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There are obviously many factors that affect gaming performance. GPU speed, CPU speed, techniques used by the game and the in-game settings all affect the overall frame rate.

TriDef Ignition offers several ways to improve performance. The first thing to check is that the game runs well enough in 2-D. If your card can't manage this, then it is going to struggle with 3-D.

The next thing to check is the in-game settings, including resolution. These can usually be reduced to get a higher frame rate. Anti-aliasing particularly can have an adverse affect in 3-D because of the additional memory requirements and the also because some graphics drivers are not optimised to work with 3-D anti-aliased surfaces.

Note: When you change the resolution from within the game, TriDef Ignition usually maintains a fullscreen window, but tricks the game into thinking it is running at a lower resolution. This allows the game to render fewer pixels, therefore improving performance, but also allows fullscreen viewing and correct pixel-level mapping required by many 3-D displays.

There are several additional options for increasing 3-D performance that can be tested while running the game. First, bring up the TriDef Ignition on screen menu by using the "OSD Open/Close" hotkey (this is usually numberpad-0, but can be changed from the Game->Properties Hotkeys tab). Then use the OSD Down hotkey (usually numberpad-2 ) to move to the "Performance" sub-menu and use numberpad-5 to select this item. This sub-menu contains a frame-rate display so you can see the effects of your changes.

Here you will see an option for "Virtual 3-D". Virtual-3D is an innovative technique for generating 3-D from the depth buffer, and does not require the extra processing power that true stereo requires. Selecting this option may give a significant performance boost at the expense of non-ideal 3-D rendering. Under this option, the "Quality" may be adjusted to give sharper edges on some objects.

When Virtual-3D is not selected, the Quality setting reduces the off-screen buffer size. If you are not running at your monitor's native resolution, it may be better to reduce the game resolution from the in-game settings for a similar or better result. If TriDef Ignition runs out of memory resources, it will automatically set this option for you and display a warning message.

When using true 3-D, the "3-D Texture Copy" mode can have a significant effect (sometimes a factor of 2 or more), depending on your particular graphics card, driver version and whether you have anti-aliasing enabled. It is tweaking this value to see which option gives best performance, and perhaps trying without anti-aliasing to see what effect this has.

Hugh

Any tips on 3d movie playback ? Great info here by the way thank you!

Hi,
For 3D movie playback, besides the obvious things such as CPU speed, the two main things that affect performance are codecs and the "hardware acceleration level".
Sometimes a particular movie clip may use an unusual video codec that causes the system to extra work transforming the video data. You can see what codecs a particular movie is using by using the ALT-SHIFT-D hot key combination. Installing the latest xvid codec ( http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.html) may help.
TriDef Media Player also has a setting that determines how much work is done by the graphics card, and how much is done by the CPU. You can use the ALT-Shift-H hot key to cycle through the hardware settings 0-8. Generally, older graphics cards might use a smaller setting, while newer one should use a higher setting. You can monitor the performance using the data displayed when you turn on the extended information using the 'i' key.
Finally, on older systems, it just may not be possible to play hi-def video smoothly in 3D. As a guide, you need to be able to play the video smoothly in Microsoft Windows Media Player, and still have about 20% processing power left over.
Hope this helps,
Hugh

OK this tip is for interlaced users on a CRT so it's not really a "general performance tip" but I didn't think anyone would mind if I put it here anyway.

a little hint for people using interlaced-line-blanking on a CRT:
This driver has some great things about it including a way to get a better image on a CRT when using interlaced mode. Interlaced mode is normally ugly for reading text since every other line is missing from each eye but they've come up with a little trick that's on by default and what it is is a way to remap a lower res game onto a higher res display output. So if you set your game to 800x600, that's 600 horizontal lines generated by the game so each eye would normally see 300 lines of that, but if you set your desktop to 1600x1200 and then enable line-blanking, each eye sees 600 lines. Then start your game at 800x600 and the Tridef driver will take that res and remap it to 1600x1200 so that each eye now sees all 600 original lines generated by the game. Pretty slick, eh? Text is much easier to read and at that res, you don't see the interlacing except that it's darker than normal shutterglass viewing. The setting for this is called "force fullscreen resolution" and you find it in the Tridef in-game on-screen menu under "Window and Cursor". Also under that submenu is a "soft interlacing" option. Shut that off for crisper text.

That's it. C'ya

--- iondrive ---