Problem challenge scenario framerate

flytandem

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Running any of the 2010 challenges, my framerate is about 5 to 9 fps. But all other stock scenarios are running 40 to 60 fps. Toshiba Satellite Laptop. Windows 7. It could be something related to the scripts running in the background? Any ideas how to make the challenges speed up to a usable framerate? thx
 

dgatsoulis

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Hmm... that's odd.
You shouldn't have a problem, even if they were activated... but did you try disabling anything LUA related in the Modules tab?
On second thought... a few days ago, i had a problem, i followed Tex's advice(post #8, and everything was back to normal!
 
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Woo482

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The text on the screen during the challenges might be causing the FPS drop, have you tried using VistaBoost? that should help improve your FPS
 

flytandem

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I spent about 30 minutes and at least 50 different sim starts with about every combination of modules activated and not activated, and various video settings. In all settings the framerate is high (acceptable) on Delta-glider folder scenarios but very slow on the ones in the 2010 folder. I first noticed it when firing up challenge 4 and TransX wasn't responding to mouse clicks. I thought at first the mouse was failing since it often took 2 or 3 clicks to get anything to happen. But soon I realized it was framerate.

edit: would I really need vista boot with windows 7?
edit2: vistaboost doesn't make any change.
 
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orb

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Hmm... that's odd.
You shouldn't have a problem, even if they where activated... but did you try disabling anything LUA related in the Modules tab?
LUA Scripts are active in tutorials. You don't disable them. Challenges use them for tracking and displaying records:
Code:
Challenge1.lua
Challenge2.lua
Challenge3.lua
Challenge4.lua


Like Woo482 said, annotations might be causing drop in FPS. Have you checked if for example "Atmospheric autopilot.scn" or "Spin stabilisation.scn" in Demos have similar problems (or maybe not since they don't update annotation's text every frame)?
 

orb

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If you don't want to check VistaBoost yet, you can disable ClearType in Windows for font smoothing and check if it hugely improves the frame rate. If so, use VistaBoost, because it's doing the same, but only when Orbiter simulation is running.
 

Tex

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Along with Vista boost, check 'Disable hardware pageflip' from the Video tab on the Orbiter launch pad. Any improvement in that configuration? I've had success with both of those.
 

Hielor

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Running any of the 2010 challenges, my framerate is about 5 to 9 fps. But all other stock scenarios are running 40 to 60 fps. Toshiba Satellite Laptop. Windows 7. It could be something related to the scripts running in the background? Any ideas how to make the challenges speed up to a usable framerate? thx

Woo got it:
The text on the screen during the challenges might be causing the FPS drop...

As I extensively analyzed in this article, the problem is that GDI rendering is not hardware accelerated in Vista and Win7. The text placed on the screen during the challenge uses GDI, so it suffers pretty poor performance. You can see that my computer suffered pretty big performance hits when text was on-screen.

I'm don't know if the D3D9 client supports the onscreen annotations yet, but you might give that a try.

I'm surprised that you didn't see any improvement with VistaBoost, though.

Somewhat off-topic:
Yes, because Windows 7 is Vista based (i.e. version 6.1).
Irrelevant. ClearType has been around since XP, although it was off by default. Of course Win7 is based on Vista, just as Vista was based on XP and XP was based on 2010.
 

flytandem

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Trying my Acer desktop Windows Vista:
it has a good frame 50-60 fps rate for the challenge scenarios with the Orbiter 2010 June 6 , but a dismal 7 fps for the challenge scenarios with the Orbiter 2010 P1 August 30 2010. In all cases I had all the modules activated.
:facepalm:
 

orb

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Irrelevant. ClearType has been around since XP, although it was off by default. Of course Win7 is based on Vista, just as Vista was based on XP and XP was based on 2010.
Irrelevant. I have ClearType enabled on my 2 machines with XP and it only takes 5% of FPS from Orbiter on both, so it's something that got implemented in Vista, what makes it 20-80% FPS drop with ClearType.
 

flytandem

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Doing the disable hardware pageflip I now have the desktop with an improvement but still some difference between the versions on the desktop...
June 2010 is 164 fps and the Aug 2010 is 35 fps. Both are very usable.
The laptop however has no difference with the disable hardware page flip, still has about 9 fps on average. So it's something related to the laptop and running a script?.
 

Hielor

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Irrelevant. I have ClearType enabled on my 2 machines with XP and it only takes 5% of FPS from Orbiter on both, so it's something that got implemented in Vista, what makes it 20-80% FPS drop with ClearType.
As posted in the article I wrote nearly two years ago:
XP with ClearType disabled:
winxp_noct.PNG


XP with ClearType enabled:
winxp_ct.PNG


That's easily a 60-70% framerate impact. On XP. The problem is not new to Vista.
 

orb

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The laptop however has no difference with the disable hardware page flip, still has about 9 fps on average. So it's something related to the laptop and running a script?.
Try a scenario with scripted vessel if it slows down the Orbiter as well:
Code:
BEGIN_DESC
Test of ScriptPB
END_DESC

BEGIN_ENVIRONMENT
  System Sol
END_ENVIRONMENT

BEGIN_FOCUS
  Ship ScrPB
END_FOCUS

BEGIN_CAMERA
  TARGET ScrPB
  MODE Cockpit
  FOV 50.00
END_CAMERA

BEGIN_HUD
  TYPE Surface
END_HUD

BEGIN_MFD Left
  TYPE HSI
  NAV 0 1
  OBS 5.34 5.76
END_MFD

BEGIN_MFD Right
  TYPE Map
  REF Earth
  BTARGET Habana
  OTARGET ISS
END_MFD

BEGIN_SHIPS
ScrPB:ScriptPB
  STATUS Landed Earth
  BASE Habana:1
  POS -82.4000000 22.9994604
  HEADING 22.00
  AFCMODE 7
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000000
  NAVFREQ 0 0
END
END_SHIPS



As posted in the article I wrote nearly two years ago:

{...}

That's easily a 60-70% framerate impact. On XP. The problem is not new to Vista.
Well, I don't experience the problem > http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showpost.php?p=144562&postcount=9
 

flytandem

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On the toshiba Laptop:
clear type ON , framerate=~ 8
clear type OFF, framerate=~ 10

The scenario by Orb (above), clear type On, framerate=~40

I installed a vanilla 2010 P1 on all 3 computers...:
on the Acer desktop, Challenge scenario framerate = 50-60
on the Toshiba laptop, Challenge scenario framerate = 8
on my wife's Lenovo laptop, Challenge scenario framerate = 35-45

So far it appears that the clear type off helps a bit but the Toshiba laptop is so bad that even that isn't helping a lot.

I started the challenge scenario on the Toshiba laptop but with the script line taken out of the scenario code and the frame rate is high. Conclusion, no doing scripts on the Toshiba laptop.
 
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