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Well, since I was bored, I thought I would try a test in full shader affects and lightmapping.

first off, my machine

P 3.4ghz w/ ht
2 gig ram
Serial ATA drive

With full shader and full lightmapping and high texture detail - chateau prefrab, no entities, 4 lights at low level - 18 minutes to run test map.

Full shader, quick lightmapping, medium texture quality, science lab prefab, 6 lights low level - 2 minutes.

As far as the difference in map quality, there were a few better lighting effects with the full on everything, but to take that long with nothing but a room and 4 lights, especially on a
p3.4ghz system w/ 2 gig ram is really bad.

I just did this in case anyone was thinking about using the full affects on their maps. I got great results using the full shader, medium quality and quick lightmapping.

My question is, if I were to take a complete map like what most people are making, had full effects on everything, based on my calculations, that would take a day or so to compile. If that is the case, why have it. Or am I mistaking? It would seem to me, based on using other map creation systems for HL2 and such, what is the problem with the lightmapping and shaders in this engine compared to those. Is it a question of openGL vs DX or something like that?

Just though I would put this out there to see if anyone knows why it is so slow on a top notch system.

Would never run on my machine:
1.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
64 kilobyte secondary memory cache
768 Megabytes Installed Memory
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 128 MB

Hig numbers do not always mean top notch.

If you are running full lightmaps on four lights then you have lights crossing wach other. in any event all you need is 4 lights with small lightmaps and full shader and you will see a drastic improvement

RF

i found that the full light map seting dosent do any justice, i mean there are verey litile changes, but for the model qulity therwe are big changes.
i alwas view levels with quick light map and medum models
also if you are using a nivida graphics card they over kill shading, go into the manger and ghange it to performance, this will make it much better but realy dosent take away from the qulity.

yeah with most comps the higher settings are pretty much useless. you have too have an ubercomp to get those running at good speeds.

what 3d card do you have?

i tryed that to.Sometimes it works on full shaders and all that stuff in like 3 min's sometimes it wont work at all.I have 512 RAM Ati Radeon X800 GT 256 and AMD Athlon 3200+.Its realy strange lol