Should I upgrade to orbiter2010?

[orbitingpluto]

Most of the time in Orbiter2006p1(which is what I'm using) it runs at about 10-30 fps. Sometimes Orbiter "hiccups" and it freezes for x amount of time and then it works again, only now it acts as if it had been time accelerated for the time it frozen, which is frustrating when your trying to do a burn and the freeze ate your opportunity and threw you orbit out of whack. My assumption is that upgrading to 2010 will only make this worse; Could any tell me otherwise?

I'm running:
OS-Windows XP
Processor-Intel Pentium 3
Graphics Card-Nvidia GeForce FX 5200

Does any one need more info than this?

 

[Urwumpe]

Pentium 3? That is antique today.

Your motherboard will likely slow things more down than the GPU.

 

[Lucy]

Not sure. I get better FPS in Orbiter 2010 than I did in 2006-P1, but my hardware is superior to those posted. I'd say you're on the borderline, but since it's free, why not just download a copy of 2010 and see how it runs? There's no reason you can't have both 2010 and 2006-P1.

 

[orbitingpluto]

The computer I'm using has the letters IBM boldly printed on the front. It is old old old.

From what I can tell the motherboard is an IBM model 656587U, chipset Apollo Pro Rev.C4. I used CPU-z to get that info btw.

 

[Tex]

Wow your computer should almost be donated to a museum!

I will echo what Xyon said.. just download it and try it out. Only you will be able to find out for sure if it will work or not. :thumbup:

 

[Loru]

Surelly you can advance into Orbiter 2010.

Few days ago as a test I was able to start O2010 on Celeron 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Geforce 2 MX 440 32Mb RAM with decent 17-30 FPS in 1024x768x32bpx resolution. Mainboard is set to 100Mhz and HDD are simple ATA-33 so don't worry and try.

It works better than 2006-P1

Edit:
With XR-2 framerate drops to 10-12.

 

[crazydogg]

download the 2010 orbiter and test it!
I think it will not work, because I have a pentium 4 and it did not work on my computer:compbash2:

 

[Moach]

2010 runs better on my video-card-less laptop than 2006 did.... :hmm:

it's a core2duo though.... not sure how a pentium would do in that case




it's worth a try... it's not like it'll cost you anything to find out :thumbup:

 

[Ghostrider]

Since Orbiter is essentially a "portable app" (it doesn't install or change anything in the registry), you don't really "upgrade". You just decompress the files. Nothing stops you from having both versions - I have both 2006 and 2010. There are no issues.

 

[Tommy]

The "freeze" you refer to is likely caused by an add-on base or hi-res terrain patch. The "freeze" will likely occur once an orbit, as the base comes into view on the horizon, as Orbiter loads the textures. Hitting the "r" key (to drop to 0.1x time accel) as soon as it happens will help a lot - you can switch back to normal time as soon as the screen starts updating again. As near as I can tell, it doesn't matter how soon you press "r", only that you press it before the "freeze" is over.

 

[Chupacabra]

The "freeze" you refer to is likely caused by an add-on base or hi-res terrain patch. The "freeze" will likely occur once an orbit, as the base comes into view on the horizon, as Orbiter loads the textures. Hitting the "r" key (to drop to 0.1x time accel) as soon as it happens will help a lot - you can switch back to normal time as soon as the screen starts updating again. As near as I can tell, it doesn't matter how soon you press "r", only that you press it before the "freeze" is over.

This. I used to have this problem with some older hardware and Kulch's Fantastic SRC base(1st version). I would always come to a halt above that speck of light as though it were a traffic stop. Thankfully newer hardware helped....a lot! Hail

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Wow your computer should almost be donated to a museum!

I will echo what Xyon said.. just download it and try it out. Only you will be able to find out for sure if it will work or not. :thumbup:

I have a Commodore 64 any museums interested? :lol:

Like said above its free so why not have a copy of each? I prefer 2010 even with all its little bugs. (Bouncing off the ground and never coming back down etc.)

Darren

 

[Lucy]

Bouncing off the ground and never coming back down etc.

That happens in 2006-P1 too.

 

[cinder1992]

Pentium 3? That is antique today.

Wow your computer should almost be donated to a museum!

pentium 3? If you think that's bad, I run some of my game servers off of an old win95 486 machine. that thing has never failed me twice (it did once, got itself virus'd and the 486 had a hissy-fit and started to smell D: )

 

[Pyromaniac605]

That happens in 2006-P1 too.

Well I haven't played it in forever but I don't think it was so common. Every time I bounce in 2010 I go floating up.

Darren

 

[orbitingpluto]

I'm in love with my computer for the things it will do despite its age. I'll see if it can handle 2010 yet, as nobody has said outright it couldn't.

Thanks to Tommy for the tip about freezes. I let you know if it helps.

 

[HAL9001]

It would be better, but you must install all your Add-Ons again then.
But you van copy them easyly, too.

 

[hribek]

I think the on-demand texture loading available in 2010 is great for lower-performance machines.

 

[jedidia]

Actually, not that much... They reduce loading times by a generous amount, but they will put more load on the processor, so a low-end machine might start to hick up a bit when you aproach a planet with 2010, without having done so with 2006. It helps to save memory, though.

The real performance increase of 2010 is that it got rid of the GDI functions for drawing panels, Hud and MFDs (allthough the last depends on the MFD. an MFD may work in 2010, yet still be rendering via GDI), so the GPU now gets to draw them instead of the CPU. Allthough I'm not sure how much help this is with such an old GPU.

Anyways, there's nothing in 2010 that would actually increase the CPU load, so if you're not putting high-res textures in it, it should run just as fine as 2006.