heya howdy high

[El Kabong]

Hello Terragenists,
DLed version 3.1.02.0/free about a month or so ago and have been tinkering with it almost daily. Have been attempting to absorb as much info as possible reading through the forums and wiki entries while my bonestock Dell Latitude D800, 1.4ghz with 1 gig ram laptop sloooowly renders test images. Reminds me of the time spent with LW3.5 with a VT4.0 as a dongle on a Motorola'040 w/ 128 mg of ram.

Will be most likely asking a load of questions if and when searching reveals little or no info.

Can anyone recommend a web browser that uses the least amount of overhead? Currently using GoogleChrome and have to shut down the browser and other programs when rendering huge files. Upgrading this machine or obtaining a newer system is not in the near future...

I did find this info: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/battle-of-the-browsers-in-cpu-and-memory-usage/2/  and GreenBrowser 6.3 seems to be the least in overhead.   Any one have experience with this browser? DLing and trying it would be the answer, but I am already constantly removing programs and files from this 60gig HD to make room.

At any rate, I have been enjoying all the TG user created imagery. Trying to wrap my brain around the posted example files and tutorials. All this math talk makes my brain ache...

Later,  Ron

[Upon Infinity]

Hello Ron,

Welcome to Terragen and to the forums!

Regards to your system, I would definitely recommend reconsidering an upgrade.  I would also switch to a desktop and use the laptop for tests or other kinds of work.  Not a stranger to being cash-strapped myself, the price of cpu's has dropped dramatically in recent years and you can get something quite decent for even under $500.  My current system is a quad core 3ghz, 6GB of RAM that I purchased refurbished off the Future Shop site for $400 3 or 4 years ago.  Not impressive stuff, although it was considered half decent at the time and handles TG 3 adequately, although not spectacularly, even today.

And yes, the forums will be instrumental in your further TG education.

In the meantime, I'd recommend sticking to using the tabs at the top of the Terragen screen until you grasp the handle of how to use the nodes adequately. 

[TheBadger]

Hey man, welcome.

It can be slow on the weekends, but mostly I think questions all get answered here. Only rarly does a question take a long time to find an answer, or at least a response. And hardly ever does one get completely missed.

Can anyone recommend a web browser that uses the least amount of overhead? Currently using GoogleChrome and have to shut down the browser and other programs when rendering huge files.

TG will use all the resources that a system has (pretty much by default). So even on my desktop which is no slouch, I have to turn off all other apps too, I even turn off wifi (I like to save any time I can on a render). But you can adjust how much system resources TG uses. In general I think people like to leave just enough to surf the web or listen to some music when rendering, things like that. And then they devote every thing else they can to rendering.

I am a little sick now so cant really focus to find the info (I am on OSX, and things are a hair different than PCs) I just wanted to let you know that you can adjust just about everything, and find the balance that is best for your set up. I am sure someone will link you or post how you can do that when they have a chance.

As far as what system is best, well there is a benchmark page. YOu can see what a lot of the people here work on and the result they get with TG
here is the thread http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,18982.0.html?PHPSESSID=fdcc073f924ae32981fa0b1f088ebecd
here are the posted results https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eX9Ltn3_9BjsamA0Pxeflv5AKrjkgViEY8VuetB8e3k/edit#gid=1964613224

Here is a link to the site with the most tuts in one place (but there are other smaller sites too!) http://geekatplay.com/terragen-tutorials.php

have some fun!

[Dune]

I agree with Upon Infinity; if you're serious with TG (you might just get hooked), you'll need a decent machine. Not for initial 'doodles' maybe, but for heavier stuff it's far more pleasant working.

[El Kabong]

After looking at the benchmark results and the systems used, my coloring book is way out dated.... 
Will be limited to doodling until the technology gods toss a semi-current system my way. Which might be a while seein's how my wife and I are trying to save a few thousand $ to fix a DtG inkjet Tshirt printer to get our small home business going, again. Priority's.
Even my XP Athlon dualcore 3gig ram desktop system faults on the benchmark scene, but it is more capable than this portable unit. 

Later, Ron