Celestia Forums

Hi, Scuse my English, I am French.

I just discovered Celestia. This software roxs, but needs badly a FPS limiter in order to become a great, universal software, usable on all classes of PCs.

When I look the Earth from near, my Core 2 Duo processor appears to be used at 100% !!! . I think that Celestia is stupidely trying to display like 400-900? or 2222 ??? Frames Per Second. Vampirizing all the ressources of the computer. Overheating CPU and GPU, wasting energy too...

In fact, 35-50 FPS would be sufficient for a good and fluid display and would save computer ressources for other work on backgroud. And would save computer life duration and stability too.

I asked for "FPS limiter" to be implemented in a 3D-Game ( Everquest ). They did it and this worked perfectly, avoiding for example for a laptop to reboot because of overheating, and the possibility added to use another application while game was running.

So, you can begin of thinking of this enhancement now. I cant help you this way because I am newbie on 3D programming languages. But I think that my proposition is very usefull.

Just implement a FPS limiter adjustable between 1 and 100 FPS... TY GREAT CREATORS.

IF.

What fps rate does Celestia claim to be using?

Type the ` (accent grave) character to see it. On a European keyboard, you may need to type ` followed by a space.

If Celestia cannot compute the contents of its next window as fast as the computer is refreshing the screen, then it will use 100% of a CPU.

See the Preliminary Users FAQ, which is a sticky near the top of the Users Forum, Q/A # 29

How about switching on 'Sync to VBlank'?

This forum now has now > 80 000 mails. Do you really think that this proposal of yours has never been made before?

Bye Fridger

Ok, ty for yours responses .

I was just surprised seeing my recent processor used at 100% ! Just seeing from too near a low-detail textured Earth ! Or maybe was it the calculations of the hidden stars by the Earth growing and hidden more and more objects.

But I think that 75 FPS ( Or whatever your CRT screen refresh rate is ) is very luxious, is it NASA or ARMY standard ? They have always very goods computers. FPS can be different of CRT screen refresh rate.

30-35 FPS would be sufficient, just activate Vsync for better rendition. And Celestia would be easier to use on mid-level computers.

Sorry my English

IF.

Iksarfighter wrote:Ok, ty for yours responses .

I was just surprised seeing my recent processor used at 100% ! Just seeing from too near a low-detail textured Earth ! Or maybe was it the calculations of the hidden stars by the Earth growing and hidden more and more objects.

But I think that 75 FPS ( Or whatever your CRT screen refresh rate is ) is very luxious, is it NASA or ARMY standard ? They have always very goods computers. FPS can be different of CRT screen refresh rate.

30-35 FPS would be sufficient, just activate Vsync for better rendition. And Celestia would be easier to use on mid-level computers.

Sorry my English

IF.

What I was saying is that the USERS have to activate VSync in case their computer is powerful. That' s NOT the business of Celestia developers/coding.

Bye Fridger

Unfortunately, even VSync won't reduce the CPU usage noticeably if Celestia can't keep up with the system's screen refresh rate. Being able to specify a slower fps to Celestia has been requested in the past. Maybe someday...

selden wrote:Unfortunately, even VSync won't reduce the CPU usage noticeably if Celestia can't keep up with the system's screen refresh rate. Being able to specify a slower fps to Celestia has been requested in the past. Maybe someday...

But in case of our friend we are talking about a Core 2 Duo...

Bye Fridger

Why let celestia have 50 fps? the human eye and brain only functions at 20 to 30 fps at best for smooth appearance to the eye?

I'm probably saying it the wrong way, but I think you can figure out what i'm saying

PlutonianEmpire wrote:Why let celestia have 50 fps? the human eye and brain only functions at 20 to 30 fps at best for smooth appearance to the eye?

I'm probably saying it the wrong way, but I think you can figure out what i'm saying

This is actually incorrect. I direct you to http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_5.html. Towards the bottom of the page there is a link to FPS Compare (11KB) by Andreas Gustafsson. You can use that small program to see that you can actually tell a difference between 30 fps and 60 fps. 60 fps just looks smoother.

right, I see the difference (I knew that allready) ,
but that is exactly why I too think the framerate should be limited
to user-specifications.
Someone may choose the higest framerate (with smoothest viewing)
and the other prefers being able "do" Celestia without
locking the whole PC, consuming much electrical power,making lots of ventilator noise, ...)
And then there are people with sufficient power who can do both.

If one is able to choose the (max) framerate everybody
can have it their way.
I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement .


Ren?©

So Celestia synchronizes his calculations with the default screen refresh rate. It should be easy to add a user divider choice between 1,2 and 3 (or more?), so Celestia would synchronize every 1, 2 or 3 physical display frames.

The most useds screen refresh are I think : 75, 85, 100 and 120 Hz.


Screen refresh rate ----- Value = 1 ----- Value = 2 ----- Value = 3

----- 75 ----------------------- 75 -------------- 37.5 ------------ 25

----- 85 ----------------------- 85 -------------- 42.5 ------------ 28.33

---- 100 ----------------------100 -------------- 50 -------------- 33.33

---- 120 ----------------------120 -------------- 60 -------------- 40


This should help Celestia to save computer ressources, noise, energy, instead of using all theses for nothing ( more than 40 FPS is useless I think ).

Iksarfighter wrote:So Celestia synchronizes his calculations with the default screen refresh rate. It should be easy to add a user divider choice between 1,2 and 3 (or more?), so Celestia would synchronize every 1, 2 or 3 physical display frames.

That's already the way VSync works. Let's say your monitor refresh rate is 80Hz, if you have enough CPU resources to render at 100 Hz, Celestia will render at 80 Hz and use 80% of your CPU, now if your CPU is able to render at 60 Hz only, Celestia will render at 40 Hz (one in two displayed frame) and use 66% of your CPU.