FPS Tricks for med-low end systems!

[jxeboy 0]

I thought I'd pass a few tips along for anyone who doesn't know. I don't have the best PC, but it isn't the worst either, but I've been able to make the game run pretty flawlessly on it. Here are the specs:

 

2.4ghz C2D

2G RAM

256mb 8600GT

Windows XP

 

I have been pulling information off of this website to try to make it run better, and a few of the tweaks that worked really well were buried quite deep.

 

The first thing I think it is important to figure out is where your PC's weak point in relation to itself is.

 

Now obviously some people have worse computers than this, but it is important to see where your individual computer is struggling. The most common problems are either a slowdown because of graphics, or a slowdown because of loading. A good way to tell if you are processor or GPU capped is:

 

a. If you ever have problems with objects popping in and out, big stutters when a new area is loaded, or your framerate jumps about when just flying strait and level then your video card probably isn't your weak point. The processor is having a hard time loading all of those high resolution textures and objects quick enough. You will see better overall performance when concentrating on things that effect loading.

 

It may not only be your processor that causes these stutters and jumpy frames. The harddrive can be to blame, and I'll go into how to tweak all of this in a bit.

 

b. If you see slowdowns when there is smoke, a lot of clouds, your near an airport, or there are a lot of planes in view then you are probably weaker on your Graphics card.

 

For me I am weaker in my graphics card more than my processor. So no matter what I do to improve load times, and stuttering, it will have little effect on my framerate. If I adjusted my texture quality down to the blurriest settings I still wouldn't see much difference in the performance of my system, maybe a little, but not a lot.

 

Now here are some of the tweaks I've figured out. Pick and choose which ones you want, but they all helped me quite a bit.

 

The first obvious thing is to configure the settings for OFF. There is already a good guide on how to do this here: http://www.overfland...on_and_settings But I'll point out some things that helped me.

 

Setting maximum resolution is a must. It is strange because in most games it is the opposite, but I definitely saw the best performance when I chose my monitors native (desktop) resolution.

 

The sliders page is pretty easy.

Aircraft = 5 - I use 5, and should maybe choose 4, but I figure since this game is about aircraft I'd rather have them looking good, and compromise somewhere else. I believe this setting has the most impact on graphics card power, but It does (as does everything) use some processing power.

 

Terrian = 3 Terrain from testing mostly effects the resolution of the ground texture. It may also effect land quality, but I'm not quite sure. I used a slightly higher setting (3) for this because I don't really have loading or stuttering issues, and the higher resolution ground textures look nice. For those who have problems with loading and stuttering it is recommended to turn this one down a little bit. It is also recommended to never go above 4 with this. Don't ask me....

 

Scenery = 2 I'm not sure exactly what this setting does, but I'm pretty sure it has a large effect on how complicated all those little objects you see are. For me with my graphics card being the weak point I turned this down to 2. For people who don't have graphics card problems, you may be able to have it higher, but remember if there are more textures and things to load then you will be having more problems.

 

Effects = 4 Effects I left at 4, and haven't tested anywhere else because the website doesn't say if you can set this to something else. Perhaps you can....

 

Clouds = 1 From experience with other flight sims I know that clouds usually eat up a lot of graphics resources. So I set them to 1 from the getgo, and haven't changed them since. They don't look half bad to me, and they don't seem to effect the framrate much.

 

 

After that there is the overrides menu. I wont go into depth on every setting, but I will tell you that unclicking Dual Pass Render, and clicking High Resolution Z-Buffer gave me good results.

 

I also checked Disable In Cloud Effect because I read its hard on graphics cards, as well as Disable Water Reflection and Disable Water Animation for the same reasons.

 

The last setting I changed in this menu was to Disable Shadows. This might be controversial, but I actually like it better without shadows. The only reason I like shadows is for aircraft, but you have to remember that the ground objects have shadows too, and that eats up graphics cards. Disabling thing may have been undesirable for my own shadow, but overall it was for the better.

 

For the Parameter Editor window I didn't change very much. I found that increasing these settings to the ones show in the guide here gave me worse FPS. The only settings I changed were:

 

Composite Terrain Texture Pool to Managed

Composite Terrain Texture Usage to RenderTarget

Composite Aircraft Texture Pool to Managed

Composite Aircraft Texture Usage to RenderTarget

Vertex Buffer Pool to Default

Index Buffer Pool to Default

Fullscreen Swap Effect to Flip

 

Now there may be other things you want to change on this page, especially for those with CPU problems. But like I said, the other settings only seemed to make things worse.

 

As for the other configuration windows, I left them as they were.

 

 

Once in-game the Workbench has 1 setting I find really important.

 

The Ground Object Density setting will really effect FPS, probably for both kinds of computers. I set mine to low, and it works really well. Maybe the forests arn't as thick as they once were, but when you're on the ground you see trees, and when you're in the air the ground is painted green, so I don't think it matters too much. This is where I compromised for my Aircraft setting.

 

 

The last setting for the game itself that I found, and is EXTREMELY helpful is a hidden one.

 

If you look in the CFS3.xml located in CFSWWI Over Flanders Fields/default there is a setting which can lock FPS.

I'm not sure if this will work for everyone, but I certainly worked for me, and I hardly see it mentioned on the forums.

In the file you can edit the line:

<Graphics OldAircraftRender="No" MaxFPS="0"/>

Where it says MAXFPS = 0, try placing where your frames usually go down to. I like 32.

 

For some reason this actually made my FPS better, and made my computer run easier! It locked my FPS so they never went above 32, but they also never really go below it either. At the most they go to 30, which is why I added the 2 fps. Someone who gets higher fps may want to try locking it higher too. But with the FPS locked it gives your computer room to breathe, and not have to work 100% all the time to get the highest FPS number. This also works with Vsync on, which ill talk about in a bit.

 

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This next group of settings is for XP, and I'm unsure if they work in any other OS. Try these at your own risk!

 

With harddrive loading it is important to have your harddrive defragmented. This will improve load time, and cause the harddrive to not spin as hard. One thing most people don't do is make sure the Page File is defragmented as well. The page file is basically "fake" ram located on the harddrive for extra memory.

 

This is how I go about defragmenting.

 

1. Make sure you have deleted anything you don't want on your harddrive. (Clean out download folders, cookies.. ect).

2. Go to your Control Panel, and System editor. From there go to Advanced and then Performance Settings.

3. From there you will see another Advanced tab, and then you can click on Edit for Virtual Memory.

4. Now we're going to temporarily set it to have no Virtual Memory. Just click No Paging-file (When you do this, the computer may run more slow, but we'll add it back later.

5. Restart, and then load up disk defragmentor.

6. Let it work it's magic.

7. Now go back to the Virtual Memory page, and this time we're going to set it to a custom size.

 

For 1G of real ram set it to 2048 on both initial and Maximum

For 2G of real ram set it to 4096 on both initial and Maximum.

 

From there it is just multiplying the number. But it is important to have them both set the same so it wont become fragmented again.

 

 

This next section is to speed up windows a bit.

First it is good to do a clean boot which you can learn how to do here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

 

It is important to restart your computer like this every time. This allows less things to load and take up ram that would normally slow your computer down.

 

Another step they do not mention is in the msconfig window you can change the startup programs. The startup tab is the last tab. I unclicked everything except for my FRAPS from this menu, and the difference in startup time, and how quickly my computer did things is immense. I recommend this to people struggling with loading issues.

 

Another cool thing you can do in the Run menu is change which services run. You can do this by typing Services.msc.

This website will let you know which ones to keep on or turn off. http://www.theelderg...vices_guide.htm

 

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The last section of tweaks I collected is for the Graphics card. I don't know much about ATI because I don't use one, so I'm sorry, but I don't have anything for that, I'm sure there is plenty of help in the forum.

 

 

First of all I recommend updating the drivers for the video card.

 

In the NVIDIA Control Panel there are many settings to change.

 

I read that 8xQ anti aliasing doesn't have a performance hit. I found this to be untrue, so I set it to 4x, and it seems to be a nice balance.

Anisotropic Filtering is one I found to cause a large FPS loss. I set it for 4x for again a happy medium.

 

The last setting that really effects things is Vsync. For me I was unable to turn it on before I locked my FPS because my framerate would get so bad. But after I locked it I am able to run Vsync no problem, and still maintain the 32fps. I recommend it be turned on due to the large amounts of tearing if you turn your head quickly.

 

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WELL,

Hopefully I helped someone out there get their game running more smoothly. I may update this when I figure out more things.

 

Until then

 

 

~Jake

 

[Creaghorn 10]

thanks for posting jxeboy,

 

most things are already known and are written "somewhere". but it's fine to see some kind of compilation of the things wich might help the best.

 

 

 

 

[Von Paulus 8]

Yes nice compilation.

[sitting_duck 3]

keeping in mind this may just be just for my system (ati 4870), i recently redid my settings from scratch, setting all to default, (cfs3config and ccc center) and making ONE adjustment at a time, playing the game, and seeing the effect.

 

Once i got my sliders set, (again, one notch at a time,,one slider at a time), (5 3 3 5 5 ), and resolution, the ONLY setting that helped fps, and overall game play in cfs3config was unchecking dual pass render.

 

checking index buffers, write only buffers etc etc,,,and making changes to texture info resulted in a drop in fps with no apparent improvement in what i saw on the screen.

 

With ANY of the recommended settings,,i was struggling at 14-19 on the ground, and 30 tops in the air. Now im at 45-53 on the ground, and at 60 almost all the time in the air.

 

all the kinda "optionsl" (shoreline render, water effects etc etc) are all enabled.

 

point is,,,if you go in and make a slew of settings, you have no idea whats pulling you up,,and whats pulling you down. And while i know all the "recommended" settings have been around for a long time, they are the settings that have been killing my game.

 

 

[Javito1986 14]

I have a fairly weak processor myself and so have spent a good bit of time finding just the right balance in performance for OFF. However, I leave Clouds at 5. The one and ONLY reason I do this is because I read that enemy airplanes can't see through clouds if you have them at 5. That's just too important for me to give up! Though I agree they look the same at 1 as they do at 5 and I'd get far higher FPS if I lowered them.

[ConradB 0]

keeping in mind this may just be just for my system (ati 4870), i recently redid my settings from scratch, setting all to default, (cfs3config and ccc center) and making ONE adjustment at a time, playing the game, and seeing the effect.

 

Once i got my sliders set, (again, one notch at a time,,one slider at a time), (5 3 3 5 5 ), and resolution, the ONLY setting that helped fps, and overall game play in cfs3config was unchecking dual pass render.

 

checking index buffers, write only buffers etc etc,,,and making changes to texture info resulted in a drop in fps with no apparent improvement in what i saw on the screen.

 

With ANY of the recommended settings,,i was struggling at 14-19 on the ground, and 30 tops in the air. Now im at 45-53 on the ground, and at 60 almost all the time in the air.

 

all the kinda "optionsl" (shoreline render, water effects etc etc) are all enabled.

 

point is,,,if you go in and make a slew of settings, you have no idea whats pulling you up,,and whats pulling you down. And while i know all the "recommended" settings have been around for a long time, they are the settings that have been killing my game.

 

 

 

Cool info sitting duck! I never messed much with the over rides, as it always ended up a muddy mess. The only things I have checked now are to disable things like the target cone, and the warning and info text stuff.

 

Kicked up the detail in the terrain and scenery stuff and have between 40 to 55 solid in the air now. And with ground details upped a notch, I still hover in the 30 to 35 range at the field suring takeoff.

Edited January 30, 2010 by ConradB