#header.image can cause high CPU (4 Viewers)

[tourettes]

How about using multiple texture atlases based on which MP screen we're on? We could still pack-and-cache all needed textures and do a (partial?) atlas change on transition from e.g. Home Screen to My Movies.

Commonly used textures (for a given definition of "commonly used") could be packed into the same packfile to ensure they're always available (or alternatively accept textures get put into more than one texture pack).

I guess this could add som lag to screen switching, but most of the time is spent inside a given screen, not on switching between screens, so maybe that's acceptable?

Would require complex and error prone logic to determine the needed textures on different views. Wwe don't want to make any such drastinc changes into MP1 (especially when ATI 2400 with 256MB RAM costs aprox 30e.)

Best way to handle the issue is to optimize the skins itself. For example B3W has many textures loaded into the pakced texture file s that arent used in a single file.

 

[Swede]

(especially when ATI 2400 with 256MB RAM costs aprox 30e.)

That doesn't fit in my laptop

 

[Swede]

Ok, more testing done: Unfortunally Vista works in other ways. In my vista setup, packet textures are needed when MP restores from minimized, or else the textures are missing.

Why is restoring from minimized different in vista? It's also very slow to restore nowadays. It wasn't some months back.

Volume textures are also needed in a packet texture for volumebar to work.

If MP wasn't made to use packet textures, this wouldn't be a problem, ofcourse.

 

[el Filou]

From what I understand, the problem lies in the implementation and not in the use of packed textures themselves.
From the URLs that Tourettes posted, packed textures actually look like a performance benefit and the only downsides are just texture quality ones in some particular cases.
I can't see a reason why packed textures would consume more graphics RAM than separate textures if done right, as these are just the separate textures combined into one big texture. If done correctly it should use nearly the same amount of graphics RAM, and surely nowhere near the difference Swede has seen.

Sorry if this has been detailed in some other post, but are these packed textures generated on the fly?
If so, maybe the best solution would be to let skin developers design packed textures manually (as is done in many games), bypassing the need for complex dynamic texture packing, and change the textures definitions in skins to something like "PackedTextureFile=>XYCoordinates" ?

Even if it's OK when using a graphics card with more onboard RAM (and some posts seem to imply that it isn't always the case even with 256 MB cards), benefitting from the performance improvements of packed textures while at the same time using less graphics RAM would still be nice, because for example some people use MP as a frontend to start games and things like that, and so the graphics RAM wasted by MP is graphics RAM that can't be used by other applications started alongside it.

Would this be difficult? Only for MP2 maybe?

 

[jernis]

I had this problem back in December.
And i tweeked my own skin. the default skin delivered with MP is using to large Gfx and a loots of Fonts not needed.

The skin designers could without a problem adress this issue without any changes to MP at this time.
you can se my posts and a quick fix here : https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/1-0-rc4-svn-builds-299/epg-tv-preview-eating-cpu-logs-49434/

I also did most of your conclusions in december se this post : https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/blue3-skin-feedback-293/blue3-skins-gr8-but-its-memory-hog-49863/

regards / Jernis.

 

[Swede]

Great!

Here are more posts in the subject:
do-we-really-need-packed-textures
nvidia-6800gt-outofvideomemory

 

[jernis]

Here is a realy simple fonts.xml that should reduce the font usage from 140 megs to around 50 megs.
Without the need to recompile or change the graphics.
(for blue3wide 1.0)
please try it and see if this helps in any way.

Unpack this one into the b3wide skins folder and delete the doc-settings/appdata/mp/cache/b3wide directory then restart MP and see if it improves.

View attachment b3wfonts.zip

(The real solution in my opinion is to optimize the default skin so that it uses lot less fonts and smaller gfx:s)

let me know if it helps
regards / Jernis.

 

[Swede]

Yes the fonts take way to much memory. I have done the same thing.
You should try the new non packet textures settings, or my fix: Stutterfix for weak GPU/
With that you can probably use ANY skin.

 

[rtv]

Here is a realy simple fonts.xml that should reduce the font usage from 140 megs to around 70 megs.
Without the need to recompile or change the graphics.
(for blue3wide 1.0)
please try it and see if this helps in any way.

make a backup of the org fonts.xml try this one instead and delete the doc-settings/appdata/mp/cache/b3wide directory then restart MP and see if it improves.

View attachment 36936

(The real solution in my opinion is to optimize the default skin so that it uses lot less fonts and smaller gfx:s)

let me know if it helps
regards / Jernis.

It's already in SVN for two days now

 

[jernis]

O. cool!. missed that!.
Thanks / Jernis.