Message-ID: <361B1982.9C37681A@satcom.nera.no>
Date: Wed, 07 Oct 1998 09:34:26 +0200
From: Harald Antonsen <hha@satcom.nera.no>
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Subject: Re: FS98 - Using Orchid Righteous 3dfx Card - Pauses
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Chris Wright wrote:

> However, the long pauses (typically 3 seconds) that many have reported
> only seem to occur in 3D mode, which would probably eliminate disk
> access as a cause. As I mentioned in my post, it certainly suggests the
> pauses occur when the texture files are actually loaded into the
> graphics card. As well as being loaded they must be converted to a
> different format (the original files are in the .r8 format usually).
> Having said that, I still can't imagine how a fast Pentium can need 3
> whole seconds to do it....
>    Best regards,
>       Chris

I too have the scenery pause problem, and it is indeed occuring during these
scenery updates. It has nothing to do with hard-disk or CD-ROM updates. For
some reason (bad FS98 programming) ALL the textures in the "visible" area has
to be transferred to the 3D card. Even the textures already loaded.

My conclusion after months of testing (disabling soud card, removing sound
card, disabling joystick etc) is that the M$ DirectX consept is a pice of
s.... For some reason the DirectX drivers are not allowing the CPU (or any
other device for that matter) in my system do anything while the 3D card
receives texture updates. I think this is because my system does not support
bus mastering (original Win-95 release). My theory is that the OSR-2 release
of Win-95 does not have these pauses since OSR-2 supports bus mastering.

/Harald

