Pilot Archive

...but Kashyyyk airspace is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to fly through, and don't you deny it.

With the constant space-lightning that lasts about 5 seconds, the unneeded orange asteroid in the background and the freaking nebulae that surround the space station, both of wich get your FSP down to 1 or less. I even failed the Civilain Protection mission the first time because I couldn't disable the tier 2 and 3 ships fast enough *Gag*!

Now, there is an easy way to fix it: either me and everyone else goes out and buys a better graphics card (I'm using Gforce 64 or something, its not the best).

OR

-Change the timer on space lighting to last no more than a few seconds (3 max)
-Change the timer between space lightning stikes to no less than 30 seconds
-Remove Nebulae from areas of high commuting (Kash Space Station)
-Give Player an option to turn the space background off
-Somehow or another decrease the lag when you see a nebulae.


Since I am not overly loaded with money, I won't go out to best buy or someother electronic store to buy a $100-200+ graphics card and a stick of RAM, I would like to see some, if not all of the above changes. Not only to Kash Airspace, but to the rest of JTL areas.

Right now, when trying to fight stuff in Kash. I only shoot when I see a blank Starfeild. When I go and "merry-go-round" a ship and my line of sight sees either the G-D, stupid, F'n orange thing or the Kash Space Station (which has a nebulae sitting right on f'n top of it) I just hold my breath and wait again till I see the Starfield. But, the thing is, these two areas are on opposite sides on the sector and take up about half the sector.

There is no place for anyone to even TRY to hit a ship in either of those two areas. You will miss everytime because by the time the system registers when you shot, what angle you shot at, where the target what, what angle the target was at, the curve of the shot, the speed at wich you, the target, and your shots are going PLUS the FPS decrease/Lag....you're just going to miss the target.

Now, I am a Rebel Ace Pilot, I did all of my tier 3 missions SOLO. I got groups for T4 and the Vette, but you all know that I KNOW HOW TO FLY my beat up X-Wing. I am using a good engine, weapons, etc and the X-Wing is also very manuverable. I DO NOT to to kill things at top speed, nor at no speed. I stay around the middle so that I can turn better. Even with all these things in my favor (supposedly), the way Kash was built makes it all folly.

Please, tell me I'm not crazy. Please, tell me you agree.

You're absolutely right, its the graphics card. Started mostly when SWG moved to DirectX 9.0c, for me. If your vid card doesn't natively support 9.0c, you processor does a ton of work, leading to lag and all sorts of anomalies. This is compounded when using a generic network card or modem, because they also force the CPU to do a ton of work.

If the CPU is busy rendering stuff, it's going to start dropping packets from your network card, leading to shots not being registered and all the other stuff you're mentioning.

Problem is that every game, including SWG, is going to be tweaking and updating the graphics engine, pushing the limit of technology and your system. ROTW is the newest expansion and therefor has the newest graphical stuff in it. I wonder if the system requirements are different on the Total Experience box than on the original SWG box. I'd say yes.

Now I'm not defending this, it's just a fact of life for a constantly evolving game like this.

Yes, the best fix is to upgrade your video card, but you can also turn down your graphics settings. More specifically, I've found that lowering Nebula Density and the Particle system sliders to minimum helps out a lot with lag in space. You'll find those on the Graphic tab of the Option window.

Try that and let us know what effect it has.

Unfortunately, my options window does not have Nebulae density anymore, It used to, but not anymore.

If Kashyyyk sector was an issue 24hr a day for me I might agree it's a hardware problem. Since it's only during peak times that I cannot play there smoothly, then the hardware problem is not mine. If there had been graphical improvements relating to new code designed to run on newer hardware as part of RotW, then we would see people saying that Kashyyyk runs better than expected, and regular sectors have improved even more since RotW. Since I have not see post one from someone saying space runs better for them since RotW, its fairly obvious that Kashyyyk is simply poorly designed, and thus the worst victim of all the increased load.

You cannot dispute that the sector contains every single factor that can lead to a graphics slowdown:

Lots of NPCs

Lots of Asteroids

Debris fields

Large Nebulae

A highly busy painted background

Lots of players (unavoidable)

All theseevents/objects exist in other sectors, but only in Kash are you expected to deal with several if not all of them at the same time. There were some very good reasons Deep Space was painted and populated the way it is. There were good reasons whythe vicinity of most space stations was left pretty empty. There were lots of good design principles that made the other sectors of JtL interesting, yet still playable. You can't look at the OP and simply say, 'yeahit's his hardware' because its as plain as the nose on my face that the designer of Kashyyyk simply took every "cool" thing he could find, and toss it in there. People with system resources to burn won't notice these problems, but when people with requirements+ a bit are having unplayable lag on top of graphics slowdowns, then there were things done to the space game graphics, and they weren't "upgrades"

Final note- number of changes in system requirementsbetween Empire Divided and Total Experience boxes: Zero

Second Final note- The slowdowns began for most people not when DirectX 9.0c was implemented, but when CU/RotW went live. You may have been having problems in space because of DirectX but most people weren't, or we would have seen these now common complaints blossom months ago.

Message Edited by psikobunny on 05-29-2005 01:15 AM

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psikobunny wrote:

If Kashyyyk sector was an issue 24hr a day for me I might agree it's a hardware problem. Since it's only during peak times that I cannot play there smoothly, then the hardware problem is not mine.

Final note- number of changes in system requirementsbetween Empire Divided and Total Experience boxes: Zero

Second Final note- The slowdowns began for most people not when DirectX 9.0c was implemented, but when CU/RotW went live. You may have been having problems in space because of DirectX but most people weren't, or we would have seen these now common complaints blossom months ago.

Message Edited by psikobunny on 05-29-2005 01:15 AM

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Woah, I'm not saying that the general lag in Kashyyykis entirely a hardware problem. The original poster mentioned, specifically, the he was getting massive slowdowns when looking at the nebulae around Kashyyyk. *That* is a hardware/driver issue.

Yes, they've added more stuff, not disputing that. The original post isn't about that at all.

When I say "graphical improvements" I don't mean making the code leaner and faster, I mean they added new particle and shader effects that are in the latest versions of directx. These *will* slow down your graphics card.

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idolatry wrote:

Yes, they've added more stuff, not disputing that. The original post isn't about that at all

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Actually, its entirely about that, read it again. He mentions his substandard graphics card as a possibility, but the main thrust of the post is that Kashyyyk is a graphical toilet.

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psikobunny wrote:

Final note- number of changes in system requirements between Empire Divided and Total Experience boxes: Zero

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I've got both boxes sitting here in front of me now and there is a difference in requirements. On the Empire Divided box, required RAM is 256 and recommended is 512. On my Total Experience box, required is 512 and recommended is 1024. That is the only difference.

Message Edited by Mac_Leod on 05-29-2005 12:37 AM

Apologies, you are correct, I was looking at graphics reqs primarily, and that slipped past me, thanks.

I'm going to try again to see if I can't improve gameplay by reducing graphics. Now, I love Kash, both Airspace and Dirtside, but when I can't get a shot in edge wise because of a) my good, but lower level graphiX engine + b) insane detail to Kash = very hard time to play the game.

Nope! NEVERMIND! I found it, but you know what? THE NEBULAE DENSITY IS TURNED DOWN AS FAR AS IT CAN GO!!!!

I have failed the CPG missions 3 times now, and its NOT because I can't fly a ship. I can, I'm an Ace in this game and ive beaten dozens of other flight simulator games as well.

The reason I fail is that everywhere I turn there is either the Planet there, the nebulae, the F*cking lighting or that d4mn 4ss, stupid peice of orange sh1t that caught fire in space. All of wich make my FPS go NEGATIVE!

PLEASE! Give me an option so that I can turn off the background in space, that alone would help tremendously.

Also, make the lightning strikes in space less frequent and not last as long. Or! Even better! Remove them alltogether! I usually don't see massive lightnight strikes above Earth...no, wait, I DONT SEE ANY AT ALL!

Yeah, yeah, this is the SWU not our universe, but still, whenever I watched the SW movies there was NO LIGHTNING is space AT ALL! And don't you dare say there was lightning on Coruscant in end of the second movie, that was on the PLANET, not in space.

Hey, While I'm on a rampage: I didn't see any nebulae sitting on top of a spacestation in the movies. Infact: nebulae are supposed to be hundreds, thousands and even MILLIONS of lightyears in length. You can't have MULTIPLE nebulae in a sector, let alone even ONE.

Asteroids are OK, but they need some tweaking, they have a purpose to be there and they are existant in a solar system. They give the enemy an advantage and you get pissed off because your shots can't go throught them, but your enemies CAN.



Now, I'm not asking for all of these things to be REMOVED. I'm asking for a fix and a little option for me to turn a few things off.

-Lightning Strikes should only last the MAX of 3 seconds.
-Lightning Strikes should only appear the MIN of 1/30seconds.
-Nebulae should not render untill 500m (or so) away from them.
-Give us an option to remove Planets, Starfeild and or Sector-Specific Detail from our background.
-Nebulae particles need to be reajusted so that not as much lag takes place when you look at them.

Just to start things off, this would help us ALL a lot.

/rantOff

i agree, this was the only reason why i actually answered strong when questioned by emya, because the lagg was so bad, i failed it the first time...