Specifications and hardware

Specifications and hardware

Postby Charlie7000 » 29 Nov 2018, 15:52

I am begging you to have two versions on the go. One for lesser specifications (ie one of the older versions?) as well as the current one. It is not just older hardware that won't run Supertuxkart now, but most new hardware as well - other than the most expensive on the market or gaming pc's. Up to 3 or 4 years ago we were playing it on a 900 Mhz eee pc. Now you need Nvidia graphics! This rules out the vast majority of under 12 years old kids, the vast majority of ordinary PC users and the vast majority of mainstream hardware - including Macbooks and Macbook Airs, Microsoft Go, most 11" 2 in 1s. So we're talking minimum £1000 PC to run it comfortably.

I am currently looking for a genera laptop or 2 in 1 for an 11 year old and there are a lot of good models in the £500 to £800 range but none will run Supertuxkart. It feels like a big loss! We are not talking about ancient hardware but needing NVidia Graphics or high level graphics which don't come on sub £1,000 PC's or smaller PC's.

So having a two tier option (as some linux distros do) would be absolutely brilliant. I can completely understand going 64 bit only - that is fine, but it needs to be able to run on a much wider variety of hardware and for a much wider variety of users - not just adults with top notch gaming machines.

I hope this will be considered. Thank you.
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby Alayan » 29 Nov 2018, 20:02

Low graphics options exist for a reason. The very limited integrated intel graphics can absolutely run STK at a decent framerate if you just lower graphics quality and resolution.

You also have to understand that hardware abilities put a ceiling to the quality of the game. At some point, having a more complex and detailed track requires higher computational resources. STK improving with new higher-quality tracks means not being able to support very old or ultra-low end configurations.

Also, nothing forbids you to install an old version, they are still available.

I am currently looking for a genera laptop or 2 in 1 for an 11 year old and there are a lot of good models in the £500 to £800 range but none will run Supertuxkart. It feels like a big loss! We are not talking about ancient hardware but needing NVidia Graphics or high level graphics which don't come on sub £1,000 PC's or smaller PC's.

It is blatantly false that 500£ to 800£ computers can't run STK.

I looked at a UK website selling electronics, and with that budget you can easily get a i5-8250U (which will run STK just fin at low graphics), 8GB of RAM, 1920x1080 display and a SSD with at least 240GB (you should not cheap out on display resolution, RAM or storage ; a low-res display or a slow HDD make the computer experience much worse).

If you don't care about your kid having terrible day-to-day experience, a 300£ computer with a low-res display, a very low capacity SSD or a HDD, and a 2 core mobile processor will still be able to run STK at low graphics/res at a playable framerate.
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby deve » 29 Nov 2018, 20:56

I tested STK 0.9.3 before the release on intel 965gm, which is 12 years old. Lightweight tracks like hacienda, scotland etc. work with ~30 fps on 1024x768 resolution. It's not as beautiful as on modern hardware, but it doesn't look worse than old STK versions either. And it's playable even on raspberry pi with very basic graphics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPd2G_qc_jk It just looks ugly compared to highest settings, but it's playable.

And I know what you mean, because I know some kids that play STK on very old hardware.

And I'm still going to make 32bit linux build for next version and I was also building WinXP package for a long time (STK 0.9.2 still has official winxp package), so I think that I care about old hardware ;)
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby QwertyChouskie » 30 Nov 2018, 00:01

My friend just got a laptop with an 8th gen Core i5 and Nvidia 1050Ti graphics for about $500. I tested STK 0.9.3 on it and it ran at about ~58FPS on max settings and 1080p on a graphically intensive track. Granted the laptop was on a Black Friday sale, but still you definitely don't need $1000+ hardware to run STK at ultra settings. And if you are fine with graphics level 1, you can easily run it on super-weak hardware.

Maybe we should update the FAQ with more reasonable minimum requirements.
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby cddepppp256 » 08 Dec 2018, 17:36

I mean... I got STK to run on a 15 year old pc, and although it did not get to a race (only to kart select) before running out of some type of ram, it still ran at ~19-24 fps. No graphics card as far as I know, single core 32-bit CPU. :)

(As a side note it also somehow runs Linux Mint 19 XFCE fine and that is what I tested it on. It may have run had I chose Linux Mint 17.3 or something.)
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby Wuzzy » 14 Dec 2018, 02:26

Apparently the biggest GPU/CPU killers are the high-end tracks like Cocoa Temple.

One idea would be to have a setting for enabling “low-quality track mode”, in which expensive predefined decorative objects (depends on track) are removed to massively cut down the polygon count. I don't know if STK does that already, but my guess is that such a setting would already help a lot.

In the add-ons, I found a low-quality but fast version of Cocoa Temple which seems to do just that.

In the meantime, the easiest way to boost your performance is to use a lower resolution. :)
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby MTres19 » 14 Dec 2018, 04:55

Yes, there's a mechanism that allows objects to be rendered only at high GFX levels (it's called geometry detail level out something). Not sure how many objects make use of it though since it was introduced relatively recently.
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby cddepppp256 » 14 Dec 2018, 05:08

MTres19 {l Wrote}:Yes, there's a mechanism that allows objects to be rendered only at high GFX levels (it's called geometry detail level out something). Not sure how many objects make use of it though since it was introduced relatively recently.


Isn't that something else? I'm not sure that that is how it works, just cuts down on polygons by some model division I think. (I don't know what i'm trying to say either to be honest...)
Edit: I mean by simplifying the model.
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby MTres19 » 14 Dec 2018, 12:27

No, you're thinking of LOD which is determined by distance from the camera instead, and uses multiple levels.
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby tux_peng » 23 Dec 2018, 23:52

My 2nd comp runs on a E8400 Core 2 Duo with a 650Ti and gets pretty decent performance. Turn down the GFX or Advanced Pipeline off if you cant run
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby eltomito » 26 Dec 2018, 20:43

I play stk 0.9.3 on a cheap lenovo notebook from 2012 that cost me 500 euros back then and I use intel integrated graphics. I turned all the graphics settings down as much as possible but kept animated scenery. And also, I switched screen resolution to the minimum possible, 800x600.

When I keep the advanced pipeline, I get
min 13 and max 52 fps on Cocoa Temple
min 40 and max 61 on XR 591

When I turn the advanced pipeline off, I get
min 36 and max 61 fps on Cocoa Temple which looks a bit ugly this way
min 60 and max 60 on XR 591 which still looks okay

So, keeping the advanced pipeline only makes the old tracks fully playable. With Cocoa Temple, the parts where the fps goes down to 13 (around the big wheels spinning)
are really jerky.

When I turn of animated scenery (disabled) and keep the advanced pipeline, I get
min 23, max 53 on Cocoa Temple and it's playable without noticeable jerkiness.

So, maybe STK could automatically turn down the gfx settings to this on slow graphics?
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Re: Specifications and hardware

Postby QwertyChouskie » 26 Dec 2018, 22:58

Git has graphics optimizations compared to 0.9.3. Also https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/pull/3662 was merged, this can make a pretty large difference on integrated graphics.
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