Forums

meter problems!!!!!!

• YankeeJim 25,827 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 1:35 PM

  andyson:

  I'm keeping hardware acceleration enabled 

  What does this do?

• Tightrope 1,072 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 1:51 PM

  Yes, good stuff Andy. In my opinion, it is the extra general resource usage in multiplay that lead to some, WGT themselves for instance, to believe that latency and connection speed is the problem. I say multiplay simply makes the margins smaller which increases the  game to misbehave. But in itself it is not the problem.

  A friends list in the game  is useless, if you are curious, open your profile with a browser (don't forget to close it afterwards because..... actually, this might be the very reason why some have experienced problems with a friends status update affecting the meter:
  The Game client shuts off communication while you swing, but the million flash app on WGT's homepage is still active and might keep their communication channels open!
  
  I have not tested that, so it is just a theory. Still, Flash works in that way that all Flash stuff that runs on you computer is sharing the same resources. Our computers run the Flash player and the Flash player run the Flash apps currently loaded on your computer. That means that an ad for for shoes in one browser window can affect your meter.

  Friends list should be optional, the gradient on the meter should be optional The WGT browser page should NOT follow your play in the background, you can only look at one screen at the time anyway. Yes, we can close the browser window, we can cut down on our friends list, we can run game optimizing software, we can spend nights Googling and updating Flash, we can buy new machines... We can do all that. But only WGT can make sure we don't have to.  

  I am quite confident that WGT calculates the meter movement in real time. They have an equation in which the put in the club speed, the ball "feel" and the percentage of the hit strength. Then they loop that and the meter moves. Of course it becomes sensitive if that is the case! I am not, of course not, sure that is the case but many people say they get different meter speed on different computers and to me that indicates that the meter is actually moved step by step rather than being an animation with a predefined characteristic. If it is so - why? So that it is more difficult to use a timed auto dinger? Big deal, then the programmer looks at the pixel color at the ding point, or at the mouse point if you want to shate the shot with late and early.hit.

  I have said it many times and I am saying it again - moving a marker across the screen is, in the year of 2012, not rocket science. A kid could do it.

   

• TonyTurbo78 340 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 2:02 PM

  I'm just wondering how you guys have your GPU control panels set up.  I have a nice high end rig, (Quad Core @ 3600mhz, 8gb Ram, ATI 7870) I'm able to run the newest of games maxed out visually at some incredibly high resolutions but this game runs pretty poor period, and is probably less than 10% as demanding as serious games on the market.  So, I basically have a WGT profile saved in my ATI control panel that I switch to when I golf.  I turn everything down to performance, don't use any AA or AF, no vertical refresh, basically all goodies off.  I also use a classic windows theme on Win 7 so all aero visual are gone.  It gives me a much better meter, but I still get a spike on the downswing around 1/4 way from the ding.  IMO, there's no getting away from the meter spikes, personally I think it's a flash problem, very little to do with pc spec.  I have a very poor laptop I use for work and the meter is no different than my gaming rig.  

• HANDBOOK 173 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 2:40 PM

  HI I have just had all my equipment inspected, ignore the pun. Everything on my computer is working fine , and then 2nite meter jumping every 2nd or 3rd shot. Lost 2 balls in one round. WTF not WGT.

   

   

• oilyrag 875 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 4:37 PM

  Tightrope:

  A friends list in the game  is useless, if you are curious, open your profile with a browser (don't forget to close it afterwards because..... actually, this might be the very reason why some have experienced problems with a friends status update affecting the meter:
  The Game client shuts off communication while you swing, but the million flash app on WGT's homepage is still active and might keep their communication channels open!
  
  I have not tested that, so it is just a theory. Still, Flash works in that way that all Flash stuff that runs on you computer is sharing the same resources. Our computers run the Flash player and the Flash player run the Flash apps currently loaded on your computer. That means that an ad for for shoes in one browser window can affect your meter.

  a simple way to watch what is happening while playing is to watch the task manager within chrome / dragon

  

   

   

• YankeeJim 25,827 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 5:21 PM

  You play with the main window open?!

• oneputtdavid 1,337 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 9:16 PM

  andyson:

  I thought I'd revisit this older post based on the discussion going on recently in "Meter Discussions" originated by Tightrope.

  On the bottom of page 1 of Meter Discussions Tightrope said:

  Tightrope:

  WGT claim they try to make the meter better, still it looks the same for years now. Maybe it even looks the same as it did in the very beginning? I am sure they have tried to tweak some things here and there, but they have not succeeded. They can do more. I know they can do more and that is the reason I still post in these kind of threads.

  I did some work in this post back on page 4, measuring the CPU impact of various actions we take in the game client window.  That was in Dec. 2010 more than 18 months ago.  So where are we now?  Have WGT made improvements?  Is the game running better than in Dec. 2010?

  This morning, I re-ran a few of the tests I ran back in December 2010.  Using the same computer, same ISP service, same affinity set up for Firefox and the Flash plug-in on CPU 1, low flash quality, aim arc and avatar movement turned on, etc, same same across the board as back then except I have a later version of Firefox (4.01) and a later version of Flash(11.2.202.235) and more importantly, the lates version of WGT's game (game 1.98.04, site 1.74.06)

  1st retest: STANDING IDLE ON BPB #1 TEE BOX

  

  Looks about the same to me.  Idle time is still around 12%.  60 second periodic spikes are still there.  No improvement in 18 months. 

  At the time I ran the test this morning I had 51 friends on my list.  I always suspected the periodic spikes were related to friend updates so.....

  I trimmed my list of friends this morning from 51 down to 35.  Any change?  Take a look...

  

  Same conditions, just 16 less friends on my list.  Those spikes are definitely shorter and skinnier.  Meaning less work and less strain on our computers.

  I'm convinced, the periodic spikes are due to periodic 60 second friend list updates.

  I just don't understand why WGT would give our PCs more work to do while we're in a game and not looking at friends status?  Make it so the update is done on the scorecard window, or when we pull down the friend menu.

  2nd re-test: Zoom, move aim marker, zoom back repeated 3 times.

  ( I still had 51 friends on my list during this test)

  

  Again it looks about the same to me.  Its difficult to reproduce the same speed of mouse movements and timing of the zoom so the shapes of the peaks will vary. 

  No improvement in 18 months.

  I got to thinking about what changes transpired in Flash over the last 18 months and recalled updating my Flash video card driver to get a version that could use the hardware acceleration feature of Flash. 

  So, I re-ran this test with hardware acceleration enabled in Flash.  Interesting result I think.  I had to change color to do a side-by-side comparison.  The purple lines are the test results with hardware acceleration turned on in Flash (right click on the game client and select Settings).

  

  That, IMO, is a significant savings in CPU work.

  I'm keeping hardware acceleration enabled  Not all video cards support it though. I believe it was a post by Infinito that got me interested in this.

  Enough for today.  My conclusion is WGT has made little if any optimization of their code in these areas during the last 18 months.  

  Adobe has given some of us an improvement. 

  I hope WGT has something in their planned optimizations dealing with the friend list updates in the game.

   

   

  andyson:

   

  I thought I'd revisit this older post based on the discussion going on recently in "Meter Discussions" originated by Tightrope.

  On the bottom of page 1 of Meter Discussions Tightrope said:

  Tightrope:

  WGT claim they try to make the meter better, still it looks the same for years now. Maybe it even looks the same as it did in the very beginning? I am sure they have tried to tweak some things here and there, but they have not succeeded. They can do more. I know they can do more and that is the reason I still post in these kind of threads.

  I did some work in this post back on page 4, measuring the CPU impact of various actions we take in the game client window.  That was in Dec. 2010 more than 18 months ago.  So where are we now?  Have WGT made improvements?  Is the game running better than in Dec. 2010?

  This morning, I re-ran a few of the tests I ran back in December 2010.  Using the same computer, same ISP service, same affinity set up for Firefox and the Flash plug-in on CPU 1, low flash quality, aim arc and avatar movement turned on, etc, same same across the board as back then except I have a later version of Firefox (4.01) and a later version of Flash(11.2.202.235) and more importantly, the lates version of WGT's game (game 1.98.04, site 1.74.06)

  1st retest: STANDING IDLE ON BPB #1 TEE BOX

  

  Looks about the same to me.  Idle time is still around 12%.  60 second periodic spikes are still there.  No improvement in 18 months. 

  At the time I ran the test this morning I had 51 friends on my list.  I always suspected the periodic spikes were related to friend updates so.....

  I trimmed my list of friends this morning from 51 down to 35.  Any change?  Take a look...

  

  Same conditions, just 16 less friends on my list.  Those spikes are definitely shorter and skinnier.  Meaning less work and less strain on our computers.

  I'm convinced, the periodic spikes are due to periodic 60 second friend list updates.

  I just don't understand why WGT would give our PCs more work to do while we're in a game and not looking at friends status?  Make it so the update is done on the scorecard window, or when we pull down the friend menu.

  2nd re-test: Zoom, move aim marker, zoom back repeated 3 times.

  ( I still had 51 friends on my list during this test)

  

  Again it looks about the same to me.  Its difficult to reproduce the same speed of mouse movements and timing of the zoom so the shapes of the peaks will vary. 

  No improvement in 18 months.

  I got to thinking about what changes transpired in Flash over the last 18 months and recalled updating my Flash video card driver to get a version that could use the hardware acceleration feature of Flash. 

  So, I re-ran this test with hardware acceleration enabled in Flash.  Interesting result I think.  I had to change color to do a side-by-side comparison.  The purple lines are the test results with hardware acceleration turned on in Flash (right click on the game client and select Settings).

  

  That, IMO, is a significant savings in CPU work.

  I'm keeping hardware acceleration enabled  Not all video cards support it though. I believe it was a post by Infinito that got me interested in this.

  Enough for today.  My conclusion is WGT has made little if any optimization of their code in these areas during the last 18 months.  

  Adobe has given some of us an improvement. 

  I hope WGT has something in their planned optimizations dealing with the friend list updates in the game.

   

   

  Great conclusion, Andy................what took you so long?  :) 

   

• pjctas0822 4,609 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 10:15 PM

  Can someone explain this. When I first got this computer a few months ago (very basic computer for school) my meter was all over the place. I use Gamebooster and it helped. What really helped was changing my computers resolution down to 1440 x900 instead of 1600 x 900. It shouldnt make a difference and the refresh rate is the same on each resolution at 60 hz. I have vertical sync off (i never let a game or app tell me what my vertical sync should be. I am an old school gamer and have always turned that off since it limits your FPS. 

  I started this game on an old AMD TBird single CPU with 512 RAM and an old Radeon pro 128 mb vid card. The game was smooth on that CPU but it finally took a dump. So when I got this new computer I was thinking yes the game will be so smooth . Yeah right it sucked so bad at first. Being somewhat techy I did my usual optimizations and driver updates etc etc etc . I am no amateur at that. After fooling with this puter for a few months now I have it running the best it is going to run with what I have. It is low end but I bet it runs smoother then most higher end CPU's based on the problems I read about in this forum. It wont hurt to lower your resolution in your video display to see if it helps your meter out.

  I know sometimes some things work for some and not for others for whatever reason,  so those who have not tried that by all means do so. Everyone make sure you turn off Vertical Sync by application or globally because you dont need that feature for anything at all. Like I said it limits your FPS big time no matter what kind of rig your using.

  Hope that helps at least 1 person out there :)

• oneputtdavid 1,337 Posts

  Tue, Jul 31 2012 10:24 PM

  oilyrag:

  Tightrope:

  A friends list in the game  is useless, if you are curious, open your profile with a browser (don't forget to close it afterwards because..... actually, this might be the very reason why some have experienced problems with a friends status update affecting the meter:
  The Game client shuts off communication while you swing, but the million flash app on WGT's homepage is still active and might keep their communication channels open!
  
  I have not tested that, so it is just a theory. Still, Flash works in that way that all Flash stuff that runs on you computer is sharing the same resources. Our computers run the Flash player and the Flash player run the Flash apps currently loaded on your computer. That means that an ad for for shoes in one browser window can affect your meter.

  a simple way to watch what is happening while playing is to watch the task manager within chrome / dragon

  

   

   

  Take it from a "computer idiot"...............been there did that, it go's so much deeper than watching your task manager..............Excluding software that "ENHANCHES" your every shot"...ie try waiting for the cpu's to steady (below 10%) 0% gives optimum performance meter wise, on every shot? (if you can catch it at that precise moment) waiting,waiting,waiting........your "mojo" from your previous shots has gone out the window!

  And there is no way in any multi player game you have time to wait on your PC's updates on any activity from WGT or other programs that is running in the background in your PC to reach that %!

  Want proof for all you IT brains............go through all your task manager programs, delete all which is not pertanant anyway shape or form to playing this game, and tell me how your meter preforms? (Shade your the best)

  And for "those who claim their meter runs perfect 99%" of the time.........if your not in the top 5% of the best players here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!........lets just leave it at that!

  BTW....I miss posts and forums golf and non-golf issues, such as political, world wide history, religion, and such..............where's Charlie, Snaike, Fat's, One w/many #/s, Stillsings, and others? Hope you all are doing well!

  Just one man's opinion......not criticizing anyone at all!.....;)

   

   

• oilyrag 875 Posts

  Wed, Aug 1 2012 1:07 AM

  YankeeJim:

  You play with the main window open?!

   

  no,

  the picture ( with ad block turned off ) was just to show that the chrome task manager is a very simple way of watching the cpu and network traffic generated by wgt

  it shows the fps for each advert and the small amount of traffic for these (very small)