OK, next Q. I am finding that with a complex scene (270 objects) the response time of Vue is awful. The camera controls are almost useless - I try and drag that trackball with the mouse and the program responds three seconds later, which makes accurate positioning impossible. I have improved matters a bit by putting most of the static stuff on a separate layer that I can turn invisible, and that speeds things up to tolerable. But sometimes I need to see all the other objects to get the scene right. (And yes, I do have OpenGL turned off). Would things improve if I installed more physical memory? I have 512 Mb at present.(And a 1.8 GHz Athlon processor).

From my experience, yes it would, as it would allow more of the scene to reside in phyiscal memory, not virtual. That chip is the 2200, correct? That should be sufficient unto the task...although faster is better, and the Barton core (XP-2500+ and up, I believe) integrated some design changes that really sped things up.

For applications like Vue there is a simple rule - the more memory the better. I would think of minimum 1GB, otherwise the chance that Vue will need a lot of virtual memory is very high - and the speed very low. What i do in complex scenes is to hide parts i am not working on via invisible layers and activate them only when i need them. AND, i use Wireframe boxes for especially high detailed objects like plants or Poser characters as long as i don't really need to see them completely. That speed up the response a lot too. Needs maybe just a little more brain work in terms of imagination but is efficient. Sometimes almost all objects used i display only as wireframe boxes.

You can never have enough memory, especially with 3D software. Also watch out your virtual memory. Make sure the swap files (or page files in windows terms) are created on your fastest drives with plenty of room.

I'm using 2g of mem & processor is 2.6GHZ. I have no problems at all. However, too many PZ3's or too much foliage will definately cause a slow down. You could always render your layers separately if you are organized in work flow. Me I'm not >:(. I try to no avail ;) LOL.

At 1G, you'll probably still see some problems and slowdowns when working with complex scenes. I say this based upon personal experience.

2G is much better.

My guess would be that 512M wouldn't be enough.

yaaa.. I have a gig on my Mac and I have hit a few times where Vue slowed to a crawl... thinking another gig would be a good idea :/ 512 really isn't enough to do anything big. If you plan on any poser imports or such high poly count items you'll need more than the gig... I'd get as much as you can afford

Thanks, I'll upgrade right away. It probably doesn't help that my work flow involves keeping Vue, Poser and Photoshop all open at the same time! 2 gig it is. A nice feature in Bryce, by the way, is that it switches to wireframe boxes automatically when needed when moving the camera, and then switches back when the movement stops. It means that navigation is very quick and responsive and precise with huge complex scenes. Improving the preview handling in Vue is something e-on could address with profit.

I hear that. What do those guys do at e-on all day? How many people work there? Not many I would gather. There must be some logical reason for the illogical way this product is developing.

Hmmm - not necessarily. I'm convinced that all the programmers who have worked on Poser have never actually used the program.

I know this is a talk on RAM but have you tried placing the vue objects in separate layers and then hiding those most poly intensive ones when you don't need them or when your moving your cam etc..? Also it helps to reduce the render thread priority setting lower in the "options" and then do what you want like scale, move , rotate etc then setting it back up again later.. MZ

I am hiding the layer with most of the junk and it does help, but not enough, and clearly I do need more RAM. But I didn't realise you could change the render thread priority, and that will help in other respects as well.