Bad Nvidia GeForce Go problem with Torque3D

#1 For anyone experiencing this same problem, here is an update:

(I am monitoring my FPS using Fraps to get actual fps instead of estimates)

I can get up to 20 fps by making the following changes:

1. Change screen res to 640 X 480
2. Change bit depth to 16
3. In the Mission editor, on the sky settings, disable all shadows


There should be no reason that I should have to "gut out" all of the settings to the absolute lowest just to get 20 fps, but its at least an option.

On lower spec machines I get better performance, including an ATI card with only 256 MB VRAM on a Windows XP laptop.


but anyway, its at least a partial solution for certain users.

#2 change to basic lighting and you should be fine.

#3 I'm pretty sure I had already changed to basic lighting before I posted. The original problems I was having were WITH basic lighting.

"Basic lighting" simply means unchecking everything in advanced lighting in "options" when you hit ctrl+o , correct?

#4 no Nmuta you need to press F11 to get to the editor up top there is a drop down menu that say lighting change it to basic lighting, then save and close it down then reload and check your performance.

#5 Ok, so I switched to basic lighting.... by going into editor and choosing "basic lighting" per the instructions.

Then I re lit the scene, exited, shut down and re opened it.

I can see the difference in texture quality with basic lighting but it did not improve the frame rate by even one frame per second. Still averaging 20.

But this is a start. I can just make a lo-fi version of what i'm making and whittle everything down as low as I can..... use minimal particle emitters, low res textures, optimized effects, etc and i may be able to get it up to 30 on the problem machine. It's not even an old computer....only 2 years old so this is a bizarre problem.

#6 the problem is not bizzare.
The problem is that you missinterpret its age I fear, just because NVIDIA named it 7xxx (the problem does no longer exist since the 8000 series cards)
you have a seriously underpowered card. the 7150 is a modified 6200 which is a modified 5xxx geforce ... So basically it roots back to 7 years old partial shader accelerated DX9 hardware more or less, its in no way comparable to the 7300+

20 FPS is basically the best you can get with that card, if you can at all

TGE runs fine cause its FFP focused which your card is too.
But T3D is current generation and focused on using shaders where your card is more than just weak, even current intel easily beat your card ... should give you an idea on its performance

#7 hmm never known that marc thanks for telling him that.

#8 @Marc

You speak true wisdom. I'm sure you are correct. I've been through this before.... back in 2002, when I was developing 3D apps only to find that people had "recent" video cards that did not support 3D acceleration at all, or barely supported it at all. I was furious. I used to say to myself : "THIS IS 2002! WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE MACHINES???" And I was looking into software rendering and a bunch of other ridiculous ways of bending over backwards to meet the requirements of these antiquated cards. I actually was developing with Director 3D (Shockwave) at the time, and so I did see the need to use software rendering about 20% of the time which sucked.

Crappy cards have a way of "lingering" around far, far past their time.

I think its safe to assume that whatever problems I'm having with this crappy card, there are a lot of end users out there who will be having this same problem. So its something i have to plan for.

#9 There will likely be users with such problems yes, as Intel Onboards are still out there until the machines break down and are replaced.

Luckily aside of the Intel nobody is offering any no-end cards anymore and the current generation intels aren't all that bad too.

#10 I believe there are more quality "tuning" options coming in the options panel for Torque3D in the next beta dump for 1.1 (I dont think Matt or Tom will kill me for saying that). Hopefully this will help make hardware with weaker video cards handle things even better, but lets not forget its a 2-way street. Torque3D needs these options and we as the developers need to utilize them, and anything else we can throw at it, in our own work to ensure things are speedy.

#11 Hopefully the basic/advanced lighting toggle will be acomin'

#12 I will get to the bottom of it.... I've equalled the playing field.

This card gets 40 fps when running stock AFX in TGE 1.5.2

and also 40 fps in an BLANK ROOM with no objects in T3D with basic lighting.

As soon as I add scatter sky and a sun, it drops to 13 fps average. So I can keep optimizing until I can find out how to achieve maximum optimization for the victims of "new but ancient" hardware.

thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. It's helped me sift through what I need.

Torque3D can achieve dazzling on the high end and also sufficient on the low end so I'm trying to get the best of both worlds.

#13 Scatter Sky is a very intense, shader driven feature.
Your gpu is definitely not performant enough to handle the shader load from the scatter sky. Use normal skybox and sun.

Also with Scatter Sky you must not use sun, but day of light.


TGE works because it was optimized for FFP hardware like yours.
If you want to target this half decade old hardware then TGE is the technology of choice. For T3D its the bottomst end or even below (with BL, for AL its not even in the range of "usable").

#14 @Marc

yeah.

It's like I have to choose who to "spite". If I go with TGE again, then I will be basically losing high end customers who expect to see shader driven, beautiful games. But I can still have some nice effects, AFX, and blazing fast speed for pretty much everyone. I've got A* working in TGE and its really fast. The whole TGE thing is certainly fast and everyone can play.

If I go with T3D , then I lose the "low-end-BestBuy-laptop from two years ago" crowd, which is a huge segment of the population.

I could keep some of them by having a version of the game that is really dumbed down specs wise. That's what I'm considering now. Having a T3D , Basic Lighting, totally trimmed down version for those customers. I just hope I'm not shooting myself in the foot....if the dumbed down version STILL runs slow, then I'm going to get a bunch of calls and emails of people requesting driver support and / or complaining: " I bought this game for my son and it's really slow".

My last release I did in TGE, and , of course, I've received zero complaints about the speed and performance of the game. And that's a good feeling.

But I've gotten a TON of complaints about how the graphics are outdated. Some of that is just due to shitty models, which is totally my fault. But some of it I wanted to remedy with a new T3D release, because T3D is simply gorgeous.

a nickel for your thoughts.

#15 If you want to make a game with modern visuals then you just have to cut the crap boxes, there is nothing to be done about that. You can't expect to have modern visuals on cards that were outdated and "office targeted" already the day they were sold.

T3D is able to fallback quite far but you have to disable everything thats higher end visual -> no shadows, only skybox + sun, no normalmapping etc, and most important: write code that disables the normal maps on the terrain and reduces the settings on the tree / ground cover to be more optimized for no end cards ( an 8600 is low end, your card is by todays meanings is not even that anymore).
The further you want T3D to be able to fallback the more sophisticated your quality handling related code modifications will have to go.

#16 @Marc... got it. That is very clear advice.

So can code that disables the normal maps on the terrain, etc..... can any of that be done via script? It would seem like you're talking about engine mods here.

What I plan to do is have three versions: low , medium, and high res. the player can choose at the beginning which one to launch.

I don't want players to have to hit ctrl+o and adjust properties themselves.... too much work for the no-brain customer who does not want to think. From being a web developer, I'm used to just assuming that people don't think. sad, but true.

I was going to have three missions, but then I realized that the settings for one mission would be shared by the others.... so I may just have three separate folders, three separate .exes that are all basically the same except for the config stuff

#17 And mind you.... this is not my only machine.

I have three laptops and one Mac mini. Its only one laptop that has this issue. Ironically the problem machine is one of the "newer" laptops, but we already discussed that.

#18 Most of these low end machine optimizations are only possible through code work.

Scripting is to mod the tech, not expand and modify it in its core behavior which you will likely have to do to get no-end machine support. Especially if you want to measure hardware performance and react upon it (instead of relying on them beeing able to use an option menu)


don't understand the part on the mission.

#19 I didn't think about measuring hardware performance and reacting to it.
that's a great idea but I'm not sure I can afford to outsource that type of job at this point.

I just want to have three different versions, and allowing then to choose "lo fi", "medium", and "hi fi" based on their assessment of their hardware, and adjust as needed.

#20 Here is my assessment at this point:

1. The people who require, and will be expecting, modern PC games with shaders and all of the modern beauty are what I consider to be an important minority.

Important because these people expect what they're getting from all other games sold in stores right now: modern graphics.

They are a minority because my hunch is that most people in my target demographic: schools, medium income families, etc. are also mass market consumers who have laptops, many of which have crap cards. So they would make the majority of my target market, but they are not any more important than the high end customers who demand a certain level of quality.


To that end, I will be deciding between two options:

a) Developing my game in T3D and simply porting DOWN to TGE, and giving the consumer two version of the game: T3D and TGE. And they can choose.
It won't be that much to rebuild my game in TGE since I'm comfortable with it.

b) Hiring a T3D developer to help me make a "low spec" version of my T3D game for my low spec laptop users.


I am leaning toward option "a" .