Forums » MacOS X

Don't look at the station! Anything but that! Nooooo!!!

Aug 07, 2004 ctishman link
So today I got my first chance to play Vendetta on a G5. It was amazing. 400-592fps average. Problem is, when I look at a station, that speed goes down to 29fps. If I zoom in to look closer, the speed goes as low as 1.3fps. Why is it that I can look at a sector-wide field of ice crystals without incident, but turning my sights on even the corner of the docking bay of a station throws my framerate in the john and pulls the flusher?
Aug 08, 2004 raybondo link
Yeah, we are working with Apple to try to fix the problem.
Aug 08, 2004 Black Omega link
I had the same problem till i set 'doshaders' to 0.
I know ist not supposed to make any difference but it do on my G5. Go figure
Aug 08, 2004 ctishman link
Cool. Thanks!
Aug 08, 2004 AlienB link
My windows box does the same thing.
Aug 09, 2004 Celkan link
I don't have that on windows, but instead my hud turns off when I look at a station... nasty when you're coming in at high speeds...
Aug 09, 2004 LuniX link
I also get a big frame drop on my Mac, but not as in the amounts you describe, i just lowered my res and i notished it less :)
Aug 09, 2004 raybondo link
Try the new 10.3.5 update and see if that speeds things up.
Aug 10, 2004 Laika link
It doesn't. Doshaders is broken like always, and I still get massive framedrops when a station appears.

G4 1.25/768MB/AtiR9k Pro btw...
Aug 10, 2004 Arolte link
Yeah, I'm also getting the station slowness bug of doom. OS X 10.3.5 installed here too. D'oh...
Aug 12, 2004 raybondo link
Hmm. I just found an interesting bug with the client.
The SceneLOD setting gets set to the wrong value internally on startup.
Try going into the Graphics options and re-set your scene/distance LOD values.
Aug 16, 2004 Black Omega link
HMMM new graphics card... 9800 pro se for G5...
No lag with graphics due too 256mb OB
'doshaders' still causes approx 25% hit on framerate though :(
Aug 16, 2004 dragos link
I dont have this problem, G4 dual 867, 1 gig, geforce4 ti running 10.3.4

is it only happening with the ATI cards?
Aug 17, 2004 Black Omega link
ummm not as far as i can tell. Had a GeForce FX5200 before with same problems.

Have you tried turning ' doshaders ' on / off and checking the fps Dragos ?
Aug 17, 2004 Arolte link
Heh, at least "doshaders" works for you. In addition to getting single digits for framerates, general funkiness occurs (i.e. screen blacking out intermittently, funky textures, blank textures, static audio, etc.) on my setup. Is the FX Go5200 supposed to be supported? It was stated that all FX series nVidia card are supposed to run it. Perhaps this is not the case as originally thought.
Aug 18, 2004 raybondo link
It's supposed to work fine but I can't guarantee that it would use all the features of the video card.
Your video card may be bad or the os may have buggy drivers for that specific card?
Aug 18, 2004 Arolte link
I think the nVidia drivers aren't going to get any less buggier. We're at what version of OS X now? 10.3.5? Ever since 10.2.7 the drivers have been crappy for me. Many people, including developers, have tried to push Apple into getting their act together. Unfortunately they're simply not budging. It's just not a priority for them, for some unknown reason.

Many recent OS X update descriptions have included something along the lines of "updated ATI/nVidia drivers" or "improved graphics support" blah blah blah. There may be some internal corrections or improvements within the drivers, but I can honestly say that I haven't actually seen any positive effects thus far. Very disappointing.

Unless by chance some huge miracle occurs, at this point we probably won't be seeing any major improvements anytime soon, despite what Apple claims.

=(

And I can totally understand what you developers have to put up with. Improvising a solution by making your own code to get around the problem has a tendency to break the game later on when a new OS update is released. It happened with MacSoft and Halo.

Many people were frustrated with a number of major graphical glitches, and the developers urged the public to wait for Apple to release an update to resolve the issues. But because of the high demand they went ahead and made an update anyway to bypass the issue. Lo and behold it broke again when Apple released the next OS X update.

It's just very stressful for us gamers having to choose between reporting the bug and asking for a quick fix, or waiting a couple of months just so Apple can release another update. Even then that doesn't guarantee a fix. Most often it's a lose-lose situation with a lot of time wasted.
Aug 26, 2004 RattMann link
Interesting.... I don't have a problem looking at stations. There is no noticeable
lowering of framerate. But (Isn't there always a "but"?) At one or two stations I
have visited, I experience markedly lower framerates when the dock comes close
to filling the frame. From a distance, no prob. When I am close to the station and
look at any other part of the station, no prob. But the dock? Bad. Trouble is, I do
not recall what stations I was at, and it is really rare. I'm using G4 dual 1Ghz and
nVidia GeForce 4, and running 10.2.8.
Sep 03, 2004 ctishman link
On my home G4/400, I get a momentary hitch when I look at a station, but it smooths out after that.