I've been getting large frame rate drops in the past couple of updates (I believe 3.3.11 fixed it then 3.3.12 brought it back). I generally get fps between 60 and 150. Sometimes if there are a lot of polygons it drops down to 38-45 with rglow on. The following pics were taken with my normal settings (see bellow) except rglow was off.

s5's 'close' station pretty much nothing else.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s5a.jpg

s5's 'far' station and most of s5's roids.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s5b.jpg
Here the mean fps was in the high 40's low 50's but there were repeated outliers way bellow that. In general that is what playing recently has felt like. Even when I have reasonable fps it's feels chopy.


Now here's where it gets interesting.
s13 pretty much everything.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s13a.jpg

s13 I haven't moved at all... there are a few more pollygons.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s13b.jpg
and about 1/3rd the fps!

I sat here for a while and it would spend 30 seconds or so looking like the first picture then 30 seconds like the second.

Mac OS 10.3.1
Dual 2ghz G5
512mb RAM
Radeon 9800pro

Settings:
1248x1024 32bit
Scene Detail: 1
Distance: 14
Rglow: off for screen shots (normally on)
DoShaders: on
everything else on the highest settings

Very interesting. Nice post, Eldrad. My guess is either that lots of effects (glowing rockets, smoke trails, etc) are being added to the scene, even though you can't see them and/or the physics engine is taking up more CPU for some reason. Ray might have a better explanation, but either way this is helpful.

Glad to be helpful. I can try to get more interesting screens that show different behavior if you'd like.

Thanks for providing solid results with this issue, Eldrad. I thought I was going nuts for a while with the FPS issue. The last release with the new station in s14 (before it got moved) was the one where everything ran fine for me. While the past one or two updates improved framerates slightly (no idea how), it's still not up to the performance it used to be back then. I too have OS X 10.3.1, except my shaders are turned off.

Ok a1k0n, here's another pic that supports your rockets, smoke trails, etc thought.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s13c.jpg

I was the only one in the sector. I was only playing on 1024x864 but the distance detail was 1.

I had a very interesting experience today in sector 10. An Itani player was trapped in the hidden station because I kept firing at him, and he returned fire by shooting rockets at me through the exit tunnel. Well, one rocket impacted right near the entrance, never making it out of the tunnel. Although the rocket was totally destroyed and harmless now, for some reason its sound kept playing as if it was still flying by me. I double checked visually and through my radar, but it wasn't there. The sound just whooshed past me as if it was a ghost. I don't know if this is related to this bug, but it's noteworthy nevertheless.

Eldrad, thanks for the pics.
If/when this happens, type /profile to see a set of graphs. They should be the same for the low fps and the high fps except for the RenderFrame() bargraph.
If not, please tell me.
Maybe supervisor->UpdateFrame() is taking more time sometimes, I dunno.

Also, try turning off doshaders and see if you have the same framerate drop issues.
Also, when your framerate is low like in 13b see if there is anyone in the sector with you and what kind of ship they have.

I've been having fps drop around the station ports and in sector 14...

Ok, not sure what ships people were using, but I got only a minor, reasonable drop with 4+ other people in the sector. As seen bellow.

http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s13%20one%20person.jpg
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s13%20people.jpg


Then I asked them to shoot. My fps dropped at least as low as 80, but I didn't manage to take a screen.

Then with only one person in the sector I asked them to fire some swarms. Resulting in the following fps drop:
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s13%20swarms.jpg


I also have these screens which may not be as helpful.

Normal fps with a modular station. I sometimes the fps are like this and sometimes they're like the s5 station picture from earlier. This definitely is not dependent on the presence of other people in the sector.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s9%20norm.jpg


This spiking behavior seems extreme to me but that might just be because I don't see the scale on the logarithmic graph.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s8%20spikes.jpg


These were all done with DoShaders still on, same settings as before... I will turn DoShaders off and tell you if there is a change.

You know, if you didn't havwe a DP G5 I'd say those FPS are pretty damned good.

Just some additional info. After playing for an hour and half, sector 9 started to become extremely choppy. Specifically when facing the station from the sector 8 wormhole. However, when I restarted Vendetta and went back to the same place, my framerates were fine again. This leads me to believe that a memory bug or something else is piling up in the background to cause some type of slowdown in performance.

Eldrad, see if you get different results when you give Vendetta a fresh start, and when you jump from sector to sector for an hour or two. I'd hate to make you sound like a guinea pig but it seems like you're good at this.

=)

I've definately noticed that after playing for a while, and in particular jumping through many sectors causes the frame rates to go down aswell, and restarting vendetta fixes this.

electric, most of the framerates aren't bad at all, though I do sometimes get sectors with 17 or less fps, which I find un-playable, but it's the fact that they're so drastically worse than in previous version, even though there were no new graphical effects.

try setting doindexbuffers=0 and/or dovertexbuffers=0 in the config.ini file and see how much of a change you get, eldrad.
Mainly try the doindexbuffers flag.

We will be releasing a sort-of benchmarking program eventually that could help in narrowing this problem down, but I'm still working on where the slowdown could be.

Ok, so here's some solid proof of what Arolte was talking about. It is not time dependent just the number of sectors you've been through, not sure if they have to be new sectors or if hopping back and forth between the same two sectors works.

Flying around for a while going through many sectors.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s7%20before.jpg

Quitting vendetta and restarting it.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s7%20after.jpg

(no one outside of the dock either time.)
doindexbuffers, dovertexbuffers, and doshaders all 1


After turning off doindexbuffers, dovertexbuffers, and doshaders I didn't get fps drops. Nothing went under 45 fps even if there were lots of people doing things and all of a modular station in view.

I will turn them on one at a time to see if one of them is causing it and get back to you.

dovertexbuffers is the problem. If it's on the problem occurs if not it doesn't.

Here's what s5 looks like after flying around nine different sectors.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s5%20dovertexbuffers%20on.jpg


Here's what s5 looks like on startup for any settings or after flying around through nine different sectors with dovertexbuffers turned off.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s5%20dovertexbuffers%20on.jpg

(note: RenderFrames() was flashing to about twice as high on the down spikes, but the picture caught it on a plateau)

I was getting low fps right when I logged on with doshaders, and doindexbuffers turned on, and dovertextbuffers turned off. There were many other people in the sector so I waited a while to see if things would change as they left. It stayed consistently bad. I took these pictures with only one other person in the sector. I don't know what they were using.

s5 right on startup with doshaders and doindexbuffers on. rglow and dovertexbuffers off.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s5%20doshaders&doindexbuffers.jpg

s5 right on startup with doshaders, doindexbuffers and rglow on. dovertexbuffers off.
http://fuller.mit.edu/alan/vendetta/fps%20-%20s5%20doshaders&doindexbuffers&rglow.jpg

Vertex buffers helps framerates by a lot. Turning it off will kills framerates for me. I'm not sure about index buffers. I'll have to experiment with that. Should it improve framerates with it on also?

There's something wrong with the way i use vertex buffers and the way the hardware wants them to be used.
ATI has verified that they have/had bugs with the vertex buffer stuff but they said it is fixed in the latest drivers/osX.3.1.
It's all a mess right now.

Ok, well good luck trying to fix it. If you need more data just speak up and I'll try to get it.

OS X 10.2.3 is going to be release very soon now. At the latest January I believe. It's going to have graphics driver updates in it. Hopefully that'll solve some of the problems. Although I suspect some of the FPS issues will remain, since they affect both ATI and nVidia cards.