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Re: How's this for a new mything computer?

Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 1:32 pm
by ThreeTigerSilverWind
GodzFire wrote:TheeTiger, I am curious for a few pieces of information from you:

1- What is the model of your Dell laptop
2- How old (years) would you say it is
3- What Operating System are you running?
4- What version of M2 are you using? I saw you said 1.7.0 previously, which is not the current stable build (1.7.1 is). We also have the 1.7.2 Public Beta for testing, which I highly suggest you check out if you haven't already.

PS: For OpenGL, make sure you have the following set:
- Anisotropic Filtering, Landscape Textures, and VSync ON
- Texture Cache (in MBs) set to ONE HALF of your TOTAL video ram size, (ie, if u have a 512 Vid Card, you set it to 256 in M2)
(1) I have a Dell Inspiron 6400.
(2) It is now close to four years old.
(3) I am running Windows XP Professional SP 3
(4) Myth 1.7.2 369b

I had all those settings turned on, except vsync. This is because when I tried OpenGL with with vsync in the past with 1.7.0, my framerates dropped down to 30 fps. But looks like there have been many improvements and optimization since then. I turned vsync on and my fps is usually around 60 now.

Re: How's this for a new mything computer?

Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 1:50 pm
by ThreeTigerSilverWind
punkUser wrote: Right, but I would highly suggest checking them out once you get the 1.7.2 public beta. On most systems they now incur very little if any overhead. If you're already getting >60fps on 1.7.[0|1] then I would imagine you'll be easily getting that *with* detail textures on 1.7.2. There were a ton of improvements made to rendering speed in 1.7.2.

To my eyes the gamma looks better in OpenGL as well... it's washed out in the D3D image. Note that gamma != brightness! If your image is too dark, you don't turn up the gamma... turn up the brightness on your monitor. Gamma is for adjusting the relatively relationship of dark and light areas and really for calibrating a monitor to display a proper gradient of lightness. Laptop monitors are notoriously bad so your ability to do this may be limited but do your best to adjust everything on the actual monitor first... ideally you shouldn't have to adjust the ingame gamma in this day and age. (Note that windows power saving settings may adjust the brightness of your panel when on battery since the backlight is quite a power hog. You can change this behavior in power options in the control panel though.)

More importantly, once you get detail textures (go get the Magma ones for the Bungie levels at the very least from the Tain) OpenGL will look *much* better due to improved detail in the landscape. I think you'll like the result.
I have Jon God's Bungie Map Textures B5 and the detail textures with his plugin are really fantastic. But on my laptop, even with 1.7.2 369b, my fps go down significantly with DT on. With DT + vsync, I get 30 fps, and without vsync, I get about 30-35 fps.

I had already set the brightness to maximum on my laptop, but the screen was still dark and it strained my eyes. So I set the gamma higher and find that it helps. I rarely use this laptop on battery now; it is plugged in 99% of the time.

I have to note that performance on OpenGL is far better on my laptop now with 1.7.2 than it was with 1.7.0. Aside from the lower fps and graininess back then, the other main reason I did not use OpenGL was because of the partial screen bug--when advancing from one level to the next, the map on the next level would only show a portion of the full screen and I could not change it. I had the same ATI video drivers back then as I do now, but I did not experience this bug when I cycled through all 25 single player maps last night on OpenGL. So, it looks like you guys have been doing alot of work on optimizing on OpenGL--thanks for all your work.

I am planning to upgrade my notebook soon, and with my new system, I look forward to playing with detail textures on.

Re: How's this for a new mything computer?

Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 10:30 pm
by BIG KROK V8 SS
i have been using open gl lately, and it some cases the resolution is a bit grainy, but i seem to have much better fps and more playable than my direct 3d. also, when playing the new dday map, the water was absolutely ridiculous looking in opengl. the amount of detail in the beach and water was like it was a brand new video game. however, i got such terrible fps with opengl, it is only playable with direct3d. its not nearly as detailed, but i can easily see now how opengl is better

Re: How's this for a new mything computer?

Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 11:57 pm
by Pyro
If your computer was choppy, you could try running it under OpenGL without the Landscape Textures option being on. That might make it run smoother.