But you are certainly asking why to use a netbook to play a game like X3R ?
Disavantages:
- Less CPU and graphic capacity. It needs to reduce the graphic settings but it is not annoying at all (see below).
- Screens are smaller but still nice and readable.
- Smaller keyboards, with no numeric keypad but you can connect an external one if you want to access the external views of your ships (not mandatory to play).
Advantages:
- Netbooks have no CD-drive. X3R v2.5 (or X2) does not require a CD-drive to play (thanks to Egosoft).
- X3R (and all Egosoft games) is an offline and single player game. No need to access internet at all for installation CD owners (Steam users need to run the game in offline mode). Thus you can turn off LAN, wi-fi and other 3G connectivity.
- Netbooks require more less power (very good for the electricity bill), they make less noise (thanks for the ears) and are cheaper than other laptops (thanks for the wallet).
- You can play everywhere, netbooks are lightweight and take up little space in your bag.
Some testing details now. The X3R graphic settings I use on my netbook are:
- Resolution: 1366x768 fullscreen (screen native resolution)
- Texture quality: High
- Shader quality: High
- More dynamic light sources: On
- Ship colour variation: On
- Automatic quality control: On
- Antialiasing: 2x
- Anisotropic texture filtering: Off (decrease the CPU load)
- Glow enabled: Off (gives some more FPS)
In game, the SETA should be defined to 6X max (the default one) but 10x could be used with more risk of autopilot issues and lower FPS.
Tested with 3GB RAM (2.6GB real because the graphic card shared memory) and Windows 7 Home premium 64-bits. I was able to play around 3 hours with a full charged battery.
I was very impressed to be able to play X3R on a so small PC. Egosoft games are CPU bottleneck but the AMD Dual Core E350 (1.6 Ghz) and the graphic chipset HD 6310 do the job very well.
I have also tested X3TC on the same netbook (but with 6 GB RAM) and the results were not good. X3TC is unplayable because the CPU is below the minimum system requirements. There is an important difference between X3R and X3TC on this point. I also tried to play with the mod "Unleashed" for TC that helps to reduce the number of ships but without success. Do not hope running X3TC on any netbook, or maybe in 1 or 2 years
Of course if you prefer to play X3TC, this post is not very usefull. But I know that some X-fans are nostalgic about X3R (or even X2) and it is interesting to know it is possible to play them today on some netbooks.
Enjoy !
