Poor performance with the nav map

[Paul Riley]

One thing I have been concerned about lately is the poor performance experienced with the nav map,especially when zoomed in closer than about 1250km,where at 50m scale the map is practically unmovable,a serious problem when trying to plot a vessel's speed.I noticed this problem seemed to start as my campaign progressed,because early on the map was much faster at 50m scale.
Is this all due to higher traffic in the seas as the war progresses?,I seem to think it is.
My only solution at the minute is to try and take speed plots at 1250km scale,increasing the margin for error,but it doesnt seem too bad so far. :nope:
As far as system performance goes,I have a decent AGP card with the latest catalyst drivers,regularly perform daily maintenance on my system (clean all TEMP files etc),regularly defrag my HD...and so on.
I also disable virtual memory also,as I have enough RAM installed,and RAM is faster than virtual RAM,by a long way.
So,if anybody else has experienced this serious annoyance could they advise me on how to deal with it?.

Thanks :up:

[von hally]

would like a fix to this also.

as soon as i get zoomed in past the bearing tool showing up....the game slows to a crawl:damn:

any ideas why???

[nirwana]

Activate fps and depending on ure hardware u will notice it drops down to usually 8 fps if u move or zoom in/out the map. It doesnt matter to me what zoomlv im using it always drops to that. I guess the game engine is recalculating globally all objects accordingly to the new center position in the map no matter if its of any relevance for the player or not.

[onelifecrisis]

Have you drawn a lot of lines and stuff on the map? It sounds that way (gradual navmap slowdown as the mission progresses). Clear the map and the slowdown will be gone.

[Tobus]

Have you drawn a lot of lines and stuff on the map? It sounds that way (gradual navmap slowdown as the mission progresses). Clear the map and the slowdown will be gone.
I second that. I have recently bought a new rig with more RAM and better CPU, which makes it a lot better. But with my old rig I found out that leaving lines, markings etc on the map makes it a memory hog, thus slowing down the game enormously. I usually delete all markings and lines after being "done" with a contact or convoy.

[Paul Riley]

Interesting point about the map markings,I have actually considered that before,but decided it was highly unlikely as the game SHOULD be well enough designed to allow players to make as many markings as they like :nope:
For me,when normally leaving French waters I draw my usual RAF markings around UK and Gib.,so I have a rough idea of when I am leaving the danger zone and able to sail surfaced from then on.I also draw a ring around F.Town if I am sailing down those parts.What I also do,is before a new patrol sum up all the expected activity in the area and the most favourable lane for me to stalk/attack,and concentrate on that lane,I do this by plotting as near accurately as possible the merchant/convoy lane as indicated on the map that came with game,So,in my current patrol in EE65 I noticed there is a huge convergance of activity around the Canary islands,and I used that area to focus the beginning of my final leg towards my PZ,and sailed along the single merchant route inbound to Gib.Being able to actually draw the merchant line on the map and sail along it is a useful tactic for me,putting me on a rough collision course with any merchants heading my way.
So in conclusion,it would be better for me to erase all the RAF markings for example as I pass them,and just re draw them as I return?.Damn,this really is unfortunate,as the markings can also be used to remind us of important areas/events for example.I really dont want to lose my lane markers :nope:

Anyway,thanks for the input,I will erase some of my markings later,and see what happens.

[bert8for3]

How is your free RAM? This could be making a difference if you have background services/processes/progs running.

Interesting about the map markings and clearing them, although myself I've never noticed that as making much if any difference. Not that that necessarily means anything as rigs are different. I do tend to delete marks after an engagement, but at the same time, I regularly use SH3Gen which puts quite a lot of marks on the map.

[Paul Riley]

Bert,

I have 2GB of RAM in total,and have no excess services running,I completely slimmed them damn things down for using my games,and only activate things like print spooler when I need to print etc.I have no other programs running,other than SHIII of course.
Give or take,I have about 1.7-1.8 GB of RAM free for my game/s when everything else is fired up.CPU usage is also 0% prior to game activation.

Going back to virtual RAM this seems to be a hit or miss with most people,some say you need it and some say you dont.Personally,I think if you have 2GB or more installed,you should never need it as SHIII needs about 800MB to run,and some games need a little more.Now you could run out of RAM if you are dling software while playing a game,and doing all sorts of video editing,but how many people do this?,not many I would guess.I only have the game running,and thats that.

Having said that,applying SOME VRAM for the game (800-1000MB) may actually be needed,as I say its a trial and error thing.
Also,when setting your VRAM settings make sure the initial and maximum settings are the same,preventing windows from allowing the file size to swell as it searches for more RAM,potentially causing games and other applications to stutter.Keep both figures the same ie,initial 1000MB / max 1000MB.

[Pisces]

I've had the same thing. I seriously doubt that any amount of map markings or similar tools would be the cause of this frame drag. Atleast not by their memory use. Coordinate numbers are made up of something like 8 bytes per number if they are floating point number (depends on programming language). A line would need 4 of them (2 pair of X/Y), so with a megabyte of RAM (1048576 bytes) dedicated to that you still get thousands of map markings. Even considering protractors need 3 X/Y pair versus point markings needing one pair. There's no way you go beyond a thousand map markings in a patrol, so I estimate you'll keep below that 1 megabyte usage. There must be another cause. Anyway, THE test to be certain is if the game slows down if one has not made any markings at all in a campaign patrol. Maybe the game tries to plot them pixel by pixel in the current scale even though they all might be beyond the screen borders. Or the map is stretched in a very inefficient way. But that would no doubt be hardcoded and little we can do.

[Paul Riley]

I really hope someone manages to address this problem,because of all the things that could go wrong with the game this has to be rated as the most serious of all,as it seriously restricts if not prevents you from making accurate plots on the map,unless you are zoomed out quite far.
It is some sort of memory leak,coming from somewhere,and the high naval traffic later on certainly cant help matters :damn:
It could get to the point that you will not even be able to properly engage targets for fear of getting all your measurements wrong.
Lastly,I DO have 'moosemeasure's map measuring tool' on a disc but I havent installed it yet,maybe this is a good work around,as it apparently allows accurate measurements at any given scale.Yes,I think I should give it a try,and you should too,see how it goes.I think once you have mastered how the measuring tool works and you are fluent at using all the scales,then this could be the perfect solution :hmm:

[Pisces]

I definately advise installing the navmap tools. It makes plotting so much easier.

I can't agree on low zoom level (due to framerate drop) making your plotting impossible. In my experience framerate is reasonable on the 1250m scale. But ofcourse I don't know how your system is built, I don't even remember what rate I get. But my system is medium at most. That scale line is 250 pixels total, meaning every 100 meters (the steps at which your watch officer reports... way too precise) is 20 pixels in length. You should be able to position your mouse with that resolution easily. Also consider that at 16km a degree is 280m wide. That means your plot will have bigger built-in uncertainty no matter what plotting accuracy your mouse allows. The solution is to plot for longer time. And make the use of averaging come to your advantage.

[a.g.]

I have figured out that very long Ruler marks specifically are a huge rendering performance hog. The reason is, they have those tick marks on them, each with a diamond shape and a distance number, which are all rendered even off screen, and their density adjusts to match your zoom. Thus ruler lines many hundreds of kilometers long can cause hundreds and thousands of those little marks to render when zoomed in.

The workaround is to use the angle measuring tool for plotting very long direction guides, which also has the benifit of allowing you to draw a corner with only one map object - basically two lines for the price of one :).

[Sailor Steve]

You might want to check the dates before resurrecting a seven-year-old thread. The thread starter hasn't even looked at SubSim in more than a year. :sunny:

[a.g.]

Yeah, but where should I report a finding like that - start a new thread? Originally I just put a few huge lines on the map myself, noticed zoomed in fps go from 75 to below 10, and investigated what the hell happened. :)

[GT182]

Paul, get more RAM. Go with at least 16GBs of DDR3 RAM if you can. It makes a whole world of difference with any game you run. More is more better. ;)

[sublynx]

Thanks for the hint a.g.:salute: