ITunes on Mac Causing Problems

#1 I could be wrong, but I believe that when ITunes goes to the next MP3, it has to max out the CPU to quickly decompress the song into a format that can be streamed into the audio hardware. CPU spikes like that happen when I'm using Winamp on my PC.

Now, the collision checks and performance *should lag slightly when this happens but things should still be okay because T2D has a limit to how much it will let collision and physics get behind (I believe it's not allowed to fall under 10 FPS). Unfortunately, it sounds like you're falling below this, so that sounds like a problem with T2D's collision system slowing down more than the minimum. If anything, the game itself should slow down (like the old NES and SNES games when they had too much happening on the screen).

Now, this is all based on my personal understanding of what little I've looked into T2D's subsystems - so I might have gotten a couple things wrong. Buyer beware, I guess ;)

A work-around should be possible if your Mac allows you to adjust your iTunes processing priority (at least that's what we call them in windows) below the T2D program's priority.

#2 Thanks Bryan - I think I was able to fix it by setting:

t2dSceneGraph.setScenePhysicsFPSActive(true);

when the game launches. At least, I haven't had any of the missed collisions since setting this.

Thanks again for the info. I couldn't figure out why iTunes would need so much processing power to switch the song :P

#3 Hey cool. I guess I shouldn't have assumed that this option would be on by default :)

#4 Yeah, I did the same thing :)

#5 If iTunes sets itself as the foreground / focused app, this will also cause T2D to slow-down (as Torque basically tries to get out of the way of other apps who want processor time / focus). But yes, if you turn the physicsfps catch up stuff on, your sim will handle interapp stuff like this (at the cost of a little more expensive overall physics processing / lower overall fps).

#6 The physicsFPS stuff does a great job. It also solved another problem I was having with my impulse forces not working right.

Thanks!