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May 20, 2006, 10:30am

Not sure if this is the right group but anyway...

Can someone tell my why AW uses so much of my available resources?
I have a 3gHz machine with 1 gig of ram 128 meg video and when I check
resources they are at 99% with AW running. Minimize AW and resources drop to
3 %. All my drivers are up to date as well. I can run many programs at same
time but open AW and *gulp* 99% used.

Hope they do summin about the graphics engine with 4.1 I think we are all
kinda tired of lag on our new powerfull machines that can run Doom and
Quake 4 at 60 FPS but get into AW 10 year old program and lucky to get 40
FPS with stutters. Anyone else have this problem?


Just a point to ponder

Kingy

May 20, 2006, 1:43pm

I usually get 20fps on 200vis on a 1.2ghz Intel Graphics chipset system =P
Check your settings, drivers and directx, the typical stuff
[View Quote] >Not sure if this is the right group but anyway...
>
>Can someone tell my why AW uses so much of my available resources?
>I have a 3gHz machine with 1 gig of ram 128 meg video and when I check
>resources they are at 99% with AW running. Minimize AW and resources drop to
>3 %. All my drivers are up to date as well. I can run many programs at same
>time but open AW and *gulp* 99% used.
>
>Hope they do summin about the graphics engine with 4.1 I think we are all
>kinda tired of lag on our new powerfull machines that can run Doom and
>Quake 4 at 60 FPS but get into AW 10 year old program and lucky to get 40
>FPS with stutters. Anyone else have this problem?
>
>
>Just a point to ponder
>
>Kingy
>
>
>
>

May 20, 2006, 2:26pm

Most all 3d apps run your hardware to 100% because it wants to run as fast
as it can ;)
They've added a frame rat cap awhile back, but I'm not sure if it actually
works or not. Try setting max fps to something much much lower.

[View Quote]

May 20, 2006, 3:19pm

done all mentioned and then some...
I cap FPS at 35 fps vis on 60 but sheesh I run a strong machine and still
lag stutter stutter
Doom and Quake run perfect at 60-70 fps without hoggin my resources.
Still say its their graphic engine I have seen with some 3D games they are
terrible for FPS but some are great like Unreal Tournament I usually get 110
fps Quake I get 70 Doom 70ish... AW I get 35 and struggle with resources
maxxed...

King


[View Quote]

May 20, 2006, 5:30pm

A lot of lag is the fault of the builders though. There are plenty of
instances where you can get great frame rate in detailed areas. I wrote up
an advanced guide for builders for keeping performance high:

http://www.swcity.net/yabbse/index.php?topic=3496.0

Hope that helps.

[View Quote]

May 20, 2006, 6:02pm

Btw if you already read the guide, I added a couple more recently discovered
tips just now - #11 and 12.

May 20, 2006, 10:05pm

I dont see where adding create solid no on those hi poly trees helps my
frame rate. i tried it and it didnt change
[View Quote]

May 20, 2006, 10:10pm

He's just messing with your mind! Actually, create solid no will help if you
do it en masse. It's better though if you can do Collision Off in the actual
model, that way AW doesn't even have to bother with making the solid object
non solid afterward... it already knows when the object is first loaded.
This was a huge boon to Seaside while Orb was building the forest... she was
able to plant at least 3 times the number of trees and plants and still keep
some decent frame rates. It really does work. :)



[View Quote]

May 20, 2006, 10:51pm

The solidly trick is perhaps the most minor of technique listed. It's mostly
for high poly-objects like trees. And even then, it's mostly only helpful
for users with a slow CPU (as it's not a video card related issue). #2 and
#9 on the list will yield the biggest performance gains.

- Com

[View Quote]

May 21, 2006, 12:54am

thanx for replying Tal and SW.
[View Quote]

May 21, 2006, 2:58pm

you by anychance in software video rendering mode? if so, that might be the
problem. sometimes AW swtiches back to software for me for some reason, and
i get some serious issues, but when on directx, AW always runs great.
For me personally, AW never takes up more then about 30% of the CPU, and
thats only at high lag areas, and my minimum visibility is set at 110meters.

-SWE

[View Quote]

May 21, 2006, 3:25pm

[View Quote] I get by with these settings under Options, Settings, Performance:
- Attempt to keep the frame rate at or near: 35 meters
- but don't let the visibility drop below: 30 meters
- Limit frame rate to a maximum of about: 33 frames/sec.
If this third value was larger than the first value, then the visibility range
would start creeping up automatically, possibly hogging up CPU.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

May 21, 2006, 7:45pm

I am usually at 90-100 FPS maybe 85 or so and on 200 vis i am usually around
55-65

May 31, 2006, 4:27pm

Here's some news :D

I compared the performances between 3.6 and 4.1 in the exact same areas,
same settings. 4.1 comes out 25% faster. Guess they did some work under
the hood.

- Com

Jun 1, 2006, 1:08am

Thanks for all the responces....
usual bin there done that
What I am getting at tho is such an old program 10 years with updates blah
blah
upgrade this upgrade that just to get 20 or 30 fps adjust this adjust that

I went into DOOM and Quake without touching any settings...
prolly is details in such worlds poorly done models even I am guilty of that

hope 4.1 is worth it...


[View Quote]

Jul 31, 2006, 8:52pm

To let people know:
Create solid off does NOT contribute to lightening your rendering load. It
simply makes the object nonsolid for your avatar. The polys are still
checked by the enging for collision. However, collision IS a drain on
resourses and only the faces that you need to colide with should have
collision enabled, only, this must be done in the RWX. At the end of the
model simply put "collision off" in the last clump. It should be the last
clump because once collision is defined as off, it cannot be turned on
again. The end result of this meathod is that these polys never get to the
collision checker and thus saves system resources. I define collision for
at least some part of almost every object I make...it definately eases the
load. Just keep an eye out for stuff that you wont need to hit :)

BTW The last clump also has to be a child clump as well, dont know why, but
just make sure that it is nested in your model begin / model end somewhere,
in a clump begin / clump end :)

Also, you may consider ADDING surfaces just for collision. For example,
lets say you have a beautifull corinthian column (and its way high polys you
sinner :P ), build a box around it only as wide as the column (no top or
bottom of course, thats a waste!). In the RWX put the whole column in the
bottom child clump, turn off collision and thrn turn opacity to 0 for the
box. Vioala! You spared the poor exhausted collision detection all that
work and believe me you will not need that much detail just to be able to
slam into the object :) fine fine, if you REALLY want to be able to slide
arounde the column you could use a hexagonal cylinder or leave collision on
for just the shaft itself (without the base and capital) if the shaft is not
so heavy. You may be surprised that adding these few polys will likely
increase your framerate.

happy building!
-oleyo


[View Quote]

Jul 31, 2006, 9:50pm

Excellant tip Mauz
I did that useing 45 40 and 35

My AW is smooth again and cpu seems to sit around 18%
Still encounter some lag here and there but likely my own models hehe


Kingy




[View Quote]

Jul 31, 2006, 11:02pm

Yay for AWI not putting in a solid no performance fix that would take
ooooooooooo 2 minutes?

--
- Mark Randall
http://www.temporal-solutions.co.uk
http://www.awportals.com

[View Quote]

Aug 1, 2006, 5:52pm

Actually I have not taken a look at this in a long time so I cant verify or
deny the current potential performance enhances with solid off so take my
first sentance with a grain of salt. However the rest of my post still
applies and is definately good practice when building. Especially since
there are plenty of objects that must be solid but dont have to be entirely
solid.

-Oleyo

[View Quote]

Aug 1, 2006, 6:19pm

One thing to keep in mind is that AW is TOTALY different from games like
doom UT and so on when it comes to rendering. Because the whole point of AW
is to sort of stream objects and textures to you, it is designed around
constantly checking the state of the world at your position at any given
time (almost all games dont have to do this, the environments are almost
entirely static, but in AW you might move any object next to me and i will
see it happen) Also, FPS games like UT use what is called a bsp for the
level. When a level is compiled (when the level is actually built by
someone) it runs a calculation on the entire map and creates a table of what
polygons can be seen from EVERY single "cell" in the level. This
calculation can take a long long time depending on how complex the level is.
Thus when you are in the game the engine simply consults the table for each
cell you are in to see what is visible and what is not and saves all the
work from the engine. That is one huge trick that we just could never take
advantage of...it is not that the renderware engine cannot give good fps.
One thing that could help us would be different levels of detail for objects
and definable visibility, I discuss these a little bit in a reply to the
minimum visibility post.

Happy building!
-oleyo

[View Quote]

Aug 1, 2006, 10:11pm

[View Quote] Its beyond me why AW has yet to have some kind of level of detail system
involved in it, I know terrain kind of does but that makes it look like crap
at certain distances.

It is also beyond me why AW does not have any kind of render exclusion
(which I talked to chrispeg about in rediculous length before he kicked me
off beta) I mean I walk down the road, why do I need to polycheck every
single bloody object in the 20 buildings down the side when you could quite
easily define that all objects within X zone are only visible when either
inside the zone.

Better yet, problem looking through windows? Create POV points, place one
infront of your windows... only show whats in the zone if one of its POV
points is in view, or even better yet, a POV point in view and within Z
range.

All this would be so god damned easy if the zone system was built right
rather than the disaster it is... that horrible options for everything
should be dropped and made into some kind of CSS style like script and all
of a sudden you have objects with whatever-you-want-to-add that doesnt need
a full protocol / bot / client / database rework.

While im having a rant (and I do like to have a rant) what the hell is with
movers and lack of collision detection? proper control scripts? I can hear
the wails of pain from AWI now 'collision detection on every object would be
so processor extensive!' hmmm lets see, convert the polar coords into x,y,z
and run the collision detection. Then rather than collision check every
object on every object for riding, just use the bounding box... simple! Its
better than nothing which is exactly what we have now...

I say again, options = bad, script = good. It really not that hard...

particle {
assets: flare1,flare2,flare3;
size: 5
vel-y: 50
}

Time to write a parser for such a thing: 10 minutes. Now what could such a
script possible mean to the average n00b who could read a help file? Perhaps
use flare 1 through 3 as assets, where each particle is of size 5 in each
axis?

SO much easier than the 500 text boxes we are hit with the moment. I bang my
head and cry 'does anyone know GUI design'? YESH!

I try to use AW professionally, and its so hard because the more I try to
use AW to its maximum potential the more I find these huge gaping gaps in
capability. When AW kicks its bottom into gear, gets 5 more developers on
board then they might have a product that doesnt have to sell itself "by
impression" but rather on what it can do.

Chris can do *far* better than this, AWI needs more developers to distribute
the workload and actually get quallity.

--
- Mark Randall
http://www.temporal-solutions.co.uk
http://www.awportals.com

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