Linux Testing

[The Demiurge]

We have been testing on several Linux distributions. I was running Ubuntu on one of my laptops but recently switched over to Manjaro. One of our CS guys is running Kubuntu and off the top of my head we have run tests on Debian, Fedora, Mint, and Elementary.

This seems to be a big issue with FGU. I have a 2014 with 16GM RAM and the basic graphics card and it appears that the basic graphic card is the issue. It causes too much of a load on the older Mac's it seems. Heck it's possible that on the newer macs it would be an issue. Not sure as I don't own a current model but if this is the case I'm wondering if I wanted to play FGU on a mac It would seem I would need one of the 4MB video graphic cards to power the VTT. I have either a 4GB or 8GB graphic card on my laptop PC and FGU works flawlessly.

[smelton]

This seems to be a big issue with FGU. I have a 2014 with 16GM RAM and the basic graphics card and it appears that the basic graphic card is the issue. It causes too much of a load on the older Mac's it seems. Heck it's possible that on the newer macs it would be an issue. Not sure as I don't own a current model but if this is the case I'm wondering if I wanted to play FGU on a mac It would seem I would need one of the 4MB video graphic cards to power the VTT. I have either a 4GB or 8GB graphic card on my laptop PC and FGU works flawlessly.

You might check to make sure your Mac meets the minimum system requirements for Unity which are:
OS: Sierra 10.12+
CPU: x64 architecture with SSE2
GPU: Metal capable Intel and AMD GPUs

At the end of the day, Unity is a 3D engine whose primary job is to render as many frames per second as possible. The more graphics processing power you have, the better the experience will be.

[The Demiurge]

You might check to make sure your Mac meets the minimum system requirements for Unity which are:
OS: Sierra 10.12+
CPU: x64 architecture with SSE2
GPU: Metal capable Intel and AMD GPUs

At the end of the day, Unity is a 3D engine whose primary job is to render as many frames per second as possible. The more graphics processing power you have, the better the experience will be.

My mac is a dual core i5 with a discreet graphics processor. Its not made for gaming unless it's the original baulder gate series. So it appears one needs a dedicated GPU to work with fantasy grounds.

I haven't rolled a *nix in a about 3 years. Do the newer flavor's of Linux take advantage of 2, 4, and 8 GB GPU's? I would think they would.

[smelton]

Just make sure your graphics drivers are up to date

[Imagix]

“ Unity is a 3D engine whose primary job is to render as many frames per second as possible.”

Sure, though for the vast majority of the time, my FG is drawing the exact same image. Drawing it a max framerate is rather wasteful.

[Moon Wizard]

Frame rate is driven by the Unity engine; not by our specific application code. We just specify where and what to draw.

Regards,
JPG

[Jiminimonka]

“ Unity is a 3D engine whose primary job is to render as many frames per second as possible.”

Sure, though for the vast majority of the time, my FG is drawing the exact same image. Drawing it a max framerate is rather wasteful.

Maybe it's time to upgrade your Linux (Mac in the Linux thread?) machine, because FGU is not even released yet and the year is 2020. Cannot expect new, basically gaming, software to work on ancient machines (Moore's Law ancient).

[Jiminimonka]

My mac is a dual core i5 with a discreet graphics processor. Its not made for gaming unless it's the original baulder gate series. So it appears one needs a dedicated GPU to work with fantasy grounds.

I haven't rolled a *nix in a about 3 years. Do the newer flavor's of Linux take advantage of 2, 4, and 8 GB GPU's? I would think they would.

Yes, they do take advantage of the cores.

[Imagix]

Maybe it's time to upgrade your Linux (Mac in the Linux thread?) machine, because FGU is not even released yet and the year is 2020. Cannot expect new, basically gaming, software to work on ancient machines (Moore's Law ancient).

Drop a couple of thousand $$ on a new laptop? (Sure, people install Linux on MacBooks) And, yes, I can expect a game with this apparent level of graphics complexity (no animated layers, all basically static 2D stuff) to run on my laptop. This isn't the latest-and-greatest first-person shooter here.

@Moon Wizard: hmm, the Unity documentation seems to suggest that the framerate is within the control of the application developer. They make specific reference to doing things like dropping the framerate while drawing menus or launcher screens to reduce the power draw and heat. (Though perhaps I'm looking at the documentation for a different Unity version/library than what FG is using?)

[Moon Wizard]

The frame rate was previously hard-coded to 60fps to specifically account for issues of machines ramping up fans trying to maximize frame rates (100+). We tried 30fps, but the transitions of moving windows and rolling dice became too chunky. 60fps is the minimum at which the transitions looked good, and is a standard frame rate multiple on most monitors.

At some point in the future, we may look at trying to dynamically adjust the frame rates based on how many and what type of objects are on the screen; but it isn't a general problem that we've found with modern hardware. So, it becomes a lot of work to make things run slower on older hardware; and we have our hands full with delivering features already promised.

Regards,
JPG