Framerate drop, how to fix?

[MD2903]

Hello,

First of all I really like this simulator and I am very satisfied with all the things that are possible.

My framerate is usually at 60 fps, which is the max, but sometimes it drops down tremendously.
The times it drops down so much are when I zoom in really close to a star, it drops to around 20 fps.
This doesn't really bother me, because I don't need to zoom in that close to a star.

The framerate drops down to 10 fps when running a supernova. The more I move towards the supernova the more it drops, until I am in the plasma cloud where the framerate is 10 fps.
Even after the plasma cloud of the supernova is gone, and I try to go to the remnant of the star, the framerate still stays at 10 fps.

My average fps of the performance test is 36 fps, which isn't much but good enough for me, because I don't usually run those heavy simulations.

I have a mid-2010 macbook Pro
specs:
System: OS 10.9.5
Processor: 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB
Storage: 582 Gb available space

Requirements:
MINIMUM:
OS: OS X 10.7+
Processor: 1.6GHz dual core
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: OpenGL, 512 MB Video Memory, Shader Model 3.0
Storage: 1 GB available space

So I got all the system requirements, but I am not sure about the graphics. I don't have Shader Model 3.0
Maybe this will improve the framerate?

Any info on why framerate drops during and after supernovae, and how to fix it, would be greatly appreciated

[Jar]

Your graphics card supports Shader Model 4.0, so you shouldn't have any issues there.

Something to keep in mind is that the minimum system requirements are what is needed to simply run Universe Sandbox ². It does not guarantee that you will have a solid 60fps during every situation and simulation. We recommend at least 1GB Video Memory, a 2.6 GHZ quad-core processor, and 4GB RAM.

Your hardware is a bit older and is likely struggling with some of the higher-end rendering, which for example may be slowing down the supernova effects. You are not the only user who has reported frame rate drops during supernovas, though, and it is something we are considering. After Alpha 19 we hope to return to some performance tuning in order to get everything running as smoothly as possible for a wide range of hardware.

Unfortunately there's little you can do right now to address supernovas specifically, except lower your settings in Home > Settings > Video (and you may already have these settings on Low). Hopefully in the future we'll have more options for older hardware.

[MD2903]

Thanks for the response!