Bard Song Lag FixFollow

These are just a few tips I've found helpful in alleviating lag caused by BRD songs and some group spells/abilities.

The lag problem is usually experienced by nVidia users, regardless of the fact that FFXI has a label that says Plays Best on nVidia. ><

If you are experiencing persistent problems with AOE spells and abilities causing lag on Windows XP, these tips can probably help you.

I have screenshots available for each step I'll describe so that people that aren't computer savvy can follow along easier.

You are encouraged to try these steps out 1 at a time, and proceed with caution. After making each of these changes, restart your PlayOnline, log in and play around, trying to reproduce situations that normally cause lag. What I did while tweaking out my settings was log out in a merit burn area near a party so that when I logged back in I could observe their bard casting, to test whether my last settings change helped or not.

First, if you are running the most current version of the nVidia ForceWare drivers, you might want to consider DOWNGRADING. I have owned a variety of nVidia cards, tested in different motherboards, and the driver version that has proved most compatible and stable for all of them was 84.21, available from nVidia's archive section here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_84.21.html

Now, on to the tweaks:

STEP 1: Many people have reported that disabling Write Combining has improved performance in MMO games. While this didn't help me personally, I'll include it.

On your desktop, right click, click Properties. Click the Advanced button, and the Troubleshooting tab. You'll see the option to enable or disable Write Combining. Try disabling it, it may or may not help.
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=picture000.jpg

STEP 2: Many people set their background resolution to 1024x1024.
It is possible through registry tweaking to set this even higher, but some people take a huge hit in performance having it even set at 1024. There is an option in the FFXI Config to set it to 512x512, but the end result looks pretty crappy IMO. If you want a happy medium, you can use a custom setting of 768.

To do this, click the Start button => Run, type in regedit and press Enter

Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE => SOFTWARE => PlayOnlineUS => FinalFantasyXI by clicking the + sign in front of each folder.

You should see a bunch of values that look like this:
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=picture008.jpg

The ones we're looking at here are numbers 003 and 004. Let's start with 003. Click on it to highlight it.
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=picture001.jpg

Double-click it to change its properties.

You NEED to change the Base from Hexadecimal to Decimal. Once you have done that, clear the field and type in 768, then click OK.
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=picture002.jpg

Now let's do the same for 004.
Click to highlight, double-click. Make sure to change the Base to Decimal again, change the value to 768 and click OK.
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=picture006.jpg
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=picture007.jpg

While we're there deep within the mires of the game's registry anyway, why not add a little bit of background blending? This can alleviate lag but it's mostly an aesthetic enhancement (PURTY BACKGROUND!). This tweak also helps remove background flicker in areas like Caedarva Mire.

Highlight value 000.
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=picture004.jpg

Double-clicky it. We want to change this value to 3 (but LEAVE the Base as Hexadecimal this time!), and click OK.
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=picture009.jpg

STEP 3: Inside the game, in the Config Menu, browse to Effects.
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=img_20070731_065532.png

Adjust your effects filters according to the problems you're having (or just filter them all if you're not obsessed with seeing the end of every animation.
Usually lag/hiccup occurs as a spell/ability finishes casting and hits multiple people/mobs. These filter settings allow you to see the spell/ability start casting but you won't see them finish, and THAT's where the performance gain starts.

I played for 3 years without ever touching this setting lol. Except for BRD spells and the occasional Firaga, I was never bogged down in any situation enough to look for further relief of lag.

Codyy suggests putting camera in first person and fidgeting it around so that you don't see the ability/spell, but I would think filtering effects would accomplish this same thing.

That's it for lag fix. Now, *cough*, for some people that use Windower, the question has come up whether there is a foreground resolution between 800x600 and 1024x768. 800x600 is just too ungodly big, but changing it to 1024x768 can cause the font size (especially the party HP/MP numbers) to jump to a ridiculously small size if you don't have a decent sized screen. There sure is a way. You can edit values 001 and 002 in the same location (HKLM=>SOFTWARE=>PlayOnlineUS=>FinalFantasyXI), but you can also change these values in the Windower.ini file, which sends the setting to the same place in the registry (the registry will always remember the last resolution setting that was passed to Windower).

So, let's crack open the Windower.ini file, located in the same folder as the Launcher.exe.

Here is a setting that I like to use, and yes if you punch it into a calculator it's a 4:3 ratio.
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e161/Chocotaku/Odd%20Stuff/?action=view&current=windower.jpg

Again, custom foreground resolutions are pretty much Windower users only. Attempting to run FFXI normally with a custom resolution will probably cause it to crash to the desktop.

So, we've gained some ground and lost some ground. All in all, it's a net gain. We lost some background resolution :( But we gained background blending and an improved frame rate. Also (hopefully), AOE spells and abilities will no longer cause the game to stutter horribly.

*Edit* Forgot to give credit where credit was due. Some of the registry tweaking information was summarized from this thread:
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=25&mid=1089735902216382834

I really hope this helps others as much as it's helped me.

Edited, Jul 29th 2007 7:57am by Chocotaku

Edited, Jul 29th 2007 9:01am by Chocotaku

Edited, Jul 29th 2007 9:34am by Chocotaku

Edited, Jul 31st 2007 7:04am by Chocotaku

Edited, Jul 31st 2007 7:34am by Chocotaku

Nice and all but this does nothing for those of us using 8xxx series cards and/or vista. We have to stick with the latest grouping of drivers.

Sorry since i'm kinda hijack this thread. But you seem to be knowledgeable in the art of registry tuning and know about the graphic tweaks for FFXI.
My graphics ingame isn't that great from what i have seen on some other screenshots. So i wanted to know is it possible to force the Game to do some sort of anti-aliasing?
And is there a way to tweak the graphic with some settings on my graphic-card tool, to make it look better or is it completely CPU dependent?

Whats funny is I'm running Vista Ultimate with a 8800 Nvidia card with the latest drivers and I havent had a single hiccup while playing final. I had no issues installing it. And it plays just fine. I honestly dont see the problem.

It's your own damn fault if you're running Vista and have problems. I can only say 'format and install xp' so many times...

At least until SP1 comes out. Hopefully that will revert a large majority of Vista.

Ill definitley try the write combining, interesting idea.

As for a quick fix, I just turned off the effects for PT and alliance buffs. Really helps in Dynamis etc ^^

Hey, Choco, add in this for me, I figured it out a while ago and I found it VERY useful, and no technical skill needed whatsoever!

This worked for me as a black mage when the bard was casting. Switch to third person view and zoom your camera out all the way. Then, move your camera up so you are looking down at your character/party. Aerial view, birds-eye view, whatever, it worked wonders for me! ^_^

Edit: I linked this post in my sticky.

Edited, Jul 30th 2007 11:00am by Codyy

Well, we're not lowering background resolution to make the game look better, we're doing it to decrease lag in certain situations, as the title of the thread implies..

Setting chat filters does just that.. it filters things from showing up in the chat. It doesn't prevent the animation of spells/abilities, which is what causes the problem I've described.

Setting chat filters may help, enough to be worth putting in the guide, but for the problem I'm describing, the instant a brd spell goes off, in your own party or in another party, with or without chat filters, the game STOpS for a split second. Can't move your character, rotate camera, anything. Annoying as crap when you're trying to cast a spell and you can't open your macro pallate or spell menu.

At first I thought this was a hardware problem on my old system but I've been able to reproduce this glitch using a variety of setups now.

*Edit* Forgot to reply to Coddyy



Woot! Coddyy rawks as usual. I spent literally hours working on resolving this issue. She fixes it in 30 seconds by jabbing her R3 button.

Coddyy, if you ever run for President I'll vote for you! You'll think of some amazingly simplistic method of ending the war overseas, getting a stable government in place and stopping the threat of terrorism.

Edited, Jul 30th 2007 1:13pm by Chocotaku

:D (I wish I had my premium smilies... Oh well).


But haha, I think president is... Not my forte. I'll stick to music and stuff. (By the way, I am a guy!)

But yeah, linked your post in my sticky and stuff. It's a useful thing... I should link some of your other helpful things there too... I've been slacking :(

Not talking about chat filters, I'm talking about effects. You can turn on filters for visual effects based on the caster & target.

Config > Effects (I think)

That is an interesting lag glitch indeed. In 3 years of playing I've only lagged once from an avatar. A little over a year ago? Sometime after the Aht expansion I believe they had an update that slightly improved the visual effect of avatars? I just happened to notice right after this occurred that the little buggers were giving me a performance drop, but it didn't last more than a couple days. Maybe it was just a result of too much Smirnoff Twist.

So, brd party buffs or foe lullaby don't make you hiccup when they land, Firaga gives you a tiny hiccup, and Avatars being out make you stutter?

Hmm. When the SMN is first casting the avatar, when they finish casting do you take a momentary BIG hit in performance?

If you have other demanding games installed, you may be used to having certain features enabled at all times like Antialiasing, Anistropic Filtering, Trilinear Optimization etc. If you do have these enabled for other games, try toggling them off while running FFXI. The lowering the background resolution in-game is also a very feasible option.

Try some things out and hit me back with the results, I'm curious now.

Edited, Jul 30th 2007 11:22pm by Chocotaku

I lag for the entire duration that the avatar is on my screen. If I turn around so it is off screen, I don't lag. And its not just once in a while, it happens with every PC's avatar.

I don't play any other games, and I suppose I could try playing with those graphical adjustments. I'd rather not take a hit in total graphical performance (lowering resolution) for something that rarely occurs (I don't party with SMNs much). Guess I'll have to grab a SMN buddy to test it out too. So what are ya up to Perg? ^^

Edited, Aug 1st 2007 3:24pm by Lyne