I believe that there are some common solutions to this problem, but I wasn't able to dig something out with the search function, so sorry if this is repeated.
I have a complex with about 40-50 fabs in Mines Of Fortune and running 2.5 vanilla with only tubless complex mod thingie (that doesn't leave modified tag, but only removes tubes to reduce poly count). Even with the mod, I believe I am hitting the limit. I was able to somewhat remedy this issue by running on Medium texture and Medium shader.
On the related note, I am seeing sometimes the "hud crash", where the game freezes briefly, HUD or menu disappears for a second and comes back in some sectors and occurs more if I SETA. This seems to be temporary in most sectors and not so frequent. However in my complex sector it disappears and freezes for more than a second, comes back and cycles like that in a slide show, unless I turn away from the plex to "steady it a bit".
What are the specific steps and which specific GFX configuration items remeedy this issue?
I am running:
Vista Home Premium 64bit
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz
4GB DDR2@1.1GHz.
Asus Rampag eFormula Mobo
Asus GF 9800 384MB GFX RAM
Resolution 1280x1024
This setup has been stress tested with many games, Prime95, Memtest 86 and examined for voltage drops. All mobo/gfx drivers are no older than a month.
X3TC Large Complex - Unusable Sector
Moderators: timon37, Moderators for English X Forum
Try the LAA tweak using CFF Explorer (have a hunt around for the thread - it can't have gone far!). The HUD thing is not a crash, just the memory cache being flushed to make room for new stuff. It should happen less often with the LAA tweak, and some people have found it improves performance for them too. Ultimately though you are going to hit a performance limit sometime if you keep putting enough stuff in a single sector.
That did help with overall performance I think but that was not the issue.
The solution was to turn off "More Dynamic Light Sources". With it off I get 15-20 FPS depending on other settings. If I turn it on, I get like one frame every 5 seconds (0.2FPS).
In that messed up mode the menu does not draw but items around the hood do. You can't interact with the game because the code doesn't register keypresses. One core is at 100% CPU. I assume the code has some glitch, endless loop or high-order-of-N algorithm that's not optimized, and it's not a resource related issue that would be solved with extra ram or something.
I did a savegame right next to the complex and tried some different combinations then checked if the game is "Stuck".
I run on my secondary display in Single display optimized mode.
1240x1024
Fullscreen
Texture Quality High/Medium (both work if extra dyn. light off)
Texture Quality High/Medium (both work if extra dyn. light off)
Ship Color Variations ON (both work if extra dyn. light off)
AQC OFF (both work if extra dyn. light off)
AA 2x
Aniso 4x
Bloom ON (both work if extra dyn. light off)
Vertex Size Optimization OFF
Alternate Video OFF
Let me know (if anyone is interested in looking into it) if I can help with anything like a savegame or dxdiag.
The solution was to turn off "More Dynamic Light Sources". With it off I get 15-20 FPS depending on other settings. If I turn it on, I get like one frame every 5 seconds (0.2FPS).
In that messed up mode the menu does not draw but items around the hood do. You can't interact with the game because the code doesn't register keypresses. One core is at 100% CPU. I assume the code has some glitch, endless loop or high-order-of-N algorithm that's not optimized, and it's not a resource related issue that would be solved with extra ram or something.
I did a savegame right next to the complex and tried some different combinations then checked if the game is "Stuck".
I run on my secondary display in Single display optimized mode.
1240x1024
Fullscreen
Texture Quality High/Medium (both work if extra dyn. light off)
Texture Quality High/Medium (both work if extra dyn. light off)
Ship Color Variations ON (both work if extra dyn. light off)
AQC OFF (both work if extra dyn. light off)
AA 2x
Aniso 4x
Bloom ON (both work if extra dyn. light off)
Vertex Size Optimization OFF
Alternate Video OFF
Let me know (if anyone is interested in looking into it) if I can help with anything like a savegame or dxdiag.
It's perfectly normal for one core to run at 100% in a busy sector. The game is single-threaded and the more there is in the sector, the busier that thread will get. It has nothing to do with any code glitch and everything to do with the large and complex game universe in the game! Obviously if the game is using the CPU as heavily as that then it's going to have a tough time registering user input.
However if changing More Dynamic Light Sources made such a difference then it would appear that the limiting factor in your case lies elsewhere, as that option is simply a shader change to reduce the load on the graphics card. Once again, it is not a "problem" that this happens; it's an inevitable result of adding more and more to a local sector, with the limit depending one what your hardware is capable of.
Adding more system memory certainly isn't going to make any difference in your situation. What might help would be a different graphics card. Although yours is well within the recommended specification for the game, the size of your complex is beyond what that recommendation was based on. Incidentally I believe you may have misquoted the model of graphics card you have as the only cards I'm aware of that have 384MB of memory are the 8800GS and the 9600GSO (these are essentially the same card in fact).
However if changing More Dynamic Light Sources made such a difference then it would appear that the limiting factor in your case lies elsewhere, as that option is simply a shader change to reduce the load on the graphics card. Once again, it is not a "problem" that this happens; it's an inevitable result of adding more and more to a local sector, with the limit depending one what your hardware is capable of.
Adding more system memory certainly isn't going to make any difference in your situation. What might help would be a different graphics card. Although yours is well within the recommended specification for the game, the size of your complex is beyond what that recommendation was based on. Incidentally I believe you may have misquoted the model of graphics card you have as the only cards I'm aware of that have 384MB of memory are the 8800GS and the 9600GSO (these are essentially the same card in fact).
Thanks for the lengthy response.
I am a programmer myself and if I ever coded anything like this the test team would flag this as a bug. And if a bug would not be resolved, it would stay as a known issue that's at least posted in the sticky. I don't have much of an issue turning this off (though I don't see why I shouldn't be able to enjoy the game in full quality just because of one sector) , but users will mistakenly try to reduce wrong parameters to be able to play the game - IF they at all find the parameter at all - and possibly ditch their game.
It is problem because I really doubt that there exists a (personal) high end system that can render the sector in this case with that option on. My secs are not the greatest but most likely higher than any PC in my neighborhood. Therefore, the code should be able to detect the number of visible stations and adequately reduce the rendering quality and/or dynamic lights. Ain't that what AQC is about?
And when I say that it is a CPU issue, I mean a high priority thread that takes CPU cycles from the main processing loop. If you take 10+ seconds to ALT-TAB, or if your key presses are not detected and if hud does not render, it points to an issue of this sort where a high complexity algorithm or a (near) endless loop is going on.
I am a programmer myself and if I ever coded anything like this the test team would flag this as a bug. And if a bug would not be resolved, it would stay as a known issue that's at least posted in the sticky. I don't have much of an issue turning this off (though I don't see why I shouldn't be able to enjoy the game in full quality just because of one sector) , but users will mistakenly try to reduce wrong parameters to be able to play the game - IF they at all find the parameter at all - and possibly ditch their game.
It is problem because I really doubt that there exists a (personal) high end system that can render the sector in this case with that option on. My secs are not the greatest but most likely higher than any PC in my neighborhood. Therefore, the code should be able to detect the number of visible stations and adequately reduce the rendering quality and/or dynamic lights. Ain't that what AQC is about?
And when I say that it is a CPU issue, I mean a high priority thread that takes CPU cycles from the main processing loop. If you take 10+ seconds to ALT-TAB, or if your key presses are not detected and if hud does not render, it points to an issue of this sort where a high complexity algorithm or a (near) endless loop is going on.
As far as I am aware you are the only person to report this performance issue with the More Dynamic Light Sources option. Even people with lower specification systems than yours are generally able to use it without encountering any problems.
And once again, the game is single-threaded. There is no "high priority thread" to take CPU cycles from the "main processing loop" because the "main processing loop" is all there is. But that's exactly the point; if the framerate drops on a single-thread application then there are fewer opportunities to check for user input, which is why you find that it becomes less responsive. As I explained before, there is no high complexity algorithm or endless loop; the game is just busy dealing with all the different things going on in the local sector. This isn't an issue of graphics that AQC can magic away.
And once again, the game is single-threaded. There is no "high priority thread" to take CPU cycles from the "main processing loop" because the "main processing loop" is all there is. But that's exactly the point; if the framerate drops on a single-thread application then there are fewer opportunities to check for user input, which is why you find that it becomes less responsive. As I explained before, there is no high complexity algorithm or endless loop; the game is just busy dealing with all the different things going on in the local sector. This isn't an issue of graphics that AQC can magic away.