I was playing today on my DSL connection (40 KB/s) and it worked! But, heh, it was 4 frames per second, so it'd be REALLY slow.

It works! And I can mine!

By the way, anybody connected with an even worse speed?

Heh. I think nearly every MMO is designed to work (in non-crowded circumstances) with 20 Kb/s or less. Latency is the killer. Hopefully you can keep your download speed near the max though!

Framerate is because of an old, underpowered computer, surely?

that...viper?

I hope you're not paying a lot for that DSL connection....

I've never ever had VO use as much as 40KB/sec, not even in capship -enabled wars packed with people.
The low FPS is definitively not due to low bandwidth, as I've even heard of people playing using 56k dialup with little or no issues.

Either low RAM, old video card with not enough RAM, or low CPU.

Now if you type /ping while playing it will tell you your latency if I'm correct.

And the higher it is, the slower you are.

Isn't about 100ms a 1/10 of second lag in most cases?

"some cases" no.. all cases...
a millisecond is 1/1000 of a second.
so a 100ms ping always means 1/10th of a second, and a 1000ms ping would be a latency of 1 full second.

this is the amount of time it takes a single packet of information to travel from one system to another AND BACK.

the average dialup connection is usually around the mid 300-400s
most dsl and cable are in the 30-90 range, and typically, satellite connections are about 800-900ms because of the extreme distance involved in sending packets to and from a satellite in space.

On a side note, I also used to *attempt* to play using a 3G (cellular phone) service, and the ping times varied greatly, from 150ms at one point, so over 1200ms at other points.

WiFi networks usually add in about another 20-30ms on top of whatever else. For instance, if I hook my laptop into my local network, I'll get an average of 60-70ms latency, however, if I use a wifi connection, that goes up to about 80-90ms, which still isn't too bad, but if there are a lot of WiFi networks in your neighborhood, or other interference-generating devices (microwaves, cell phones, cordless phones etc) expect it to add even more, since the transmitters, in both the wifi network card and the wifi access point, will have to "sort" through a lot of interference to get the info and may have to resend many packets of data.

And to think.. I'm just a dumb ole truck driver :)

My computer info:
Compaq
Presario
Intel(R)
Celeron(R) CPU 2.66 GHz
2.67 GHz, 504 of RAM

Compaq Presario? That has an integrated graphics chip right? Get a new video card, should do wonders ;)

Also, have you tried setting all your graphics settings to minimum?

I think it's the internet.

My friend has about the same thing with a faster connection but it works fine on his computer.

It's NOT the internet.
As has been said VO uses next to none bandwidth and even extreme lag doesn't affect framerate.
Only thing that does is your own computer.
Maybe it's not the hardware but software then?
Maybe your friend uses lower settings or has less programs running while playing VO.
Or maybe you have some adware/spyware/whatever.

Mail Compaq support and ask about updated drivers, if you can't find them yourself :)
That is likely to solve a lot.

Oh, btw, not even a thid of the current line of Presario have crap video cards. They're intergrated alright, but it's nvidia and ati all the way.
The very low end has Intel Extreme, so that's right out for VO :P

VO uses between 8 and 20 kilobits/s per user, under normal conditions (not a ton of other ships in the sector, etc). You said you're getting about 40 kilobytes/s, that's 320kilobits/s. Seriously, the game is playable over a 28.8 modem most of the time. If the network were impacting your game, you'd still get like 30fps, but you'd see certain things (like bots and other ships) jumping around. Stations, asteroids and other non-moving objects would look fine.

The network will not make you get 4fps, that's your computer. The other people in this thread are probably correct, your video chipset may be very slow. You might go into Options -> Video and try setting the Visual Quality setting to 16MB. Then Apply and see how it runs.

The game automatically configures on startup based on your reported video ram. The assumption is that a 128MB card will perform about as well as a GeForce4 Ti or Radeon 9500, and that a 256MB+ card will perform as well as a GeForce 6 or 7 series. However, if you have an onboard chipset that reports shared system ram as video ram, the game may autoconfigure for well above the capabilities of your system, simply because the card will say it has "256MB".. when it really has 8MB and shares 256MB of your system ram. So, try changing Visual Quality (just that first, top option) and see if things improve.

I changed the video quality to 16 bits and it didn't change at all.

I'll look into getting a newer graphics card. ;)

What would you suggest for a new card?

nvidia geforce fx5700 is an inexpensive card, but still fairly powerful for its price, you might also consider a ATI radeon 9200. get something with at *least* 128M of video ram, either nvidia or ATI, as those cards are the best "bang for the buck" and they are designed for gamers, whereas some of the other cards are more geared for business computers etc.

Long ago, I was on my eMac on dial up. All I did was mine and race Solra for mentor points.

i have a fx 5200 with 128 megs of ram its prolly like 20$ canadian to buy newi can maxe setting exep for anti aliasing and i still get a smooth 70 fps as long as im not near to a large station like D-14 or uit capitol station

"Seriously, the game is playable over a 28.8 modem most of the time."

Hell, Incarnate, the game's playable using a cell phone's 14.4 modem for your internet connection!

... not for PVP, but for trading and collector hunting it is. >_>

It's probably $50 Canadian new.

And make sure you have a 250W or greater PSU.

Newegg.com has a decent deal of a EVGA 128MB FX5200 AGP 4x/8x 1.5V for $34.98 USD including shipping.

We generally recommend the GeForce 6-series or better, and the Radeon 9500+ or better. The 5200 will play the game, but it's really slow at anything to do with shaders. I think there are low-end 6-series cards now that cost about the same, and perform better. But, I'm a little out of the loop on the current state of the videocard world.