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Triple Buffering

The place to ask for technical help with running the demo or the full game...

Post Tue Sep 12, 2006 3:01 am

Triple Buffering

Hello,

after playing Freelancer for some time I wonder if there is an option
to activate the triple buffering feature.

Mostly when I'm near to jump holes or while travelling in trade lanes
my frames drop from 60 FPS to 30 FPS and back. (FRAPS benchmark).
This indicates double buffering and using vsync. I don't want
to disable VSync, because of screen tearing on my LCD.
I already tried to do so.

My PC:

P4 3.0 GHz
512 MB RAM
ATI 9600XT
Windows XP SP2 Home Edition

As you can see my PC is more than optimal for playing Freelancer.

The FPS switch between 30 and 60 FPS is very annoying.

In the flconfigdatabase.txt I found the option for triple buffering.

My graphics card is listed as unknown at the end of the file, therefore
there should not be any restrictions in the graphic features.

I would be glad if somebody could help me with this strange case.

The option triple buffering is not a driver setting, it depends on the game,
and Freelancer should support it.

Post Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:53 am

Have you tried installing the QuickFix Plus? It'll put in a fresh database file that is updated for newer graphics cards.

Post Wed Sep 13, 2006 8:09 am

I have already tried to do so, but I the triple buffering is still no activated.
The quickfix patch shall have advanced graphics, but I did not notice any
visual change. What is meant by the advanced graphics?

Nevertheless, the quickfix patch does not solve the problem.

Post Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:09 am

according to this article Smooth Gaming with Triple Buffering triple buffering as a driver option is only applied to openGL games, and direct X games with internal access to the option. It also has a utility for forcing triple buffering in directX games without triple buffering in the options list, using an application-profile type setup - i've tried it and it raised my 3dmarks score by a couple hundred so it seems to be working

Post Wed Sep 13, 2006 3:07 pm

I thank you very much for this advice. It is unbelievible that triple buffering
is now activated. The FPS improvement is very significant and visible during
gameplay.

I thank you once again for having helped that quick.

(If possible this triple buffering topic should be included in a sticky thread
or in a FAQ section, as it really helps for a better gameplay.)

Post Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:54 pm

AWESOME!

This just fixed my mouse-lag problems with Vsync-enabled

Post Fri Sep 22, 2006 2:55 am

I used DXTweaker now for several hours and noticed some texture flickering.
You can see this whenever you switch the view of the ship at ship dealer.

The shadows under the ship flicker, when the game is loaded by the DXTweaker.
I tried to disable the Present Changer but this does not change anything.
The flickering is caused by DXTweaker.

Does anybody else have these problems or any ideas how to solve them?

I don't want to miss the triple buffering because it really changed the smoothness
of the game.

So far I have tried to do these things:

- changed the Z-Buffer and texture format
- downloaded the newest beta 2005 1j from DXTweaker web site

Post Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:14 am

I have finally found a "solution".

Another tool that can enable Triple Buffering for Direct3D is ATi Tray Tools.
As the name indicates it is only meant for ATi cards, so only for those
players who play Freelancer with ATi.

The tool only works properly, when the driver is loaded without the
Catalyst Control Center.

It is really a pitty that triple buffering has to enabled via other tools,
although the flconfigdatabase.txt indicates that this feature should work.

I hope that DX Tweaker will work better for nVidia users in the next version.

Post Sat Sep 23, 2006 10:03 am

I'm still wondering how triple buffering could reduce mouse lag, while it technically should increase it since it's another layer between rendering the graphics and displaying it.

Check this article at behardware.com for details.

It explains one of the major flaws of TFT screens, input lag, and makes a few suggestions on how to decrease it.

Edited by - Preacher0815 on 9/23/2006 11:06:12 AM

Post Sun Sep 24, 2006 4:57 am

I haven't read the whole article, but I think that the mouse lagging is mainly
caused due to the drop to 30 FPS and back to max. FPS.

I have played Freelancer on a Celeron 2.4 GHz and noticed that the game always
had 30 FPS. The I went to my other PC and the mouse movement was very fluent.

I don't know if it really makes a difference if a LCD is 3 - 5 frames behind a CRT.
To me it seems more important to have V-sync and triple buffering, because
these things can be changed with ease, instead of speculating about possible
hardware components such as about CRT or LCD differences.

I´m personally playing Freelancer on a LCD display and I do not really notice
any ghosting. The only disadvantage is when games only support double buffering
and the monitor max. refresh rate is 60 Hz.

Therefore I was looking for this triple buffering feature which works perfectly
with the ATI Tray Tools. The DX Tweaker had too many settings to set up and
the beta versions do not work for me.

However I'm still wondering how people play Freelancer especially if someone
has triple buffering enabled by the flconfigdatabse.txt and not by several
graphics tools.

In the perfoptions.ini there is a setting for advanced graphics that can
be enabled. I have already seen some threads discussing this topic.
Some people write to have noticed some differences while others don't.

I'm playing Freelancer for a year now and this "tweak" (triple buffering)
really improved the gameplay therefore I thank all for this helpful thread.

Edited by - Paulovic on 9/24/2006 5:58:14 AM

Edited by - Paulovic on 9/24/2006 5:58:47 AM

Post Sun Sep 24, 2006 6:27 am

Frankly, I am kind of dissappointed in this thing. All I ever get is the error message

Start Failed:
Unable to load Dll (Dxtpatch.dll).
At DXTControlApplicationConfig.StartPatched(Boolean Active)
At DXTControlApplecationConfig.Start()

The .dll in question is included in the zip folder and is already there!!!
I have Framework 1.1 installed and this is all it ever does is give me the above error.

If someone could tell me what I am doing wrong, I would appreciate it.

Post Sun Sep 24, 2006 7:08 am

When using DXTweaker you have to update the DirectX Runtime
from this page:

Link

After doing this, the DX Tweaker should work. I had the same problem.
If you have an ATi card I recommend using ATI Tray Tools.

Edited by - Paulovic on 9/24/2006 8:11:48 AM

Post Sun Sep 24, 2006 7:20 am

Ouch!!! Thats a long download. 52 Meg for a 52 baud modem. I am downloading it now. I have an old Geforce 2 card so DXTweaker should work O.K..... Curiosity check: How did you figure out that this was the problem?? I myself didn't even know about this, and wouldn't have guessed to download this from Microsoft in a million years.

Edited by - inteck on 9/24/2006 8:26:36 AM

Post Sun Sep 24, 2006 7:25 am

Alternatively you can download this file. It should be smaller.

Link2

At the bottom of the page there is an update for DirectX.
The page is from the developer of DXTweaker and there I found
this file which also fixed my problems, the same one you have.

Edited by - Paulovic on 9/24/2006 8:25:55 AM

Post Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:01 pm

After having used the ATI Tray Tools succesfully for about three weeks
I'm back at the beginning of my problem concerning the triple buffer.

Reason:
I had to uninstall ATT because it locked my PC whenever I switched between
my displays and whenever I switched between channels while watching TV
on my PC. For this purpose the ATI CCC is the best solution.

Therefore I`m again searching for an option to activate triple buffer via
flconfigdatabase.txt. I won't use DXTweaker anymore because the newest
version does not activate triple buffering succesfully and the older ones have
the already mentioned texture flickering.

This whole topic is somehow frustrating for me because I already had a solution
for the game but it created new problems.

I would be very glad if someone could check if the triple buffering
is enabled by the game on other graphics card. My method for testing
this feature is the game's intro. When the nomads appear to destroy
the Freeport the frames always drop to 30FPS with double buffering.
For checking this I use FRAPS.

For some reason I can't believe that the game does not support triple buffering
because in the flconfigdatabase.txt there are options for disabling it, so it has
to be on by default. (Freelancer requires DirectX 9, according to some forums
I read, DX9 enables triple buffering by default.)

I ask you to test on your PCs if this feature is accidentaly enabled.

I tried the QuickFix patch but it did not deliver the promised "advanced graphics".

Edited by - Paulovic on 10/24/2006 1:03:39 PM

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