As the developers add more (Quite good, in sober fact) features and engine functionality, not to mention LUA, Spring has been advancing rapidly. However, I get almost the same FPS on mid-low settings on a 7600 Go with all the requisite drivers and settings these days as I did on an unoptimized GeForce 4 a year ago.
I can only conclude that either Spring is not taking advantage of the power of advancing graphics cards or is unable to generate graphical elements efficiently.
Now, as I am not a coder and cannot easily discover what is happening in the engine for myself, I wanted to open discussion about this and possibly ask what in the engine can be optimized or updated to increase performance and decrease resource drain.
Graphical Performance & Spring
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Stealth870
- Posts: 166
- Joined: 13 Sep 2004, 00:25
This is indeed true. If I alt-tab (or have a window minimize my Spring) once I get back in, it's so sluggish I normally have to restart my game. That's with a 2.4 Core 2 and 8800GTS. I can run Supcom on high, 1680x1050 and AA all over the place with no hiccups, and I can alt-tab pretty quick too! 
Spring definitely needs some optimizations.
Spring definitely needs some optimizations.I don't get the link with the topic and your "alt tab" troubles.Stealth870 wrote:This is indeed true. If I alt-tab (or have a window minimize my Spring) once I get back in, it's so sluggish I normally have to restart my game. That's with a 2.4 Core 2 and 8800GTS. I can run Supcom on high, 1680x1050 and AA all over the place with no hiccups, and I can alt-tab pretty quick too!
VBOs are mostly slower than DLs, so there is no need to replace them.Tobi wrote:Using vertex buffer objects instead of display lists may help.
The current usage of vertex arrays is a bit silly in Spring, that could be better (streaming/dynamic VBOs maybe?).
see here:
http://www.sci.utah.edu/~bavoil/opengl/vbo/batching/
http://www.sci.utah.edu/~bavoil/opengl/vbo/data_types/
Only VBAs are really slow, in that case VBOs would be a lot (4-10x) faster.
The pages talk about DLs generated using VBAs. I wonder if that makes a difference compared to DLs generated using glBeging/glVertex/glEnd. (I'm not even sure what Spring does though.)
Even then, by making projectiles use a dynamic/streaming VBO instead of a VBA it should be possible to speed stuff up.
Even then, by making projectiles use a dynamic/streaming VBO instead of a VBA it should be possible to speed stuff up.
VBOs are faster from my experiences. I was doing some fps game for a school project and did play a lot with renderer, first doing everything in immediate mode, then DL and then VA and VBOs. The fastest was using VBOs (using index arrays and streaming separate color/normal/vertex buffers on the fly), but it might be just a radeon thing (using radeon 9k) - I've read somewhere that some radeon drivers simply translate DLs into VBOs anyway.jK wrote:VBOs are mostly slower than DLs, so there is no need to replace them.
For dynamic geometry, VBOs are the only way.
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Stealth870
- Posts: 166
- Joined: 13 Sep 2004, 00:25
My point was I can run a highly-intensive game and alt-tab in and out without problems. In Spring this is not so. Perhaps its a completely separate bug, but since we are talking about performance, I've noticed that Spring is really bad after an alt-tab. My guess is that when doing an alt-tab, something happens with the 3D calls by Spring that causes it to slowdown. As if it can't properly re-initiate the rendering or something, perhaps due to (as the thread states) the lack of optimizations.Masure wrote:I don't get the link with the topic and your "alt tab" troubles.Stealth870 wrote:This is indeed true. If I alt-tab (or have a window minimize my Spring) once I get back in, it's so sluggish I normally have to restart my game. That's with a 2.4 Core 2 and 8800GTS. I can run Supcom on high, 1680x1050 and AA all over the place with no hiccups, and I can alt-tab pretty quick too!
It isn't exactly a rare issue with games, really...Oblivion freezes when I alttab back to it when it runs in fullscreen mode. Bioshock sticks for a good 2 minutes. Other games sometimes start mixing textures around in the vram- a wall becomes a player texture, a gun gets a wall texture, etc. Not saying it's a non-issue, but it might be a graphics driver problem or something.
This does seem to happen in Neverwinter Nights 2...Peet wrote:It isn't exactly a rare issue with games, really...Oblivion freezes when I alttab back to it when it runs in fullscreen mode. Bioshock sticks for a good 2 minutes. Other games sometimes start mixing textures around in the vram- a wall becomes a player texture, a gun gets a wall texture, etc. Not saying it's a non-issue, but it might be a graphics driver problem or something.
Hmm I have no problems alt tabbing in spring what so ever, works every time. On my older XP box, I used to have some problems, occasionaly if I didn't alt tab back fast enough it would quit me out of the game?!?! But my new box is fine (running Vista 64). However I do note that my FPS majorly sucks. now my graphics cards are:Stealth870 wrote:My point was I can run a highly-intensive game and alt-tab in and out without problems. In Spring this is not so.
Very nice cards running duel sli. I run BF2 at a very high res and it has a brillant frame rate. in spring, lucky if I get above 40fps... average around mid 30's. Sometimes it drops depending on what is happening and can drop as low as the 10's.2 x Inno3D (PCI Express) GF 8800GTX Overclocked 768MB 384-bit DDR3, HDTV, Dual DVI, PCI Express X16 interface, 590MHz Core Clock, 1900MHz Memory Clock
I think part of my problem is that I have a 30" monitor and as such run Spring at it's highest res. but even with fiddling with the settings (turning off a lot of stuff or reducing it down) I still get what I would consider is a low FPS for my system. Never really understood why.
I have not those bugs while alt tabbing. The only true alt tabbing bug in Spring I have is the following :
When you alt tab to windows and try to focus back spring through task bar it often does nothing than moving your mouse up a corner without focusing spring. Sometimes 3 attempts are needed to go back in spring fullscreen.
When you alt tab to windows and try to focus back spring through task bar it often does nothing than moving your mouse up a corner without focusing spring. Sometimes 3 attempts are needed to go back in spring fullscreen.
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SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
CuPCaKe has the same setup and same problem.MetalSkin wrote:Hmm I have no problems alt tabbing in spring what so ever, works every time. On my older XP box, I used to have some problems, occasionaly if I didn't alt tab back fast enough it would quit me out of the game?!?! But my new box is fine (running Vista 64). However I do note that my FPS majorly sucks. now my graphics cards are:Stealth870 wrote:My point was I can run a highly-intensive game and alt-tab in and out without problems. In Spring this is not so.
Very nice cards running duel sli. I run BF2 at a very high res and it has a brillant frame rate. in spring, lucky if I get above 40fps... average around mid 30's. Sometimes it drops depending on what is happening and can drop as low as the 10's.2 x Inno3D (PCI Express) GF 8800GTX Overclocked 768MB 384-bit DDR3, HDTV, Dual DVI, PCI Express X16 interface, 590MHz Core Clock, 1900MHz Memory Clock
I think part of my problem is that I have a 30" monitor and as such run Spring at it's highest res. but even with fiddling with the settings (turning off a lot of stuff or reducing it down) I still get what I would consider is a low FPS for my system. Never really understood why.
I've finished building my new rig. Spec is in the Off topic forum in a thread I made about it.
Needless to say, on my 8800 GTX and quad core Q6600 I'm getting an astonishing average of.....8 fps.
Regardless of what settings I have changed, it is the same. Is there something I've missed or something I can do to make it work better?
Anyways, pretty dismal performance. Other games are all running on ,my monitors aspect resolution (1680x1050) with all settings on full and 8x AA at anything from 90-200 fps constant.
On a side note, seems I got an awesome q6600 chip or I'm just insanely good at installing heatsink with thermal paste etc because my chip idles at 26 degrees with all fans (including heatsink fan) on low and on full load only reaches 33 degrees. Looks like this one will be a bit of a beast for OC'ing :D
Needless to say, on my 8800 GTX and quad core Q6600 I'm getting an astonishing average of.....8 fps.
Regardless of what settings I have changed, it is the same. Is there something I've missed or something I can do to make it work better?
Anyways, pretty dismal performance. Other games are all running on ,my monitors aspect resolution (1680x1050) with all settings on full and 8x AA at anything from 90-200 fps constant.
On a side note, seems I got an awesome q6600 chip or I'm just insanely good at installing heatsink with thermal paste etc because my chip idles at 26 degrees with all fans (including heatsink fan) on low and on full load only reaches 33 degrees. Looks like this one will be a bit of a beast for OC'ing :D