Modders out there, help me...

[Pistitom]

Hi there guys, I need your help...I have a problem with the fps when on bridge and looking towards the horizon ( otherwise no problem at all), apparently it's not my driver nor video card to blame..After many hours of desperately trying to solve it, I came to the conclusion, that there might be a remedy...I'm almost sure that decreasing my visibility range ( no idea of the stock range-6-8 km ??? ) should solve- partially- my problem...I couldn't find any cfg file to modify, that's why I turn to You...maybe somebody could create a mod or sg...not my WO's but my personal view range should be decreased...is this possible? Please guys, I would appreciate it a lot if somebody could fix my little problem....THX a lot in advance guys..

[Paul Riley]

Hi pistitom

Remember we spoke about this privately in the PM section?i'm sure someone in here will understand this problem,but do you remember me saying to you it may be actually a small bug or something in the game,and not your system?.Just one thing,does it happen on calm days too,as I also get a small fps hit during storms and high seas,when on the conning tower and I look out to a specific compass point (not sure which compass point)

This seems to be a well recognized problem,and i'm sure someone will enlighten you more on this.

Lastly,I am not sure you can alter your viewing range 'in game' but I know it can be done by altering your graphics settings via your desktop,and it normally comes under the name of Anisotropic Filtering.What this does is draws detail further out in the distance in games,and lowering this setting will not draw as much detail further out (appears blurred) other than at closer ranges.I set mine to 8x which gives great detail at distance without too much of a fps hit.

What graphics card do you use,and do you have AF enabled at all?In fact,let me know what all your settings are for the card,I may be able to help you in lowering/tweaking certain ones.

[Pistitom]

Hi, these are the figures You asked for I suppose...
I have quite a few options, but i don't know what they are for...I turned off AF, no effect...I have asynchronous flip, tripple buffering, flipping policy, etc...I played around with these for a while, but not knowing what they're for, I had no results...
BTW, in stormy weather it doesn't get worse at all.Uzo and binoculars work ok. Just plain sight, and external camera (horizontal)
I almost forgot, the SH3 detection tool didn't even recognize my cpu It says 'unknown'....too many problems

Directx9.0.
Physical Memory: 1015 MB
Minimum Graphics Memory: 8 MB
Maximum Graphics Memory: 128 MB
Graphics Memory in Use: 8 MB
Processor: x86 family 6 Model 14 Stepping 12
Processor Speed: 1828 MHZ
Vendor ID: 8086
Device ID: 27AE
Device Revision: 03


* Accelerator Information *

Accelerator in Use: Mobile Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset Family
Video BIOS: 1471
Current Graphics Mode: 1280 by 800 High Color (60 H)

[Jimbuna]

If your playing stock the visibilty range should be approx 8km. If your playing GWX for example you have a choice of 8km or 16km....this is the size of the SH3 world that your system is continually updating and rendering. Obviously the 8km setting is less of a burdon on your cpu.

If it is stock your playing then it sounds like a dideo card or driver issue.

You might also consider upping your physical memory to 2GB.

[Paul Riley]

pistitom

I can see your problem straight away,your graphics card has way too low onboard memory.8MB used is too low for a game like SHIII,you would probably need at least 128MB upwards,to render everything smoothly.

Physical memory seems adequate,but another 1GB stick would'nt hurt.

Set all your graphics options to low,then increase them one by one until you find the main bottleneck,but I can tell you now your graphics card lacks sufficient muscle mate,sorry to say that . If you can afford it you should buy one with 256MB onboard memory,even better 512MB.

Also,get a Bios update for your motherboard,if you know the make and the site to visit.That can iron out many problems.

Keep us posted on this one,it can be cured,via hardware upgrades.

[Jimbuna]

8MB

I missed that

[Paul Riley]

It is quite low jim,too low in fact for even some of the oldest games,say around year 2000,or even before

As long as he knows what is causing it,or at least it is likely to be that.

[danlisa]

You both missed it.

The OP has a shared GFX card, 8mb the MINIMUM and 128mb the MAX, when required.

Bottom line OP, SH3 requires a dedicated 3D accelerator card. System shared GFX cards in laptops ain't gonna cut it (guessing it's a laptop from the specs posted).

The only thing that 'might' help is to increase your Pagefile (virtual RAM) size. Set it to a fixed amount of 3052. TBH I'm surprised you even have shader 2.0 support.

Then again, this could be the bow spray bug in Stock. Doubt it though.

Edit - How many resident programs do you have running, using up your limited 1015mb RAM? Using programs like EndItAll & FSAuto start which kill all un-needed programs might help.

[Pistitom]

LOL guys, had You posted in chinese, I would've understand perhaps even more....Anyway, I don't really understand why I have this problem, since games like Need for Speed MW , Pacific Fighters, Blazing Angels, rFactor ran quite smoothly on my laptop...I thought NFS and Blazing Angels had greater requirements... it seems I was wrong..ok, I'll do what You told me , (I'll try) and see what happens...and thanks a lot, appreciate it

[Pistitom]

I'm not so good at computers...here's what I've done: in control panel/ system changed the paging file size to 3052. Is that ok ? I can't increase the 128 Mb memory, right ?

[Paul Riley]

Yes Danlisa,we both missed it,I see that now

The only way you can increase your system RAM or your GPU RAM is to install memory modules onto your motherboard,and a new graphics card to increase the GPU capability.But as you are using a laptop,upgrading with components that are usually intended to upgrade desktop systems will be harder.I don't work with laptops much,if ever,so don't know their internals as much as a desktop.But in a nutshell,try and buy some more RAM,and a new graphics card,if you can.

Regarding page file,I set mine to 1000 minimum and 1000 maximum,as I have ample RAM and find SHIII doesn't peak my system any higher than 1000.Setting equal settings to the page file prevents it changing size all the time,and can disrupt games sometimes.Pagefile is an ongoing problem with many people,and it makes you wonder sometimes who is right and who is wrong.Microsoft recommend 3052,but if you already have in excess of 2GB of RAM I don't think that figure is realistic.1000 seems a good figure.If ever you get messages warning you of low system memory at full load,then naturally you would increase the pagefile accordingly.

[danlisa]

The rule with your Pagefile/Swap File, whatever you call it is 1.5 x your installed RAM.

However, this rule was never designed for RAM hungry 3D applications. As a rule SH3 modded or otherwise will not use in excess of 2GB of RAM, virtual or real. Therefore a base figure for real RAM @ 1024mb is adequate for the Stock game to run, however, that is the bare minimum. Having a Pagefile at a fixed amount allows the Operating System to allocate extraneous files (while running SH3) to that space allotment, thus freeing up resources for the game.

Bottom line is that you can set your pagefile to whatever you want, it's only dedicated HDD space that the OS uses to write it's memory to.

TBH though, I don't think it will solve the OP's problem. The GFX card is not up to the 8km world rendering.

[Paul Riley]

danlisa,

Could you expect adverse effects in games with NO pagefile? I mean,for those of us that have ample RAM would the pagefile even be used?

Again,it is a subject that confounds many people still to this day,but the 1.5 x RAM is correct,officialy that is.

Thanks

[danlisa]

Originally Posted by Paul Riley

danlisa,

Could you expect adverse effects in games with NO pagefile? I mean,for those of us that have ample RAM would the pagefile even be used?

Theoretically no.

However, look at it logically.

How many running processes do you have at system startup, how much RAM do they use at idle?

You can get a good idea of this requirement by pulling up the Task Manager, or better yet Process Explorer, and looking at the Physical Figures. This is your system at rest. Now add in a RAM intensive application and you can see what will happen.

Bottom line is that if you have no PageFile and your system runs out of Physical RAM the computer will Lock Up and probably shutdown/BSOD.

TBH, on a XP machine where 3052mb Physical RAM is the max recognised a pagefile will always be required.

MY test machine during GWX development was only a 3.4ghz P4 with 1GB RAM. However, at rest I only had 18 processes and the system required only 181mb of RAM and GWX ran fine for me, bells & whistles. I allocated a 2048mb Pagefile on a non OS HDD and windows swapped most of the unused proggies to that file and SH3 used my RAM.

[Paul Riley]

Personally I have only 15 processes at startup (XP Home).I shut most of the services down as most of em are useless,save for alg.exe which must be enabled for the inbuilt firewall in XP,which I actually do use as I have no 3rd party firewall/or virus scanner.I also use system restore to replicate a virus scanner,I can roll back . Then turn it all of for games playing.

My system is a P4 at 3Ghz,4GB RAM,ATI X800 Pro (256MB).It is an old system now from when I built it by today's standard,but still works great for most games today,albeit I am not able to run games like Splinter Cell Double Agent due to a lack of shaders 3.0,and other games from about 2008 onwards.This is understandable.

Think we may be going off topic a bit here