Hi BrianG,
Since the maintenance of things on this forum is done almost entirely by volunteer members, and you obviously have more expertise than most of us, perhaps you would undertake the task of collecting and maintaining the information.
Regards,
Marty
Hi Marty,
... and here is my followup.
I suggest it be tackled as follows :-
A This topic be moved to:-
Ship Simulator > English forum > Ship Simulator 2008 > Technical Support > Performance Optimization.
The first child topic to be a 'Sticky' containing links to 'Graphic Settings',and 'Troubleshooting' headings of the pdf of the current User Manual. Vstep should consider adding a heading 'Performance Optimization' to the User manual with 'Graphic Settings',and 'Troubleshooting' as subheadings.
Each time VStep produced a new printed edition they would update this link. Any existing FAQ material added to the new printed edition Would be removed from the FAQ topic by the volounteer maintaining the FA Topic.
The second child topic also to be a 'sticky'
Ship Simulator > English forum > Ship Simulator 2008 > Technical Support > FAQs about Performance Optimization.
Here would be placed concise answers to questions raised and answered in the 'Discussion' topic by anyone. A volounteer would not thus need the time and knowledge to answer the questions personally to update the FAQs.
When producing a new edition of the printed User manual VStep would review the FAQ answers for inclusion in the new edition saving them some work and cost.
The third child topic , also to be a 'sticky':-
Ship Simulator > English forum > Ship Simulator 2008 > Technical Support > 'Discussion' (of Performance Optimization).
Here as at present anyone would discuss the subject. When a question seemed to be resolved the volounteer would put the material as one question and answer and add it as a child topic to the FAQ topic.
So that is the structure I have in mind.
As to Content
As I said I am not an authority on PC performance but I offer my view till something better comes along.
1. Read the User Manual Sections on Trouble Shooting and Graphics and apply the knowledge.
2, Vista needs a bigger hardware spec than XP as it uses more of the hardware resources for itself. Vista is inferior to XP as regards performance on the same hardware as it provides extra functions which Ship Simulator does not need. Vista also has more problems so if the choice is available then use XP.
If buying new then Toshiba (and maybe others) offer with Vista Business Edition PCs a recovery disk for XP because many Business Users won't buy a Vista PC otherwise. Having bought it you run the recovery procedure and you have a new PC running XP and more user power. Later you can always 'restore' Vista without having to pay extra.
Vista shares the main memory between the cpu and the graphics so that confuses matters.
3, Graphics Cards: The troubleshooting section of the User Manual recomends Geforce 5900 or Radeon 9600 Pro/X600. with 128 mb Graphics memory. If you have another card that you think is suitable then email the manufacturer. It is too costly for VStep to answer this sort of question. They did their bit by stating the minimum spec.
4. If short of CPU power try to stop unnecessary programs running in the background. Vista has dozens.
Look elsewhere for advice on how to do this. Perhaps someone will suggest a source.
5. Captain Baines initial questions on this topic require an expert to answer. I suggest you raise your PC to the minimum spec specified in the User Manual then if it does not work contact Ship Simulator support at info@shipsim.com .
6. My guess is that users of Ship Simulator world wide constitute a large and growing market so perhaps Microsoft, and the manufacturers of the video cards, ATI and NVidia would be happy to give their advice for publication on this forum.
BrianG