I know the devs have tried real hard to keep performance as consistent as possible between sectors, while keeping everything interesting and unique. But I've run into a few troubling sectors where my framerates just plummet.

One of the biggest trouble spots is Dau G-11. The closer I get to the asteroid station, the more my framerates drop. I'm talking about a difference from 50-12 FPS. Navigating into the docks can sometimes be unbearable and tedious. I've got my distance level of detail turned all the way down too. For the most part the rest of the game runs fine too. I average at about 60 FPS in most sectors. So I'm pretty sure my settings aren't at fault here.

I also ran into another performance-killing sector earlier today. Unfortunately I didn't record what sector it was. It was in another UIT system. I'll try to revisit it sometime later to report that one also.

But anyway, I encourage everyone else to look for sectors like these and report them. I'm hoping the devs will read up on this and put some effort in optimizing them. That is once they've got the time to do it.

There is another thread about this somewhere..

The other type of sector that kills framerates is the superdense bone roids, like in Edras F5. Basically the textures for the asteroids are unique and so take up much more video memory.

You might try enabling texture compression, even though visual quality is affected somewhat.

Does texture compression work in the OS X version? I heard it was busted or something. I might give it a try later I guess. I usually turn it on whenever I can for all the games I own.