PlaneShift

Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: DannMann99 on August 11, 2003, 06:49:09 pm

Title: My idea to stop lag... and it works
Post by: DannMann99 on August 11, 2003, 06:49:09 pm: Add in adjustable plane clipping. I was toying around with the game and i couldn\'t figure out where my lag was coming from. It just hit me though, that when i am in that town i am able to see everything in the town from certain points. If you add in adjustable plane clipping, the user will be able to set a point to where their vision is cut off, and the background is set to sky color or black. This way your unfortunate users with real slow computers can make the plane clipping to 0 and they wont be able to see far, but they will get alot less lag. Make it scallable from 0 to 100, 0 is only so far, and 100 is the entire zone. I Dont know if you were working or thinking of this, but i will try to find an example of code that you could use.

~Dan
Title:
Post by: CadRipper on August 11, 2003, 08:57:16 pm: The \"lag\" is not due to your graphics card. You may experience a slowdown because of the graphics but this has nothing to do with the \"choppiness\" that happens when objects get in your proximity, or when suddenly everything freezes.

Those are coming from a nasty effect in the network code, like it was shown in a test (http://planeshift.oodlz.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=4921&boardid=17#10).

I have put a switch to this part of the code and now I can escape the so-called \"lag\" whenever it becomes too dangerous :D The side-effect is that all the players and objects in the proximity are not drawn anymore until I reach another area. Everything has a price...
Title:
Post by: DannMann99 on August 11, 2003, 09:43:15 pm: are you sure though, i played EQ for a long time, and i know when my connection was running bad or if i was in a high lag enviornment (like on a raid in a dungeon) then i would turn down the clip plane to real low, and its a noticable difference between lag. Now i dont know if this is due to processor, vid card, ram, or isp. But i have 1ghz P3, 64mb geforce, 512mb sdram, and cable ISP. So whichever it is, clip plane used to help out with either lag of low frames per second. Its just an idea to put into your project.

~Dan
Title:
Post by: Drilixer on August 11, 2003, 10:30:48 pm: I think Dann has a point - I\'ve heard people talk about this before.
Title:
Post by: Wedge on August 11, 2003, 11:10:51 pm: This is an issue that causes low framerates but not choppiness or \"lag\" like Cad said. The render routine has just about zero optimizations right now, and there are a number of things that need work that could help the issue without directly cutting the draw distance. It\'s not really a concern for a pre-alpha release though, I\'m sure some things will be added to fix this in CB.
Title:
Post by: theonlyjimbob on August 12, 2003, 03:05:51 am: Lag lag lag you know what I dont think there will be anyway to get out of it. Xbox found a way, only people with a cable connection can play online. Anyways I\'d really like to know how I can play with that clipping thing.
I have a 56k modem, Windows 98 2nd edition, pentium III, 650 MHz, 318 RAM.
[EDIT: oh and by the way I just found this out my computer has as Intel(R) 810e Chipset Graphics Driver with a 3.5 Mb capacity not that I have any clue what that is.]
Title:
Post by: Drilixer on August 12, 2003, 03:08:23 am: I\'m sure the devs will fix the lag once they get around to it :P there are more important things to do right now like making trees and wineglases :D
Title:
Post by: Monketh on August 12, 2003, 03:44:20 am: I\'ll toast to that! :) But anyway this has been discussed before and it was generally agreed on that this \"fog\" idea was good. Perhaps we\'ll se it in cb.

[Edit: I stand corrected.]
Title:
Post by: Kiern on August 12, 2003, 03:49:59 am: http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=3137&boardid=10&styleid=3&page=1

say \"I wanter go to work\"

it\'s counterfeit
Title: har har har
Post by: Drilixer on August 12, 2003, 04:22:00 am: in response to a querry for draw distance:

Quote
Originally posted by Vengeance
no.

Get a new machine.
Title:
Post by: DannMann99 on August 13, 2003, 01:05:55 am: My machine runs rather smoothly actually, only a real slight lag problem that i can get over pretty quick... i was just thinking that it may inhibit other players from getting on and playing around.

~Dan
Title:
Post by: zaphar on August 13, 2003, 05:13:10 pm: Clipping Planes help low end machines deal with graphic overload. They reduce Frame dropping and increase framerates.

That is completely different from lag. Lag is caused by slow communication between the client and the server. Determining which one you are experiencing can be difficult. Its kind of early to be coming up with ideas on how to reduce it. The devs are going to be fixing all this stuff in future releases. Ideas like Clipping planes are industry standards, and the dev\'s are already aware of them.

Probably the best way to prevent framerate droppage however is simply using occlusion in the maps. PS\'s evironment will be especially suited to this technique. Occlusion is using architecture and walls to \"hide views\" of the rest of the map. Since Planeshift is primarily a cave world it should be easy to design the terrain and dungeons with occlusion built in. There will of course be areas with huge vista\'s to look at. But I think a lot of the area\'s can be surrounded by lots of occluding objects.

Just my two cents on the subject.
Title:
Post by: DannMann99 on August 13, 2003, 06:48:21 pm: Occlusion sounds good.... but my PC isnt in that bad of shape so i wouldn\'t mind being able to see most of things..
Title:
Post by: Drilixer on August 14, 2003, 04:41:58 am: yeah Vengeance said that we will probably \'occlude\' in the \'Why Abemore will think PS sucks\' thread