Yo, check this out! Great speed boost!

[jomni 6]

But taking into account their different nature, flight sims are always behind the current available technologies....Just take a look at Black Shark...Almost new game but doesn't even utilise more 1 one cpu core. Shame, really. Hopefully things will start to change for the better :yes:

 

Flight sims concentrate more on getting the flight physics correctly which involves a lot of computation power when you want accuracy.

Unless you want something like HAWX.

Edited July 2, 2009 by jomni

[+Brain32 265]

Exploiting the advantages of multi-core processors can only benefit flight simulations, also todays GFX cards are so powerfull(much more powerfull than CPU's) they can run extremely pretty graphics without braking a sweat...so you can basically have one entire core running physics while other is more than enough to "feed" the GFX card with data.

 

But who uses all that modern stuff? FPS developers! So we can have nicely detached limbs falling on the ground perfectly realistic, the boxes you smash with a crowbar brake down hyper-realistically. But when on the same rig you start a flight simulator even one with not so fancy graphics you get 5fps - first - excuses, excuses then "buy this multi milion dollar PC and you will get enourmous 15fps" - yaaay we rock. F that!

 

Seriously the only man that IMO really knows what to F is he doing with his code is Oleg Maddox, IL-2 series is a benchmark all sims made so far need to strive to concerning pure technical aspect - period.

[FastCargo 412]

It's well known how the AI cheats in IL2 physics-wise. Therefore, sure it's easy to make the physics realistic...if you only apply it to the player's aircraft.

 

Additional comment...the physics modeling issue is a legitimate concern...don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Multi million dollar simulators that focus on one aircraft always feel different than actually flying the aircraft. Haven't seen one yet that convinced me I was flying the real thing...no matter what PR hacks will tell you.

 

FC

[Aintry 0]

Sorry if I missed this somewhere, but does this .dll/.ini mod change the settings in your video card if you install it?

[column5 63]

It's well known how the AI cheats in IL2 physics-wise. Therefore, sure it's easy to make the physics realistic...if you only apply it to the player's aircraft.

 

Additional comment...the physics modeling issue is a legitimate concern...don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Multi million dollar simulators that focus on one aircraft always feel different than actually flying the aircraft. Haven't seen one yet that convinced me I was flying the real thing...no matter what PR hacks will tell you.

 

FC

 

Yeah, that's one of many reasons why I can't buy into IL2. At least in ThirdWire games we know where we stand: The AI fly on Normal, and they don;t run out of gas, but other than that they follow the same rules as the player.

[Fubar512 1,350]

Sorry if I missed this somewhere, but does this .dll/.ini mod change the settings in your video card if you install it?

 

No Tristan. It "hooks" onto it's own dll, which essentially contains most of the parameters in the DX9.0C library (taking advantage of shader model 3.0, etc.). The effect is almost as if someone re-wrote and updated the sim's graphics code.

[Aintry 0]

No Tristan. It "hooks" onto it's own dll, which essentially contains most of the parameters in the DX9.0C library (taking advantage of shader model 3.0, etc.). The effect is almost as if someone re-wrote and updated the sim's graphics code.

OK, thanks.

[+Brain32 265]

Yeah, that's one of many reasons why I can't buy into IL2. At least in ThirdWire games we know where we stand: The AI fly on Normal, and they don;t run out of gas, but other than that they follow the same rules as the player.

They fly on normal - we fly on hard, automatically it's obvious they don't follow the same rules as the player, not to mention the fuel. But that's not the issue of il-2 or TW sims(those two actually have pretty similar ways of AI cheating), that is the issue in all sims(LockOn,Falcon you name it!). AI simply can not be programmed to fly under same rules as the player and be challenging in the same time - that's why every single AI in FS's cheats

[column5 63]

They fly on normal - we fly on hard, automatically it's obvious they don't follow the same rules as the player

 

They use a difficulty setting that is available to the player and which TK considers the baseline. Thats pretty different from throwing out physics alltogether.

[+Julhelm 266]

yes but it give strange behaviour with clouds

 

still tweaking

SSAO is on shift-f10. Hit shift-f7 to get rid of the cloud anomalies.

[jomni 6]

But who uses all that modern stuff? FPS developers! So we can have nicely detached limbs falling on the ground perfectly realistic, the boxes you smash with a crowbar brake down hyper-realistically.

 

That's why I don't play much of the newer FPS because my PC can't handle it.

 

I'm quite happy that Thirdwire sims don't need a super computer to play. Once TK starts doing what FPS people are doing, then it will be a very sad moment for me. (Time to buy a more powerful computer?)

 

For this sim, obviously the little people (those who cannot afford top of the line hardware) are the winners.

Something we don't see often these days.

Edited July 3, 2009 by jomni

[+Julhelm 266]

They use a difficulty setting that is available to the player and which TK considers the baseline. Thats pretty different from throwing out physics alltogether.

The point is that whatever rules of physics the AI actually uses is of no interest whatsoever to you the player as long as the AI appears to use the same physics as you do.

 

Personally I think TK's engine is simply starting to show its age since he's essentially just bolting more and more stuff onto the same basic game engine which is some 8 years old now.

[+Spectre_USA 7]

I agree.

 

I had hoped that the "2" series would have rebuild from the ground up.

 

Sure, use the tried and true, but take the basis and make it better.

 

The terrain engine is just beyond tired after 8+ years. Somehow, some way, the seams have got to go...

[zmatt 2]

Megatextures would be cool. that's what Id does in their games. Of course that would require modeers to make huge single textures for an entire terrain. Satellite images would work well for that but may not be practical.

 

I think he has a good point. For computers physics simulations are not hard work. 3d rendering is much higher on the difficulty scale for hardware. The engine doesn't take advantage of newer technologies, and because of that we get poor performance for meh graphics. Many old games are the same way. Just about every game I have that came out around the same time as SFP1 or before runs slow on my modern machine. The fact that for modern hardware the enbseries mod improves performance while improving graphics also supports the claim. For modern hardware of any type to emulate older hardware's routines that are not expressly supported by the new hardware, it takes a lot of computing power. Modern cards don't work the same way as old cards. In 2001 video cards were essentially several different hard units that handled different tasks and strapped together. Modern cards use a unified shader model where you have many stream processors which are jack of all trades, do the work.

 

The enbseries mod lets the modern card with stream processors (geforce 8 series and newer, radeon hd2000 and newer) render the game the way they want to. This allows the graphics to improve and fps to sky rocket. Although the mod isn't perfect, (occlusion makes my aircraft transparent) it's a massive improvement. This, along with driver level AA and AF, something that SFP1 and just about every other game form that time don't support, allow us to get some pretty decent graphics. But these are all patch jobs. A game released in 2009 should have AA, AF, parallax mapping, ambient occlusion, soft shadows, HDR, bloom, and motion blur. That kind of thing is expected now.

[FastCargo 412]

If you have the budget.

 

FC

[zmatt 2]

If you have the budget.

 

FC

 

Very true. I think that's the biggest reason the SF series doesn't have all of this. Thirdwire is essentially TK, and a few other people that he hires when he needs help.

[FalconC45 162]

I didn't see any graphical or FPS improvement. The files are in my SF2 saved files flight dir. Is that the correct path? I got a 8800 GTX 768MB card and is supposed to be DX10 capable card. I have tweaked the card before I typed this however. Will report back. BTW am using zmatt's ini settings.

 

Falcon

[zmatt 2]

I don't have SF2 so I'm not sure but you may have the files in the wrong place. In SFP1 the .dll goes in the root directory while the ,ini goes in the flight directory.

 

EDIT:

 

By the way, this is the settings that I have found to give the best eye candy to performance ratio. It may be different for everyone else, but it's worth a shot.

 

[EFFECT]
EnableBloom=1
EnableOcclusion=0
EnableReflection=1
EnableMotionBlur=0
EnableWater=1
EnableShadow=1
DepthBias=0

 

I really didn't get much effect out of motion blur on this end, fps wise or visually. Ambient occlusion makes my aircraft translucent and kills my fps. the shadows work well, and the Bloom is the main feature here. I guess the other features will come into their own in later releases.

Edited July 6, 2009 by zmatt

[FalconC45 162]

I don't have SF2 so I'm not sure but you may have the files in the wrong place. In SFP1 the .dll goes in the root directory while the ,ini goes in the flight directory.

 

EDIT:

 

By the way, this is the settings that I have found to give the best eye candy to performance ratio. It may be different for everyone else, but it's worth a shot.

 

[EFFECT]
EnableBloom=1
EnableOcclusion=0
EnableReflection=1
EnableMotionBlur=0
EnableWater=1
EnableShadow=1
DepthBias=0

 

I really didn't get much effect out of motion blur on this end, fps wise or visually. Ambient occlusion makes my aircraft translucent and kills my fps. the shadows work well, and the Bloom is the main feature here. I guess the other features will come into their own in later releases.

 

OK I'll test those tomorrow. My fps was 23 ish in cockpit and 40's outside (F6). But no choppiness though.

 

Falcon

[Icarus999 70]

OK I'll test those tomorrow. My fps was 23 ish in cockpit and 40's outside (F6). But no choppiness though.

 

Falcon

 

High res terrain and widesky settings have a big impact I also had a 8800gtx 768M card and with certain terrain and widesky combination I would get about 17 fps tops without this HDR bloom, it is a kick a** card but it just was taking a pounding. If you are getting mid twentys as an average from the cockpit you are doing good with one card.

I just upgraded to quad SLI using 2 9800gx2 self contained SLI cards and with the HDR bloom I average around 40 fps and top out at 63 fps from the cockpit with intense cloud/fog mixed in a "broken" sky setting in the widesky and high res terrains.

 

 

Also thanks for the antialiasing tips ZMatt... I'm Still trying to dial it in but I am seeing a big improvement.

Edited July 6, 2009 by Icarus999

[+Julhelm 266]

If you have the budget.

 

FC

It isn't that hard to implement that kind of stuff as long as you rebuild the rendering engine from the ground up. Then again there is zero chance of TK ever doing that, especially since his customers aren't going anywhere else anytime soon.

[jomni 6]

A game released in 2009 should have AA, AF, parallax mapping, ambient occlusion, soft shadows, HDR, bloom, and motion blur. That kind of thing is expected now.

 

Agree, but I still keep coming back to the old classics (I'm now playing Delta Force 1, and Armored Fist 3, lol!). For some reason, they have better gameplay.

Graphics those days were not so good so developers concentrate on the total experience.

These days, most developers spend more time doing graphcis than fixing gameplay thinking that eye candy adds to experience.

It does to some extent, but looking deeper, you don't see anything.

Edited July 6, 2009 by jomni

[zmatt 2]

High res terrain and widesky settings have a big impact I also had a 8800gtx 768M card and with certain terrain and widesky combination I would get about 17 fps tops without this HDR bloom, it is a kick a** card but it just was taking a pounding. If you are getting mid twentys as an average from the cockpit you are doing good with one card.

I just upgraded to quad SLI using 2 9800gx2 self contained SLI cards and with the HDR bloom I average around 40 fps and top out at 63 fps from the cockpit with intense cloud/fog mixed in a "broken" sky setting in the widesky and high res terrains.

 

 

Also thanks for the antialiasing tips ZMatt... I'm Still trying to dial it in but I am seeing a big improvement.

SFP1 doesn't support multicard and I have seen marginal improvement with crossfire. I doubt dual 9800GX2's will give you any speed boost. And I have seen tests that suggest that over 3 cards you get worse performance. As far as SFP1 goes i would recommend one good car dsuch as a GTX260 core 216 or a radeon HD 4890 (which can be had for a great price right now by the way).

 

Anandtech has a good recent article onthe current state of affairs for those in the market for a gpu

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3588

 

@ Jomni

 

my broswer just froze after 10 minutes of typing a long winded response so I am kind of pissed at myself right now. So much for linux huh?

 

Anyways this is an abridged version. I wouldn't say that older games necessarily have better gameplay. For those of us who have been playing pc games long enough know that there have always been good games and bad games. Gameplay is somethign that you really can't innovate upon much. Story telling ha sbeen around as long as spoken language has and we have worked on it for a long time. Good gameplay will always be based around a few criteria, they are a compelling story, good, solid controls, competent AI (scripted or otherwise), origonality, depth and replayability. Some games can skew these a bit depending on their audience. but for the most part the cirteria are set. As for graphics, they are always improving and there will always be a cutting edge game. I thinkt hat grpahics gets an unfair reputation now a days, as a lot of people (most too young to know much about the past) tlak about hwo gameplay has gone down as grpahic shave improved. The grpahics somehow being a cheap and watered down substitute. Let me be the first to say this isn't true. Good graphics ad to and improve gameplay. They add immersion which is very important in the depth part of gameplay. swords are more beleivable if they look and act liek swords, similarly you will be more apt to buy into a racing game if the cars look and behave like race cars. galaga is nothing like what real space combat would be like, and I don't knwo anyone who can shoot fireballs becaus ehtey ate some shrooms. ;) Not to say those are bad games though. I think that good modern games are equal parts gameplay and graphics, each rely on eachother to make a good game. Part of Half Life 2's appeal in 2004 was it's use of realistic physics (which was a major part fo gameplay) combined with good acting and a compelling storyline.

 

I think a good example of grpahics bashing is in Crysis. I have heard many people lable it as a benhcmark and nothign more. First off, there will always be one game that will have incredible and gratuitous graphics every generation. This time around it was Crysis. Those games are essential to the industry as they are a trial by fire for new tehcnolgies and their sucess is essential to the future adoption of them on a large scale. Secondly, the people who actually played crysis know that it actually has pretty solid gameplay. Nothing ground breaking or award winning, but ti worked well. The enemies were origonal and the gam mechanics worked well. I would say in gameplay it was on par with FEAR which won awards, but has far inferior graphics. Overall objectively that nmakes crysis better.

 

Anyways that was pretty longwinded, but that's my sincere feelings about it. And I think that we can all agree that these grpahics hacks do make the TW games more fun.

[FalconC45 162]

Well, I can't get this plugin to work on my SF2. Don't see any graphical nor FPS improvement. In fact under FPS, it made mine worse. Before I installed this plugin, my FPS was in mid 40 in cockpit with mirrors on, 60 outside. I still got SF1 installed and will install this plugin to see I'm doing something wrong in SF2.

 

Falcon

[FalconC45 162]

OK, I got this plugin to work in SF1, in fact it displayed a text message on upper left corner of the GUI. I didn't see that in my first plugin install in SF2. Now my SF1 FPS was in mid 50's in cockpit with mirrors on and in F6 mode. With the plugin on, my FPS dropped to 23 in cockpit with mirrors on and 40's in F6 mode. But I did see some graphical improvement.

 

So I installed the plugin in my main program files (x86) dir/thirdwire/sf2 directory (dll in main dir and ini in flight dir) and saw the text message when the GUI was displayed. But, I had this blurry stuff going on.

 

 

I had this in SF1 but I disabled it by editing the "EnableDepthofView" line to 0 but in SF2 it didn't work. Any suggestions?

 

Falcon