Project Reality Forums

Bear with me.

I'm running a Pentium 4 (3.4ghz)processor with a PCI Express ATI Radeon HD 4350 (1GB DDR2) video card, and I have 1 gigabyte of RAM, also DDR2. My OS is Windows XP 32 bit.

I decided to test the game when it finally installed by creating a local server to familiarize myself with the weapons, and to get in some practice piloting the Apache, which happens to be my favorite helicopter.

Anyway, my display settings were on maximum, and the game, when loaded, ran very smoothly. While I was unsure how to check my FPS rate, I can assure you it was quite high.

However, loading any map takes anywhere between twenty minutes to an hour. For this reason I have not attempted to join any servers yet, as it is more than likely the round will be over and the map changed before I can fully load in. And if for some reason I must abort the load, the 'Unloading Resources' process takes forty minutes at the very least.

Battlefield 2 Vanilla, on the other hand, takes between 10 and 30 minutes to load. (Still a ridiculously long time)

I already tried closing all nonessential processes running in the background before trying to load the game, but there was no change.

Here's what I don't understand. Until about a week ago, I was using an Nvidia 6600 graphics card (256MB). Load times took between two and five minutes using that card on battlefield 2, and I doubt they'd take much longer in Project Reality. The graphics were terrible, but the loading time was decent.

Also of note is the fact that I can load and run ARMA 2 quite well in about a minute and a half.

Since I bought my new GPU and installed it at the start of this week, the drivers are definitely up to date.

Any help in resolving this issue would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. The loading bar freezes for the majority of the time on 62% (Geometries) 71% (Textures) and onward from there.

P.P.S. Yes, I've already tried lowering my settings to the bare minimum, but it doesn't speed up loading.

Welcome to the forums

and I have 1 gigabyte of RAM,

I'd recommend more RAM, BF2 loads alot faster with more RAM.

Another GB of RAM, if your motherboard supports it, would go a long way in the general performance of your comptuer as well as PR.

I think a all around upgrade would help, right now nothing in your computer is good enough to run PR at decent settings. The Pentium 4 and RAM are probably the reason to the slow loading.

I had half the computer he had before I finally upgraded and my load times, while fairly long, weren't "glacial".

I have a 2.2ghz Intel Core2Duo, 2gb RAM, HD 2600 Pro, and nowadays it takes maybe a minute at most compared to upwards of 5 >_<

Your best bet would be to get more RAM and upgrade to a dual core processor. Maybe even a quad core, or even the new hexa core processor if you're feeling adventurous.

Make sure you have AA disabled. Also, textures and geometries tuned down, lighting and shadows... Yes that DOES alter the loading time a LOT. (Note that during loading they say what are they loading. Better to see where does it take the longest (which % and which thing. You can have a great GPU but it's not the answer. I have a HD2400, 2GB RAM, Core2Duo 2.4GHz and I am normally between the first 30 people to load a map when the server is full (64), which means I normally load before the timer even starts. But I don't have anything fancy on, like shadows, dynamic lighting and shadows, AA and Texture Filtering.
See what I mean? IGNORE ALL OF THIS I didn't see the last 2 lines of the thread.

Also, have you tried re-installing/re-downloading the game? Might do the trick.


Also, note this is NOT a PR problem. You see, PR maps are much bigger and "heavier" than vBF2 ones, so it WILL take a longer loading time. If you already have a long one in vBF2 (>8min IMO) you might have some corrupted data over there on your files.

Okay you have two issues here. One is that you have a single core processor, which really is not ideal if you intend to run several applications along with PR, for example background programs will not be able to get a look in with PR running, slowing the entire system and your loading times right down.

Second thing is that you simply need more RAM. The BF2 specification states you only need 512mb but that is only a minimum and based on a game with tiny view distances and small maps. Compare to PR maps with view distances up to a kilometer+ and 4x4km maps and you can see why you are struggling. Really 2GB is the minimum for PR to run efficiently, especially in v0.9.

Basically what is happening in your system is that the old processor and small amount of RAM are bottlenecking the one decent component; the grahics card, hence why it takes longer and why you'll need to bring both the RAM and CPU spec up to scratch in order to see a decent improvement.

Finally, this isn't a bug (with PR or BF2) especially if you are experiencing 10-30 minute loading times on vanilla BF2

A general upgrade is required.

That is crazy long. When my old pc was at minimum specs vanilla would load in about 3 minutes.

Perhaps turning on the task manager (ctrl+alt+del) and lettting it run when during a map load then alt-tabbing over to it after the map lods may tell you if it is the RAM or CPU.

While general upgrading is always a good idea, you should probably try to isolate a problem before making a fix.


edit: try loading a vanilla map so that you don't have to wait for the next leapyear to see the results.

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