Re: Removing in-race messages

Hi

Could you tell us about your system (hardware, graphics, driver, operating system, …)? Do you use the latest TORCS version (1.3.3 or 1.3.4-test1/2)?

What happens when you switch off the rear mirror (this is the most "hungry" feature, because the scene is then rendered twice), how does it behave on another track?

On a "normal" system it is not possible that the race messages cause any such drop, because it is just texturing (the FPS counter works more or less the same way like the race messages). A possibility is that your OpenGL driver is not hardware accelerated or that the used blending mode is dog slow (e.g. when done in software emulation).

I recommend to update the graphics/OpenGL driver if your system supports hardware accelerated OpenGL at all. To check if the sound causes the trouble you can simply switch it off in TORCS. If another OpenGL/3D application is running at the same time, switch it off (e.g. do not use a 3D desktop like Aero), this can hurt performance badly. Some antivirus software or process in the background can slow down things as well, so shut off any background tasks.

Btw. if there is no hardware accelerated OpenGL driver for your system around, but it features a Direct3D driver, there is a commercial wrapper around IIRC (but I guess a cheap graphics accelerator does not cost more)., e.g http://www.majorgeeks.com/GLDirect_d381.html, google for more, there might be other ones.

Could you try the above recommendations and let us know about the result? Thank you for your detailed report.

Best regards

Bernhard


On Aug 31, 2012, at 15:41 , [email protected] wrote:

> 
> I hereby present four images as evidence of the phenomenon in question.
> The first three of them were taken in a matter of seconds and they
> highlight the significant drop in FPS when a robot driver pits for
> repairs. The final image shows another huge drop after the race finish
> as the robots roll in one by one. In that particular race, the FPS
> usually stayed between 20 and 30, so the sudden drop to under 10 is
> troubling, and really complicates driving. Bear in mind I had already
> reduced the graphics a lot to reach those adequate 20-30 FPS in racing
> conditions.
> 
> Here are links to the images (I opted against sending attachments as
> they might never arrive). I hope the image host didn't resize them so
> badly the FPS can't be seen anymore.
> 
> 1st image, right after a robot pits (FPS still normal)
> http://tinypic.com/r/1448sv4/6
> 
> 2nd image, huge drop in FPS
> http://tinypic.com/r/2dbmp6w/6
> 
> 3rd image, FPS back to normal after the notification is gone (robot
> still pitting)
> http://tinypic.com/r/w6uvdz/6
> 
> 4th image, post-race texts cause another drop
> http://tinypic.com/r/34zlelg/6
> 
> If the above links fail for some reason, here they are in html:
> <a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=1448sv4" target="_blank"><img
> src="http://i47.tinypic.com/1448sv4.png" border="0" alt="Image and video
> hosting by TinyPic"></a>
> 
> <a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2dbmp6w" target="_blank"><img
> src="http://i45.tinypic.com/2dbmp6w.png" border="0" alt="Image and video
> hosting by TinyPic"></a>
> 
> <a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=w6uvdz" target="_blank"><img
> src="http://i45.tinypic.com/w6uvdz.png" border="0" alt="Image and video
> hosting by TinyPic"></a>
> 
> <a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=34zlelg" target="_blank"><img
> src="http://i47.tinypic.com/34zlelg.png" border="0" alt="Image and video
> hosting by TinyPic"></a>
> 
> The sound issue (interference) I explained in earlier posts frequently
> coincided with the FPS problem, but it's difficult to say if they're
> related, at least with my unimpressive diagnostic skills. And to further
> confuse this simple mind, the FPS doesn't drop every time a robot pits. 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.fastmail.fm - A no graphics, no pop-ups email service
> 
> 
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