coming late, some birds around me were saying definate in April, I sorta laughed at them.

I hope they take all the time they need. I wanna minimize the number of bug fixes I pay for.

I think I am looking forward to it though losing the vehicles was rough.

Games almost never ship on time.

That's why being a producer is a nightmare.

If they do ship on time, we get @#%$ like Luclin.

OK.. so this is way off topic..

But since you mentioned Luclin.

I have a P4 @ 1.8 Ghz. 512 Meg Memory, and the Geforce 4 4600 128M video.

I turned on all character models. Resolution at 1280x960.

When I enter Bazaar, Nexus, PoK... most any zone where I have 20+ people.. I start to lag a LOT. Meaning Slide-show.. unless I stare at the ground.

Is this normal for someone with my system? Just checking.. I actually run the latest Geforce drivers (and since I got Freelancer I also run DirectX 9.0).

I have almost the same setup. Don't worry Palidor, you are not alone :/
Raids I get a "bit" of lag. Bazaar, PoK, sometimes Nexus... urgh. Clip plane to 5%!! Normally I run Clip Plane at 100%. You?

The EQ graphics engine is *old* and has been hacked a lot to allow things which, ironically, it was never "intended" to handle. (I think a case could be made to sony, the engine was never intended to handle horses so all luclin models should be nerfed!)

It's biggest faux pas is it seems to try to render people that you cant see, and all their light sources.

I didnt mind keeping light sources off until I started playing my monk full time a couple years ago (human), when you simply could NOT SEE such simple things as the corridor from shadowhaven to the baz, or the tunnel in dreadlands.

Bit of a design flaw imho. Anyway. Particles are a good thing to turn off, as it also renders them whether you can see them or not, and some zones are surprisingly full of other particles. (PoFire is notorious, but lots even in HoH.)

Tia

<blockquote style="padding-left:0.5em; margin-left:0; margin-right:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; border-left:solid 2">It's biggest faux pas is it seems to try to render people that you cant see, and all their light sources.</blockquote>

That is interesting because SOE licensed an occlusion culling plug-in (Umbra was its name) for Luclin so that polygons you're not supposed to see aren't drawn. It was one of the major tweaks for its EQ 1.5.

I did see a demo of this in wireframe, so it worked, albeit with some bugs here and there when some invisible polys were still being foregrounded.

Either this plug-in was rendered useless by further changes to the engine or it's just buggy.

Its easy enough to see the effect. Approach a raid that's around a corner, and before you can see anyone, your framerate will go to heck. Turn away from where the people would be (if there werent walls in the way) and framerate is fine.

Doesnt matter which kind of wall it is either (zone geometry or fake wall), the slowdown happens. I think they ditched a lot of umbra stuff after it was released because it was causing problems for a lot of people (amd k6 users and such)

Tia

Well last night I turned off all models but Human Male/Female, Horses/Elementals. I kept my other settings.

I turned off "Level of Detail" (Have no idea what this is for), I also turned off "Luclin Animated Emotes" and I have never used "Mip Mapping".

I saw a line in eqclient.ini something like "GrassMove=TRUE" so I set that to FALSE.

I still ran with 1280x960 and 100% clip plane and "LOW" particles.

End result:

I would say that I went from a 0.5 second delay to a 0.2 second delay.

Still got a ton of stutter/lag/Slide-show in Plane of Knowledge and of course Bazaar.

Right now, I am also using Drakah MIX custom UI and I have noticed that casting spells is VERY laggy for me..The first second of the spell freezes my display, so after I cast a spell I pause a second and then see my spell timer already counted down some. (Very Annoying).

I am getting a new PC in about a week (I run a LAN).. Going to a P4 @ 2.53 Ghz(533Mhz FSB), 512 MB (PC 1066 RDRAM), and a 128mb DDR ATI Radeon™ 9700 Pro.

I will be transfering my EQ files over to it (so same settings) and I will report to you any changes in performance.

Your regular pc is fine for today, don't go trying to get a super duper system just to have eq running better. It will end in disappointment.

That is a weird resolution... I am on a celeron 1.8 ghz with 768 meg ram, geforce 4 4200 128 meg, at 1024 x 768.
With all old models I do pretty well, low textures also, direct 3d texture compression, texture caching, clipping at about 5 usually. Its luclin models that really kill, luckily there are not enough frogs around to screw me up that much (its a luclin only model)

This is just not a well optimized game, it runs especially bad in outdoor zones where you see just as far no matter what clipping is set at (like POK)

I can get in anarchy online and have things set much higher than in EQ and run pretty ok.

Thanks,

I am not really trying to make EQ run perfect.. I know that it will not run perfect. Heck.. I bet that a P4 3 GHz w/ 2 Gig RAM would not run perfect on EQ.

The problem is with EQ not hardware.

I am just curious how much effect the new system will have on EQ.

I am getting the new computer, just as another PC for my LAN.. up to 4 now. So I am getting close to LAN PARTY time =)

Older P4's (1.8 etc) tend to... well... stink for games aside from quake.

Also, don't gimp yourself on memory, 1GB is nice for games. ;)

I have a AMD 1800 (1GB of PC2100) from 1.5 years ago, running at 1600x1200, high textures, over half the models on, anims on, etc, and run fine everywhere but bazaar (and even there its "playable". I never have to adjust clip settings (maxed). GeForce 4 4600? I think I bought for this. Can't remember. I do have spell effects turned off, but that's more for "I can't see!" than the lag. When you raid with 60 people casting... hehe, even on the "low" density setting, the whole raid looks like a glowing cloud, and you can't see the monsters. Now, when I do get near a raid for the first time, I can tell (for one thing, the LOD code is kicking in, and having to do that slows ya down), but once at the raid, no problem.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I am getting a new PC in about a week (I run a LAN).. Going to a P4 @ 2.53 Ghz(533Mhz FSB), 512 MB (PC 1066 RDRAM), and a 128mb DDR ATI Radeon™ 9700 Pro.[/quote]

my PC is a P4 2.53 Ghz, 1024 MB PC333 DDR Ram, and a 128 MB DDR ATI Radeon 9700 Pro vid card.... trust me, you're situation won't get any better.

I'm afraid you will be really disappointed as you will see very, and I mean very little performance improvement.

If you play other games, like Freelancer or Splinter Cell (aka graphically intense games) then you'll be blown away by the performance boost, but EQ sucks on any machine.

It's always boggled me how games like Tribes 2 or Battlefield 1942 can have such sweet graphics (and have 60+ people in a relatively small playing area) and have virtually no graphic lag... and then you have EQ where if you get near 20 other people its like someone turned on a strobe light.

Actually... It is a huge difference.

I just copied my Everquest folder to the new PC and started it up.

I have the majority of "models" on the old pre-luclin mode..

Now I can cast spells, turn on particles, Extend Clip Plane.. and run with my head up in Plane of Knowledge and Bazaar.

Yeah there is some choppyness, but it is Substantially better.

I am wondering if having Windows XP vs. Windows 98 made a difference (the new system runs WinXP).

I will be upgrading the old PC to Windows XP soon.. and we shall see if it improves.

Okay old machine:

GF2MX 64mb
512mb 100RAM
RAID IDE HDs
P3-933
SB Live

performance - very choppy in PoP, walking around PoK is laggy, bazaar is stupid and have to face the floor (I dont change my setting from max at any time).

New Machine:

P4 3Ghz
1GB Corsair RAM (In Dual Channel Mode)
RAID WD HD
SB Audigy 2
GA-8INXP MB
Hercules 9700Pro

performance - DSP is relatively smooth, also PoN etc all fine unless lots of people etc.

My conclusion - The maps are fine and lag free.... ..as long as nodody is in them! No matter how fast your machine is the bazaar will never be smooth, nor will any amount of people in 1 area.

But at the end of the day the performance increase is great, and I dont just play EQ. I'll cut them some slack since the game is about 4 years old and nobody could expect a company to re-write the entire game.