Deck/Periscope issues (huge lag)

[Tossik]

I've been playing SH4 for a while and I recently found a very cheap copy of SH3 and bought it straight away. So I decided to give it a go and installed the game, updated to 1.4b, and got the GWX3 Gold too. The game works perfectly, even though I am playing it on windows 7 64x.

Problem is that whenever I look around in periscope view or when I go up on the deck the fps plummets to about 5-10. If I zoom in in periscope, or if I use the binos on deck, the fps goes back up. Same goes in free cam, if I look straight down at my sub, the fps is fine, as soon as the horizon gets in view my fps goes down. Any ideea what I could do? Keep in mind that SH4 works perfectly on the same machine.

I have a notebook with amd athlon x2 64, 2Gb RAM and an onboard ati x1250(sucky, i know but again, it can handle SH4, drivers are up to date too).
I tried everything, from environmental altering mods to different versions of drivers. Any help would be appreciated.

[Sailor Steve]

WELCOME ABOARD!

SH3 is actually more graphics intensive in some areas than SH4. For instance, I've done several upgrades to my computer, and SH4 now runs very well, but with SH3 my game always lags when I look at heavy fire and smoke, and I can't even run the super-heavy smoke mods without crashing.

If you can't improve your graphics somehow I think you're going to have to live with it. I'm hoping someone will tell me I'm wrong and tell you how to fix it, but until then that's all I can think of.

[Paulie76]

I don't really know a solution to it, but it sounds very much like a fairly common flight simulator problem. As long as your graphics card is focusing on one thing (ie water, or sky), it's fine. But as soon as it has to do both at once (showing the horizon), it drops.

My computer is old as well. It's an Athlon X2 64 2.2ghz. I've got 3 gigs of RAM. So all total I have a barely better machine than you. The only difference is that since it's a desktop, my graphics card has been upgraded again and again and again in the intervening years. Currently running an Nvidia 9500gt.

Why it runs SH4 smoothly, I honestly couldn't tell you. But I would stake my life that your problem is your onboard video having to share memory with the system rather than having it's own to play with like an installed card. Considering it's a laptop, I might think overheating a bit too, but that's only based on my own past experience with a laptop running flight simulator 2004 many many years ago.

[Tessa]

SH3 can be a major resource pic even on the best rigs. A few of the mods actually help performance (iirc MaGui helps your fps as do some of the other Gui mods) be sure to read them all the way through as some while they improve the graphics quality do explicitly say that you can expect a 10-15 fps drop when added their mods.

[krashkart]

Surprised to hear that even an onboard ATI chipset has trouble with those horizon views; thought it was just the shoddy video support on this laptop I use.

However, there is a (keygetys?) DirectX dll that might improve frame rates on some machines. Found it in the SH3 Mods section:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=173605

[Capt. Morgan]

Somewhere in here I remember reading that in some situations, you need to do a full 360' rotation of your view in order to read all of the visual elements into memory. Once done, the FPS pick up dramatically.

I've found this works well in busy places like harbours.

[krashkart]

That's true, but it has more to do with loading nearby models and textures. On some systems it doesn't make any difference when switched to an external view -- as long as the horizon is in FOV the framerate grinds along at slideshow quality. Through optics (UZO/periscope) the framerates pick up again and are much more bearable. I don't know why.

[Paulie76]

Originally Posted by krashkart

...Through optics (UZO/periscope) the framerates pick up again and are much more bearable. I don't know why.

Most of your screen in UZO/Periscope view is taken up by a fairly simple (graphics-wise) 2D layout with the only 3D rendering taking place in a little circle viewport in the middle. Doesn't have to work as hard with that. Less water in the view, usually one ship at a time, etc... I believe, as far as the processing is concerned, the rest of the 3D world (basically) ceases to exist outside of that circle until you pan to it, and it's faster in processing it when you do pan to it since it's a smaller patch to have to render at any given time.

Panning 360 to get everything to render once seems to make a whole lot of sense to me. I run a rather unspectacular 30-50fps consistently, but when I enter the control room and pan across the attack scope in the middle of the room, it lags for a split second the first time. No idea why...it's the only place that happens. Kinda weird, but it's literally a split second so I don't worry about it.

[Tossik]

Wow, thanks to all the quick replies. Well, I tried most of the things you recommended and there wasn't much of a difference. The (keygetys?) DirectX .dll thingy seems to have improved my fps while viewing the horizon by about 5 but it is still pretty unplayable. I guess I just need a better graphics card. Thanks again. Good hunting

[Missing Name]

I thought it was just because of my un-upgradable POS graphics card (laptop, x86 family 6 Model 14 Stepping 8). But it seems to be something many others have issues with... ok. I just run at the lowest possible settings and it helps.