I have a level with a giant wall that has a .tga alpha texture.
Frame rate drops from 60(locked) to 24 when it is in sight. Why, and what can I do? I know I have a under powered laptop with a Intel GPU base.

Thanks for any help.
Mal

how big is the texture? Are you scaling it at runtime? how many verts / polygons does it have?

2 polys 4 verts, I believe do to the wall size and low olys that YES the texture is scale up.

Other info - Objects behind the wall are extremely far away.

Malice I think problem is not related to the scaled big wall with alpha texture, maybe something related to those 'far away' objects? Are they out of the clipping range? Cause I don't really see any reason for a simple model with alpha texture to 'kill' framerate. I'm using a lot of models/sprites with alpha texture and never faced such problems.

Why don't you use sprite instead? It will looks like the model but will render faster I guess.

Greets

Ok I will test the suggestion. Thanks ALL.

@3run the model exceeds 4000 units in length so I believe a sprite would not be allowed. However it is to large either ways so I will replace it with both 1024 long models and sprites to see what gives the best results.

What you mean by units? Quants? Having one sided model with 4 vertexes and with size bigger than 4000 quants won't kill framerate too I think. What is the size of the skin you use for that model? Simply create sprite and scale it up! Let's say sprite with size 1024x256 (wide image for landscape) placed in exact the same position and scaled up too 4000 quants, it won't kill the framerate!

BTW about 4000 quants, make sure you set clipping settings for camera, so objects far than let's say 5000 (it could be different value of course, depends on how far you would like to see things) quants aren't going to be visible. I remember I had same problem at the very beginning when I used to spent more time on creating levels and placing models (without LODs) all over the place, then suddenly fps used to drop bellow 40-30 frames, only cause they used to get visible all at the same time without LODs, with shadows etc.

Greets!

Sounds to me like your camera is trying to render everything off in the distance. I noticed in my old days of programming, that if I made a level on a flat ground I wouldnt have any rendering issues.
But as soon as I introduced a second layer to the ground, the fps would begin dropping.

Your model is off in the distance - what size is the texture? if its way out in the distance the camera may be trying to render everything all at once and is jamming things up.

try giving it a smaller texture just for debugging. ( iassume its big enough if your need to see texture 4000 quants away with any fine detail)

Noticed that too. Dont know how often i wondered about dropping framerates btw. If the WMP is not centered well in WED this might cause framerate drops aswell, i noticed.

Wondering if the DDS format ( 4ex ver5 with alpha support ) might help you in this case?

Greets

THANKS to ALL for the replys

The issue turned out not to be the wall, but instead a high detail model in front of the camera when looking at the wall. The TGA and wall side and distance objects had zero effect, however if this detailed object was close to the camera and covering a large part of the screen, frame rates died.

Thanks you all
Mal

So before I thought this was do to transparency. However, setting the sun in WED to black and it's angles 0,0 - With ambient light set to a higher white. While facing the sun(that I thought would be turned off) causes the frame rate to drop to under half (24 fps). Is there any reason why, or is this a bug??

Thanks
Mal