The online racing simulator
#1 - pmw
Why does "print screen" freeze LFS?
Hey, at first I couldn't find any topic for this.

So, I raced today on event and accidentaly did hit "Print Screen" -button, my screen freezez for ~2-3 seconds and I'm gonna wreck my car.

What did happen? I tested button again and tsadaam, freezes my LFS. Same happens on 5 different computers what I've tested now.

What print screen -button exactly even do? I don't find any new screenshots under shots/ -directory.

Thanks for advice
The button takes a screenshot and puts it in the clipboard, availible to paste in paint etc..
use alt-printscreen to do the same but only with to topmost active window

No freeze for me, Win7 Pro x64, 0.6E.
Just tried it and it also freezes for me.

btw to get screen shots use ctrl+s in game these are then stored in the \shots folder
#4 - pmw
I know it takes print screen to clipboard, but we are not in 90s, it shouldn't freeze the game. But this is LFS, so I understand it.

I was just thinking if there are some *actual* feature for print screen -button. But thanks for answers.
FPS drop but no freeze. You tested it on 90s computers?
Just noticed it does for me only in fullscreen at 1080p any lower res and it doesn't freeze, FPS is locked at 62 and unlocked its over 300 so any fps drop wouldn't be noticed when locked at 62.
PC is AMD 1090T @ 4.0GHz with Corsair Vengeance 8GB @ 1600MHz.
GPU is 560Ti @ 1GHz Core.
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my LFS doesn't freeze when doing this, could you tell your specs pls?
#10 - pmw
All computers I've tested with, are pretty new and (enough) powerful to play LFS nicely, with max antialiasings and 1080p-resolution fps never goes under 100.
It seems that freezing is _not_ related to how *powerful* your computer is. Pretty strange stuff, cause on some computers, it's just seems to drop fps a littlebit, but on other ones, total freeze.

About this race and LFS freezing, I was playing on my main computer, it is Intel i7 960, with 24GB RAM, SSD-disk and Geforce GTX650ti. I'm working with computers so I think I know this is *enough* for game like LFS.

This case sounds more like there is somekind of *bloat* feature behind the print screen or in LFS's rendering options. I don't know, I haven't done any research yet. This is pretty small case, not the world end, I was just curious.


No freeze for me, just very small FPS drop.
single button press is unnoticeable for me, only holding down printscreen makes the game stutter with 15 fps or so. (wood computer)

Did you try to find out if it is LFS or happens in other games too?
For example there is a bug in windows where pressing printscreen can completly freeze the computer:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954436/en-us
So does not seem unlikely that there could be similiar bugs where it only freezes for a moment?
Print screen works ok here, no fps loss nor freeze and i'm with a p4 3.2ghz
#14 - pmw
Quote from Gutholz :single button press is unnoticeable for me, only holding down printscreen makes the game stutter with 15 fps or so. (wood computer)

Did you try to find out if it is LFS or happens in other games too?
For example there is a bug in windows where pressing printscreen can completly freeze the computer:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954436/en-us
So does not seem unlikely that there could be similiar bugs where it only freezes for a moment?

It's not related to any bug. I've never had problem like this with any game. It is definitely only in LFS, not in nothing else. So I *assume* there's something wrong in LFS, truly not on my computers.
#15 - troy
I got the same problem here, never investigated further though.
amd athlon x2 64 5600+ (2,9 GHz), 2GB RAM, GF 9600 GT, screen 1920x1080, detailes maxed...
i had pressed print screen for 10-15 seconds and frame droped by (max) 5 (all time above 85)

Cheers
It does it only in fullscreen for me, fps drops but isn't noticable as its always above 60.

My guess its a conflict in the way that windows captures the screen and the way lfs is rendering the screen.

Wouldn't say its a huge bug as its probably only going to be accidental presses of the key, and if this is something that you do often then you can disable the printscreen key via registry
No problems with printing screen on my weak laptop - I can notice a tiny lag in graphics,but nothing to worry about,knowing that hardware is not too far from low end.
#19 - troy
Quote from DavidTiger :It does it only in fullscreen for me, fps drops but isn't noticable as its always above 60.

That is true indeed, just tested and I get about 1s of stuttering when I press print screen in fullscreen mode, as soon as I switch to windowed mode there is no stutter at all. I wouldn't consider my hardware weak either gtx260 and 3570k, that should be plenty to get this stutter free.

Maybe this should go into the program bugs section?
Tested on a IBM ThinkPad R60 with Core Duo 1.4G and ATI X1400. In full screen there's only a small lag. In windowed the game freaking lags to hell even if I'm not pressing anything.

Quote from pmw :I know it takes print screen to clipboard, but we are not in 90s, it shouldn't freeze the game. But this is LFS, so I understand it.

...

#21 - troy
Tried this again on a clean lfs install. No matter the resolution and quality settings I always get some stutter when printscreen is pressed with enabled anti aliasing via the LFS in game settings, most noticeable in higher resolutions there it will stutter about 1 or 2 seconds, if I go back to 640x480 the stuttering is down to about 0.5s.

*stutter meaning the picture is freezing completely and the sound starts to loop

As soon as I turn off anti aliasing or force it via the nvidia control panel instead the stutter is gone, no other quality settings seem to make a noticeable difference. I would guess there is a problem with LFS' implementation of anti aliasing via the ingame menu? Could somebody test this on other affected machines so we can confirm this?

Just for completeness sake my rig:

Asrock Z77 Extreme4
Ivy Bridge I5 3570k
GF GTX 260 (896mb ram)
Win7 x64 (16gb ram)
Same as Hub. Siema btw

I only get micro-stutters if HDD is working hard at writing something in the background, e.g. letting HD youtube vid load in the background - but not play since that would put a load on CPU with inevitable FPS drop and possible stutter which would be expected and normal.

When you press Prt Scr on the other hand, a single stream of data is stored into system memory - image of the entire screen in BMP format. Afterwards you can paste it into an image program. Size of data is resolution dependent so it's about 5.05 MB for 1680x1050. Now, i don't know if HDD plays a role in reading the screen info and then writing it into memory but if so then then you can imagine what's the reason for the stutter. I jut don't know why. It's like LFS wants the HDD all to itself . On my system anyway.

It would explain the pit exit stutter tho: new skin of other driver gets written to skin folder and if your LFS folder structure is filled with many skin and set files it will take some time for your HDD to write it and finally load the skin file - only first time for first skin after lfs is loaded, cause folder structure gets written into system memory as well
#23 - troy
I could understand a very short stutter related to harddisk access times, but my system plate is an SSD and if I start to force AA via nvidia driver instead of lfs it's completely gone, not even a flicker on the fps when I press printscreen. So it has to be something lfs does differently when AA is done via in game settings.
#24 - pmw
It's not about the hard disk, maybe if you are using computer from 90s.

I just tried that AA stuff:

Without AA, nothing happens when I hit print screen. No fps loss _at all_.
In windowed mode with AA, nothing happens, no fps loss at all.


BUT:
With _any_ AA mode, 2x, 4x, 8x etc in fullscreen, _always_ same pause, 2.5 seconds.
I tried many times, in many different MPRs, always same 2.5 seconds.

For me, it sounds definitely like fullscreen rendering with AA-enabled, something just bugs. It's not about HDD speed or caches, if stuck time is always same.
I have full screen and 8x AA, but still my game doesn't freeze.
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