Orbiter 2016 vs. My Obsolete Hardware

[StargazerBranden]

Okay techies. In the red corner weighing in at AWESOME, we have the long awaited, highly anticipated Orbiter 2016. In the blue corner, we have a DIY computer weighing in with an Intel BadAxe II mobo, Intel Core II Duo 3.3 GHz processor, 16 gigs DDR2 RAM, and an NVidia GTX 260 GPU. It runs 2010p1 D3D9 at 600 fps. How will this hardware fare against 2016? The official site minimum requirements only say this: "To run Orbiter, you need a Windows PC with at least 4GB of memory. The basic installation requires about 10GB of space on the hard disk, but additional texture packs can take up significantly more space. A fast graphics card is recommended. Orbiter can be controlled via the keyboard, but a joystick is useful for atmospheric flight."

(Crap, I clicked the wrong link. Meant to post this in hardware and software help. Sorry guys!!)

 

[jedidia]

Should run just splendidly. My laptop's nowhere near that powerful and doesn't have problems. Orbiter doesn't have any super-expensive particlesystems, lighting effects or post-processing effects going on, so most modern GPUs are somewhat underchallenged.

Unless you're Dantassii, of course... :shifty:

 

[Ripley]

...The basic installation requires about 10GB of space on the hard disk...

Huh?
Basic 2016 installation takes a lilttle more than 2,5 Gb.

 

[Artlav]

a DIY computer weighing in with an Intel BadAxe II mobo, Intel Core II Duo 3.3 GHz processor, 16 gigs DDR2 RAM, and an NVidia GTX 260 GPU

THAT counts as obsolete these days?
Wow.

 

[StargazerBranden]

Ripley: Check the site. That's the quote directly from the Probe (martins) himself!!

Artlav: Unfortunately yes, pretty much! That's 2005/2006 hardware. I can barely run Microsoft Flight Simulator 9 at 20 fps. Sid Meier's Civilization 5, forget it! Silent Hunter 4, works okay. Silent Hunter 5, nope! And those games are what my tech savvy little brother calls "old school" Lol

 

[birdmanmike]

yeh the site says 10 Gb but as Ripley says, the basic 2016 is c. 2.5 Gb with no added high res

 

[jroly]

NVidia GTX 260 GPU is holding you back, I used to have a GTS 250 but that was 2 upgrades ago.

 

[StargazerBranden]

jroly, what about a 460 GTX. I know they are a little on the aged side in terms of technology but it'll run FSX at 60 fps (so I'm told... This is hearsay)

 

[jroly]

Maybe a 460 GTX will do the trick, but you never know until you try. I can run Orbiter almost at full specs and I have a GTX 960 2GB, although it gets jerky if I increase the mesh resolution to 128 so I just keep it at 64. Thing is the lower your card, the more settings you will have to decrease to have it running at a smooth pace.

 

[Fabri91]

THAT counts as obsolete these days?
Wow.

We're still sort of used to considering 8-10 year old PCs basically obsolete, despite the trend to increased power tapering a bit off, since the 10 year old Intel Core 2 Duo E6400-based PC behind me is still very much usable for light workloads, especially since it's now been fitted with an SSD.

To put things in perspective, using a system from 1996 in 2006 (or 1986 in 1996) would have been a bit of a pain.

 

[4throck]

StargazerBranden I think your graphic board might be slowing the PC a bit.

I have a P5KPL-AM, Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, 4GB DDR2, Geeforce GT640 2GB.
Runs recent games fine (about 40fps at 1280x720) with anti-aliasing off, and minimal postprocessing. As you know frame rate is king :thumbup:

Once tried a GTX260 1MB and performance was lower. Also had frequent stops to load new textures...
So try a new board with a more moderns chipset / compatibility.

As for Orbiter 2016, my humble PC performs quite well with standard settings (1920x1080, 2X anti-aliasing, full reflections on, etc). Orbiter is not graphic intensive.