Explosions in LOMAC are still bogging down my high end system!

[S.h.r.i.k.e.]

I can't believe this! I just reinstalled the original Lock On. I jumped in the A-10 on that quick start mission in the main menu. I did a strafing run at the 2 trucks driving down the road and destroyed them. I was ~100m away from them as they exploded. My frame rates must have dropped to single digits because the game started to chug. Once I flew past the smoke/explosions, everything instantly went smooth again.

 

Something is seriously wrong with the game coding if my new system (which has to be better than the top of the line system when the game was first made) still chuggs at those instances. I have an Athlon II X2 2.9GHz, 2GB DDR3 RAM, ATI HD 4670 1GB, and Windows 7 32bit.

 

So my question is this, Black Shark should obviously have a lot of this type of ground pounding explosions going on. Did they optimize the coding for it any better or will I still chugg like crap whenever I blow something up if I buy it?

 

In LOMAC, it didn't seem as big of a deal because you were at altitude shooting missiles a lot of the time.

[Total]

If you have your water set to "High" - turn it to medium. The water table covers the ENTIRE map, not just areas with water. Not a bug, just how the engine is.

 

Also, put your shadows to All Planar instead of Full.

 

Also, the further you zoom the FOV out, the fewer frames you will have ;)

 

I was running LockOn: Flaming Cliffs 1.12 and Blackshark just fine with an AMD 2.2GHz dual core, 2GB DDR2, and an nVidia 512MB 8600GT.

 

The game engine for Lock On was developed to be far ahead of the top of the line systems at that time.

 

Flaming Cliffs 2.0, which is on the Blackshark engine, runs eons smoother than the orginal Lock On ;)

Edited April 16, 2010 by Total

[Lange_666]

It happens because not everything is loaded into memory from the beginning but only when it's needed. So even on your high end system, you have to wait for the data to be loaded into memory (and threathed) and this causes the FPS drop.

Nothing much to do about it except replacing the graphics which cause the FPS drop by smaller (in size and therefore less detailed) ones. These then load quicker and you'll notice a less high FSP drop.

If all explosions are loaded into memory from startup, you would not have such a problem.

In a flightsim world this is an issue because so much scenery data has to be loaded into memory (and threathed) because the visibility range is so hugh. Same happens when buildings or other scenerey pops into the sim but this in general is less noticable.

[theGozr]

In View.lua

ExplosionExpoTime = 4.0

 

Reduce time to 1.0 or 2.0 it help in fights :)

[Fahhh]

First of all, your system is not high-end. Not nearly even. You're running Win7 and got 2 gigs of ram only, which as it seems are not enough for a smooth playable game. I'm running just a bit slower CPU than you, but got 4 gigs of ram, and I see no stutter on explosions. So maybe here is the key for your problem. As Lange said, due to the low amount of ram available to the game, not everything is loaded, and probably when something needs to be loaded, your system needs to free that ram and writes it to the page file on your HDD. And this is not very fast so, the stutter and low fps are to be expected in such scenarios.

[MadTommy]

First of all, your system is not high-end. Not nearly even. You're running Win7 and got 2 gigs of ram only, which as it seems are not enough for a smooth playable game.

 

QFT

 

boot up your PC without running any apps and see how much RAM is being used by Win7.. my guess would be at least 1/2 you ram is being already used.

 

I used to have a similar PC and it ran LockOn with no issues with win xp.. its not the game at fault.

 

Did you update to the latest patch?

[connos]

What sound card are you using?

 

I had this issue in BS with Xonar DX when GX 2.0 was enable.

[Fahhh]

QFT

 

boot up your PC without running any apps and see how much RAM is being used by Win7.. my guess would be at least 1/2 you ram is being already used.

 

I used to have a similar PC and it ran LockOn with no issues with win xp.. its not the game at fault.

 

Did you update to the latest patch?

 

In fact Win7 runs FC2 much better than XP. And there is something new at play here. Free RAM is wasted RAM. Win 7 unlike XP, uses the free ram to preload often used data and apps, which helps it run them faster when launched. So when you see 8mb of ram free in win7, you get the wrong conclusion. And when you need it for something else, it's immediately cleared and available. Yeah win7 uses a bit more ram than XP, but it uses the entire amount much more efficiently.

 

In XP it doesn't make a huge difference if you got 1 or 2 or 4 gb of ram. In win7, the more you add, the faster your system will go. And I mean noticeably faster than XP could go.

[MadTommy]

In fact Win7 runs FC2 much better than XP. And there is something new at play here. Free RAM is wasted RAM. Win 7 unlike XP, uses the free ram to preload often used data and apps, which helps it run them faster when launched. So when you see 8mb of ram free in win7, you get the wrong conclusion. And when you need it for something else, it's immediately cleared and available. Yeah win7 uses a bit more ram than XP, but it uses the entire amount much more efficiently.

 

Win 7 uses a lot more RAM than XP does. If you only have 2 GB of RAM you'd be better off with XP in my opinion.

 

I know Win7 uses RAM better especially if you have 4+ Gig.. but that is not what we are talking about.. and also the OP was talking about Lockon original.. not even FC1 let alone FC2. So stating FC2 runs better on Win7 is missing the point here.

 

In XP it doesn't make a huge difference if you got 1 or 2 or 4 gb of ram. In win7, the more you add, the faster your system will go. And I mean noticeably faster than XP could go.

 

errr that is so untrue. Of course it does. Obviously XP can only use 3.5 GB.. but 3.5 is a lot better than 1 GB!!

Edited April 16, 2010 by MadTommy

[Fahhh]

My bad, i thought he was talking about FC2 in comparison to original LO.

 

Then I didn't make myself clear enough - of course XP makes a difference when adding more ram, but the jump in 7 is much more noticeable. And 2 gb of ram ought to be enough, if you do some maintenance before launching a hardware-demanding game. Stopping torrents/skype/browser will free a lot of memory. I wasn't always with 4g, so i know what I am talking about.

[theGozr]

The solution is looking into your Task manager and see the load.

You will see if you need more.

[Sulman]

 

errr that is so untrue. Of course it does. Obviously XP can only use 3.5 GB.. but 3.5 is a lot better than 1 GB!!

 

Superfetch / Prefetch is very impressive in Win 7. Hence the more memory you give a Win 7 box, the more it will gobble up. It does do a better job than XP did.

[MadTommy]

I agree, as i said win7 uses Ram better than XP..that is not being disputed.. however it also uses more ram for its basic functionality.. therefore if you have limited RAM, 2 Gig or less it may not be your best option.

 

What i meant was untrue.. was not the improvement in Win7 with extra RAM.. but the fact the having extra RAM in XP does not make much difference.

 

But anyway.. this is all rather off topic now.

Edited April 16, 2010 by MadTommy