Spore is horribly single threaded

I received Spore for Christmas and so far I do like it. It’s not exactly what I had hoped but its a fun distraction. One thing that bugs me though is how often the game slows down. Entering a planet’s atmosphere becomes slower and slower as more models are no longer kept in the graphics cache. What’s odd though is that PC specs are well above the recommended system requirements for Spore. To simply explain, in the Windows Performance Ratings my computer rates at 5.2 while Spore recommends a computer rated at a 4. Why should I have a problem?

I investigated and looked at one of the most important performance bottlenecks today: the lack of multi-threaded programming. Using the Vista’s built-in performance monitor, I checked CPU core usage over 30 minutes of game time. The graph below illustrates the problem.

 

Look at the core in yellow. At no point does its usage go above 20% while the purple core goes to near 100%. In short, Spore is not correctly multi-threaded. What’s silly is that model generation can be done in a totally parallel fashion since models aren’t dependent on each other. AI requires some level of connection but a large amount of the computation can be done separate.

To sum it up: EA got lazy and their customers suffer because of bad multi-core performance.

Update on Vista Metadata Project

For anyone who cares, I just released Alpha Preview 2 of the Vista Metadata Project. Has a few fixes but most of the major bugs are still there. Anyone who knows anything about C++ or is willing to learn and wants to help should contact me!

Psalm 34:8: "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!"

iTunes is a bad neighbor

My brother got an iPod for graduation and he's been using my computer as his docking station. Since Apple must do everything their own way, that means I needed to install iTunes. While I personally dislike iTunes, it does have the ability to listen to Windows Media files. That was very helpful as it meant I didn't have to rip all my CDs into iTunes separately as I've already done that in Windows Media player. Unfortunately things didn't go as planned.

You see iTunes can't actually play Windows Media files like every media player on the face of the earth, including players for Linux and Mac. No they have to "transcode" (which means convert from one file format to another) Windows Media files to Apple's own M4A format. M4A files take about the same amount of space as a Windows Media file so now my music takes twice as much space as before and Windows Media Player and Windows Search finds two copies for every song. That's annoying.

I don't expect iPods to support Windows Media files. What I do expect is iTunes to keep the transcoded data in a format that doesn't double the size of my media library and hide it so Windows Search and Windows Media Player don't find two copies of every friggin' song. Shame on Apple for being horrible computing neighbors. Computers are tools to improve people's lives, not burdens to make our lives more difficult.

John 1:14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Vista Metadata Project

This would be a project I've been working on. It allows you to add tags to AVI files in Windows Vista. Any help would be appreciated!