Yep... another update and yet another performance hit. I already did what I could using the tips in the sticky "people with slow computers" and got my CPU usage down from 128 doing nothing but moving around as astronaut, to getting in a ship, moving through sectors, and experiencing the frequent CPU spikes that reach into the 300+ range. I managed to get my CPU usage down to -the 70s-80s with less sever spiking. Now, with this update, if I'm completely still it will stay in the 70-80 range. However, once I turn and look at my ship I'm at 98 to a little over 100 with the added bonus that looking at my medium size ship causes more lag and the CPU spikes are back.
Is this all for the debris system? Even though they did improve and pretty much completely remove the momentary freeze on missile impact to resulting explosion and damage with this update, I just hope its addition and future optimization and graphical changes will not keep creeping CPU usage up and up, so much that players with lesser video-cards will need a config switch so it can just be turned off. (which is what I wish I could do now - to remove some of the lag endured even when nothing is being "cannoned, missiled, or beamed" to produce debris from this new lurking system)
I know, I know. We are in ALPHA after all. (and to stumble upon a game of this quality and genre, in alpha doesn't happen very often. Maybe I'm just greedy. )
...back to playing.
