I am running:
Machine: Alienware Aurora R8, 32GB RAM, RTX2080Ti
OS: Win 10 Pro version 1903
Java 8 build 211
Vassal 3.2.17
When editing or using a module, even if no graphical windows are visible on the screen (e.g. I am clicking menus and typing in Module Editor dialog boxes) my mouse cursor experiences near-constant, extremely painful lag. After trying to move the cursor over the Vassal windows, there is often a noticeable delay of up to half a second or so, sometimes accompanied by stuttering after the cursor starts to move. This problem is not specific to any particular module.
I do not have this problem with any application except Vassal. As you can see, my computer has abundant resources. I keep drivers and BIOS updated, and regularly get > 100 fps on maximum quality settings in demanding 3D video games.
When the lag is happening, my computer’s CPU usage is essentially zero, there is no disk or network activity going on, and I have 16+ GB of RAM free. I have tried setting the heap sizes in Preferences as large as 4k/8k MB. It doesn’t seem to matter (if set too low, performance degrades further, of course).
Based on what I’ve observed (it’s not a resource-related problem), I speculate that maybe something is doing computation in the program’s message loop and making the UI unresponsive - at least, it’s possible to write windowed applications that do that, and exhibit this sort of behavior. What that could be when I’m just poking around in the module editor UI, I can’t imagine though.
I’m kind of out of ideas, but it makes using Vassal, while certainly not impossible, VERY frustrating.