Celestia Forums

i have this for my machine
Windows XP
2 512mb nvidia 7950
2 AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processors
2 GB memory

Why am i still having horrible frame rates and scattered movement, meanwhile, on a linux live cd, it runs smoother then anything?

Any Software(Free hopefully) That might speed it up a bit?

What version of Celestia are you using?

To me it looks like you don't have hardware openGL driver enabled,
what does your openGL info say ?

(see help/openGL info)

Ren?©

Robertbobby91 wrote:i have this for my machine
Windows XP
2 512mb nvidia 7950
2 AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processors
2 GB memory

Why am i still having horrible frame rates and scattered movement, meanwhile, on a linux live cd, it runs smoother then anything?

Any Software(Free hopefully) That might speed it up a bit?

This is a good joke.

With this hardware and Celestia you are bound to get amazing framerates, once you have your (presumably new) machine configured properly! Sure, even with such a power configuration, running Celestia under software OpenGL (Mesa lib) gets you down around 1fps . See Ren?©'s post above.

Since Celestia is a really demanding OpenGL application, many people tend to show up here, with incorrectly setup (new) computers, who realize this for the first time when trying out Celestia ...

So go and get the latest NVIDIA drivers for your two 7950 cards from the NVIDIA site, install them PROPERLY and you should be VERY surprised .

Bye Fridger

Your computer is much better than mine but I get good frame rates.

Did you install the drivers for the video card?

I did a google serch of open gl and can't find a download. i have the new beta drives from nvidia installed (im entering then 360-a-day condest they have) and i think i have my amd drives installed. The frames are a little better once i figured out to press ctrl+V to get opengl 2 on. Im really unsure on drivers though. I have a lot of complications on this machine that Im just now resolving but can't quiet work out. I would swith to linux if I could get it working right, but alas, she fails to play my games properly. But anywho, any links to drives I may have left out? It still studers a little, but the opengl download location would be nice.

There is not a separate download for OpenGL drivers, they're part of the standard graphics drivers provided by Nvidia.

Did you verify that hardware acceleration is enabled?

What version of drivers does Celestia report in its help menu?

Selden, Fridger et al:

Guys, frame rates always seem to plague some people with good systems, while other Celestia users with lesser systems seem to get good rates. For example, I just bought and installed a new Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT PCI Express 256 MB card in my system. I have an Athlon 64 single core 2.8 GHz cpu, 1 GB of RAM, the new video card and a Creative Audigy 2 sound card. I've installed the latest Nvidia driver a few days ago. Yet when I tried the 64 K VT Earth with 32K VT Normal, my frame rates again plummeted to under 6 fps.

I suspect there is some optimum settings that one should set a Nvidia card to, to optimize frame rates. Likewise, I suspect some settings should never be used.

Would you guys be kind enough to share with us your advice on what the following Nvidia settings should be to optimize frame rates? It would be MOST helpful: (I'm using the settings from my particular card, but other cards will have similar choices)

Ansiotropic Filtering -
Ansiotropic Mip filter optimization -
Ansiotropic Sample Optimization -
Antialiasing setting -
Conformant Texture Clamp -
Extension Limit -
Force Mipmaps -
Gamma correct Antialiasing -
Hardware Acceleration -
Negative LOD Bias -
Texture Filtering -
Transparency Antialiasing -
Trilinear Optimization -
Triple Buffering -
Vertical Sync -


What are your recommendations on a few other settings to optimize frame rates:

Monitor Refresh rate (optimum) -
Paging Memory -

Thanks in advance guys.


Frank

fsgregs wrote:Selden, Fridger et all:

Guys, frame rates always seem to plague some people with good systems, while other Celestia users with lesser systems seem to get good rates. For example, I just bought and installed a new Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT PCI Express 256 MB card in my system. I have an Athlon 64 single core 2.8 GHz cpu, 1 GB of RAM, the new video card and a Creative Audigy 2 sound card. I've installed the latest Nvidia driver a few days ago. Yet when I tried the 64 K VT Earth with 32K VT Normal, my frame rates again plummeted to under 6 fps.

I suspect there is some optimum settings that one should set a Nvidia card to, to optimize frame rates. Likewise, I suspect some settings should never be used.

Would you guys be kind enough to share with us your advice on what the following Nvidia settings should be to optimize frame rates? It would be MOST helpful:

Ansiotropic Filtering -
Ansiotropic Mip filter optimization -
Ansiotropic Sample Optimization -

Frank,

obviously with your system 6 fps are NOT in order. Something is wrong!

Anisotropic settings tend to affect the performance only mildly, while anti-alias settings can be much more dramatic. Anyway, for benchmarking/testing put all of these to ZERO/default values.

For the /default/ Celestia distribution,
6 fps look like /software/ openGL (Mesa), i.e. like NO hardware support being activated.

This may for instance be caused by incorrect installation of the drivers, i.e. by some stale driver components from the old driver setup being still around and mixed with the new ones. You may open the respective dialog and carefully check the listed dates of the various driver components. That's what I always do as a standard cross check after a driver update.

I hope the 6 fps don't refer to all your educational stuff being included. Then you are largely on your own, since it's hard to estimate their slowing-down effects.

I am sure you checked already the openGL info output in Celestia under Help -> OpenGL Info?

If you have an installation problem also other openGL (NOT DirectX!) applications should also be abnormally slow. This would confirm incorrect installation.

Good luck,
Bye Fridger

fsgregs wrote:What are your recommendations on a few other settings to optimize frame rates:

Monitor Refresh rate (optimum) -
Paging Memory -

Monitor Refresh rate - If you don't have V-sync enabled, then this makes absolutly no difference at all. If you do have it enabled, then your framerate will be limited to your refresh rate, or 1/2 your refresh rate if it can't reach your full refresh rate. For example, if your refresh rate is 60 Hz, then your max fps would be 60 fps, one frame for every refresh. This is so that you don't have screens getting drawn halfway through refreshes. It causes screen tearing, and looks crappy. If it can't get 60 fps, then it would automatically drop to 30 fps (one frame drawn for every other refresh). After that it would drop to 20 fps (one frame for every 3rd refresh), and so on. Basically, it makes little difference though. You should have the refresh rate set to the max for whatever resolution your running. As for resolution, you should have it set as high as you can tolerate it for visibility. Some (usually older ) people don't like it too high, because they can't see items because it's too small. My preference is 1280x1024, the max my monitor can do. This limits my Refresh rate to 60 Hz. Some people say they notice flicker at this rate, and so they lower the resolution so they can increase the refresh rate. I don't notice any flicker, and I crave screen real estate.

Paging memory - Depends on how much memory you often use when you're using Celestia. Paging memory is just a backup to RAM. If you never use more than 1 GB of memory, then you don't need much of a paging file (500 MB would be plenty). But if you use alot of memory (say closer 2 GB), then you'd want more paging memory. You shouldn't have more than 1.5 times as much RAM though. Using the paging file is much slower than just using RAM. If you find you're using your paging file alot, you should think about getting more RAM.

I'm on vacation visiting family, w/o my PC (I miss it alot, ), and so I can't check all those settings for a while.

As for getting 6 fps within Celestia, Fridger's right. Something's definately wrong.

Frank,

Please provide the settings that you're actually using, including OpenGL version and driver version.

Don't forget that you have to uninstall/reboot/reinstall Nvidia drivers after any DirectX update since the DirectX distribution installs obsolete versions of the graphics drivers.

OK, I have troubleshooted my problem a bit more. I don't want to take up too much forum time, but perhaps I am not the only one facing the problem.

When I load 64K VT Earth (with or without any Normal textures or clouds), and I go to Earth, I will hear my video card loading the textures. It may take a whopping 10 - 20 seconds for Earth to appear. As the textures are loading, everything is frozen ... the clock is stopped ... the video card is simply making noise loading.

10 -20 seconds later, the scene will begin ticking again, time will again advance and frame rate will rise to 45 - 50 fps. Then, if I try to move the scene a bit ( I begin orbiting Earth) so that new tiles must load, my system will again lock up, everything will stop, my video card will hum and load for 10 -20 seconds, frame rates will drop to under 1 fps for a moment, then ... when all new tiles are loaded ... frame rates will return to 45 fps or so. Then, I'll try moving the scene even a little ... and everything will lock up for another 10 -20 seconds as the next tile set loads.

I have set my paging file at 3 GB, and it still doesn't seem to help.

PLEASE NOTE: I uninstalled the entire Nvidia driver set and reinstalled it with fresh new drivers from Nvidia as you recommended. I set them to default settings. No change! I guess this is not a driver issue. Also note that the same thing happened to my former Nvidia card (a 6600 GT), so it is not broken hardware.

Here is a dump of my OpenGL screen from Celestia:

Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer: GeForce 7600 GT/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!
Version: 2.0.3
Max simultaneous textures: 4
Max texture size: 4096
Point size range: 1.000000 - 63.375000

Supported Extensions:
GL_ARB_color_buffer_float
GL_ARB_depth_texture
GL_ARB_draw_buffers
GL_ARB_fragment_program
GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow
GL_ARB_fragment_shader
GL_ARB_half_float_pixel
GL_ARB_imaging
GL_ARB_multisample
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_ARB_occlusion_query
GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object
GL_ARB_point_parameters
GL_ARB_point_sprite
GL_ARB_shadow
GL_ARB_shader_objects
GL_ARB_shading_language_100
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
GL_ARB_texture_compression
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
GL_ARB_texture_env_add
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3
GL_ARB_texture_float
GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two
GL_ARB_texture_rectangle
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
GL_ARB_vertex_program
GL_ARB_vertex_shader
GL_ARB_window_pos
GL_ATI_draw_buffers
GL_ATI_texture_float
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once
GL_S3_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_env_add
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_blend_color
GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate
GL_EXT_blend_func_separate
GL_EXT_blend_minmax
GL_EXT_blend_subtract
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_Cg_shader
GL_EXT_depth_bounds_test
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements
GL_EXT_fog_coord
GL_EXT_framebuffer_object
GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil
GL_EXT_packed_pixels
GL_EXT_pixel_buffer_object
GL_EXT_point_parameters
GL_EXT_rescale_normal
GL_EXT_secondary_color
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color
GL_EXT_shadow_funcs
GL_EXT_stencil_two_side
GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
GL_EXT_texture3D
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_cube_map
GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp
GL_EXT_texture_env_combine
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_EXT_texture_lod
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp
GL_EXT_texture_object
GL_EXT_texture_sRGB
GL_EXT_timer_query
GL_EXT_vertex_array
GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip
GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_KTX_buffer_region
GL_NV_blend_square
GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color
GL_NV_depth_clamp
GL_NV_fence
GL_NV_float_buffer
GL_NV_fog_distance
GL_NV_fragment_program
GL_NV_fragment_program_option
GL_NV_fragment_program2
GL_NV_half_float
GL_NV_light_max_exponent
GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint
GL_NV_occlusion_query
GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil
GL_NV_pixel_data_range
GL_NV_point_sprite
GL_NV_primitive_restart
GL_NV_register_combiners
GL_NV_register_combiners2
GL_NV_texgen_reflection
GL_NV_texture_compression_vtc
GL_NV_texture_env_combine4
GL_NV_texture_expand_normal
GL_NV_texture_rectangle
GL_NV_texture_shader
GL_NV_texture_shader2
GL_NV_texture_shader3
GL_NV_vertex_array_range
GL_NV_vertex_array_range2
GL_NV_vertex_program
GL_NV_vertex_program1_1
GL_NV_vertex_program2
GL_NV_vertex_program2_option
GL_NV_vertex_program3
GL_NVX_conditional_render
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
GL_SGIS_texture_lod
GL_SGIX_depth_texture
GL_SGIX_shadow
GL_SUN_slice_accum
GL_WIN_swap_hint
WGL_EXT_swap_control

ANY HELP WOULD BE MOST APPRECIATED. I CAN'T FLY ACROSS EARTH OR SEE ANY CLOSEUPS.

It is possible that your HDD is not *very* fast and I don't know if you put all texture in .dds (dxt3 for exemple) it will be faster for the HDD to load textures in memory of the video card.

Frank,

As Fightspit points out, the problem you have described is the loading of the surface texture image files from disk. This has nothing to do with the performance of your graphics card.

Which version of Celestia are you running? Chris made some substantial improvements in how VTs are loaded in v1.5.0, to avoid loading unnecessary tiles.

Defragmenting your disk should help a little. Equivalently, running Celestria and the VT you're using from a large enough USB "thumb drive" would be faster, too. A thumb drive has much better access time than a hard drive because it doesn't have disk heads to move and wait for. (Although the very largest thumb drives actually are tiny disk drives, which would not be an improvement.)

If you aren't running Celestia v1.5, upgrading your version of Celestia should help a lot, too.

If you can make your "journey" into a script, so that all the tiles are loaded during the first runthrough, then it should run more quickly the second time.

Frank,

I've had a similar problem when I tried to install the latest Nvidia driver (v93.71). So I installed back a previous version (v91.31) and then everything went fine... I know that my graphics card has nothing to do with your GeForce 7600 GT, but it may be worth trying with v91.31...

selden wrote:Frank,

As Fightspit points out, the problem you have described is the loading of the surface texture image files from disk. This has nothing to do with the performance of your graphics card.

Which version of Celestia are you running? Chris made some substantial improvements in how VTs are loaded in v1.5.0, to avoid loading unnecessary tiles.

If you aren't running Celestia v1.5, upgrading your version of Celestia should help a lot, too.

Along the same lines let me point out that in earlier versions (including the first pre 1.5.0) there was a SERIOUS bug concerning VT's of monster textures! It was practically impossible to extensively operate tiles, due to similar effects Frank has described including plenty of crashes!

Chris has meanwhile fixed this and the VT operation is just great in the
most recent pre 1.5.0 version(s).

Since Celestia is under "rapid" development towards 1.5.0 final, it appears surprising that Frank did not specify precisely WHICH Celestia version he is using, despite his extensive report...

Bye Fridger

fsgregs wrote:... I will hear my video card loading the textures.

The sound you're hearing is data being read from the hard drive. Other than the fan, a video card is silent.

Frank,

next issue:
++++++++++
you mentioned your 64k Earth VT's, but you did NOT specify where they are from!
++++++++++
Since my latitude-optimized
64k VTs are not yet publicly available, I suppose you were using the ones from Fightspit. These, however, have, NO polar optimizations of their resolution built in and THEREFORE ===>

+++++++++++
produce a great loading stress due to VERY large overlap of tiles closer to the poles!! Depending on memory, this fact can even lead to crashes, but certainly it leads to lousy (tile loading) performance north and south of the equator!
++++++++++

I am sure being an astronomy/science teacher, you immediately figured out why this happens, if the tile resolution is kept constant (rather than being adequately decreased in polar regimes!)

Bye Fridger

BTW: My last graphics-card did make noises :
I could hear every change on the screen whispering out of the card.
Never heard of that before but after a search in a 3D-Forum I found that this is a known issue !!!!

First I thought about my power supply being too weak but it was rock-stable.
--> after all the card went return to sender. It was louder then all my hd`s and fans together...