i didn't use ent_create() in my project. all entities were in the level already. preload_mode 3 still didn't have any effect.

Then that continues to solidify my suspicion that...[EDIT]And to clarify that, I mean from hard-disk to system-ram, rather than video-ram.

So I now await, with greater interest, an answer from an A7/Dx guru...

@darkinferno: "huh, umm, "in fact it startup will be slower" (sorry, your right of cause - my bad english )

From all I understand preload_mode=3; loads all entites (even models loaded later in the game process) into memory at startup - against preload_mode=1; accesses to the hard drive if a later ent_create is processed.

It has nothing to do with the transfer of the informations to the video memory.
Too bad because to transfer all "models" to the video card (whatever there will be moved?) must be done with a camera total at the whole level scene.
Maybe this can be done with a fullscreeen splash panel...

all you have to do is create your models at startup but create them as view entities, that way, when you load your level, there will be no delay when creating them ...

[MANUAL]
"After an entity is removed, its file content is still stored in a cache for faster creation of entitities of this type. The cache is emptied when the level is changed. If this is not desired for some reason, keep the file in the cache by defining an invisible view entity with the same file. "

I am also interested in better understand preload_mode and how to proper take away that "shudder" when creating models on the run. I will be sure to try out the view entity idea.

Same here. When my first projectile is fired, there's a jerk, when my first shield-hit-effect (model based) is fired, there's a jerk.

So I'm experiencing the same effect, even with preload_mode set to 3.

From the last posts (darkinfernos) I understand that the view-entity creation only needs to be done at startup once, and if you use the ent_create-for-one-frame method it needs to be once after every level_load?

But then the question remains: What does preload_mode actually DO, if it doesn't do what it says in the manual?

Preload_mode loads the entity into video RAM at ent_create time.

I also thought that would avoid the "jerk" when the entity becomes visible, but it doesn't in all cases. The reason is that DirectX sometimes does not load it really into video memory, it loads it into a special RAM buffer first. Only when the entity really becomes visible, it's moved in video memory. This is due to the DirectX memory management, and can also depend on the size of your textures and the size of the video RAM.

To overcome this problem, we could implement an own memory management instead of using DirectX. But this has quite complicated consequences. But at least you now know the reason of the problem.