SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

I've heard many people complaining about sluggish menu performance. At first i didn't have this problem, but since i've tested antialiasing i know that this most likely is the cause of the problem. With only 2xAA activated i get a performance loss of about 100fps! as soon as i enter the ship design menu, it's sluggish indeed.

I've already dispatched an email to Aaron, but i'd like to know if this is a common issue or if it's limited to certain configurations, so try the game with activated / deactivated AA.

My specs:
P4 3.0GHz
Radeon 9800 Pro
1GB Ram

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Hey, you're right ! I have an Athlon 2400 and a Radeon9600, didn't know why I had a choppy 6 fps in design screen (and 20 elsewhere), disabled AA and poof I got 60 everywhere now !

It could be an ATI issue, they have many (I think I'll switch back to NVidia next time, they have good OpenGL optimization for Dominions *and* show fog in CM also... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

I have an nvidia card. With AA 4x and AF 8X, I get 75FPS in the main system screen and exactly the same with it off. (which means the real FPS is higher than that and V-sync is kicking in)

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Could you try the same thing with deactivated VSync, Phoenix-D? Just to see if you experience the same fps drop.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

I'm thinking he means disabling it in the global settings, not setting it to application controlled.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

SE5 doesn't have a AA setting so application controlled is the same as "off".

That said I lose 5FPS by turning AA on. Whoops de do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Apparently its a video card specific issue. I lose *100* FPS going to the ship design screen though, which is just bizzare.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Please forgive my ignorance:

What is antialiasing and how do you acticate/deactivate it?

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Anti-alising is activated either by an in-game menu or in your graphics card settings.

What it does is smooth out the "jaggies" created by low resolutions. Take a circle drawn in a 10x10 'screen'. It'll look a lot less smooth than one drawn in a 100x100 screen, because you don't have as many pixels to draw the edges with.

What AA does is take those rough edges and smooth them out a bit, giving you the effect of higher resolutions without as much of a performance hit.

Or that's what its *supposed* to do; it doesn't always work out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Thank you very much for your answer. I learn every day something new.
As far as I understood you can't change the antialiasing for SE V alone but you would have to change it for your entire computer. Is that correct?

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Depending on your video card, yes. Most of them also have tools where you can force AA on or off for only one program.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Here's a technical description of anti-aliasing: wikipedia

In a nutshell, it blows up a frame by a certain factor (2x, 4x, etc) and finds all the edges, then dithers those edges, and finally shrinks the frame back down to be rendered at the initial resolution. The higher the number (2x, 4x) the finer the softening of the edges will be (and the sharper the images will seem), at the cost of higher video memory/gpu cycle requirements.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

I'd say that it is very likely your anti-aliasing is choking on the every-other-pixel transparency effects in the design screen...
Basically, every single pixel on the screen looks like a jaggie, and the result would be blurring of the picture.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

What every other pixel transperancy? The .bmp for that screen is normal, and I'm not seeing any transparency effects at all in-game.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Another good explanation of anti-aliasing, and as a bonus, anisotropic filtering:
Hardware.info

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

I suppose this is as good a thread as any to post my problem.
It was advised on the IRC last night that if my computer could run Starfury, it should run SE:V just fine; that is not the case at all apparently. Once the game is open, my entire system is taxed. Not only does the game operate sluggishly (more on that in a minute) but everything slows down. I was trying to chat at the same time, and sometimes had to wait 10 or 15 seconds for what I typed in the send-line to even show up. The mouse ghosted. The windows start menu opened only after a long delay. Et cetera ad nauseum.
Now the game itself: Opening the game is ok. Going thru all the setup and empire options and all that is all fine. However, once the game actually starts playing.... <Insert sound of Millennium Falcon hyper-drive failure here> The mouse in-game behaves like it's stuck in molasses. I move it, it disappears, it reappears and slides to a halt somewhere in the direction I moved it.

This system is no slouch (though I'll admit the vid-card is a bit lacking) and as I stated before, it plays Starfury very well, even the 3d-rendered battles. I'm looking for ways to fix this.

• I can't find an antialiasing setting in the advanced setup of my card.
• Can I turn off the rotation of the planets in the main screen or something?
• Should I spend $200 on a new card to play this buggy-*** game?

System:
XP Pro sp2
2.4ghz Intel P4
1.5GB RAM
Matrox Millennium G550 with latest drivers and DirectX 9.0

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

I can't help with your card settings, but did you set the video memory mode in SEV, to Safe? That seems to fix most people's problems.

Edit: The G550 only actually supports up to DirectX 6 (at least officially), SEV requires DirectX 8.1 support.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Yes it's set to Safe. I've tried several different resolutions, windowed mode, set the detail settings low, etc. All with the same result. The latest driver (8/8/05 v5.95.5.0) is installed and running with no display errors in any other app, and I've run the tests on DirX 9.0... all working fine.

TT

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

It will pass the tests regardless, but the tests don't look for version compliance. You could pop in an old GeForce mx440 and it would 'pass' the DirectX test too, but it doesn't support DX9.

The simple answer is, if you want to play SEV you'll have to get a newer card. Not necessiarily a brand new card, just something that supports at least DX8.1, I'd suggest checking local forsale newsgroups, or bargin bins at local hardware stores.

For ATI cards, you'll need at least a Radeon 8500, for Geforce at least a Ti4200 (and the GF3 cards will work too).

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Ok, maybe that's the problem then. What version of DX does Starfury require though?

If I'm actually going to buy a new card, I'll of course buy the best one I can get, so I get the most mileage out of it. That's my adopted strategy for this whole machine, which is why it's lasted so long. (4 years)

Thanks for the help,
TT

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

I think Starfury was a DX7 game.

EDIT: Checked the system specs on Strategy First's site; DX 7 compatible video card for SE:V

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

The game engine definitely needs serious optimization. Seriously, Heroes 5 and HL 2 run faster on my computer than SE5.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

I think you mean for StarFury, not SE:V.

No..SF does say DX7 for SE:V, however Malfador lists DX8.1 as required.

Seriously, maybe Aaron should have found a better publisher?
SF hasn't done any marketing (That I have seen) and they can't even manage to get the game specs right...

From SF:

New vehicle types and sizes: Ships, Bases, Freighters, Fighters, Mines, Satellites, Troops, Drones, and Weapons Platforms.

-Umm..what new sizes?

From SF: System Requirements
Pentium 500MHz or better class machine
Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP
64 megabytes RAM or better
1024x768 or better screen resolution
16 bit color display or better
DirectX 7.0 (or better)
A video card with 3D acceleration
500 megs hard drive space
A sound card capable of supporting MP3 and DirectSound playback. Sound card must be DirectX 7.0 (or better) compatible.

From Malfador: Pentium 500 MHz or better class machine
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
128MB RAM
1024x768 or better screen resolution
16bit color or better color depth
500 megs hard drive space
A video card with 3D acceleration
DirectX 8.1 or higher
A sound card capable of supporting MP3 and DirectSound playback. Sound card must be DirectX 8.1 (or better) compatible.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...readnought.png

This is what I mean... look closely at the slots, and you should see the shading effect. Every-other-pixel being black.

That would kill a card trying to smooth out jaggies, since a large fraction of the screen is covered by the alternating pixels instead of just the occasional corner.

Re: SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing
 

Which menus are you having trouble with? Certain menus (colonies list, ships/fleets list, etc.) are very slow to appear because the program must compile the list before it can be displayed. It's searching through the entire simulated universe to find your planets or ships or whatever. No amount of 3D acceleration will help that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif