The below was posted to the ISS forums. I think it is a very good guide to reducing the amount of strain that your computer is under and thus the client generated lag you will experience, especially during fleet battles. There is nothing more frustrating than arriving on grid with >100 others and being in hull before you get your first frame refresh .... well, OK there are more frustrating things, but not in eve . I think this is good enough to add to the useful linkies page. Read and digest; there will be a test at the end....
Kaganis Warmonkey wrote:I don't have a very good spec computer these days, and while it handles normal EVE play OK, fleet battles will make it poop it's pants & lock up. Even high-spec machine have real trouble with the sheer number of things flying around the screen.
So, I've decided to collate all the lag-reducing tips I've found & use, and put them here in one nice central location, and for other people to enjoy perhaps.
Basic tips:
* All effects off with ctrl+alt+shift+e.
* Turret effect off with ctrl+alt+shift+t.
*Setting colour depth to minimum (16-bit IIRC).
* All sound off. /edit ctrl+alt+shift+F12
* Don't generate character pictures when clicked.
* Hide the Shield / Armour / Hull text readout.
* Trails off.
* Damage messages off.
* Sun occluded off.
* Log chat to file off.
* Show exception windows off.
* Close any non-essential chat channels.
* Blink off on as many chat channels left as possible.
* When warping to the battlefield look directly behind you.
* When warping to battle, minimise the overview until you've loaded everything.
* Be on max zoom out.
* Pin your chat channels so they go see-through.
* Have your overview set up correctly.
* Turn off the Z buffer.
* Go full screen.
* Shut down any other programs you have running (except voice comms).
Overview tips
Set up so you only see hostiles / neutrals & the correct ship types. There are plenty of helpful posts on the issue, so I won't go into it here.
For reducing lag, you can play with the overview further:
* When warping to battle, minimise the overview until you've loaded everything.
* The only two columns you should have are Distance & Name. Turn off Tag.
* Turn off all colourtags, & backgrounds.
* Turn off everything under the "ships" tab.
Advanced option
I've only recently tried this, so don't know what effect it has in-game, but it makes EVE load up a lot faster.
In your EVE\cache folder, there is a file called prefs.ini.
Make a back up copy of it, we're going to edit it slightly, so it's important to have the original somewhere safe.
Open up prefs.ini
Find the line: buffersize=80
Change the 80 to be half your computers memory size in megabytes.
Save the change.
And you're done. Remember some of this stuff really is only when preparing for fleet battles. Some you can live without anyway, some you can't.
Also remember to do it all before the action begins. :D
Feel free to comment / ask questions. Any more good suggestion & I'll edit them into this post.
He does say thge Prefs.ini one is untested but if it works without analy raping your PC then changing buffer from 80 -> 250 (on my under speccd PC with 1/2 GiG) should make a behoony load of difference.
Meanwhile, I just bought a new GFX card, now let's see if I can get it to fi.....
. I think this is good enough to add to the useful linkies page. Read and digest; there will be a test at the end....
