Aquarium "Tweaking" Trick

[BitBasher]

Several months ago, Jim mentioned to me that if I press the undocumented "N" key while the program is running, I might be able to milk a few more FPS out of the progam.

I just installed V.99G, and I ran it, and pressed "S" to show my FPS rating. It was 56fps. Then I pressed the "N" key, and it jumped up to 85fps and boy did the fish start swimming smooooothly!

I'm running at 1280x1024 on an Asus-V6600 (GeForce) video card on a 650MHz PIII system. I must say that 85fps is pretty darn good at my high-res setting.

Supposedly pressing the "N" key toggles some "time-expensive" calculations on and off. The quality is supposed to be a little less, but certainly can't see any differences in quality, only in the speed.

So, try it on your Aquarium program, and see if you can get possibly better performance by pressing the "N" key. I think the newer versions of the Aquarium default to the faster "N" setting, but if you accidentally pressed the "N" key, you might be running in the slower mode. Pressing the "N" on two other different systems didn't make quite the same massive fps differences, YMMV.

Doug.

[Jim Sachs]

With v.99G, the N key defaults to off.

--- Jim Sachs

regularly
@ 1280x1024 with 7 fish i get 153fps
when i pressed it i was @ 119fps

[hooters]

hmm when i press the N key i go from 65ish to like 32 so ide think at this much of a drop it would drop everyones frames not raise them am i right

[Jim Sachs]

As I said, with v.99G the N key is already off when the program starts, so pressing it will lower your frame rate.

--- Jim Sachs

[BitBasher]

I think when I installed V.99G, I must have pressed the N key once before turning on the FPS display (S key). So when I pushed the N key again, my FPS appeared to improve, but in fact, as Jim points out, the default for V.99G is to run as fast as possible by default.

Therefore, pressing the "N" key may only improve performance if you're running older versions of the Aquarium.

Doug.

[hooters]

ok; cool ,thnx ~ I won't be touching the N key no more hehe- have a good~day all.

If you notice, the N Key Enables more detailed Lighting of Each Fish. I think it may be doing something in the sense of bump-mapping to give the fish a little bit more detail and depth. Well, it took me like 2-3 minutes to notice it ... give it a try.

Anyway, I prefer to keep it silky smooth and I keep it off to keep me happy at 85FPS with VSYNC on.

[Jim Sachs]

The N key enables re-calculation of the surface normals for the body of each fish as it bends. These are several thousand calculations per frame, but the visual effect is very hard to notice.

--- Jim Sachs

Hi. I'd like to make a suggestion. I personally notice the difference, and find it makes the fish's movement much more realistic looking. The request I'd like to make is for the option to be saved in the registry so that if the user (such as me) wanted it on, he wouldn't have to hit the N key everytime. Great screensaver, thanks!

[Darkfalz]

Pressing N drops my FPS down from 185 to 125. I don't see any difference, could anyone explain just what having it on improves? Fancier lighting? Jimbo, please explain? I don't mind having it on, since I usually have VSYNC on which caps it at 75 fps, which is enough for anybody.

[Jim Sachs]

In order to use real-time lighting effects, each polygon or vertex must have a surface normal, which is like an arrow pointing straight out, perpedicular to the surface. These are used for shading, reflections and speculars (shine).

When a fish mesh bends, its vertex normals no longer point straight out from the surface, so I recaculate each vector. Though technically correct, the differences in shading are so slight that most people don't notice them, so the calculations are now turned off by default.

[FishyBusiness]

I am running v.99H. When I push the N key nothing happens. Everything is the same including the FPS. When I go to the settings and click About, it doesn't even show that option.

Did Jim just get rid of that feature? I want to see if I can see a difference.

Frank
home.pacbell.net/gamete/index.html

[Jim Sachs]

If you have an extremely fast processor, you might not see a frame rate drop. On my Pentium2 233, pressing the n key causes the frame rate to drop about 10 FPS.

i dont even get a frame rate drop. I perceive a .3 drop at the most. Sometimes I dont even know which one is running. Anyways to get "N" perfomanently enabled? =)

running ATI Mobility 128 M4 32M SGRAM (ati rage 128 pro), 850MHz PIII on a dell laptop.

mike

[FishyBusiness]

OK Jim, after seeing your post I turned the Aquarium on and pushed the N key. I did see a difference. When I push it all of a sudden the shadowing on the fish changes. It is most noticable when the fish are still and on the bottom of the tank. The Regal Tang is most noticable when this change takes affect.

The funny part is that I pushed the N key so many times that I don't know if the feature is on or off.

I guess is doesn't matter if I know because once the fish swim away I can't tell if it's on or off. Also, the only time that I notice it is right after I push the N key.

I have no idea what my point is but I am running a 1GHz machine so that explains why I don't see any drop in FPS even though I could spare 10 FPS.

On another note, I had the opportunity to see your aquarium run on a P166 MMX with DX7 and a $15.00 Trident 9880(rCADE 3D chip). It runs at 30 FPS. I was shocked at how well it ran. 30 FPS isn't all that bad. You definitely made the aquarium very well.

[patscarr]

Where was Cliff when this thread was started?

[Tiny Turtle]

In kindergaten?

That's an old one, Pat.

P.S.
I was a newbie of only a few weeks when that discussion took place...

/Tiny piece of History

[Darkness2k]

Does this have anything to do with the CalcNormals registry entry? (Defaults to 00)

[Darkness2k]

Also, do you get better quality if you set NoCompressedTextures to 01 or by leaving it as 00 (therefore having compressed textures)?