Improving performance

LaserGolf will still run on systems that have less than 32 MB of video memory, but you may consider reducing some of the graphical features, even in faster cards, to get smooth flowing animations. If the game is running too slowly it will affect the performance of the whole game, and can even limit the Tee base's ability to respond efficiently. Some graphics features can be toggled from keys within the game (press F1 to see a list) or under the Display submenu under Preferences.(Move your mouse to the bottom left of the screen from within the game and the sub-menus will appear).

1. Press F3 to toggle the Frames Per Second (FPS) indicator. You can use this as a guide -the higher the fps figure the better. A few things can affect the frame rate - use the following table as a guide to what is acceptable

The following examples were tested on a 467MHz Pentium II processor with 32MB Nvidia RIVA TNT2 model 64 graphics card

With all features ON and the Sector Drawing set to its highest setting, this graphics card is giving poor performance at 7.7 fps

2. Press e to toggle fogging off.

Turning the fogging OFF has improved the performance to 8.5 fps

3. Press d to toggle the fine detail off.

Tturning the Fine detail OFF has improved the performance to 10.4 fps

4. Change the number of sectors drawn to the lowest value -15. You can do this also from the keyboard using SHIFT +1 or !. The Sector Drawing controls the amount of the golf course that is drawn in each frame and can be controlled from 15 to 60.

This should give the most dramatic change in frame rate but at a cost of distance detail. In this example the performance has doubled to 23.9 fps.

5. Press F2 to change the video settings. Depending on your graphics cards you may try the following options (your own video card may be different from the ATI RADEON shown here of course)

Try running Direct3D without T&L (Transform and Lighting).You can also try running in a lower screen resolution and color depth - say 640x480 and 16 colours. Some cards will run faster in Windows mode than in Full Screen mode. It can be a trial and error process to find the most desirable graphics settings.

6. Make sure that you are not running any other applications which will be using precious memory and processor time.

7. Consider upgrading to a faster video card with at least 64MB of video memory.