GP2 "Processor OCcupancy"

Recently i stumbled on this feature: press letter O in the race and the puter reports "Processor Occupancy"... BUT: What is it? I would understand if the numbers returned when using this was somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. Mine are 210 to 220 percent. I don't get it! Anybody out there who knows? Happy New Year! Jas

>Recently i stumbled on this feature: press letter O in the race and the >puter reports "Processor Occupancy"... >BUT: >What is it? I would understand if the numbers returned when using this was >somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. Mine are 210 to 220 percent. I don't >get it! Anybody out there who knows? It's exactly what you think it means, and yes, it's perfectly valid it if goes up over 100%. What that simply means is that each of the frames being drawn on screen are not coming out exactly when needed. For example, if you are supposed to be getting 30 frames per second, at 200% occupancy, you are really just getting 15 frames per second. In fact, you'll notice that the motion is extremely slow along certain portions of the track. What you have to do is turn off some of your graphics options. Don't worry, I was getting over 300% occupancy sometimes on my old 486DX2 system, and it's still valid to see over 100% occupancy in even the fastest systems out nowadays, because the processors are just simply behind the software in this day and age. It goes like that, sometimes the hardware is way faster than the software, and then all of a sudden the software destroys the hardware. Yousuf Khan -- Yousuf J. Khan Ottawa, Ont, Canada Nation's capital

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>Recently i stumbled on this feature: press letter O in the race and the >puter reports "Processor Occupancy"... >BUT: >What is it? I would understand if the numbers returned when using this was >somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. Mine are 210 to 220 percent. I don't >get it! Anybody out there who knows?

Its sorta simple. If your processor occupancy(just call it po) is on 100 or bo\elow then the game is runnig in real time ie.a 1:32 lap actually takes 1:32. But if the po is over 100% (or 210 220%) then the frame rate is too slow for real time and the computer SAYS its a 1:32 lap but if you time the lap with your watch or whatever it will take about 1:50 or more. Inother words if the po is higher than 110-120% the n you have too much graphics for your computer to handle,so tke soe graphics off bye Julian Maxwell

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> Recently i stumbled on this feature: press letter O in the race and the > puter reports "Processor Occupancy"... > BUT: > What is it? I would understand if the numbers returned when using this was > somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. Mine are 210 to 220 percent. I don't > get it! Anybody out there who knows? > Happy New Year! > Jas

Your occupancy should actually be between 0 and 100%. Since it is over 100, it means that the processor is overloaded and actually playing the game slower than it should be. I posted this reply to someone else who was asking about the occupancy measure.... Understanding the occupancy measurement is actually one of the most important things in order to get GP2 to run properly. Briefly stated, you can get the occupancy anytime when you are playing the game by pressing the "o" key. It then gives you a number which indicates the percentage of processing power which is being used to display the game. If it is under 100%, then it means that there is processing power to spare. If it is over 100%, it means that the computer does not have enough processing power to display the game with the detail options and frame rates you have selected in the option screen. THIS IS IMPORTANT. GP2 is more primitive than most other games in terms of how it handles a lack of processing power. For instance, in Indycar 2, if the computer does not have enough processing power to display all of the required frames, it firstly stops applying some textures to reduce the processing load (depending on the options you choose in the setup screen). If this still does not lessen the processing load enough, it then also reduces the number of frames per second it displays, so that the game is still able to display what it is required to display in "real time" (ie, irrespective of the processing load, one second of game time is equivalent to one second of real time, and it will always take the same amount of real time to travel down the main straight, for instance). GP2 is different. Irrespective of the processing load, it does not compensate for this by changing either the graphic details or the frame rate. It will always display what you have chosen in the setup options. Therefore, if the processor does not have enough processing power, then it will still do all of the calculations but will not be able to display them as fast as they should be if they are representative of how fast things should be occurring. Therefore, the game will actually slow down! In other words, whereas usually it would take 3 seconds (in real time) to go from one corner to another, this can actually increase to 6 seconds even though in the game the car's speed is just the same. This is most noticeable at the start of the race and into the first corner, where occupancy can go up to 400% or higher and the game almost seems to slow down to a crawl for a while. This is largely due to a lot of the cars producing smoke from their tires (the smoke effect is very processor intensive) and the cars trying to sort themselves into a single file. Once they have done this, the occupancy should return to normal levels. Therefore, it is best to run GP2 with the occupancy rarely exceeding 100%, as this then means that game time will closely mirror real time. To do this, you should choose a frame rate which is at least a couple of frames (if not much more) below the estimated frame rate. Also, a frame rate below 16 starts to become to jerky (various people find different frame rates to be "barely acceptable"). Anyway, once you have decided on what frame rate you want to run at (eg, 16), you should change the detail options until the estimated frame rate is at least 18 to 20 using whatever graphical options you think is the best trade off (considering the speed of your computer). You should then start a practise run and make sure the occupancy is around 70-80% on a clear track. This should then be alright as it gives a bit of leeway for occupancy to increase when you are in traffic, as well as processor intensive parts of the track. You will find that processor occupancy will vary both at different points on the one track (as some parts have more objects to draw) and vary greatly across tracks. In particular, the occupancy at Monaco will be much higher than any other track (Monza is also relatively processor intensive, surprisingly). Therefore, detail options set for one track may not be appropriate for another track.

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>>Recently i stumbled on this feature: press letter O in the race and the >>puter reports "Processor Occupancy"... >>BUT: >>What is it? I would understand if the numbers returned when using this was >>somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. Mine are 210 to 220 percent. I don't >>get it! Anybody out there who knows? >It's exactly what you think it means, and yes, it's perfectly valid it if >goes up over 100%. What that simply means is that each of the frames being >drawn on screen are not coming out exactly when needed. For example, if you >are supposed to be getting 30 frames per second, at 200% occupancy, you are >really just getting 15 frames per second. In fact, you'll notice that the >motion is extremely slow along certain portions of the track. >What you have to do is turn off some of your graphics options. Don't worry, >I was getting over 300% occupancy sometimes on my old 486DX2 system, and >it's still valid to see over 100% occupancy in even the fastest systems out >nowadays, because the processors are just simply behind the software in >this day and age.

NO , NO of course NOT !!! Microprose did a very, very bad job in the graphics, taking absolutely NO advantage of what modern video cards can nowadays !!! So, you really have to wait for a graphics update version of GP2 to see it fly. rgds Marc Biesmans, Essen, Belgium It goes like that, sometimes the hardware is way faster

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>hardware. > Yousuf Khan >-- >Yousuf J. Khan >Ottawa, Ont, Canada >Nation's capital

Dennis, Thanks for the excellent explanation. A related question to this is, what happens when we couple two PC's to have a multiplayer game (as we often do, BIG fun). Both PC's have different processors. If the game slows down on one PC -in your example you indicated that a 3 seconds part can take double the time if the processor is overloaded- I assume that the other one will follow this. In other words, in a two PC situation it has no advantage to play on the fastes PC ?? Is that correct ? Martin snip, snip snip, snip

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>Recently i stumbled on this feature: press letter O in the race and the >puter reports "Processor Occupancy"... >BUT: >What is it? I would understand if the numbers returned when using this was >somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. Mine are 210 to 220 percent. I don't >get it! Anybody out there who knows? >Happy New Year! >Jas

If you search the web a bit you'll find a page all about processor Occupancy.. at any rate if you get numbers above 100 (%) your game play will be slowed down so that the CPU can process all the info needed to maintain the Graphic Detail that you selected. Try this out....make a timed test lap...save this HOTLAP. Replay it with a stopwatch in your hand...time the lap using your stopwatch. If your stopwatch showed a longer time than the laptime indicated by your ***pit timer then you have too much graphic detail selected to run in realtime....reduce the amount of graphic detail so that Realtime=Laptime...you'll find that the occupancy numbers will be below 100% and the car handling response will improve!

Another slant would actually be that it is very clever <g>. Dropping frames is as much of a bummer if it's just before a braking point as a slowing down of the game time :( Both the Geoff Crammond "slow time" and Papy's "drop frames" approaches have pros and cons. At the end of the day however you need to come up with a setting that will give a _consistently_ fast frame rate in Papy's sims or a fast frame rate in real time for GP2 - this is the only way in which you can hope to drive a sim consistently quickly. Cheers, Richard

Prosessor occupancy should not very often exceed 100 percent because it causes the game slow down. You should lower your detail settings or frame rate. My personal opinion about frame rate is that it must be at least 19.6 or higher.

> Recently i stumbled on this feature: press letter O in the race and the > puter reports "Processor Occupancy"... > BUT: > What is it? I would understand if the numbers returned when using this was > somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. Mine are 210 to 220 percent. I don't > get it! Anybody out there who knows? > Happy New Year! > Jas That has to do with the frame rate you chose in graphics options: 0-100% - The frame rate is being acheived. 100+% - Not quite. You'll better turn off some details or lower the frame rate. BTW: This feature was already present in F1GP1. Regrads, -- _____________ E-MAIL: ____/ / / /_ / /_/ /_ / _ / / / / / HOMEPAGE: /____/ \__/ \____/ /_/ /_/ /_/ /_/ http://dux.isec.pt/~storm96/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... I Feel The Need ... THE NEED FOR SPEED ! ...

I've written a (moderately technical) explanation of the realtionship between frame rate and occupancy in my GP2 FAQ, at http://www.simracing.com/onestop/gp2/faq/ --