Re: [Flightgear-devel] memory hemorrhage

[John D. <js...@av...>]

On 02/03/2010 02:00 AM, Tim Moore wrote:

>  Do you still get it now, after the shader errors have
> (hopefully) been banished?

Three answers:

1) The shader issue is greatly improved.  No more nasty
 shader-related error messages on the console.  This is
 an improvement at all airports, not just JFK, whereas
 the memory hemorrhage was observed only at JFK.

2) The memory issue is improved.  I no longer observe
 the 144 megabytes per minute steady hemorrhage.  The
 "RES" number goes rather quickly to about 900 megs
 and sits there.

3) Whether the new behavior is entirely correct is
 something we should discuss.  The memory usage at
 JFK is 400 or 500 megs larger than it would be at
 a "normal" airport.  I know the NYC scene is
 complex, but jeepers, 500 megs complex?

 As the saying goes, a picture is worth athousand
 words, but half a billion?  Really?  That's about 
 500 bytes for every pixel on the screen.

 I mention this because I betcha lots of users of
 the new release will not have hardware that can
 handle this.  I've got a rather capable machine,
 capable of 70 frames per second of "normal"
 scenery, but it can only do 20 in the NYC area.
 An it is an ugly 20.  Very jerky.  It "looks"
 more like 10 fps, and sometimes only 5, even 
 though FG writes 20 in the corner of the screen.

 Do we really need hundreds of bytes of scenery
 /for every pixel on the screen/ ... or is there
 some way to lower the memory usage and/or raise 
 the frame rate?