same issue. FPS drops regardles of level of detail.

OS X

edit* i turned off shaders and glow and have no fps drops anymore

same with Cunjo. MASSIVE FPS lag as Teradons enter into sector. All due to my crappy card, I'm sure.

I've got an Apple G5 iMac with that heat issue. When playing VO, the computer's CPU temp regularly hits 185°F. Even when fan is at max. Dunno what the normal range is supposed to be.

Wonder if I could get a discount on a new one if I complained enough? Hrm.

OK posting my setup:

GRAPHICS OPTIONS:
Background Detail: OFF
Effects Detail: Low (I need Low because otherwise I can't see weapons fire)
Space Junk Detail: OFF
Scene Level of Detail: 1
Distance Level of Detail: 1
Full Scene Glow Effect: OFF
Show Station in Menu: No
Target Box Mode: 2D

VIDEO DRIVER GRAPHICS OPTIONS:
Visual Quality: Custom
Resolution: 1024 x 768 32bpp
Window/Full Screen: Window
Texture Resolution: High
MimMap Filtering: Trilinear
Texture filtering: Ansiotropic
Illumination Maps: Off
Environment Maps: Off
Bump Maps: Off
Shaders: Off
VSync: Off
Gamma Correction: 13
Rage 128 Color Hack: Off
Texture Compression: Off (Can't be on, this crashes the machine)

OS: Mac OS X 10.3.9
1.8 GHz iMac G5
1 GB RAM
nVidia GeForce FX 5200 64 MB card

No other major programs running besides VO and OSX. I don't have any goofy system things running, either.

************************

With this setup, I regularly get around 20 fps in a normal sector with some combat (neuts, no misiles, etc.)

If someone uses AGT or missiles or rockets, I'll get that little fps lag thing and I'll dip to something like 2 fps for a split second, but it's enough to be annoying.

Now, in the Border Skirmish sector, with more than one teradon in my viewscreen, my fps is around 15. If they fire at me, or if someone else fires at me, or if they're close to me, my fps drops to about 2 again. but never over 10 fps.

Please tell me this is my settings. Because my video card should NOT be this bad.

Leber: I'm on a Powerbook G4 1.33 with 512 MB of RAM and the same video card (or the laptop equivalent anyway). I can manage 60fps most of the time (maybe lower during combat, but not that I can tell much).

Try the following:
* Change to medium or low texture resolution
* MipMap Filtering to Bilinear
* Texture Filtering to Linear
* Vsync On (Locks framerate to GCD of your framerate and the LCD refresh, which is technically 60Hz, so you get either constant 60fps or occasional drops to 30 so it still looks smooth)

You should then be able to increase a number of the other settings, especially the LOD settings. Something must be wrong if you have to turn those so far down.

Texture compression doesn't crash mine anymore since VO 1.5. Not sure if this may be an issue still on G5s or on OS X 10.3. If you can, upgrade to OS X 10.4, the video drivers got a boost, and I imagine lots of other things would benefit as well.

You can turn off VM on OSX. However, you really, really don't want to. Seriously.
-:sigma.SB

I've got a plasma screen on the iMac G5, so there technically *is* no refresh rate. So I've left that Vsync stuff off.

I will try your settings and report back, Nerde!
Maybe I'll upgrade to 10.4 today. What the hell. I'll SPLURGE! OMG!
Solra will be so happy that I'll be able to talk to him on Jabber.

OK welp, not enough $$ for the $130 for OS X 10.4 this week.
BUT!
Nerde's setting appear to be rather helpful. I'm only hitting ~15 fps in Deneb B-12 now, not too bad, things appear to be smoother.

So - THANKS NERDE! Next time you're in Milwaukee I'll buy ya a beer.

[EDIT] Well, didn't work so well for another fight, where I dropped frames every time I got dual gauss fired at me. More research required. [/EDIT]

Sometime around 00:00 last night, my framerate started dropping below 1 FPS every time ANY ship entered or left a sector. It was impossible to approach stations without the risk of crashing into them as someone undocked or jumped in/out, so I logged.

PS. By below 1 FPS, I mean that the screen would freeze up completely for 2-3 seconds and then resume at the 'normal' 15-30 fps.

Okay, some demo videos of the FPS issue as it relates to mission computer updates... you can see here how the framerate makes a sudden and drastic drop to 2-3 fps with every update of the mission computer.

For context, the more updates the mission computer gives in flight, the bigger the framerae drop becomes with each one. When you're just starting out it's barely noticably, but after doing some long botting missions and mining a bit...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3167647862272431384
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9170392500659969058
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=116234764584231477

At this point, the framerate drop was too high to be doing more dangerous activities (like PvP or botting) because the drops were large and frequent enough (they're also triggered by ships entering the sector) that you'd get killed fast.

The only way to get it to stop doing this, as it seems, is to exit the client and re-start it.

So in short:
1. The more feedback you get from the mission computer, the higher the probability of FPS drops when things happen, and the more severe the drops when it happens.
2. The issues with FPS drops build up over time until you exit the client and re-start it
3. Once the issues are severe, anything from a ship entering a sector, to an explosion, to the firing of ordinance weapons and the opening/closing of menus (as demonstrated in the third video with the cargo menu) will cause momentary lockups of the framerate.
4. When the framerate issues get too severe, you can't fly safely.

My FPS are ok ± 50, my ping is back to 150 ( which means VERY GOOD to me because im in the Caribean Sea...)
BUT wen i enter a station (by the docking bay or by the "returning to home station" screen) my FPS drops at 5 for about 20 seconds and then back to 50. this happened also if I Log off, the fps stay at 5 for a limited time and then go back to normal...
My ping is much better since the last update, i won't complain about station FPS issues.