Transparent GUI = Bad framerate!

[CallakDW]

I'm not sure of how this will go over, but I reccomend turning off transparent windows untill performance is improoved. I noticed two things: First, if you turn off your GUI, the frame rate is much much better. Second, if you overlap two transparent windows, your frame rate drops dramatically. What this is telling me is that the GUI color mixing code is poorly done, and I think we would see a big frame rate improovement in the game if it was turned off untill EI can improove it's efficiantcy. I don't have any real proof that it's the transparency alone, but I have a very strong huntch.

Hmm.. on a side note, I wonder if there is an option in the settings to turn off transparent windows... I will have to check later.

[Eni]

Interesting thing is that /toggelui (turn of GUI) does a lot more for performance than /window renderwindow (toggel off everything but GUI).

[Tzael]

Alpha blending, lack of hardware acceleration, 'nuff said.

If you're suffering from poor performance with your UI then you disable the transparencies for each window. Don't demand that it gets changed globally because some of us actually use these features and do not experience poor performance.

[CallakDW]

That's a rather rude response Tzael.

My post is a suggestion not a demand.

My video card is a GeForce 7900 GT/GTO, one of the best cards out there running on a dule core processor, hardware acceleration is not my problem, but I do see a perfomrance increase.

I acutally use these features too. But I'm not sure if I wouldn't prefer an improovement in frame rate over continued use.

[Tzael]

That's a rather rude response Tzael.

There is a world of difference between rude and concise. If my reply were rude then it would have certainly included at least one choice insult or derogatory phrase.

My post is a suggestion not a demand.

Your post read more as an "I think this is wrong therefore change it".

My video card is a GeForce 7900 GT/GTO, one of the best cards out there running on a dule core processor, hardware acceleration is not my problem, but I do see a perfomrance increase.

Whoopdidoo. Nice graphics card. By now you've probably figured out the obvious. It doesn't matter if you've got a Geforce 4 ti4200 or a Geforce 7950 with extra bells and whistles, performance in Horizons does not correlate to the power of your graphics card.

I acutally use these features too. But I'm not sure if I wouldn't prefer an improovement in frame rate over continued use.

You're telling me that you don't get 30 to 50 frames per second throughout Istaria except in the hottest battle scenarios ? Maybe you need to check the configuration of your computer. I've got a couple of computers here I use for Horizons, one is a lowly PIII with 1 gig of memory and a Geforce ti 4800, the other is a lowly Athlon XP with 1 gig of memory and a Geforce 7600 with half a gig of its own memory. Both systems give solid stutter-free performance when playing Horizons.

See my problem with you now is that you accuse me of being rude yet you condescend the entire community with ill-informed posts demanding that graphical functionality you (and I to a lesser extent) do not understand. How does it feel when the condescension is turned around ?

[Gremblthrg]

Ah, let's not fight, here....

If transparent windows cause you a problem, you can modify the transparency in I believe right click - properties or some such, but what affects one person doesn't work the same for everyone; for some people, also locking every window (so it can't be moved/resized) helps frame rate. For me, neither matters, my computer is reliably slow for everything.
Except when tabs flash, that is; it slows the crap out of me, especially when I am porting. I still keep them set to flash anyway, since I'd miss new messages otherwise.

All I'm saying is, problems vary from one person to the next, and disabling it for everyone just to help a few, when you can change the setting yourself... is a bit of overkill.

You are both coming across as rather hostile, whatever your initial intent; and you both raise good points of discussion. So please put away the claws?

[CallakDW]

Your post read more as an "I think this is wrong therefore change it".

My post should have read to you, if it doesn't work right disable it utnill it's fixed. As a recommendation, since this is the reccomandataion forum. If you had a better idea, you might have mentioned how to change it rather than simply telling me to do so.

Whoopdidoo. Nice graphics card. By now you've probably figured out the obvious. It doesn't matter if you've got a Geforce 4 ti4200 or a Geforce 7950 with extra bells and whistles, performance in Horizons does not correlate to the power of your graphics card.

"Alpha blending, lack of hardware acceleration, 'nuff said."

You just contradicted yourself, because I thought you specifically said it was my hardware alphablending that was the problem. And that was sertainly also a rude comment. Yeah, Wooptydoo to you too.

See my problem with you now is that you accuse me of being rude yet you condescend the entire community with ill-informed posts demanding that graphical functionality you (and I to a lesser extent) do not understand. How does it feel when the condescension is turned around ?

Again, I didn't demand anything, I made a suggestion. If it works great for you then you could have let me know in a more polite mannor, even mabe telling me your hardware config. I'm only going by my experience with the game. If you can read more into my posts than was meant I'm sure you can forgive me for reading yours as rude. Ill informed yes very possible, I was hoping if it's incorrect that someone could share information with me, but responses like your first one didn't help.

I'm going to experiment with the individual windows a little later a bit more.

[Sigi]

How cute, you guys (?) really love eachother

[Tzael]

You just contradicted yourself, because I thought you specifically said it was my hardware alphablending that was the problem. And that was sertainly also a rude comment. Yeah, Wooptydoo to you too.

Let me elaborate on this particular point since it is of utmost importance that you attain clarity on this matter. Lack of hardware acceleration for the blending of alpha channels is not a problem that is inherent within your own graphics accelerator; the rendering engine used by the Horizons client relies heavily on the CPU and not the graphics accelerator for this task.

Steps to kick-****** performance for Horizons (some tips useful for other games too):

Baseline system should have a cpu fsb of 200Mhz, memory should be an exact multiplication of this bus speed. Basically anything from an Athlon XP 3200 or an Intel P4 3Ghz upwards is suitable. Motherboard chipset should be nForce 2 or Intel 845 or better.

One gig of memory is more than adequate.

Graphics card is not too important, for Horizons a GeForce 4 ti4200 with 128Mb of memory has enough bandwidth to handle everything Horizons throws at it with ease.

All hard drives should support udma5 (ata100) minimum.

Set up a mirrored raid array across two disk drives preferably on a sata II interface. This increases disk read times dramatically. Install operating system and game to this mirrored array.

Add two more hard drives, put them both on their own interfaces (eide or sata - if eide then one drive set as master per interface).

Set one drive of these additional drives up as a dedicated swapfile drive. No other disk activity should be occuring on this drive.

Set the other additional drive up as a dedicated worldcache drive. Instructions have been posted in the player customisations forum. No other disk activity should be occuring on this drive.

------------------------

Well that pretty much describes my gaming computer's setup. Suffice to say that games like Horizons where disk and cpu performance count but graphics performance poses little influence this setup performs remarkably well. It's not for the average Joe, but I'm sure you can reproduce a similar setup CallakDW.

[Royal]

game-code sux, framework sux, etc/wha-evah

[CallakDW]

Doh! Double post! Sorry.

[CallakDW]

How cute, you guys (?) really love eachother

Hehe and I hope my wife will not be quite so bossy. (You know, being told what to do personally is what ticked me off the most in this, instead of making the suggestion that I do somthing I think.)

And finally thanks Tzael for clearing up the true meaning behind the short one liner, witch could have been interpreted several ways, now I know what you mean. I still think it should support the hardware better. As for the rest of the specs, my machine has most of those covered.

[Tzael]

Regular Istarians doing our duty to keep a bit of life in these forums. At least we're talking about the game and not the management.

[Justa Mirage]

1 gig of memory is more than adequate?? bet me!

I have a system monitor on my keyboard that tells me Ram/CPU usage

When playing HZ the ram and cpu peg at 100% then it goes to the swap pagefile.sys. This does hamper my performance, by getting 2gigs of memory my ram meter stays at a comfortable 66% and the performance has improved.

[CallakDW]

I also have a system monitor on my keyboard Justa, and I agree, 2g made quite a noticable difference over just one.

[Gremblthrg]

512 megs for the win?

It still runs okay...

edit: oops, typed 512k at first; gave me a flashback to my tandy 1000. Still, it was a nice upgrade over the 32k of the TI-99/4A.

[Hasai]

Ahem.

Actually, I've found a very nice use for an empty chat window that's set to be not-quite transparent:

It makes for a great set of polarized sunglasses! Nifty tool for picking-out wisps against snowy backgrounds and the like.

]B=8)
.