Wings Series Performance

[Salraine_Chi 0]

I have recently bought WoE, WoI and WoV and with the help of this community I am enjoying them very much.

 

My concerns are about how the games run and especially the poor performance on my machine of WoI. I understand it has a updated engine and where the other games in the series run amazingly well on all high with terrain set to far and full shadows, WoI runs badly until I disable the shadows. I also have to drop down to medium settings for textures ect. Even plane only shadows make WoI unplayable for me. I have read elsewhere that the other games in the series will be patched to the same as WoI and I am afraid that their performace will drop too. They look great with highest settings and shadows on so the last thing I want to have to do after they are patched is have to disable shadows and drop settings down.

 

Are there plans to optimise or change the shadow performance hit before the patches are released?

 

Ta

 

Sal

 

 

Athlon 4000+

2 Gig Crucial Ram

7900GTO

Win XP SP2

[+Dave 2,322]

The sad truth my friend is that you will have to reduce your setting to make it playable with your specs. Even with my AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000 (3 GHZ), 2 GB RAM and my GF 8600 GTS OC. I have to turn my settings down some. I don't play with shadows on at all unless I am taking screen shots. But I know how you feel.

[+DoctorQuest 125]

Agreed.

 

I have a Intel P4 2.6 Ghz machine with 2Gb RAM and a Gforce 6800GT 256M.

 

I run on mainly "medium" setting but I do allow myself the luxury of HIGH cockpit textures.

 

That being said, I still think the TW series looks pretty darned good.

 

I also play the TW sims a lot more than some other "eye candy" sims I own. Graphics are not a the top of my "must have" list. Hell, I still play and enjoy EAW, Total Air War and Red Baron.

[Salraine_Chi 0]

WoV & WoE run great on my PC even on all high settings and full shadows enabled. My point is if they are patched with the new shadows/graphics ect the same as WoI they will be running a lot worse. Im talking going from a steady 50 fps to single figure frames with shadows on. WoI, to my eyes does not look that different to the others and I cannot understand the huge difference in performance. I am just hoping this is something Third Wire are aware of and is fixable.

 

I could not patch them of course and play them as they are, but I intent to play online once I am a little better and having a older version to others would prevent this. Its no game killer of course and I am not having a go at Third Wire at all. I am just expressing my fears over what might happen to the games after patching.

 

An online gaming friend with a rig much better than mine with Duel Core Intel and a 8800GTX struggles to run WoI with settings on high and shadows on and he also sees a massive fps increase with shadows off. Im just hoping that this is a problem that can be fixed before the patches come out.

 

Ta

 

Sal

[+DoctorQuest 125]

I suspect that TK is already in the loop regarding issues of this type. Have you tried the forums over at www.thirdwire.com?

[Salraine_Chi 0]

Just checked the forums at Third Wire and there are a few similar posts to mine, but others saying they are getting better performance with the same settings as they were on the older games. One post asks if they can change the new shadows to the old by messing with the ini settings and TK said maybe, but only for some of the older plane models which could use them. I would be happy with the option to use the old shadows tbh. It is a decent looking game and for the money charged they are also a bargain as im finding a depth of gameplay I have never seen before.

 

I might copy my first post over there and see what replies I get.

 

Ta

 

Sal

[+Julhelm 266]

It's not the shadows, it's reflection and mirrors that's slowing you down by rendering the same scene several times.

[Viper6 3]

I'm runnin a dual core 3.2ghz with only 1meg ram (soon to 2megs) and GF 8500gt 512mb DDR2 in the PCI-e slot and I notice only a little bit of choppiness in areas where there are a lot of targets like in WOV Hanoi or haiphong other than that this series (I have them all except FE) is Great!! I just LOVE looking in the rear view at the purty explosions as I beat feet out of dodge!!

[+Brain32 265]

Also the IsraelME terrain is much more demanding than previous terains, the solid and alpha object is pumped up extremely, you can see much more objects than you could in WOE for example.

Also there is a new effect called Farterraineffect.fx, that baby does not help fps either

I edited the terrain DATA.ini a bit, downgraded it to WOE levels and it seems I got a fps improvement out of it, but I doubt that would help you guys with 2GB RAM and modern gfx cards...

[Doghouse 0]

Has anyone tried dumping out the IseaelME.cat file, and replacing it with the VietnamSEA.cat file? Renaming it to Israel.cat of course.

[+Gocad 26]

Has anyone tried dumping out the IseaelME.cat file, and replacing it with the VietnamSEA.cat file? Renaming it to Israel.cat of course.

 

What should that achieve? Other than creating a lot of chaos, of course.

Edited March 17, 2008 by Gocad

[FalconC45 162]

Huh. I have great framerates with WOI. I have 3.00 gig dual core cpu with 6mb cache. The video card is a 16xpci-e 8800 GTX 786MB. The settings are max out except for shadows. Card settings are 16x AA and 16QX AF at 1600x1050 res. WOI looks great. Framerates go from 40 to high 50's.

 

Falcon

 

PS. Sal, did you update your video drivers and DX9.0?

[+Brain32 265]

Other terrains, either stock or 3rd party work normally in WOI, if you have same settings as in WOE ofcourse.

The Israel terrain is simply more demanding, more objects, new terain effect, it will impact the frame rates on not so stellar machines.

As for the brand new super ass kicking machines as FalconCAF's, well there's obviously some kind of problem with shadows.

 

I have AMD AthlonXP Mobile 2500+ OC'ed @2.2GHz, 1GB DDR and GF6800(vanilla but OC'ed)

As you can see it's pre-historic, some younger members here probably think Hitler played Quake2 on such system in 1943, however I can run WoI at 1024x768(17" monitor), 4xAA, 2xAF, all options on high except visibility distance, and ofcourse shadows, mirrors and reflections turned off

 

So OK, on some quite rare occasions fps drop to like 17 but they are mostly around 30-35, I'm happy with it, but yes I will upgrade my computer soon

[Doghouse 0]

The cat file swap hopefully cuts out all those grass shacks and mud huts and other worthless items that add nothing to the game but glitter, yet needs to be drawn thus reducing frame rates. That said, the swap doesn't work without extracting the cat and doing some very serious modding. That's something I'm not going to expend energy one since I've already got everything in my modded SFP1-WOV-WOE install without the framerate hits. Perhaps TK will address the FM issues in some future patch. In the meantime I'm quite happy with what I already have, and will catch up to specs when I build a new puter system this fall. WOI is nice, but it would have been nicer is TK and crew expended that energy on fixing the multiplay issues first. <sigh> No since in crying over spilt milk, I'm gonna go fly.

[csb 12]

I wonder if these low fps are on dualcore machines - many of you guys actually have slower cpu speeds.

 

I get similar fps to Brain32 (mine 25-30) with similar settings, both ingame & vidcard, resolution is at 1024x800.

 

In fact some settings are on unlimited, Ground Objects on high, water on low.

 

I am getting slightly lower fps to what I get with SF.

Edited March 17, 2008 by csb

[+Dave 2,322]

WOI is nice, but it would have been nicer is TK and crew expended that energy on fixing the multiplay issues first. <sigh> No since in crying over spilt milk, I'm gonna go fly.

 

Yeah but we all know he doesn't care about MP. Never has an never will.

[+malibu43 142]

I wonder if these low fps are on dualcore machines - many of you guys actually have slower cpu speeds.

 

I get similar fps to Brain32 (mine 25-30) with similar settings, both ingame & vidcard, resolution is at 1024x800.

 

In fact some settings are on unlimited, Ground Objects on high, water on low.

 

I am getting slightly lower fps to what I get with SF.

 

Maybe someone here can enlighten me. I have a Dell laptop that has a 1.4ghz processor. That is where I currently run WOV. I have another laptop that has an Intel Duo Core 2.2 ghz processor, and I'm hoping it will give better performance.

 

So if WOV doesn't take advantage of the Duo Core, is the 2.2 Duo Core any better, worse, or the same as the regular 1.4? Is there a "conversion"?

Edited March 17, 2008 by malibu43

[Fubar512 1,350]

Maybe someone here can enlighten me. I have a Dell laptop that has a 1.4ghz processor. That is where I currently run WOV. I have another laptop that has an Intel Duo Core 2.2 ghz processor, and I'm hoping it will give better performance.

 

So if WOV doesn't take advantage of the Duo Core, is the 2.2 Duo Core any better, worse, or the same as the regular 1.4? Is there a "conversion"?

 

Your C2D laptop has both cores operating at 2.2 gHz. There's no direct comparison with your older 1.4 notebook, as that may be anything from a P4, Pentium M, etc.

 

For example If it's an older P4, just one of the cores on your 2.2 gHz C2D might be equivelent in performance to that same P4 running at 3.8-4.0 (or more) gHz!

 

[Salraine_Chi 0]

It's not the shadows, it's reflection and mirrors that's slowing you down by rendering the same scene several times.

 

I dont have the mirrors on as they dont help with the frame rate either. WoI runs ok on medium settings with shadows off. So yes the extra terrain detail is slowing me down but the shadows are the real killer. Like I said I go from an average of 50 fps to 10-15 fps just by turning on the aircraft only shadows. That is a massive drop by any standard.

 

FalconCAF, I am using the latest graphics drivers as well.

 

Looks like this is nudging me towards that new PC I have put off buying for a while now.

 

Ta

 

Sal

[+76.IAP-Blackbird 3,557]

Same probs here got mine WOI this night and the game is great! Nice AI nice modells and damn cool features! But fps drops to 12 and less

 

My Rig

 

8800GT 512MB

1 TB HDD

4 GB RAM

P-35 Mobo

 

I thought it`S enough.

[+Major Lee 18]

This article might help sort out the power of various CPU's...

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/16/cpu_charts_2007/

 

WOI has upped the "in" for the SF series. TK has plans to activate dual-core architecture in the (near??) future. This will make SF even less friendly to lower speed machines running single core CPUs; it's the price of progress...