I made this thread a few versions back when I noticed some funny business happening. The largest planet that I could create was a 3000r Earth that used 15.6GB (Detailed further in that thread). Just a few moments ago, I launched v.63475 and noticed that it uses 1GB less just for the UI, which is known. But what's interesting is that it uses 4GB less for the planets. Same planet, same parameters, 4GB less to render in that version. Holy cow. From the build that was online on Aug. 5th, v.69721, to the current, v.70289, the RAM usage has once again increased. Obviously, 15.6GB is pushing the limits of my 16GB of system memory, but it was still do-able. Today, I couldn't finish the planet and had to kill PA when it used up all of my available RAM to generate the same planet. That is at least o.4GB more, which is pretty relevant. What's happening here? The same processes are running as in my previous tests, so what are you programmer guys doing to increase the usage so drastically? I'm really very curious here, it seems a bit counter productive. Edit: I did notice that PA seems to use a little less RAM on the main menu now, which rocks. I can't test how much less currently, since my PC cached a lot of stuff, but it's still noticeably less!
It's in the linked thread, but for ease of access: 0 Earth; radius: 3000; height range: 35; water height: 34; temperature: 50; metal density: 50; metal clusters: 50.
I'm still wondering though. Do you have any idea how you're going to solve the problem with people for having many different configurations. For instance. one guy has a pc with 4 gigs of ram so it can't load up big systems (well it can probably but the Pa experience is not going to be great)while the topic starter can load up bigger systems (because of it 16 gigs). Are you going to give players limits based on there specs? So the 4 gigs player can run 5 planets while the 16 gigs player 20 planets?
Such limits won't work. Memory usage only depend on amount of objects on planet and not size or number of planets. E.g planet without water with tons of cracks can use 3X more memory than planet with lot of water.
If I'm not insane, I think that smaller planets use less RAM than they used to, and once we get into the 1500r+ is when the RAM usage skyrockets, which is just fine by me. How the game uses RAM is always cool to play with, and I hope I can provide a little bit of reproducible feedback for you guys. Also, I can't wait to get access to my school's new "server." 64GB, watercooled hexacore, hyper threaded beast I get to build and try to break records with! Super planets!
We're still doing a few wasteful things with RAM. And while we require 4, and highly recommend 8, as anyone who's played a lot knows, big, fun systems can eat quite a bit. So we want to maximize all the usage as much as possible.
All your RAM shall belong to them. I'd gladly see improvements though, I don't know what to upgrade first and it not being RAM would help the framerate and smoothness a lot.
