Troubleshooting

 

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 It seems nowadays that no matter how 'standard' Windows has become, there are seemingly endless varieties of configurations designed to confound the best programs and the most experienced users.

 

So with that in mind here are a few tips:

 

Make sure you have the latest drivers for your video card.  This ensures the best possible performance and compatibility.  A couple of spots to look:

·       For Nvidia based cards: http://nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

·       For Radeon based cards: http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html

 

If you have very low frame rates (<10fps) it is probably due to an underpowered video graphics card. 

 

·       Try using the Simple Model option in the Advanced dialog box.  These models are much simpler then the default ones and may give your poor card a helping hand.

 

·       Reduce resolution of the landscape and textures.  You may be running out of texture memory on your video card or the card is just not capable of running high polygon landscapes and models.

 

·       Don’t use Realistic Shadows.  Try the Synthetic ones or none at all.  Many slower cards have trouble calculating shadows.

 

Play around.  I know that is not a very technical troubleshooting statement, but you will find that playing around with the window size, graphics setting, detail levels, etc. can allow you to get the program running in most cases.  After a little work I was actually able to get the program to run on my wife's Dell laptop.  It won't run in full screen but as a smaller window it does just fine.  

 

Finally----

 

In the Advanced dialog box you can turn on debugging.  EL3D then creates a file is called GraphicDebug.txt in the same folder as you installed the program.  You can use this file to see where your computer had trouble or you can send it to me at monsenrm@eaglelander3d.com.