Help: Celestia runs much slower with addons

[alimerzairan]

I have just downloaded celestia 1.5.1 on to my computer and added many addons. When I had a few addons, Celestia worked perfectly and I could freely travel through the universe going from star, to galaxy, to planets, etc. But after putting many addons, I have noticed that the memory usage rocketed to 1.6 gb out of 2.3 gb of my RAM. It was quite odd because I was not expecting the addons to effect Celestia by so much. So, the main question I have is, what should I do? Here are the specs of my computer:

Model name: HP Pavillon a1600n
Windows XP Media Center Edition Professional
Windows XP Service Pack 2
DirectX Version: 9.0c (4.09.00.0904)

Total Physical Memory: 960.00 Mb

AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
Processor Speed: 2.0 GHz
Total Virtual memory: 2.00 Gb

Video Card
NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE
Memory: 256.00 MB

[bdm]

Please provide more details on the addons that you have loaded. I'm guessing that you've loaded too many addons at once.

[alimerzairan]

well, In added many. Some were about 90 kilobytes and others were 130 megabytes. I added about 30 add-ons. At the first 15 it was working very well and I was enjoying it so much. But when I added the other 15, it started to lag and freeze on me. For example, when I start the program, the memory usage goes up drastically and the program freezes once I start rotating around the earth or when i give the command to go to the m2-9 binary system.

[selden]

The size on disk is smaller than the size in RAM.
High resolution jpeg surface textures, in particular, can cause Celestia's RAM size to grow much more than you might expect.

In general, do not include Addons you won't visit.

[BobHegwood]

Just curious here...
I have 57 different add-ons installed on my HP, and these are all used almost daily with no degradation in performance that I can see.
Does the allocation and/or tweaking of permanent large swap files help in this regard? In other words, can't you tweak your memory cache to avoid these problems?
Thanks, Bob

[danielj]

The reason is SIMPLE.You have a quad core that it is much faster than ANY Athlon64 X2.Unfourtanetelly,Celestia relies much on CPU power,too.Looking to your configuration,it appears that contrary to common beliefs,CPU is MORE IMPORTANT than even the VGA

Just curious here...
I have 57 different add-ons installed on my HP, and these are all used almost daily with no degradation in performance that I can see.
Does the allocation and/or tweaking of permanent large swap files help in this regard? In other words, can't you tweak your memory cache to avoid these problems?
Thanks, Bob

[BobHegwood]

The reason is SIMPLE.You have a quad core that it is much faster than ANY Athlon64 X2.Unfourtanetelly,Celestia relies much on CPU power,too.Looking to your configuration,it appears that contrary to common beliefs,CPU is MORE IMPORTANT than even the VGA

Well, this may be true, but I also ran Celestia (with many add-ons) on my old Gateway PC which had only 512 MB of RAM, and no graphics card too.
That wasn't even a dual-core machine if I recall correctly.
I simply thought that you could improve the add-on situation by adjusting the amount of disk space that can be used for virtual RAM. Sorry.

[danielj]

But I put 4096 MB of Virtual Memory and it wasn?t enough.But I realize that it is not only the number of addons that matters,but also its complexity.I can?t run Io volcanoes at decent frame rate even if I have a FRESH INSTALL AND ALMOST NO ADDON.

[alimerzairan]

hey guys, i was just testing my Celestia again. I got rid off the large add-ons that are usually in the 100 MB+. When I ran Celestia again, I noticed that it was working a bit more smoothly, but still would freeze up about 30 seconds, give or take 10, in the program. When the game launches my PF Usage of 500 MB/2872 MB jumps to 1200 MB/2872 MB. That is when the program has not frozen yet. Then, the program freezes and that 1200 MB turns to 1600 MB and more. The highest I reached was 1700 MB with the CPU Usage drastically going from 100 % down to about 50% and then back up (oscillating).

When I look at the applications tab of the Task Manager, I notice that when Celestia is running, I see one program called Celestia. When it is frozen, I see two programs called Celestia with a "Not Responding" next to it. I don't know what to do. I have deleted most of my add-ons. What else can I do? Help please.

Here are my specs:

HP Pavilion a1600n
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
2.00 GHz, 960 MB of RAM

[selden]

Exactly what Addons do you have installed?

Your symptoms are consistant with one being very large
and your system not having enough page file space.

Celestia grows when an Addon comes into view. That's when Celestia reads in that Addon's models and textures from disk in order to construct the Addon's objects. Reading information from disk also causes Celestia to pause until the files are completely loaded into RAM.

[Hank Cotman]

Gentlemen,
I use to have the same problem when I loaded a lot of add ons. My solution was to download multiple copies of Celestia 1.4.1 into my Programs File and name each one accordingly. For example, I have a separate Celestia downloaded for Near Earth Spacecraft, Solar System and Beyond Spacecraft, Bablylon 5, Fictional Systems, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. This way, when Celestia loads it only load what I am using at the time. There is another problem, however, that can cause Celestia to lock-up and go to White Screen. That is when your surface textures of objects is set to high resolution. Using a lower resolution helps in many instances. Also, Jestr's 32K High Resolution Earth DDS Textures when used past level 5 may cause lockups on slower machines with less virtual memory. I removed levels 5 thru 12 of these textures and my machine works much more efficiently. I hope these comments have helped some of you.
Hank Cotman

[t00fri]

Gentlemen,
...
Hank Cotman

Help!!! I am a girl

-t00fri

PS: Never mind, my computer is male...

[fsgregs]

You can command Celestia to load only certain add-ons and not others. Read this post for complete instructions.

http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11988

Frank