Lomac TEWS

[Manawar]

First, let me say that i love this application. It's exciting to use and im glad that 169th_Polecat turned me on to this. Although I have to say that im having an issue with the TEWS.
It loads fine and works great until I select a tab that activates the TEWS. In the lomac-zorlac profile for instance, everthing is stable until i activate the "Combat" or "TEWS" tab. At this point i get a slightly "rhythmic stagger" within the game while in flight. Any suggestions?

I have a very clean and lean running Windows XP Pro (Fully Updated) Socket

939 64bit 3500+
2G OCZ memory
2 x 200 Sata drives
(Nvidia 6800 GT)

Thanks for the help

S!

[Wild.Bill.Kelso]

Hey Manawar, great to have you here!!

Zorlac will probably have to help you with this issue. Which version of TB are you running? How about in your Sig, you also put your touchscreen and version of TB. Z asked us to do that a while back to help him out, in helping us out..

[GiGurra]

It works for me now after I found the installation instructions. Still the update time is VEEEERY slow, only like 1 per 2 seconds.

Is there any way for us to configure the update time manually, should we have a computer powerful enough to run it

Me thinks I need 50 fps tews & fullscreen on second monitor :P

[Manawar]

Rgr That Wild.Bill


939 64bit 3500+
2G OCZ memory
2 x 200 Sata drives
(Nvidia 6800 GT)
TM-868 8" Monitor
Latest Version of TB (Fully Patched)

[ruggbutt]

As hungry as LOMAC is for CPU power, I'd bet that if you're running your processor at the edge you're going to see some stuttering with the active modules and if you're running in local mode. I don't see any with my client/server setup and my client machine is old and slow (1.3 Athlon).

[Manawar]

From what im reading, those of you that are running in network mode seem to have better performance. My machine should have all of what it takes but it seems that im out of luck Unless there is a way to throttle this usage down?

[zorlac]

I`ll say this again, because its something that keeps coming up again and again.

Lomac (and generally any games) never "sleep"... they never rest... the keep the CPU running all the time. They dont like other applications running.... in fact they dont even know they are there. Games are CPU and resource hogs. These other applications have to fight against games to get any time on the CPU. Normal applications that run on the desktop do sleep, and so all the applications co-operate, and allow each other to get time on the CPU as and when required. But games, by their very nature, need to be running all the time... so any application that runs at the same time as a game will steal CPU time from the game, and there isnt much anyone can do about that. Dual Core users are generally immune to this problem right now because most games only use one core, and the other applications that need to run will be handed CPU time on the other core, but as the next generation of games get developed and become dual-core aware, the problem will return.

TouchBuddy does sleep. While it is idle, it sleeps for 1/100th of a second, VERY briefly wakes up to check if it has to do anything, then goes back to sleep again. Every 10 waking cycles (i.e. 1/10th second), it checks some other things as well (hence why the anim updates are marked in the number of 1/10ths of a seccond). If the currently selected tab has an item on it that requires a constant update (active modules, animated buttons, hold-expire update, etc), then this gets done... then TouchBuddy goes back to sleep again. I could make TouchBuddy run all the time, never sleeping... the reaction time would be fantastic, and you game probably wouldnt stutter...but it would be running at half the current frame rate because it now has serious competition for CPU time from TouchBuddy

Given all that I have said above, there are two things you have to do to make the Lomac active modules update faster

*NOTE* THIS WILL SERIOUSLY AFFECT THE PERFORMANCE OF ANY RUNNING GAMES

#=======================

#1 - change the touchbuddy-export.lua script to update more often. On line #261 of that file , you will see an entry that looks like this:

tNext = tNext + 1.0

the "1.0" part is how often (in seconds) it should update the data file. reduce this as required.

#=======================

#2 - tell TouchBuddy to update any active modules more often. In the touchbuddy.cfg file, look for this entries:

# Animation update rate
# On tabs that have multiple image buttons or tabs (i.e animation), this value determines
# how often window updates happen. The value is in number on 0.1 seconds to wait between
# updates. A vaue of 10 will give you 0.1 x 10 seconds delay (or 1 second).
# WARNING: Decreasing this value increases the CPU time that TouchBuddy will use. Ideally
# anim_update and active_plugin_update (below) should be the same value, but they dont have to be.
anim_update = 10

#=====================
# Active "plugins"
#
# Active Plugin update rate
# On tabs that have active plugins (The Lomac TEWs for example), this value determines
# how often window updates happen. The value is in number on 0.1 seconds to wait between
# updates. A vaue of 10 will give you 0.1 x 10 seconds delay (or 1 second).
# WARNING: Decreasing this value increases the CPU time that TouchBuddy will use. Ideally
# anim_update (above) and active_plugin_update should be the same value, but they dont have to be.
active_plugin_update = 10

Please be VERY aware that decreasing the time between updates will steal even more CPU time from your running game.

You could possibly tell TouchBuddy to run at a lower priority to minimize the impact (in touchbuddy.cfg):

**ONLY AVAILABLE IN v1.3.0 Rev. 12 and above **
# Set the process priority of TouchBuddy. This option can be set to:
# below_normal
# normal
# above_normal
# high
# (I *REALLY* do not recommend using the "below_normal" option in Local mode)
cpu_priority = normal

but the problem here could be that in the fight for CPU time against an never-sleeping game, if you lower the TouchBuddy priority, it could/may appear to be running very sluggishly, especially if you are pushing your CPU to its limits by bumping up the view distance, AA/AF, scene level, etc. The harder the game is hammering the CPU, the less spare time the CPU will have for other applications that dont run all the time, and even more so for processes that have a lower than normal priority.

So, if you change things and your game runs at a slower frame rate than TouchBuddy, then dont say I didnt warn you

[zorlac]

I have been thinking about this all day, and need to run some tests later this week.

When a tab has no active modules on it, it will not get updated/redrawn until a button is pressed, hence why there is no stutter on tabs without active modules. As soon as a tab as one or more active modules, it will get updated on a regular basis. This involves repainting the entire window area, buttons, backgrounds, modules, everything.

I need to test to see if its actually the active modules making things stutter, or if its the process of redrawing. Because this is a win32 window (and not a directx window), TouchBuddy *HAS* to use system calls to create the images and place them into the window area, and system calls can be very slow and resoirce intensive. It could be these calls taking up the CPU time, but I wont know until I do some tests.

If its the active modules that are causing the problem, I do have some ideas about how to reduce the CPU time they take. If its the actual redrawing thats making it stutter, then there isnt actually much I can do about that, but again, I will test some options on that too.

[Manawar]

Thank you for your efforts in trying to find a solution.
All in all though i have to say that touchbuddy is AWSOME and makes the flight sim game even more enjoyable!



Cheers!