Sector Generation.

Kojiro

AstroSynthesis keeps ceasing to respond every time I try to generate a sector. I have Windows Vista, an AMD Athlon X4 9750 Quad Core, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GS. Each time I run the standard generator, it just stalls and reads as "not responding" by Task Manager. What is wrong?

srhoag

The problem is most likely being caused by Vista. Astrosynthesis likes to create files it its own directory but Vista tries to prevent any program from writing to the "programs" directory as a security measure. Granted, using security and Vista in the same sentence is a sad joke, but that is for another discussion.

Have you tried creating a folder for Astrosynthesis in "My Documents" and installing it there? I'd bet this will solve your issue.

If you have a chance, upgrade to Windows 7. I'm not sure if you would run into the same security issue as I have not tested it yet, but overall from what I have seen so far, 7 is a major improvement over Vista. Then again, Windows XP was much better than Vista.

If this does not solve the problem, get back to me and I will do some more investigation on that.

Ed_NBOS

Also, it could just be running. If you look at the task manager and see the CPU upwards 100%, its probably just doing its thing. Astro2 isnt very good at updating the gui as the process runs, and if you start clicking around you can get that 'not responding' in the title bar (even though its still running) because the interface isnt updating.

How big are the sectors you're creating? If you just installed Astro, and right out of the box try to make a 1000x1000x1000 sector... its going to take quite a while. Hours. Try something small like 10x10x10 to be able to guestimate how long the larger sectors should take to generate on your computer.

If small sectors wont run - then as srhoag mentioned, you probably have a rights problem. Try running Astro as administrator or from a different directory.

Kojiro

Ed_NBOS wrote:

Also, it could just be running. If you look at the task manager and see the CPU upwards 100%, its probably just doing its thing. Astro2 isnt very good at updating the gui as the process runs, and if you start clicking around you can get that 'not responding' in the title bar (even though its still running) because the interface isnt updating.

The CPU is nowhere near 100%, and the "not responding" comes up immediately without clicking.

How big are the sectors you're creating? If you just installed Astro, and right out of the box try to make a 1000x1000x1000 sector... its going to take quite a while. Hours. Try something small like 10x10x10 to be able to guestimate how long the larger sectors should take to generate on your computer.

If small sectors wont run - then as srhoag mentioned, you probably have a rights problem. Try running Astro as administrator or from a different directory.

It's any size of sector. I tried a 20x20x20. Since I can't afford purchasing another OS, I will try the Run as administrator option as that usually does sort anything out.

Kojiro

So as administrator I was able to try 20x20x20 this time and it worked, and then I decided to try 100 next and it brought up the "not responding" dialogue.

Edit: I take that back. It could be the GUI problem you mentioned instead this time. It finished.

srhoag

Hi Kojiro,

Looks like Ed and I were both right. By logging in as Administrator, you over came the rights issues that I was referring to and Ed was right that you need to give your computer time to complete tasks that are large. I've had my system tied up for many hours at a time generating sectors of space. I've since learned to generate smaller sectors and then merge them when I need to look at the big picture, but keep the smaller ones as they are easier and faster to work with.
I'm glad to hear you got it working. Astrosynthesis is such a great program and I hope everyone gets a chance to work with it.

Later - srhoag (aka - Steven R. Hoag)

Ed_NBOS

The next version, which hopefully will be available by the end of the year, is fully multi-threaded. So you can pan and zoom around on the map, and add/edit things, as the system generator is running.

srhoag

Does that mean that Astrosynthesis will actually utilize more than one core in my processor? I've noticed that my processor is very under utilized while generating sectors and producing surface maps of all the bodies found. Yes, I like to abuse my computer and make it generate surface maps of all the bodies in each sector. It's my revenge. ;-)

Ed_NBOS

Yep, it'll use multiple processors. Primarily for the surface map generation, which can use all the processors. Between optimizations and multi-threaded support, surface map generation is almost 90% faster than AS2's. So fast, in fact, that you dont have to select 'create surface map' from the menu - it'll just create the surface map automatically when you click on a planet. Sector generation will only use one additional processor. What I found was that using more really didnt speed things up since processor power wasnt where the speed bottlenecks were. But generation is still done in a background thread, making the program far more responsive.