Hi, The machine I use to play PA seems to struggle with any systems bigger then 2-3 planets, and I was wondering if it is because my RAM is running out of room. I have 8 Gb of ram, and when attempting to load a system of more then 3 planets it uses all of it. Is this the same for anybody else? Also I've noticed on all but the smallest systems, I don't get a chance to choose a spawning location for my commander (not even the green circles). Instead he just seems to be placed somewhere randomly on the planet. Thanks in advance for any help.
Computer specs? What size planets are you making? Sounds like you have a bad computer and take so long to generate the world you get auto placed because you took too long to choose. Try making smaller systems.
The random placement is because your taking to long to load into the game. If PA is hitting 8GB based on the system s your making then the systems/planets have to be massive. In my testing currently a 6 planet system a 1000 radius tropical, 800 Volcanic, 700 Earth + a 400 Moon and a couple of 200 asteroids should use about 4GB RAM. Planet size increases ram usage to the square of the radius ie Surface of the planet is 4pi*R^2 so doubling planet size results in a 4 times increase in surface and therefore probably memory. Undoubtedly as we get further into the Beta Uber will reduce the memory usage with regards to surface area, but you'll probably always have the 4x increase in memory for double the planet size.
Well I've attached my DxDiag. My machine should be reasonably capable I believe. Most of the time I'm experiencing these issues is when I've just joined into a game in the lobby. I don't think the systems I'm trying to play on are unusual.
The ram usage thing is in the code. Pa shouldn't need as much ram as it requires. Why yes the planets are big and have a lots of surface detail, fact is they use the same details over and over. Ideally only one instance of the detail is stored in local memory. Remember the dev's want to be able to play 40 man servers so that mean multiple planets. Anyways, I am sure they are working on optimization of ram usage.
I feel your pain, I only have 4GB of ram.....biggest I can play is two planets, max size 3, and 4 players....and it can get laggy I play to double my ram soon so I can have more options and better FPS but its what I got for now. I can load 1 or 2 planets pretty quickly though, and I get to place.....but any system with 4+ I crash, or it even kills my PC lol My plan for now is to create a system with just one size 4 planet, and start up 2v2s on that,
Your problem is the fact that you're using integrated graphics. It's not even a full video card, it's a video chip and they are reallly bad. sorry man. Is it a laptop?
To be fair it is Intel HD 3000, which isn't that bad. In fact intels integrated graphics is improving at such a rate that it is actually going to start giving dedicated graphics cards decent competition for a fraction of the price. Just look at the performance increases from HD3000 to HD4000.
Yes it's a laptop so that's not really surprising he can't run it very well. Dell also tends to have loads of bloatware. Having a dedicated card/RAM makes such a big difference(even if it costs more), even with haswell. It's an entirely dedicated processing unit just for rendering with far superior parallel processing. Suppose we shall see in the future, though. That said, 2 planet system with only one planet populated uses 6 gigs of RAM, my goodness. Can run several games at once with less RAM. I'm sure they will make it much more efficient, but it's amazing how much it pushes my comps.
There is a good increase although the intel 4000 is still a "class 3" it gets lower scored than a 230m, and those are probably what like 40 bucks?
I've actually got an nvidia 555gt. It is a laptop, and I've been pretty aggressive in rooting out any bloatware. Is there any reason my card didn't show up in the dxdiag?
Actually your NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M is listed in your DxDiag.txt, but not everyone here on forum know where to look for it. But are you sure that game actually running on Nvidia vide card? You probably want to check this video: And configure PA.exe to run on high performance Nvidia graphics card.
