So basically the set up is this...my laptop character cannot run across long chasms and pits because, even with levitate, the character falls too fast. The only workaround I've found is to use something like selo's to compensate and switch to first person. it's clearly a hardware type issue, and I have max FPS.... but what else can I try? Thank you.
Due to the way the game was coded, players fall at a rate inversely proportional to the current frame rate. You can easily test this by lowering your max background fps and alt tabbing, you will fall much faster. Also, looking up while running helps. You can hit home until looking straight up, then hit auto follow. So I'd recommend making sure your max background and foreground fps is at least 60. In addition, disable shadows, 2.0 pixel shaders, advanced lighting, and decrease the clipping plane enough to ensure you're getting 60+ fps.
To keep altitude as long as possible you should first move camera out to 3rd person view, lower the camera so it is pointing upward, and then put the camera back in 1st person view. To keep your /following characters from leving too high do the same but step 2 have the camera pointing down instead of up.
Disable Pixel Shaders?? this forces the CPU to process lighting and bump mapping (among other D3D calls) instead of the GPU. if your GPU has the ability to perform a task let it...not the CPU.
Framerate affects drop, I agree. As mentioned by xxGriff, I would not disable Pixel Shaders. The rest of your suggestions are great, especially the clip plane (Shift+"+" and Shift+"-" will let you change this on the fly). In addition, I've noticed that being in first person view increases FPS, presumably because there is less for the client to draw. You do want to be looking up, somewhat, but looking all the way up has never made any difference for me, versus looking up only slightly. On laggy boxes, I will zoom into first person, press Home key to center my view, then press the Page Up key once or twice.
Looking straight up, then going to third person has some annoyances, one being that you'll hop up and down in water, and actually swim slower if not levitating. One benefit is that you'll climb ladders with ease. Thats an interesting point, I may try re enabling pixel shades and comparing framerate. My worst laptop has Gen 2 Intel graphics, so I'm not sure that even counts as an honest gpu. It does "work" fine with the above tips, but I'll probably upgrade if I continue boxing. Here's to hoping we get a Z-axis auto follow some day (follower looks up or down at leader to control altitude gain/loss). Auto follow in water or while levitating is the worst.
Looking up usually works to keep toons up in the air with levitate (and let background framerate be maxed). I do find zones like the new skyfire are weird. Even my main feels like he sinks super fast compared to other zones.
For the laptop, run it with power connected instead of battery and set Power Options to High Performance. You do not want the laptop to throttle the CPU or core park. If using Nvidia set Power Management mode to Max Performance. Now, can of compressed air and q-tip. Q-tip to hold fan if you have access to it but use a vacuum and can of air to clear out the exhaust vents/heatsinks. Youtube will likely have a video of how access the fan/heatsinks by removing a portion of the bottom. If you have not cleaned that laptop in a while (shudders) then make it a regular preventive maintenance every 3-6 months. Now, eqclient.ini, change the number after the equal sign CPUAffinity # = -1 to a neg 1. This spreads out the work instead isolating it to one core. All the above you should do for your desktop too, especially the cleaning the heatsinks. If they get too clogged you will need to remove them and clean them by hand, loads of fun. And.. DO NOT uncheck (hw) Vertex Shaders. Unchecking it moves the work from the hw-hardware/GPU to primarily software/cpu.
