Very slow to rotate/pan in Vista

from GalCiv2 Forums
I posted this on another forum where Brad saw it, but I wanted to see if others are encountering this as well:

GC2/DA have extreme performance problems for rotation and panning in Vista on my machine. When I hold down the middle mouse button, I have to move far to the edge of the screen to see any kind of response, and then it jumps very far in rotation. Simlarly, the map pans extremely sluggishly when moving the pointer to the sides of the screen. Rotating ships in the shipyards/intelligence report and moving the tech tree around all work great. Brad suggested this might be related to the poor Nvidia drivers in Vista on the other forum, but I'm not so sure since it's only affecting the one area. Any chance this could be a mouse driver type of issue? It's very frustrating as I don't want to keep rebooting into XP to play. (Speaking of which, everything runs great at max settings in XP).

Anyone else run into this? Thanks!
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Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If you minimize the toolbar by pressing the Hide Context Area button (top of the minimap) does scrolling work at full speed again?

If it does i think this is a problem with the nvidia driver but not sure if its releated to the problem stardock are already aware of.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If you minimize the toolbar by pressing the Hide Context Area button (top of the minimap) does scrolling work at full speed again?

If it does i think this is a problem with the nvidia driver but not sure if its releated to the problem stardock are already aware of.


Sure enough! I just minimized the context area and everything worked as it should. After restoring the context area, the problem came back.

Can anyone from Stardock comment on this? Any fixes on the horizon (from either you guys or NVidia)? Or better yet, a workaround?
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I also did discover this last night. The problem goes away when I minimize the bottom bar (I wish it had a hotkey). It's smooth as day when it's gone, and choppy when I restore it. Gotta be a Vista/Nvidia problem, and hopefully it'll get resolved soon.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm 99% sure it's an NVidia-Vista problem. ATI/XP system and no problem with that... and you're probably aware of the huge muck-up NVidia had with Vista's release. People are very angry at them for having drivers that work so poorly (or not at all) with so many games compared to ATI cards.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Has anyone figured this out? The new nvidia drivers (158 release) did not solve the problem? I am soo upset with this one!
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i've the same problem.. and i use a laptop, so it's difficult for me to update the drivers.

Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Has anyone figured this out? The new nvidia drivers (158 release) did not solve the problem? I am soo upset with this one!


This issue is still being worked on on both ends (nVidia and Stardock).
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I have a test build that may help the slowdown when scrolling, but I would like some volunteers to try it before we put it up as a beta.  To give this build a try, backup your current lib3d.dll and gc2darkavatar.exe files and then extract the files in this zip to your GalCiv2\DarkAvatar folder.

http://sd.stardock.com/carielf/da_1_6_b2_test1.zip

 

Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Stardock (CariElf),

It didn't seem to improve anything as far as I can tell...

P4 dual 2.6Ghz CPUs
3GB RAM
GeForce 7600 GS; Latest drivers from Nvidia
Vista 32-bit

I can give you a dxdiag or bug dump if you think that would help.


Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
No...it's probably still having issues because of the 2D drawing.  I'm going to have to try switching to using Direct3D, which is going to take me a bit longer to implement.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
DA is unplayable on my Vista. The game runs just fine, but its so slow and laggy, its not worth playing. Thats why I gotta go back to DL, until I upgrade my desktop.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

No...it's probably still having issues because of the 2D drawing.  I'm going to have to try switching to using Direct3D, which is going to take me a bit longer to implement.


Cool - I'll keep ducking in to check on the status. Thanks!
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
#11
No...it's probably still having issues because of the 2D drawing. I'm going to have to try switching to using Direct3D, which is going to take me a bit longer to implement.


I tried the files on my system too, no difference.

Pentium 3.2 Ghz
2 Gigs RAM
2 Geforce 7900 GS SLI
Vista 32 bit

I appreciate you staying on top of this CariElf. Thanks!
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
try using 1.6 beta 2: it works well on vista.


I am currently using the 1.6 beta 2, test 1

Also got the latest drivers from Nvidia.