100% CPU Usage

[Erzulie]

hello Plane Shifters. I have been attempting to play PS for many years but it just had too many issues for my computers to cope with. I have a nice little PC that was given to me and for the first time I was able to play Plane Shift in a couple different characters up through about 15 beginer quests but I did notice some persistant problems.
1. The training area sure needs some help. Much of it is out of date and about half of the training fails or fails altogether to load. I never DID see a furnace behind the blacksmith gal but another player clearly did.
2. There are many areas in the quests and NPC directions that are out of date and confusing to a new player.
3. Where the heck am I? No maps? When a new area wouldn't fully load and you are supposed to follow an unseen road, whaddya do? Where is my avatar, and where in relation to everywhere else? Very discouraging.
4. If I look straight ahead the view is bleached out. Turn a little left (in 3rd person but the same in other views) and I see a fully loaded scene in afternoon light. A little more left, it's night. Turn a little right, it's gone, then bleached out. Turn a little right a fully loaded sunset scene, a little more gone, back to bleached. The strobing in awful.
5. It uses 100% of my CPU which made my computer rebel and yell at me until I deleted Plane Shift from my computer.


NOW, I understand how PS is being created and I appreciate that. I am about to invest in a custon PC and I would like any tips you players may wish to share about putting together a computer that can handle a program such as Plane Shift or other mass graphics online sites. I thank you all for any help and I hope someday to be able to really sink my teeth into this creation.

[Sen]

It would help to understand the technical problems if you could tell us a bit about your computer 

[Erzulie]

Erzulie back again, here is some system and graphics card info. For now I am on a 56k modem. I had a very wiggly wi/fi connection but it just crashed Plane Shift. The 56k worked better although I can easily understand it would work best on a cable connection.


OS Name   Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version   5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer   Microsoft Corporation
System Name   HYPATIA
System Manufacturer   HP Pavilion 061
System Model   DK218A-ABA A220N
System Type   X86-based PC
Processor   x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1 AuthenticAMD ~2079 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date   American Megatrends Inc. 3.21, 8/31/2004
SMBIOS Version   2.3
Windows Directory   C:\WINDOWS
System Directory   C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device   \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale   United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer   Version = "5.1.2600.5574 (xpsp_sp3_qfe.080402-1256)"
User Name   HYPATIA\Paul
Time Zone   Pacific Daylight Time
Total Physical Memory   768.00 MB
Available Physical Memory   470.49 MB
Total Virtual Memory   2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory   1.96 GB
Page File Space   2.21 GB
Page File   C:\pagefile.sys


I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7   PCI bus
I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7   Direct memory access controller
   
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF   PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF   NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
   
IRQ 20   Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller
IRQ 20   Realtek AC'97 Audio
   
IRQ 21   Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller
IRQ 21   OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
   
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF   PCI bus
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF   PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF   NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
   
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB   PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB   NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
   

Thanks for your help

[Sen]

Thanks for the information. Im not an expert in that, but I think your graphics card is a bit old. I'd lower all graphic settings and disable what is possible. Maybe someone else here knows better if that card is ok or not.

[Erzulie]

Yeah I did dial down all the graphics and turned off the music.
I read the forum and used a lot of the reccomendations for my problems. BUT, I didn't address them here. I thought that I would wait to see if I could resolve them.

The above (first posting) are the issues I couldn't resolve.

What would be a good PC set up for runing Plane Shift style programs?

[bloodedIrishman]

Maps would be nice I agree, Erzulie.

[RlyDontKnow]

Processor   x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1 AuthenticAMD ~2079 Mhz
Total Physical Memory   768.00 MB
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF   NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400

those are your bottlenecks.
if you check our website, you'll recognize that your cpu, your memory and your graphics card are all below the minimum requirement quite a bit. to be honest it's a miracle you got it to start at all in my opinion.

anyway, if you want to build a box for planeshift, you can check our recommended requirements (note that I'd go with something above that just to be sure (at least for the graphics card)

also note that intel graphics cards aren't really recommended as they tend to have serious driver issues.

[Vakachehk]

Erzulie you are not the only one who are finding the minimum requirements high, I had to upgrade my old computer to run 0.4 but then about a month later they upgraded it to 0.5 and it was useless again

Planeshift is all over the place with requirements and in my own opinion are way to high for such a unpopular game. If the developers (Talad) wants PlaneShift to reach its goal in being "The best fully free MMORPG" they need to not make things like Shaders and other flashy things compulsory to play the game. If a player doesn't want a nice well graphic detailed game, they don't need it. Let them run around just seeing faces and textures.