Frame Rates Dropping in game

[nealg]

Good deal....glad I was able to provide some help. Ok, a bit further.....I tried a small while tonight with the 'Above Normal' priority, and noticed the following: like High, the effect when it occurs only has a small impact - IOW, barely noticeable, in the 3 to 6 frame difference area. But, it seemed to occur more frequently....I did only test a couple of missions, but it was there in both.

Switched it back to 'High' and played for about a hour+ - yep, this is definitely liveable in my situation. Occurs less frequently, with noticeably less impact.

Thanks, Wayne, for sticking by us and following this...and for being able to decipher my gibbering.

[nealg]

Well, update with not-so-good news. It is acting up again, as of last night ( had a 15-20 fps difference in enable/disable, in a mission with absolutely no action at all )....I can't think of anything else to do. And, I discovered there may be a problem with the 61.xx series Nvidia drivers and FB, so any results I get may be tainted.

Still, the priority setting seemed to be a move in the right direction. Would be good to know if a ATI user could verify, as they don't seem to suffer from the Nvidia 61.xx driver bug we discovered ( has to do with the loading of the Finland map, and resultant resource use...and since it seems to affect resources, that's why I say my results may be tainted, even though I hadn't used that map in my testing ).

Thanks, Wayne, and sorry to bring more problematic news.

[Wayne]

Nealg,

I wasn�t happy in some other games, as I am using the G-Force card also. I decided to go back to the 6.14 drivers and I have not had a problem since.

The lack of other users that have had problems since dropping the thread priority has been very encouraging. I have to say that this has been a very difficult problem to solve. We have just installed the latest ATI card into our games machine at the office and it works perfectly with no frame rate drop.

What video card do you have?
Have you tried the earlier version drivers?

[nealg]

Wayne; Well, yes and no on the drivers. Right now ( as of Aug 21st ), I am using the 65.62 betas, and they are sweet with FB so far, and fixed the other map problem ( usually I shy away from beta drivers, but I wanted to use the Finland map again because of new campaigns ). I forget what set I was using back when this drop first occurred, with my TIR 1 - I think it was the 45.23 set.

It is hard to track down, indeed, and acts like a flu bug....you find something to kill it, and it mutates to sneak in another way. I firmly believe now it is not a TIR problem per se, but related both to systems and changes in FB code. And the fact that others have now had the drop, with both ATI and Nvidia cards, tell me it isn't card/driver specific.

In fact....and this is by memory, and mine isn't as good as it was when I was 20 - or even 40, LOL - but when I first got this, I had switched from TIR 3.01 back to 2.11, then tried 2.12 - and that's where it started, I think. But also about that time, I beleive, was FB's 1.22 patch, which started the introduction of new West Front planes and maps.

I doubt we can ever isolate this....there will be too few who are affected ( or, who realize they are affected ) and most will be upgrading in a big manner the closer we get to Oleg's new sims ( Pacific Fighjters and BoB ). Chances are, with newer systems and new coding for PF and BoB, the problem may disappear totally. Hopefully, I will be able to upgrade myself in a year or so.

Your efforts to assist us in this are greatly and warmly appreciated. TIR is definitely a must-have add on for any flight simmer, but we can't expect each and every little buggy nuance to be reproduceable, especially one noticed by so few users.

Me, I am just going to go back to flying for a while. Thanks again Wayne, and everyone at Naturalpoint.

Edit: sorry...to answer your question, my card is the FX 5700 Ultra 128 meg, as in my sig. My current drivers - the 65.62 betas...are at least the 5th or 6th set since I got the card....think I started with the 53.03 when I got the card, but might have been the 45.23/33. When I got the TIR 1, I was still using a GF 4 Ti 4600 with the 45.23 drivers ( ah, for simpler days...hehehehe!!! ).

[ August 23, 2004, 08:59 PM: Message edited by: Nealg ]

[310thDiablo]

Wayne...have you been able to find what is going on yet and possibly fix it? I went a long time with no problems then all of a sudden this past week i have gotten teh same problems back.

[Wayne]

Have you installed SP2?

[VFS-22_SPaRX]

Wayne,

You had any luck with this as of yet. Those of us that posted in this thread are still exp. the same issues. Even with the release of Pacific fighters, we are still getting the same problems. Just a recap of what happens.

After a period of time on a map, our framerates will drop dramatically. If we switch the TIR unit off, the frames go back to normal. Typically once the mission on the server changes, the Frames will go back to normal and then drop of again after 20/30 minutes.

My systems is as follows.

Asus A7n8x MB
1024 megs ram
barton 2800+ cpu
Ati 9800 Pro 128meg

Running XP Pro SP1
ATi drivers: i have tried all of the 4.x series and get the same results.

I run my IL2 with 4x AA, 4x AF in excellent mode.

If there is anything we can do to help, please do not hesitate to ask. We LOVE your product and do not wish to see it performing like this.

S~
SPaRX

[ November 14, 2004, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: VFS-22_SPaRX ]

[Wayne]

I am looking at an alternative to the issue that some of you guys are having.

By changing the thread priority has helped most users, however I may have another solution.

[VFS-22_SPaRX]

Well if there is anything you want us to try, please post it and we will give it a shot Wayne. We tried changing the thread priority, and it simply did not work for us.

S~
james

[Wayne]

VFS-22_SPaRX,

Thanks for the offer to test. Everything is looking very good.