Getting around Vista Lag?

[Litholia]

Ive pretty much done a lot of what my friends have told me to do as far as IMPROVING lag sustained by Windows Vista. However I'm still not able PA to the best of my abilities, or as I should in comparison to Stepmania.

The following apply to me in attempts to getting around Vista lag:
Standalone Flash Player 8
Low Quality Resolution Setting
Masking both 'Accuracy' and 'Combo'
and I also have set my computer view to "Classic"

I'm looking for a serious solution for this, so please keep the "Don't play FFR"
or "Get better" comments to yourself, because no one cares.

Any constructive help/input is greatly appreciated.

[rushyrulz]

Impossible. Vista is just terrible, and unfortunately nothing I have ever tried has made playing FFR on Vista even close to comparable to playing on XP or 7.

[m0de]

i tried everything aswell. nothing at all seemed to work. i switched to SM ;_;

[Izzy]

I can't recall ever getting ffr to run smoothly on vista but I'm pretty confident that vista uses the same aero style desktop which utilizes the gpu to render explorer. At least on windows 7 there is some conflict with flash performance here and changing the windows theme to classic it removes the aero and renders your explorer strictly from the cpu which removes whatever conflict there was.

I would at least try it on vista.

[Litholia]

Originally Posted by Izzy

changing the windows theme to classic
I would at least try it on vista.

Yeah I've done that, and there is a noticeable improvement however it's not me desired outcome.

But I appreciate the help guys, I'll be sure to upgrade to windows 7 Asap, lol.

[Izzy]

Try combining that with running a standalone flash player in windows xp compatibility mode.

I don't personally feel like that would help because it seems like trying to make something compatible is going to have to do emulation which causes more overhead and ends up slowing things down. Maybe it will work though.

[bmah]

I use Vista and with velocity's engine plus Flash 9, the game works well.

I see you're using Flash 8. Try Flash 9 instead. People who say that playing FFR smoothly on Vista is impossible are wrong.

[rushyrulz]

It would be fine if I didn't get random goods 3/4 of the time on 9+ songs.

[justin_ator]

Yeah, I used to run Flash 9 on Windows Classic, and I only lagged a little if I ended all processes I didn't really need. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you.

[Litholia]

I guess I'll give Flash 9 a chance, Like Rushy said though, I get an insane amount of random goods, and i know its random because in stepmania my PA is just right were it should be. I'll give it a try though.

[bmah]

Just to be sure, don't forget to set a proper offset for the song you want to play. After I downloaded velo's engine with flash 9, I still got "random" goods. That was before there was an offset option though. I'm just saying that improper offset can be a possibility too.

[ELRayford]

Next time you see me in PC get at me and I will teamview you. See if there is anything you have missed.

[emerald000]

Try downloading Game Booster. It stops most useless Vista stuff running in the background. It makes playing in Vista from totally unplayable to somewhat laggy. If you combine it with the other stuff proposed, it should be somewhat playable.

[yo man im awesome]

I'm with Bmah on this one: I use Vista with Flash 9, and it works with virtually no lag. If I were you, I would try Flash 10 as well, and just compare between the 3 players. I got lucky and Flash 9 works perfectly for me.

[Litholia]

Originally Posted by bmah

Just to be sure, don't forget to set a proper offset for the song you want to play.

I'm confused as to what you mean by this.

Let's say i wanted to play
Perfect Cherry Storm, how would i tell what offset to use?

That's a feature i never knew what it did so i never messed with it.

Also, Rayford helped me out with team view and that defiantly helped out my game play, a lot. So thanks Rayford, i owe you one :P

Yo man, Yeah i have them all installed, at least the 3, i just haven't tried them out yet, but if its an even more improvement I'll be sure to give you your kudos too

[WTFBrandon]

get xp.
thats what i did

[rushyrulz]

it's not a matter of constant offset, it's a matter of small blips of un-noticable lag that turn your 3rd frame perfect hit into a 4th frame good hit.

[lumphoboextreme]

I use flash 9 and it works well. I barely lag anymore.

[bmah]

Originally Posted by Litholia

I'm confused as to what you mean by this.

Let's say i wanted to play
Perfect Cherry Storm, how would i tell what offset to use?

Oh!

In the options settings, the offset is basically a feature you can use to sync a song that's offbeat due to incorrect gap (i.e. offsync throughout the whole song). Offset is a set amount of time added or subtracted to get a file onsync. For instance, if the arrows are arriving too late, you would use a negative offset (e.g. -1) to subtract the excess amount of time that's causing the arrows to fall behind. Conversely, if the arrows are arriving too soon, you would use a positive offset (e.g. +1) to add additional time. All in all, the offset helps offsync songs to be onsync.

Before this feature was introduced, I got a lot of goods due to trying to distinguish the misalignment between the arrows and the song.

Offset differs from computer to computer (things to consider: the time it takes to press a key on your keyboard, the sound coming out of your speakers/headphones, etc.). For me, nearly all of the songs I play have a -1 offset. Imagine how I would fare if this feature didn't exist.

Originally Posted by rushyrulz

it's not a matter of constant offset, it's a matter of small blips of un-noticable lag that turn your 3rd frame perfect hit into a 4th frame good hit.

In your case I guess so. But we're still trying to diagnose Litholia's issue first.

[Litholia]

Thanks for clearing that up, I guess I'll try and mess with it a bit more. As of Flash 8-10, i don't see any difference in game play amongst the 3 different Players.

As far as my PA goes, it has improved quite a bit, but not were it should be, i know my keyboard may be a factor, but not enough to get 40 goods on MOONBEAM, lol.

However, I did drop from 100 goods on Blaze to 55, which is obviously a big improvement, thanks to you guys. So cheers!