Since both the particle effects for spells and the sound for same are clientside based as far as I can tell, it is probably something in your system that is interfering. Even other people's animations are client based, though there is a download trigger to tell your client to invoke the effect. (Particle effects for things like fog involve downloaded triggers so there is an effect on bandwidth there. Ditto for mass battles where the server has to update the actions of many many players and NPCs.)
I found, for instance, that I couldn't get good sound if I was running a streaming radio station or any other use of my sound codecs. (Streaming radio had two effects, one related to bandwidth and one to resource usage but even local music interfered.)
Ryzom is a memory and cpu hog, pure and simple. The single biggest thing you can do to improve performance is have at *least* 2GB of memory. By default it assigns itself to Core 1 (or core 0 if you count that way). If you have a dual core processor you can make things much better (especially for dual clients) by assigning one to each. If you have some other application that also works "badly" (i.e. forces itself into core 1) that will cause a problem, but most modern programs are better behaved than that.
You can set the graphics settings down a bit lower in game by reducing cutoff distances, turning off "bloom" and reducing groundcover and some other stuff. Also, you can try changing your mouse setting from hardware to software (or the other way) and try either hardware driven or OpenGL settings. There are also some sound settings, but they are pretty minimal.
As for changing the actual coding of particle effects to reduce the load, I agree that it probably is a good idea. However, along with reducing the greediness of the client, new models for mobs and the like, I doubt that it is going to happen with the current apparent lack of lots of dev team people. It does sound like something that might be attempted by the Ryzom Core people.
Hope this gives you useful information.
Bittty <<-- not a CSR or a Dev but has been around for a while.
I found, for instance, that I couldn't get good sound if I was running a streaming radio station or any other use of my sound codecs. (Streaming radio had two effects, one related to bandwidth and one to resource usage but even local music interfered.)
Ryzom is a memory and cpu hog, pure and simple. The single biggest thing you can do to improve performance is have at *least* 2GB of memory. By default it assigns itself to Core 1 (or core 0 if you count that way). If you have a dual core processor you can make things much better (especially for dual clients) by assigning one to each. If you have some other application that also works "badly" (i.e. forces itself into core 1) that will cause a problem, but most modern programs are better behaved than that.
You can set the graphics settings down a bit lower in game by reducing cutoff distances, turning off "bloom" and reducing groundcover and some other stuff. Also, you can try changing your mouse setting from hardware to software (or the other way) and try either hardware driven or OpenGL settings. There are also some sound settings, but they are pretty minimal.
As for changing the actual coding of particle effects to reduce the load, I agree that it probably is a good idea. However, along with reducing the greediness of the client, new models for mobs and the like, I doubt that it is going to happen with the current apparent lack of lots of dev team people. It does sound like something that might be attempted by the Ryzom Core people.
Hope this gives you useful information.
Bittty <<-- not a CSR or a Dev but has been around for a while.
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Remembering Tyneetryk
Phaedreas Tears - 15 years old and first(*) of true neutral guilds in Atys.
(*) This statement is contested, but we are certainly the longest lasting.
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