Jerky motion in Nexuiz

[tttonyyy]

Hi all, I've been running Nexuiz 1.5 on my machine (WinXP, Athlon XP 1600+/1Gb DDR/GeForce 3 Ti200).

Although the framerate is always reported over 50 FPS (usually 80 on the maps I've played), the action isn't very smooth. If I'm running along or straifing, I get about a second of smooth motion, then a discernable pause or skip). This seems to be independant of visible polycount (straifing while looking at a simple wall has the same behaviour). I've tried this on a local server and get the same effect.

I run at 800 x 600 with the default gfx options.

My current connection is 512k down and 256k up.

I don't think it's anthing on my machine taking pulses of CPU time as CodeRed Alien Arena 2006 GE runs smoothly at 1024 x 768 with all graphics options enabled except reflective water.

Any suggestions?

[tChr]

Your HW should be perfectly capable.. Tried running nexuiz-sdl.exe instead of nexuiz.exe? Oh and if you turn bloom off, you might get a jump in FPS.

[esteel]

Yeah i think your hardware should be perfectly able to run Nexuiz..
What do you mean with 'local server'? 'Instant action'? 'Create game'? Or have you setup a dedicated server in your own network?
Is this the first time you have installed Nexuiz? Older versions had a bug in the server that could cause such short hangs in the movement. So maybe you have mixed versions..

[razor-wind]

been getting same problem on linux... upto 100-120 fps jerky movement probably due to the lack of quake code thingy?

[esteel]

been getting same problem on linux... upto 100-120 fps jerky movement probably due to the lack of quake code thingy?

What is that supposed to mean?

Well first of all you should not get this jerky movement when playing localy.. if you do then we first have to see if its really the movement.. some lag, maybe some mouse problem or what else..

If its happening when playing online it might be simply lag, or some of the older servers had a bug that would cause this jerky movement..
All the server that are currently running should be at least 1.2.1 server and so they should tell you the version when connecting to it. Old 1.2.1 server still had this bug i mentioned.. 1.5 server should not..

[tttonyyy]

Hi, thanks for the advice. I tried nexuiz-sdl.exe and it was very different. No jerky movement, but framerate was waaay down (40 fps vs 80 fps).

What's different between nexuiz.exe and nexuiz-sdl.exe?

[tChr]

Hi, thanks for the advice. I tried nexuiz-sdl.exe and it was very different. No jerky movement, but framerate was waaay down (40 fps vs 80 fps).

What's different between nexuiz.exe and nexuiz-sdl.exe?

Basically the SDL version works better with newer hardwrae, as it behaves a little differently in the way it accesses and talks to the hardware. iirc

[tZork]

The framerate thingy is most likely vsyncing. the -sdl forces vsync on =/

[Willis]

Hi, thanks for the advice. I tried nexuiz-sdl.exe and it was very different. No jerky movement, but framerate was waaay down (40 fps vs 80 fps).

What's different between nexuiz.exe and nexuiz-sdl.exe?

Basically the SDL version works better with newer hardwrae, as it behaves a little differently in the way it accesses and talks to the hardware. iirc

I don't believe vsyncing issues will be resolved in SDL until its next major version, but you can disable vsyncing in your video card drivers and see if that helps.

The difference between nexuiz.exe and nexuiz-sdl.exe is that nexuiz.exe communicates more heavily with windows to try to find hardware, whereas nexuis-sdl.exe uses a library with a collection of common methods for various OSs, in the case of windows, only windib and directx5. For the purposes of gaming, the combination of windib and directx5 is enough to sucessfully find 95% of all keyboard, mice, joysticks, and optical drives.

I'd honestly recommend using SDL over the native nexuiz.exe unless SDL is missing some of your hardware. Once you get vsync disabled, sdl is generally slightly faster than nexuiz.exe

[esteel]

I never noticed a difference in fps with nexuiz.exe or nexuiz-sdl.exe. I had no clue about sdl and vsync but i have it off by default anyway.

That would indeed be the only thing i can imagine giving different fps. There was a rather long discussion in the old forum about vsync on/off and double/tribble buffering. If you have vsync on make sure you also have tribble buffering active as you might get huge fps drops otherwise. But with vsync on and tribble buffering on you might get a slight lag when moving the mouse. If it bothers you you should also disable vsync.

With vsync off on the other hand you might get tearing.. e.g. when turning fast the pictures might not look as good as with vsync. But i never had big problems with that and i'm more ok with it then with fps drops or slight lag.. you can try what you like more

Now to get a bit back to you fps problems. Does this thread here help?
http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?p=90#90
It has many useful tweaks..


razor-wind: Are you still there? I got no anser to my previous question.. Do you still have problems? Or are you reading this forum at all?