I posted a new thread on how to improve performance under wine (Linux). The thread you reference (and that's in my signature) isn't so much how to improve it so much as how to install it.
I posted a new thread on how to improve performance under wine (Linux). The thread you reference (and that's in my signature) isn't so much how to improve it so much as how to install it.
I hope you don't mind a very specific question. I have an i5 system with dual 460's in sli. The game runs very smoothly except on the ground at three specific times:
1. When Reman's go purple and launch those ghosts.
2. When Jem-Hadar get cloaky
3. When the crm2000 starts to actually freeze something and the ice effect starts.
I get a major frame rate drop that goes away with the effect.
What effect is that launching? Bloom? Something else? I've tried putting my shadows to low and didn't see any change.
I hope you don't mind a very specific question. I have an i5 system with dual 460's in sli. The game runs very smoothly except on the ground at three specific times:
1. When Reman's go purple and launch those ghosts.
2. When Jem-Hadar get cloaky
3. When the crm2000 starts to actually freeze something and the ice effect starts.
I get a major frame rate drop that goes away with the effect.
What effect is that launching? Bloom? Something else? I've tried putting my shadows to low and didn't see any change.
Thanks.
That could be a combination of several things. Bloom is generally the glowly after effect you see around things but the actual effects of things from particles to traces is generally affected by Lightning Quality and Visual FX in the options menu. You can try to turn those lower (or even off) to see if that gives it a boost.
Also a quad core for STO is kind of overkill. While the Cryptic engine (for CO and STO) will "use" all 4 cores, if you sat down and did the number crunch on it they never really tax out more than a Dual Core, which is one reason why it runs decent on some older rigs like mine because the CPU requirement isn't nearly as high. You can try setting the affinity of STO in Task Manager to Core 0 and Core 1, and leave all your other apps (vent, browser, etc whatever else you use while playing STO) running on Core 2 and 3. It won't necessarily bump up STO performance but it can help other apps, or at least from my testing it can (as always I leave myself room to be wrong lol).
But yea try lowering the Visual FX, and maybe Bloom, re-test and see if it happens. Post back if it still happens and we can look at what you have the rest of your settings at. Hope that helps
Another thing to rember about on demand patching is that is frags your game up. Right now my STO has 520 fragments. So defrag the STO directory every now and then.
Really great guide! Thanks for taking the time to post all of that! Just something I would like to add too is another choice for great anti-virus software. I have been using Microsoft Security Essentials, which is completely free, for a long time now and have been loving it. On a old computer I used to use a lot, it caught a few viruses that McAfee apparently missed and what is also great about it is the fact it uses less resources than other programs and has no "bells and whistles" to interrupt or interfere with your gaming (or other stuff). It updates automatically and silently. Definitely something to keep in mind and try out!
Go into the settings in STO and your GPU and turn all graphics to minimum.
Defrag.
Reduce unnecessary running processes.
Protect computer from malware.
If the above don't work, get a faster GPU and/or Internet connection.
That's all nice advice, but the most useful guide is one that provides detailed information concerning individual settings -- in terms of performance impact. This guide pretty much just says "turn it off/down to minimum".
Tried that game booster mentioned in post #2, and it helps alot. Better grab a copy NOW as it's going payware in a couple weeks. It also has a built-in defrag that will defrag only the game directory. The video tweeks also made a sizable difference (post #1), as well as disabling my wireless in my router (from the rubberbanding thread).
Thanks for the great info posters,
...sadly nothing helped the load time of the SOL system, but everything else loads in less than a minute (or instant).
Tried that game booster mentioned in post #2, and it helps alot. Better grab a copy NOW as it's going payware in a couple weeks. It also has a built-in defrag that will defrag only the game directory. The video tweeks also made a sizable difference (post #1), as well as disabling my wireless in my router (from the rubberbanding thread).
Thanks for the great info posters,
...sadly nothing helped the load time of the SOL system, but everything else loads in less than a minute (or instant).
SOL system loads slowly even for good PC's, it's an on-going issue that a lot of people have.
Since the install I have had constant stuttering every few seconds. My FPS can drop from 60ish (on lowest settings) to zero pretty frequently on a periodic basis when moving around.
The fact that I can still move the cursor around leads me to believe that it is a lag issue and not a hardware one, is there any way to confirm/address this?
If this thread still relevant? If so, I'd like to give a bit more clarification on a few points:
"Half Resolution," renders the game internally at half you chose resolution, then scales it up to whatever resolution you're running your monitor in. So if you are running @1680x1050, the engine renders the game @ 840x525 and then upscales it to 1680x1050.
"Monitor Vertical Sync," Vsync locks the framerate to the refreshrate of the monitor, it prevents tearing, but has some side effects. First, it can induce input lag, and second, if the engine doesn't utilise triplebuffering, then your fps will get cut in half if it drops below your refreshrate, so if your refreshrate is 60Hz, the game will lock your fps to 60fps, but if your fps drops below that, then it will crop all the way to 30fps, unless triplebuffering is used. For best performance, Vsync off is better. (Although the "Adaptive Vsync" option in the control panel for Nvidia cards is handy for this, it will use Vsync until fps drops under the refreshrate, then it will automatically disable Vsync to stop the fps drops.)
"Antialiasing," it doesn't "round off objects that are round," it smooths the edges of all objects in the gameworld, round or not, unless those objects are transparent, in which case you'd need to use SSAA or TSAA, not MSAA, or a good trade off is FXAA from the Nvidia control panel.
"Dynamic Lighting," it doesn't make things more vibrant per say, Dynamic lighting affects the game world and objects around it, creating shadows and lighting up objects that pass through it's field.
"Texture Anisotropic Filtering," Basically makes you textures look sharper, especially distant textures, takes away that smudgy, blurry look. Most graphics can run this these days with little to no performance loss, but it can make a fair difference to the image on screen.
"Screen-space Ambient Occlusion," it improves shading, calculates how objects cast their own realtime lighting/shadows based on the surrounding area, or not, it can have a real big performance hit though.
"Cinematic Focus," often called Depth of Field or DoF for short, tries to simulate the effect of focusing on objects in the foreground or background, blurring out the surrounding area.
"GPU Accelerated Particles" This does indeed offload particles to the GPU, but if you have weaker dual core or single core CPU and a better GPU, like from the last 3-4 years, you may be better leaving this on, as relieving the CPU of the workload could be more important.
"Reduced File Streaming," if you have plenty of memory, like 4GB+, then enable this to force the game to keep more data in system memory, this reduces load time and can reduce stuttering when the game tries to stream new information from the HDD. If your running STO from an SSD, this may make little difference.
If this thread still relevant? If so, I'd like to give a bit more clarification on a few points:
"Half Resolution," renders the game internally at half you chose resolution, then scales it up to whatever resolution you're running your monitor in. So if you are running @1680x1050, the engine renders the game @ 840x525 and then upscales it to 1680x1050.
"Monitor Vertical Sync," Vsync locks the framerate to the refreshrate of the monitor, it prevents tearing, but has some side effects. First, it can induce input lag, and second, if the engine doesn't utilise triplebuffering, then your fps will get cut in half if it drops below your refreshrate, so if your refreshrate is 60Hz, the game will lock your fps to 60fps, but if your fps drops below that, then it will crop all the way to 30fps, unless triplebuffering is used. For best performance, Vsync off is better. (Although the "Adaptive Vsync" option in the control panel for Nvidia cards is handy for this, it will use Vsync until fps drops under the refreshrate, then it will automatically disable Vsync to stop the fps drops.)
"Antialiasing," it doesn't "round off objects that are round," it smooths the edges of all objects in the gameworld, round or not, unless those objects are transparent, in which case you'd need to use SSAA or TSAA, not MSAA, or a good trade off is FXAA from the Nvidia control panel.
"Dynamic Lighting," it doesn't make things more vibrant per say, Dynamic lighting affects the game world and objects around it, creating shadows and lighting up objects that pass through it's field.
"Texture Anisotropic Filtering," Basically makes you textures look sharper, especially distant textures, takes away that smudgy, blurry look. Most graphics can run this these days with little to no performance loss, but it can make a fair difference to the image on screen.
"Screen-space Ambient Occlusion," it improves shading, calculates how objects cast their own realtime lighting/shadows based on the surrounding area, or not, it can have a real big performance hit though.
"Cinematic Focus," often called Depth of Field or DoF for short, tries to simulate the effect of focusing on objects in the foreground or background, blurring out the surrounding area.
"GPU Accelerated Particles" This does indeed offload particles to the GPU, but if you have weaker dual core or single core CPU and a better GPU, like from the last 3-4 years, you may be better leaving this on, as relieving the CPU of the workload could be more important.
"Reduced File Streaming," if you have plenty of memory, like 4GB+, then enable this to force the game to keep more data in system memory, this reduces load time and can reduce stuttering when the game tries to stream new information from the HDD. If your running STO from an SSD, this may make little difference.
This needs a much needed bump imo.
I'll give this new insight a try.
NO to ARC RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
I have a pretty decent PC that can run the game with most setting son medium, yet whenever i spin the camera around quickly the frame rate spikes.
I tried turning everything off like it says in this guide but i'm still trying to figure out why it slows down when i turn the camera. Can anyone explain this to me a little?
I just got a new laptop with a Haswell Processor and GTX 780M gpu. I figured that I would be able to run the game maxed out since it is a few years old but that is not the case. My FPS takes a big dive when i try to max everything.
Is anyone else running it on a 780m? If so what your FPS and graphical settings?
I know leaving the half resolution on is recommended but I happen to like it off. I don't really like my graphics all fuzzy and pixelated. I've done it before though I can't remember how I did it then. For a time I couldn't get into the game due to technical issues and had to contact tech support and they fixed that problem but my setting had been changed so I turned off the half res. Recently someone messed with my settings and now I can't turn the half res. off. I click on it but nothing happens. Is it another setting preventing this? How do I turn it off?
Same here it won't change. After an update a few weeks ago my machine has lost over half fps and is nearly unplayable. I've tried all the settings being low or off and my frame rate doesnt change at all, except if I hide the UI then it runs like it use to. Is there a lighter resource UI out there?
Okay, I've been playing for some time with half-resolution off. Great graphics, only occasional FPS issues.
Knowing that PWE is pushing the whole "using a launcher to start your launcher" thing, I ran the experiment of downloading Arc and trying to play STO through that. Unfortunately, Arc is enough of a resource hog (on this three-year-old Toshiba Satellite) that my FPS dropped to an unacceptable level. Okay, data point. Cool.
So, I then tried the experiment of downloading Steam and running through that, since Steam will still be usable when this all happens. Tried it for CO, and the graphics got a little wonky (the toons were kind of vertically stretched out), but nothing I can't deal with. So, I tried STO. It turned my half-graphics on, and won't let me turn them off. So I went back to the separate launcher I already had - and again, it won't let me turn half-graphics off. Do I have to delete and reinstall STO or something? Or am I fracked until such time as I can afford a new computer?
Edit: Found the solution in another thread. When you start gameplay, type "/renderscale 1" into the chat box. Cleared the problem right up. Also, no framerate drop under Steam, so there's my solution.
Had massive issues running sto for 2 years with 4 gig of memory, i literarily had to keep switching stuff off in task manager. (I had a task manager shortcut )
The loader lauched 15 mins. The start screen... ages.
Then a week ago i scrubbed the money together and upgraded the ram to 6 gig.
Super difference. The only lag i receive now is when the internet link blows out. Or goes slower.
Running game on ful setings all of them and i am impressed. I dont ever turn the under water thing on cause really. The only place you need that is where there are ponds.:P
Play with the graphics.
What i would suggest OP do is update it to season nines new user interface. That will help seriously.
What did bug me about sto is this. I skyped with a friend from West coast earlier this week for 4 hours, skype seamlessly, no lag, sto - timed out 13 times.
Im hoping when they nerf the extra zones, the game will have a boost.
Overall. Great post by the op, thank.s
Whether you think you are right or wrong, either way you are RIGHT.
Comments
The Linux performance thread is here.
Thanks for the update, I'll update the link in the OP
1. When Reman's go purple and launch those ghosts.
2. When Jem-Hadar get cloaky
3. When the crm2000 starts to actually freeze something and the ice effect starts.
I get a major frame rate drop that goes away with the effect.
What effect is that launching? Bloom? Something else? I've tried putting my shadows to low and didn't see any change.
Thanks.
That could be a combination of several things. Bloom is generally the glowly after effect you see around things but the actual effects of things from particles to traces is generally affected by Lightning Quality and Visual FX in the options menu. You can try to turn those lower (or even off) to see if that gives it a boost.
Also a quad core for STO is kind of overkill. While the Cryptic engine (for CO and STO) will "use" all 4 cores, if you sat down and did the number crunch on it they never really tax out more than a Dual Core, which is one reason why it runs decent on some older rigs like mine because the CPU requirement isn't nearly as high. You can try setting the affinity of STO in Task Manager to Core 0 and Core 1, and leave all your other apps (vent, browser, etc whatever else you use while playing STO) running on Core 2 and 3. It won't necessarily bump up STO performance but it can help other apps, or at least from my testing it can (as always I leave myself room to be wrong lol).
But yea try lowering the Visual FX, and maybe Bloom, re-test and see if it happens. Post back if it still happens and we can look at what you have the rest of your settings at. Hope that helps
Go into the settings in STO and your GPU and turn all graphics to minimum.
Defrag.
Reduce unnecessary running processes.
Protect computer from malware.
If the above don't work, get a faster GPU and/or Internet connection.
That's all nice advice, but the most useful guide is one that provides detailed information concerning individual settings -- in terms of performance impact. This guide pretty much just says "turn it off/down to minimum".
Thanks for the great info posters,
...sadly nothing helped the load time of the SOL system, but everything else loads in less than a minute (or instant).
SOL system loads slowly even for good PC's, it's an on-going issue that a lot of people have.
Since the install I have had constant stuttering every few seconds. My FPS can drop from 60ish (on lowest settings) to zero pretty frequently on a periodic basis when moving around.
The fact that I can still move the cursor around leads me to believe that it is a lag issue and not a hardware one, is there any way to confirm/address this?
+1, i don't have any great machine, but sto worked nice until last season. now i have lags lags and lags
"Half Resolution," renders the game internally at half you chose resolution, then scales it up to whatever resolution you're running your monitor in. So if you are running @1680x1050, the engine renders the game @ 840x525 and then upscales it to 1680x1050.
"Monitor Vertical Sync," Vsync locks the framerate to the refreshrate of the monitor, it prevents tearing, but has some side effects. First, it can induce input lag, and second, if the engine doesn't utilise triplebuffering, then your fps will get cut in half if it drops below your refreshrate, so if your refreshrate is 60Hz, the game will lock your fps to 60fps, but if your fps drops below that, then it will crop all the way to 30fps, unless triplebuffering is used. For best performance, Vsync off is better. (Although the "Adaptive Vsync" option in the control panel for Nvidia cards is handy for this, it will use Vsync until fps drops under the refreshrate, then it will automatically disable Vsync to stop the fps drops.)
"Antialiasing," it doesn't "round off objects that are round," it smooths the edges of all objects in the gameworld, round or not, unless those objects are transparent, in which case you'd need to use SSAA or TSAA, not MSAA, or a good trade off is FXAA from the Nvidia control panel.
"Dynamic Lighting," it doesn't make things more vibrant per say, Dynamic lighting affects the game world and objects around it, creating shadows and lighting up objects that pass through it's field.
"Texture Anisotropic Filtering," Basically makes you textures look sharper, especially distant textures, takes away that smudgy, blurry look. Most graphics can run this these days with little to no performance loss, but it can make a fair difference to the image on screen.
"Screen-space Ambient Occlusion," it improves shading, calculates how objects cast their own realtime lighting/shadows based on the surrounding area, or not, it can have a real big performance hit though.
"Cinematic Focus," often called Depth of Field or DoF for short, tries to simulate the effect of focusing on objects in the foreground or background, blurring out the surrounding area.
"GPU Accelerated Particles" This does indeed offload particles to the GPU, but if you have weaker dual core or single core CPU and a better GPU, like from the last 3-4 years, you may be better leaving this on, as relieving the CPU of the workload could be more important.
"Reduced File Streaming," if you have plenty of memory, like 4GB+, then enable this to force the game to keep more data in system memory, this reduces load time and can reduce stuttering when the game tries to stream new information from the HDD. If your running STO from an SSD, this may make little difference.
Sticky Please, and suscribed
and hoping this UI setup can be added in game Slider : Performance
This needs a much needed bump imo.
I'll give this new insight a try.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
I tried turning everything off like it says in this guide but i'm still trying to figure out why it slows down when i turn the camera. Can anyone explain this to me a little?
Is anyone else running it on a 780m? If so what your FPS and graphical settings?
Knowing that PWE is pushing the whole "using a launcher to start your launcher" thing, I ran the experiment of downloading Arc and trying to play STO through that. Unfortunately, Arc is enough of a resource hog (on this three-year-old Toshiba Satellite) that my FPS dropped to an unacceptable level. Okay, data point. Cool.
So, I then tried the experiment of downloading Steam and running through that, since Steam will still be usable when this all happens. Tried it for CO, and the graphics got a little wonky (the toons were kind of vertically stretched out), but nothing I can't deal with. So, I tried STO. It turned my half-graphics on, and won't let me turn them off. So I went back to the separate launcher I already had - and again, it won't let me turn half-graphics off. Do I have to delete and reinstall STO or something? Or am I fracked until such time as I can afford a new computer?
Edit: Found the solution in another thread. When you start gameplay, type "/renderscale 1" into the chat box. Cleared the problem right up. Also, no framerate drop under Steam, so there's my solution.
The loader lauched 15 mins. The start screen... ages.
Then a week ago i scrubbed the money together and upgraded the ram to 6 gig.
Super difference. The only lag i receive now is when the internet link blows out. Or goes slower.
Running game on ful setings all of them and i am impressed. I dont ever turn the under water thing on cause really. The only place you need that is where there are ponds.:P
Play with the graphics.
What i would suggest OP do is update it to season nines new user interface. That will help seriously.
What did bug me about sto is this. I skyped with a friend from West coast earlier this week for 4 hours, skype seamlessly, no lag, sto - timed out 13 times.
Im hoping when they nerf the extra zones, the game will have a boost.
Overall. Great post by the op, thank.s