jsippy -- help request

[Guest Allan Jones]

A friend just made the switch to Mac (FP iMac 800) and found a copy of Fly2K in the bargin bin at a store. He's not having much luck with it. Mark said you had a workabout to get 2K to recognize the nVidea card. If so, can you repost so I can forward to my friend?Many thanks,

[Guest jsippy]

Allan,Great timing... I have not been very active in the forums lately due to work, I just happened to have had a few minutes to check in.I do, in fact, have a work around to get some pretty decent framerates out of an nVidia GeForce2MX on a Mac. Basically, all I did was to tweak the "vcf" file for the RAVE driver to activate AGP texturing and a few other hardware features. While this tweaking works well to improve framerates, it is not quite perfect... I occasionally notice some slowdowns (usually only while looking at 3D objects with high polygon densities), and sometimes the wrong textures get mapped to the wrong surfaces (ie. you may see ground scenery appear as a ghost image within lens flares from the sun). Switching from the sim environment to the 2d screens and back again clears up the ghost image issue, and the slowdowns clear them selves up (as if the system is caching the polygons into vram)I am away from my home system (the one that has Fly2K installed on it) at the time of this posting, but I will have access to that system tomorrow and I will post the VCF file as text, and any other relevant Fly info in a reply to this thread.Cheers---John R. SippyChicago, IL, USAPowerMacG4 -Dual 5001024MB RAMnVidiaGF2 - 32MB

[Guest Allan Jones]

Many thanks, John! I know my friend will appreciate it. I can use your numbers to set up a .vcf for him. Hopefully, he'll be flying soon.

[Guest jsippy]

O.K. Here's the deal... The system I run Fly2K on has 1 Gig of RAM, so I allowed the AGP bus to use 384 Meg of system RAM for texturing. As a result, Fly2K seemed to have a problem with using that much RAM for texture swapping until I changed its "Preferred Memory Size" to 279687 (Yes, thats just a tad over 256MB of RAM). Your friend may not be able to allocate that much RAM to Fly, or want to allow that much RAM to be used for texture swapping (I will post a 128 Meg VCF file next). I also had Fly2K generate a video card report so I could get my video cards ID numbers and write them into the VCF file, so you will want to change those values from what I have. Finally, I am using 1024x768x32 as my default resolution.Here's the VCF I have been using regularly:// **** Begin VCF ****RAVE (nVidia GeForce2MX - AGP 384)TRI RAVE.dll1314276417 // Video Card ID #15 // Video Card ID #21 // AGP Flag (0=no AGP, 1=High Detail, 2=High Detail+Triple Buffer)0 // AGP Must Exist (if AGP is non-zero on previous line)0 // Mip mapping0 // Allow AutoMipMapping (Mip Mapping must be off)1 // Direct Texture Mode0 // Alternate Blend Mode100 // Texture Count 32 (100=default)150 // Texture Count 64 (150=default) was 48250 // Texture Count 128 (400=default)999 // Texture Count 256 (255=default)8 // Video Res Count640 480 16 0 // Video Resolution (last number is relevance (1=default, 0=normal))800 600 16 0832 624 16 01024 768 16 0640 480 32 0800 600 32 0832 624 32 01024 768 32 10 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved// **** End VCF ****I hope this helps, the math involved in calculating texture slot values is quite nasty... I will try to find my copy of the VCF FAQ for you (assuming I had sense enough to save it before the web site it was on went down)Oh, by the way... It does not matter what you name the VCF file once this data is pasted into it, but I named mine in a sequence of revisions based on the file I started from. So, I called this file "RAVE-3.vcf" since it was my 3rd revision of the original "RAVE.vcf" fileRegards,---John R. SippyChicago, IL, USAPowerMacG4 -Dual 5001024MB RAMnVidiaGF2 - 32MB

[Guest jsippy]

Here is "RAVE-2.vcf" (the 128 Meg version)// **** Begin VCF ****RAVE (nVidia GeForce2MX - AGP 128)TRI RAVE.dll1314276417 // Video Card ID #15 // Video Card ID #21 // AGP Flag (0=no AGP, 1=High Detail, 2=High Detail+Triple Buffer)0 // AGP Must Exist (if AGP is non-zero on previous line)0 // Mip mapping0 // Allow AutoMipMapping (Mip Mapping must be off)1 // Direct Texture Mode0 // Alternate Blend Mode32 // Texture Count 32 (64=default)48 // Texture Count 64 (68=default)250 // Texture Count 128 (300=default)999 // Texture Count 256 (230=default)8 // Video Res Count640 480 16 0 // Video Resolution (last number is relevance (1=default, 0=normal))800 600 16 0832 624 16 01024 768 16 0640 480 32 0800 600 32 0832 624 32 01024 768 32 10 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved0 // Reserved// **** End VCF ****I don't think I tweaked the texture slot numbers nearly as much in this version, but it still should yield decent frame rates (assuming you can spare 128 MB of RAM in addition to what you allocate to Fly2K)---John R. SippyChicago, IL, USAPowerMacG4 -Dual 5001024MB RAMnVidiaGF2 - 32MB

[Guest Allan Jones]

John,This is great!Two questions:a) When you go the Fly2K's graphics screen, how do these vcfs show up in the pull-down where you select the card? Rave, nVidea, or does it pull the title off the first line?:( I've never used an AGP Mac other than a couple of days with my daughter's eMac before we hauled if off to the dorm. Does the vcf set the amount of RAM to pass to the AGP bus or is there a separate control panel or other file that does it?My recollection is that my friend has 512MB so I suspect we'll try the 128 version.Thanks again,

[Guest jsippy]

Allan,Glad to have helped!Answers to two questions:a) Fly pulls the title from the first line, so you can edit that line to read anything you would like.:( I have yet to find a utility that allows the user to adjust the Mac's AGP parameters. Basically, the vcf tells Fly to "ask" the MacOS for memory allocation via the AGP bus, provided that the line:1 // AGP Flag (0=no AGP, 1=High Detail, 2=High Detail+Triple Buffer)is set to either 1 or 2.As long as the MacOS has enough free RAM available to it, it will honor Fly2K's requests for RAM allocation across the AGP bus. If the OS does not have enough RAM to allocate, it will try to allocate as much as it can, but Fly will still think it has all the RAM it has asked for. Since the system will then be running inefficiently, you will see video stuttering, or low framerates, or both.Good luck, have fun, don't forget to generate that video card report and change the ID numbers in the vcf (or it won't work), and please feel free to ask plenty more questions either here or at "jsippy@mindspring.com"Cheers,---John R. SippyChicago, IL, USAPowerMacG4 -Dual 5001024MB RAMnVidiaGF2 - 32MB

[Guest Allan Jones]

John, You've been a great help. I met with my friend this morning but he had to leave for another meeting before we could get to the Fly stuff. We'll get him fixed up, though.Allan

[Guest ftessler]

It's been a long time, but I recall getting great frame rates in Fly! 2k on my dual 800 with a GeForce2 card without any tweaks. If I get a spare moment (hah!) I'd love to try some of John's suggestions.-Franklin------------------------------Franklin TesslerDP 800Fly! for Mac Co-moderator

[Guest jsippy]

The new OpenGL Library provided by Jaguar to OS 9 has done some amazing things...Not only is Fly2 now "flyable" for me, but Fly2k framerates have gone from 9-12 in high polygon / high res (1 Meter per pixel) areas to 15-20. Framerates are now up in the 30-40 range while flying around terrascene areas.Franklin... the only thing that my tweaks really do are to get Fly2K to utilize the texture swapping abilities of the AGP bus. The tweaking of the numbers in the texture slots were done in order to accomodate some really high resolution scenery of Chicago done by Dominique Normond. Try them out, you may find that they increase framerate, or you may not need them at all.Cheers---John R. SippyChicago, IL, USAPowerMacG4 -Dual 5001024MB RAMnVidiaGF2 - 32MB