Who else doesn't like the new planets?

[Mr.Steam]

I.. don't see the difference? D: Apart from massive lag spikes, that is.

I loaded the latest dev build and flew to a totally new, ungenerated planet. My game basically froze and it took 5 minutes or more to generate the planet. Once the planet was initially generated my framerate was playable 30+. Perhaps planets chunks could be pregenerated in the background while you aren't doing much? Maybe the CPU could reserve 10% when there is extra CPU overhead to generate and save stuff that will be explored later? Maybe keep a supply of pregenerated planets in a data file, then refill it as it gets used? Spread the lag out over a long period so you only lose a couple FPS over long period, rather than all at once.

Maybe the new universe update will generate an entire cohesive, balanced beginning star system when the game is first installed! For most beginners this is all they would need for quite a while.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

I loaded the latest dev build and flew to a totally new, ungenerated planet. My game basically froze and it took 5 minutes or more to generate the planet. Once the planet was initially generated my framerate was playable 30+. Perhaps planets chunks could be pregenerated in the background while you aren't doing much? Maybe the CPU could reserve 10% when there is extra CPU overhead to generate and save stuff that will be explored later? Maybe keep a supply of pregenerated planets in a data file, then refill it as it gets used? Spread the lag out over a long period so you only lose a couple FPS over long period, rather than all at once.

Maybe the new universe update will generate an entire cohesive, balanced beginning star system when the game is first installed! For most beginners this is all they would need for quite a while.

I personally base my graphics settings on how my game behaves near planets. Try using lower settings, and the planets should load really fast.

Tip: Leave the lighting setting on 16. It will improve loading a lot and the difference with 256 is barely noticeable when you're not using shadows.
Tip 2: Don't use shadows. They currently break lighting and take up lots of CPU power, which can be spent having anti-alias on (which really makes individual blocks look better. If you spend lots of time near blocks, this is what you'll want).

That is actually one of the ideas I had once btw, but with the recent loading improvements it won't be necessary (and it really was improved).

 

[Valiant70]

I personally base my graphics settings on how my game behaves near planets. Try using lower settings, and the planets should load really fast.

Tip: Leave the lighting setting on 16. It will improve loading a lot and the difference with 256 is barely noticeable when you're not using shadows.
Tip 2: Don't use shadows. They currently break lighting and take up lots of CPU power, which can be spent having anti-alias on (which really makes individual blocks look better. If you spend lots of time near blocks, this is what you'll want).

That is actually one of the ideas I had once btw, but with the recent loading improvements it won't be necessary (and it really was improved).

That didn't help. The planets still lag like heck while they generate. I guess if you have a quad-core CPU it would load them really fast. Once generated, they work normally.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

That didn't help. The planets still lag like heck while they generate. I guess if you have a quad-core CPU it would load them really fast. Once generated, they work normally.

Interesting... I have no problem loading them, but I guess that's because I have a quite powerful computer. Maybe you should post a bug report about it?

 

[der_scheme]

That didn't help. The planets still lag like heck while they generate. I guess if you have a quad-core CPU it would load them really fast. Once generated, they work normally.

The lag while generating can be circumvented pretty much only be having generation take longer, so I wouldn't expect this to change. However, generation is multi-threaded now and should therefore take a lot less time than before.

 

[Dave586]

I have noticed the planets generate faster the closer to the surface you fly to them - vs the further out you go - I have my planets set to "big" in the server.cfg so the edges don't look as bad.

 

[lazarus78]

The lag while generating can be circumvented pretty much only be having generation take longer, so I wouldn't expect this to change. However, generation is multi-threaded now and should therefore take a lot less time than before.

The planets don't really lag for me. I mean they do cut into my FPS, but when I get over ~300FPS uncapped, and I dip down to ~25-30FPS, I notice it, but the game is still very playable. It just takes a while for the planet to actually generate...

I have noticed the planets generate faster the closer to the surface you fly to them - vs the further out you go - I have my planets set to "big" in the server.cfg so the edges don't look as bad.

I have/had my sector size set to 5000, and when I approached a planet, it started generating a bit further away, so this "helped" as the planet was mostly generated by the time I got to it.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Once again, the latest dev build loads planets a lot faster, so please stop asking for them to load faster. Instead just keep asking for planets to lag less in general by using occlusion culling to its full extent, amongst other things of course.

 

[lazarus78]

Once again, the latest dev build loads planets a lot faster, so please stop asking for them to load faster. Instead just keep asking for planets to lag less in general by using occlusion culling to its full extent, amongst other things of course.

I did use the latest dev build. And I said they don't lag much for me, they still load slowly.

And I still don't like them in general.

 

[der_scheme]

Once again, the latest dev build loads planets a lot faster, so please stop asking for them to load faster. Instead just keep asking for planets to lag less in general by using occlusion culling to its full extent, amongst other things of course.

And how should occlusion culling improve rendering for a massive block of blocks?

I also have no idea what you mean in general, since I have no performance issues with planets once fully loaded.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

My fps drops to below 10 when loading full planets. What I meant with improving occlusion culling was that it doesn't load the back of the planet, but it might already be doing that.