So I have an idea on a possible way to help out with the console (more noticable on the PS3) version of Skyrim. However, as I don't have the PS3 version I need a couple of hands to help me with the endeavour and who else would I ask but you lovely Skyrim-Escapists? If you own the PS3 version, have a heftily-played save file and have encountered the aforementioned lag, and have a couple of hours free then you're just the person I'm looking for!
Here's my theory in a nutshell: The game operates via an entity-table for environmental objects/people. By this I mean when you first start out and get to Riverwood the game loads up where everything is (from a default set off the disc) and writes it onto the ram's copy of the entity file. As time goes on and you uncover new locations this entity table becomes larger and larger to the point of the constant checking of entities starts slowing down the system's ability to write variable placement to/from the ram.
Here's what I need a few people to test:
Go to a city/town with a lot of lag (Whiterun for example) and steal every single item that isn't bolted down. Then sell it all to your local fence (be it Guild or Perk) and then Rest for a few in game days to wipe the fence's stock.
For extra points try to also pickpocket everyone you can and take everything they have on them. If my theory is correct this will greatly reduce the ram's entity tables entries and perhaps cause games to go back to a more stable rate.
Thanks in advance for any willing volunteers and I look forward to hearing some results. If we're lucky and this does in fact fix the problem then we can perhaps forward it off to ol' Beth and they'd create a workaround (for example, totally resetting an areas object entity tables to default or allocating an expiration variable for when an entity is purged) and fix the lag issue.
An after-thought: maybe this is why some people haven't experienced the lag at all? Perhaps they played thiefy characters who stole everything and anything they could.
Here's my theory in a nutshell: The game operates via an entity-table for environmental objects/people. By this I mean when you first start out and get to Riverwood the game loads up where everything is (from a default set off the disc) and writes it onto the ram's copy of the entity file. As time goes on and you uncover new locations this entity table becomes larger and larger to the point of the constant checking of entities starts slowing down the system's ability to write variable placement to/from the ram.
Here's what I need a few people to test:
Go to a city/town with a lot of lag (Whiterun for example) and steal every single item that isn't bolted down. Then sell it all to your local fence (be it Guild or Perk) and then Rest for a few in game days to wipe the fence's stock.
For extra points try to also pickpocket everyone you can and take everything they have on them. If my theory is correct this will greatly reduce the ram's entity tables entries and perhaps cause games to go back to a more stable rate.
Thanks in advance for any willing volunteers and I look forward to hearing some results. If we're lucky and this does in fact fix the problem then we can perhaps forward it off to ol' Beth and they'd create a workaround (for example, totally resetting an areas object entity tables to default or allocating an expiration variable for when an entity is purged) and fix the lag issue.
An after-thought: maybe this is why some people haven't experienced the lag at all? Perhaps they played thiefy characters who stole everything and anything they could.