[SOLVED] Choppy cutscenes and tech room ship rotation

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[SOLVED] Choppy cutscenes and tech room ship rotation

JoshuaAryeh
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Post by JoshuaAryeh » Tue Mar 29, 2022 10:07 pm

I just upgraded my computer and XWA was (of course) the first game I installed on my brand new rig. ;)

I'm using an AMD Raedon RX 6600 XT graphics card with a Dell s2722DGSM monitor using displayport. OS is Win 11 Home.

After installing from GOG into the default directory, I applied the mega patch and the v5 update. Gameplay is wonderful (FPS around 160).

I've got only two small issues for which I seek your wisdom:
1) Cutscenes are very choppy - as though I'm missing frames. FPS on the intro cutscene is around 40. Concourse is 60.
2) In the tech room, rotation of the ships is jerky. FPS is 60.

After poking on the forums, I disabled Surface Format Optimization - didn't make any difference. I left it disabled.

I then tried applying the newest files from blue-max. Unfortunately, the rendering of the ships in the tech room looked terrible - curves became flat planes and the viewports became very dark. I reverted to the previous settings(changed OLD to .dll) and everything was as it had been.

This is such a small issue... But we all love this game! Thank you for any guidance - I'd love to have it completely smooth again. :D

MTFBWY!
Last edited by JoshuaAryeh on Sun Apr 03, 2022 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Ace Antilles
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Post by Ace Antilles » Tue Mar 29, 2022 10:23 pm

JoshuaAryeh wrote:
Tue Mar 29, 2022 10:07 pm
I just upgraded my computer and XWA was (of course) the first game I installed on my brand new rig. ;)

I'm using an AMD Raedon RX 6600 XT graphics card with a Dell s2722DGSM monitor using displayport. OS is Win 11 Home.

After installing from GOG into the default directory, I applied the mega patch and the v5 update. Gameplay is wonderful (FPS around 160).

I've got only two small issues for which I seek your wisdom:
1) Cutscenes are very choppy - as though I'm missing frames. FPS on the intro cutscene is around 40. Concourse is 60.
2) In the tech room, rotation of the ships is jerky. FPS is 60.

After poking on the forums, I disabled Surface Format Optimization - didn't make any difference. I left it disabled.

I then tried applying the newest files from blue-max. Unfortunately, the rendering of the ships in the tech room looked terrible - curves became flat planes and the viewports became very dark. I reverted to the previous settings(changed OLD to .dll) and everything was as it had been.

This is such a small issue... But we all love this game! Thank you for any guidance - I'd love to have it completely smooth again. :D

MTFBWY!
I believe the concourse and tech room are maxed at 60 FPS. Tbh that's fine, it is an old game but I've never seen bad rotation once a ship is loaded.

For cutscenes it's the same but download some newer HD versions from my site The X-Wing Outpost which will be better.
https://www.xwingoutpost.com/
Chief XWAU Team annoying nitpicker.
Ace Antilles - The X-Wing Outpost
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JoshuaAryeh
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Post by JoshuaAryeh » Tue Mar 29, 2022 11:05 pm

Thank you for the swift reply!

I'm downloading the videos now - I'll share results.

The rotation of the craft in the tech room really baffles me! I'm wondering if it might have something to do with my particular setup, given how smooth I've seen it run on every other install (including my son's laptop - much less powerful than my new rig).

If there's any diagnostics or alternate settings you can think of, I would absolutely run them.

The game itself runs beautifully - this is a very small (though annoying) fly in a wonderful ointment.

Thank you, once again, for your kind reponse!

JoshuaAryeh
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Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:35 am

Post by JoshuaAryeh » Wed Mar 30, 2022 12:38 am

One more part of the puzzle. The animation in the concourse is also choppy. And when I enter the tech room, sometimes the animation of the controls at the bottom swinging into position is oddly ACCELERATED. And then the A-wing spins very quickly for a rotation or two before settling back into the slightly stuttering rotation.

The game itself runs flawlessly. This seems to be restricted to the concourse and the tech room. Baffled...

JoshuaAryeh
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Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:35 am

Post by JoshuaAryeh » Sun Apr 03, 2022 6:09 pm

After a bunch of experimenting, I realized that my monitor and video card refresh rates at 60 HZ were negatively impacting the animations. When I upped them both to 144 Hz (windows display settings for the monitor and the AMD game-specific configuration for the game executable), everything smoothed out beautifully in the tech room and the intro cutscene!

Thank you to everyone who continues to keep this game feeling like magic!

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