Well I'm not sure about that underwater city, but it kills my framerate too. I'm pretty sure its not in the game but might make an appearance as a cut scene. As far s I know the only time you get near planet-side is during cutscenes although there is apparently some stuff you can do once landed. Probably not much though, just pick up missions and maybe cargo. Or perhaps only as part of the plot. Those who know are either developers or testers under NDA.

TC

I gave it a bash with Anti Aliasing and Shadowing switched off and it ran a heap better, the lowest frame rate I saw was 25fps in scene 19. Anyway here's the output.

X2 - The Threat

Executeable compiled Tue Aug 19 15:38:13 2003

Video Settings during test:
Screen Resolution: 1024*768*32
Bumpmapping: On
Realtime Shadows: Off

System specific video settings:
Adapter name: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 [NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900
Vertex Shader: Hardware, version 1
Hardware T&L: Yes
Fog capabilities: W-fog Z-fog RangeFog Table(Pixel)Fog VertexFog

System specific audio settings:
SecondarySampleRate (Min/Max): 5000/48000
PrimaryBuffers: 1
MaxHwMixingBuffers (Static/Stream/All): 33/33/33
FreeHwMixingBuffers (Static/Stream/All): 0/0/0
MaxHw3DBuffers (Static/Stream/All): 33/33/33
FreeHw3DBuffers (Static/Stream/All): 0/0/0
HwMemBytes (Free/Total/MaxContigFree): 0/0/0
UnlockTransferRateHwBuffers: 0
PlayCpuOverheadSwBuffers: 0
Flags: CERTIFIED CONTINUOUSRATE PRIMARY16BIT PRIMARY8BIT PRIMARYMOMO PRIMARYSTEREO SECONDARY16BIT SECONDARY8BIT SECONDARYMONO SECONDARYSTEREO

Framerates
Scene 00 315.566 fps
Scene 01 94.286 fps
Scene 02 66.860 fps
Scene 03 43.122 fps
Scene 04 68.152 fps
Scene 05 59.096 fps
Scene 06 41.139 fps
Scene 07 83.138 fps
Scene 08 109.879 fps
Scene 09 87.168 fps
Scene 10 59.695 fps
Scene 11 60.743 fps
Scene 12 48.080 fps
Scene 13 48.537 fps
Scene 14 141.866 fps
Scene 15 92.775 fps
Scene 16 80.045 fps
Scene 17 114.773 fps
Scene 18 79.792 fps
Scene 19 27.366 fps
Scene 20 81.605 fps
Scene 21 54.892 fps
Scene 22 69.023 fps
Scene 23 77.323 fps
Scene 24 64.243 fps

Overall average framerate: 82.766 fps

There's a few people on the X2 forum who've managed to break the magic 100fps barrier using the default settings, and even they're only getting around 30 fps on scene 19 (presumably the one with the huge fleet flying toward the planet). Still, that beats the maybe 1 frame per 2 seconds you'd get after dropping 200 fighter drones in X-Tension...

Moderator--X2 Forum

i hate the scene that looks like its underwater...

"What? Another girl! Tell me my boy. *whispers* what have you been doing?" - Tobias