Perf and zooming

[EricL]

2.43m contains a significant performance improvement for those people who run with graphics on and the view zoomed in to show only a portion of the field.  In all prior versions, all the ties and bots and stuff were being drawn independent of whether you were zoomed in or not.  If you were zoomed in, most of this work was wasted, displaying stuff not on the screen.  As of 2.43m, I only bother to display stuff that is actually visible.  This is essentially equivalent to turning off the graphics for everything not on the screen.  The more you zoom in, the faster the sim runs.   The perf improvement for people who run this way is significant (e.g. 25% increase in cycles/sec for a sim with 1000 bots when zoomed in significantly vs. full field in view).

I may attempt some other perf improvements in this area.  In order to do so, I'd like to know more about how people run their sims.

hmm.  Seems I only get three poll questions.  Please reply with any other comments you may have along these lines.  In particular:

Does anyone care about the lame little "skin" squiggles inside bots?

What cycle/sec rate do you aim for when chooisng your sim size / number of bots, etc.?  Namely, how slow is so slow that you decide to make your sim smaller?

Do you run with shapes?  Would you be willing to take a perf hit (in sims with shapes) to make shapes better? e.g. bots could burrow into them, shoot off pieces, etc.

[Testlund]

Usually I open a few graphs when I start the sim and then close them to set the values, so to speak, so I can open them later and see the progress.
I've noticed a slight performance boost sometimes when I zoom in, but usually I have it zoomed out all the way when I'm not watching it. I should probably have an empty spot zoomed in when I'm not watching.  

[EricL]

There should not be any noticible perf difference when zoomed in in current builds.  The perf enhancement isn't in yet.

You don't use the "no graphics" button when not watching the sim?

Would people be interested in the program automatically turning off graphics after some period of user inactivity?

[Testlund]

There should not be any noticible perf difference when zoomed in in current builds.  The perf enhancement isn't in yet.

What? Then I guess the performance will get even better when you've put it in!    

You don't use the "no graphics" button when not watching the sim?

I can't see any improvement in performance by disabling any graphical feature, not even disabling video output. Right now my sim is down to 0.1 crawl nomatter what I do.

Only by pressing the 'Toggle fast mode' button I get improved performance, so that's the only one I use. The 'flicker mode' just causes flicker but no performance boost. The button left of the 'Toggle fast mode' button was something Nums put in to slow down the sim if it was running too fast, but it looks like you've disabled that in this version.

[shvarz]

Does anyone care about the lame little "skin" squiggles inside bots?

Not really. I'd rather have different shapes for bots, even if they are just for show.

What cycle/sec rate do you aim for when chooisng your sim size / number of bots, etc.? Namely, how slow is so slow that you decide to make your sim smaller?

0.5-1 cycles/sec.

Do you run with shapes? Would you be willing to take a perf hit (in sims with shapes) to make shapes better? e.g. bots could burrow into them, shoot off pieces, etc.

Not recently. I kind of forgot about them.  I guess I would like to experiment more with them.

[MacadamiaNuts]

I always turn off all the candyeye, including shoot impacts and death explosions. There's a little performance boost by doing so.

I never use shapes, because there aren't so many bots able to react to edges. And I don't like to run sims under 5 cycles/second, even if I'm on a slow computer. I'm a bit impatient.

[EricL]

I'd rather have different shapes for bots, even if they are just for show.

Try the little plant button in 2.43m and tell me what you think...

[Numsgil]

The squiggles are useful for figuring out if a bot is spinning or not with just a glance.  Other than that I usually turn them and poffs off.

Shapes really should let bots burrow into them and break off pieces, etc.  It's one of the things I'm planning on working on with DB3.  If you haven't yet, you can eliminate alot of the perf impact with pieces of shapes breaking off, etc., if you implement a grid to sort bots with.  Look here.

Also, I usually try to run at least at 4 or 5 cycles a second.  Anything under 1 cycle/sec is effectively too slow no matter what as far as I'm concerned.

[Commander Keen]

I'll put up with 2 cycles/sec, but I prefer 5-10 cycles/sec.

I don't find the squiggles very useful. Maybe to save memory the sim should use one squiggle for all of a species rather than change it when the species mutates.

I always turn the graphical display off when I'm not there.

I often turn off a few graphical effects, but only if the sim is running a bit slow.

I never use shapes. It's just one of the features I don't know alot about and don't see a need for except in evolution sims. And my PC is too slow and low on ram for proper huge evo sims.