Ok, with a little help from Sweenie, some things are becoming clearer and yet the overall situation is more confusing. Can anyone else with a sub 1Ghz CPU test this to see if the results are consistent or if it's patchy?
Rob : You definitely turned shaders off? The demo has them on by default and I'm wondering if it's actually something funky that the cube-mapped pins do when they're being tossed around that's causing it.
You see, I've modified the source to display the number of milliseconds the physics is taking and it's taking around 0.05 millisecs most of the time, peaking at around 0.1. Even on a PC which is ten (!!) times slower than mine, one millisecond for the physics is pretty darn low. And most important of all, the physics time doesn't spike at ALL when the ball hits the pins.
[edit]Ah Hell.. I'll sort this out one way or another. I've uploaded a patch that displays the milliseconds the physics are taking in the top left corner of the screen. People who don't have the beta yet need the beta AND this patched exe. Rob and anyone who tried the previous beta version, if you wouldn't mind testing it again, you'll only need this patched exe. You can leave the old one around or overwrite with this one. Makes no odds.
http://members.aol.com/sybixsus/beta101.zip[/edit]
I can't think of anything else that changes when the ball hits the pins. I mean I get the pin positions and rotations every frame. I could ( and probably will ) optimize it so that I don't get the positions and rotations of the pins until the ball is nearly to the end of the alley, but at the moment, I'm doing it all the time.
Rob : You definitely turned shaders off? The demo has them on by default and I'm wondering if it's actually something funky that the cube-mapped pins do when they're being tossed around that's causing it.
You see, I've modified the source to display the number of milliseconds the physics is taking and it's taking around 0.05 millisecs most of the time, peaking at around 0.1. Even on a PC which is ten (!!) times slower than mine, one millisecond for the physics is pretty darn low. And most important of all, the physics time doesn't spike at ALL when the ball hits the pins.
[edit]Ah Hell.. I'll sort this out one way or another. I've uploaded a patch that displays the milliseconds the physics are taking in the top left corner of the screen. People who don't have the beta yet need the beta AND this patched exe. Rob and anyone who tried the previous beta version, if you wouldn't mind testing it again, you'll only need this patched exe. You can leave the old one around or overwrite with this one. Makes no odds.
http://members.aol.com/sybixsus/beta101.zip[/edit]
I can't think of anything else that changes when the ball hits the pins. I mean I get the pin positions and rotations every frame. I could ( and probably will ) optimize it so that I don't get the positions and rotations of the pins until the ball is nearly to the end of the alley, but at the moment, I'm doing it all the time.