Graphics Detail

[TheRock]

Hi All,

I decided to max out some of the graphics details in the game and found that it got choppy. I am thinking that this is very strange considering I have a fairly fast system now.
My system:
Asus P5E3 Deluxe X38
Intel Core 2 E8400 3.0 GHZ
G. Skill F3-12800CL7D-4 GBHZ DDR3 Dual Channel
HIS Radeon HD 4850 625MHZ 512MB PCI-E
Silverstone Olympia OP 1000W PSU

Can someone explain why I cannot max out some details in the game please?
Is it the game itself or the internet connection I have?
My Internet speeds are download at 600kb and up load at 70kb

thanks
TheRock

[Steelclaw]

Describe and define choppy.

The following in-game commands may be useful:
/window lagwindow
/fps
(the latter if the fps readout doesn't change)

[Spirit]

Describe and define choppy.

The following in-game commands may be useful:
/window lagwindow
/fps
(the latter if the fps readout doesn't change)

I see what he means and I think the same. It's choppy when it's accessing the hd, whether for reading or writing. Anything you can do to make that process faster or reduce the number of accesses seems to make the game smoother. Perhaps try disabling chat logs or any form of logs?

I found I had quite an improvement just changing hd's from an old ide drive to a new 7200 sata drive with a large cache, but I still see the issue. My system is no slouch either, racking up a healthy 10k in 3dmark06. I can only think that when loading resources, in some instances, if the client doesn't have the data and needs it, it stalls while it gets some bit of it it can then display. Perhaps if the client was written with multi-core in mind, then it might not show as much? Of course I don't think that'll happen. :|

Rakku

[Drevar]

You can try defragging the drive that the game is installed on. The 10s of thousands of small files loaded and written to can really make a mess of your hard drive.

If your issue is actual graphics rendering "lag" the only real remedy is a faster CPU. The game doesn't make much use of anything faster than a Geforce 4. The larger frame buffers and faster clock speeds on more modern cards will allow you to play at higher resolutions, but next to none of the hardware accelerated features are available to the client.

I am 99% sure that defragging will solve most of the stuttering. As dependant on the CPU as the client is, a Core 2 of any type should be able to handle everything the client can throw at it. One trick you can try is to set the affinity for one specific core. That will cut out any latency created by Windows trying to load balance a non-threaded app across the two cores.

Bah, last edit, I promise. Try turning your View distance down just a tad. With the 382/383 versions of the client you can get away with max view distance and only a 20-30% reduction in FPS. On the current Live 381 client, though, your framerate will get slaughtered. At 75% it is still impressive, and your load time on portalling will be cut down a good deal.


Drev

[TheRock]

Thanks for your replies...I shall try them tomorrow

[Takora Drakan]

If you want the best results try /setpref fogdistance 600 and if you really want that your HD burns try /setpref displayShadowDetail 2, that even makes my game stutter from time to time.

[Guaran]

I see what he means and I think the same. It's choppy when it's accessing the hd, whether for reading or writing. Anything you can do to make that process faster or reduce the number of accesses seems to make the game smoother. Perhaps try disabling chat logs or any form of logs?

I found I had quite an improvement just changing hd's from an old ide drive to a new 7200 sata drive with a large cache, but I still see the issue. My system is no slouch either, racking up a healthy 10k in 3dmark06. I can only think that when loading resources, in some instances, if the client doesn't have the data and needs it, it stalls while it gets some bit of it it can then display. Perhaps if the client was written with multi-core in mind, then it might not show as much? Of course I don't think that'll happen. :|

Rakku

The problem is the way one of the folders in the worldcache is organized. I forget the exact name but theres a "LODdetail" something or other folder with 29,000 files in it (or was it 65,000..) Tens of thousands of files in a single folder... The file system gets sluggish in accessing files once it gets past 511 entries (I might be remembering this limit from old FAT file systems' capabilities). So you can imagine the poor performance of accessing one with many many times that.

Here's some advice from someone with an environment where we have folders containing millions of files:

1. A folder stores the index information (links to child files & child folder) in an index file. This file will get very large when you have a lot of children. Note that it doesn't distinguish between a child that's a folder and a child that's a file. The only difference really is the content of that child is either the child's folder index or the child's file data. Note: I am simplifying this somewhat but this gets the point across.
2. The index file will get fragmented, which slows performance of the file system. When it gets too fragmented, you will be unable to add files to that folder. This is because there is a limit on the # of fragments that's allowed. It's by design. I've confirmed it with Microsoft in a support incident call. So although the theorical limit is several billions, good luck when you start hitting tens of million of files.
3. It's not all bad however. You can use the free Sysinternals tool: contig.exe to defragment this index. It will not reduce the size of the index (which can reach up to several Gigs for tens of million of files) but you can reduce the # of fragments. Note: The normal Windows Disk Defragment tool will NOT defrag the folder's index. It will defrag file data only. Only the contig.exe tool will defrag the index. FYI: You can also use contif to defrag an individual file's data.

Contig.exe can be freely downloaded here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb897428.aspx

Unzip the file into say C:\Windows, which places it in the path. Then you can use it anywhere by simply typing it out: "contig -s *.*" for example from inside your Horizons Game directory, or world cache folder, to defrag those folders and index. The microsoft website above gives instructions on its use. Also you can type "contig /?" at a command prompt for quick instructions.

[Spirit]

Gonna try that right now... thanks for the link!

Rakku

[Greenclaw1]

Thanks for your replies...I shall try them tomorrow

If you've never been to an area before it will have to be added to the world cache, but once you've been around a bit and go back those areas it will be smoother. Turn clutter down bit in the games video options helps too.

[TheRock]

Thanks,
I am using contig now and when that is done I shall try the in-game options.
Had some RL matters and didn't get to try anything yet.