

Now thats a challenge! Well done! 660GT wow!:up:

[peewee]

yup....of course I have ALL the settings on 'LOW' lol but I can carry out attacks against convoys both surfaced and submerged, go to the external camera, sail into and out of ports without any problems in the US game and I have various mods installed such as RSRD, 4 bladed props, betterscopes and so on....the german campaign is, however, a nono at the moment....impossible to play......

[letterboy1]

Are any of you using the PE mod? I experienced something similar when using PE with the camera mod that is included. I replaced the free cam with another one and the problem went away.

[peewee]

I'm not running any mods on my german game, what is the PE mod ?????

[Rockin Robbins]

I wouldn't worry about Pacific Environment! It's the replacement for Reflections on the Water environmental mod. It makes water look nicer, reworks reflections of everything, works up the sky to look really great, resizes the sun and moon to more accurate sizes and makes a mean taco when you get hungry!:rock:

I think I'd leave it alone with a 6600GT card though...

[peewee]

ah ok I know it, just couldn't make the connection when ppl use abbrv ........:D

so, it looks as though, if I want to play u boats its SH3 for me.............very odd that one half of the game works fine but the new half doesn't though.......

[Sirkam]

The better game to play with the german U-boats is SH3 + GWX 2.0 (and the 2.1 patch will be available soon):sunny:.
However, in allied harbours happend the same (slow downs)?

[peewee]

a little, yes but not to the same extent as in the uboat game. I can always start 'outside the harbour' and afetr moving away from shore go to just about any time compression I want but in the uboat game I cant do ANY compression above about 32 without the game locking up......also, if I go to external cam at normal time and just look at the u boat, it 'judders' along raher than moving smoothly and if I go on the bridge I can barely pan around to see the crew.....

Like someone else mentioned, SH3 with grey wolves is my uboat game of choice...

[peewee]

wow, 99 posts......just had to add this one to make it 100.......hahahahaha

[Sirkam]

Ok, for now i leave the German campaign until the 1.6 arrives.
Is it better starting "outside the harbour", isn't it?
And another more thing. If i sneak into a enemy harbour, the slowdowns appear once more?

[Fortune]

Normally not, at least not on my Computer. I only have this problem in the "new" harbours. Went to Mogadishu yesterday, and everything was fine.

[Rockin Robbins]

It is not a bug that makes SH4 work slower on your machines, it is the higher overhead with better graphics and physics. Version 1.6 if it comes, will only work the same, very slightly slower or very slightly faster than what we have now.

Silent Hunter 4 is just a more microprocessor and graphics card intensive game than SH3. That isn't going to change. But the save game issues SH3 had are not present here, and that alone makes me prefer SH4. It's painful to put weeks into a career that vanishes without a trace because the program got cranky. It ruined my enjoyment of SH3 and I'm only now getting interested again after nine months.

[Wilcke]

It is not a bug that makes SH4 work slower on your machines, it is the higher overhead with better graphics and physics. Version 1.6 if it comes, will only work the same, very slightly slower or very slightly faster than what we have now.

Silent Hunter 4 is just a more microprocessor and graphics card intensive game than SH3. That isn't going to change. But the save game issues SH3 had are not present here, and that alone makes me prefer SH4. It's painful to put weeks into a career that vanishes without a trace because the program got cranky. It ruined my enjoyment of SH3 and I'm only now getting interested again after nine months.

Just think if they get the bright idea to implement DX10!:sunny: I budget a PC rebuild about every 2-3 years, this next one is going to be expensive as I will be getting CPU/MOBO/GPU/PSU/MEM... yikes:nope: ...oh but get ready to see some nice used stuff on EBAY. Never OC'd!

This is my hobby and with a the amount of hours I spend on the PC I do not even want to deal with Frame Rate issues when it comes to flight sims. The rest of the games I could care less.