TrackIR - Image tearing at monitor edges

[BirdDogICT 3]

Lou, your experience matches mine pretty closely...

[Tamper 9]

Very interesting, Lou - and thanks for the highly detailed outline - as well as your very comprehensive post over on the poll thread. That's the sort of detail that really helps isolate problems - heck, even I'm not so studious about documenting. I envy and admire your diligence

 

Your experience starts to make me re-examine the entire situation, and while some conclusions might still be the same, other possibilities seem to present themselves.

 

I do still firmly believe that access time in the mass media storage subsystem plays a large roll in the presence (and/or severity) of both stutters and tearing. I also believe that the overall 'load' placed upon a system will cause/worsen the condition. The fact that you use TIR but don't have tearing makes me think that it's really more about the overall load than anything else.

 

And, your system being 'conservative' (no slight intended - actually, I'd say yours is probably an ideal 'test platform' in this case)...well, I think it goes to prove that super high-end graphics cards, CPUs, motherboards and memory aren't really required to get decent performance from this sim. I think your case in particular gives us all something to think about.

 

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

 

 

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

Hey, I'm nothing if not thorough Tamper, some might even say anal. And no slight perceived at all about my system. I built my flying box a couple of years ago with two goals in mind. 1: To put together a system that would run OFF very well. And 2: To keep the total cost at or below $800. I came very close to achieving both, (final cost actually ended up closer to $900).

 

Also, I too believe that access times to the mass media storage facilities is crucial in this. All the water volume and pressure in the world does you no good if you are trying to push it all through a 3/4" garden hose, when what you need is a 4" fire hose to get the job done right.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

 

.

[Hellshade 110]

Ok guys, I have what I firmly believe to be the solution and anyone with a TrackIR can test it for themselves to see if they can duplicate my findings.

The TrackIR screen tearing, unlike normal CFS3 stutters, is inversely tied to the refresh rate of your display. Meaning if you lower the refresh rate of your screen to around 25, you'll see some pretty big screen tears with TrackIR. Conversely, if you bump it up to around 60, you will see them all but dissappear. Of course, the higher your refresh rate, the more likely you are to have stutters. This theory - as I've experienced it - explains the following:

 

How at least 3 people, some with modest systems, can run TrackIR without the tearing issue even though they obviously DON'T have SSD drives. My guess is their FPS is set pretty close to 60 or higher.

How I could remove most of the tears with Lou's settings, but they show up the moment I turn on FRAPS. It wasn't the HD access that was causing the tears, it's that FRAPS has an option to select the FPS capture rate and mine was set at 25. As soon as I bumped it up to 60, no more tears in FRAPS while using TrackIR.

 

Here's a video I made of me running FRAPS at 60 FPS. You'll notice some stutter as my HD tries to keep up with the textures (and SSD drive would probably fix that!), but you'll also notice the screen tears are almost non-existant.

 

Jaggies Be Gone (1:51) HD

 

Try it for yourself guys if you have a TrackIR. Go to C:\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\default and edit the cfs file with notepad. Change 'MaxFPS="0"/>' to 25 and try using TrackIR. Lots of Jaggies. Bump it to 60 and see if they dissappear. The exact number they dissappear at may change with your slider settings, etc. But Jaggies are definately more prominate at lower refresh rates.

 

Hellshade

[Tamper 9]

Hellshade, not to rain on your parade, but I have questions about what you're saying here...please see your "solution" thread. Thanks.

[Hellshade 110]

Hellshade, not to rain on your parade, but I have questions about what you're saying here...please see your "solution" thread. Thanks.

 

I don't see any rain to my solution. By changing the setting for MaxFPS to low numbers, the TrackIR tearing shows up. By changing it to numbers above 55, ir reduces it dramatically or eliminates it. With no other values being changed, what other explanation is there to account for the difference?

 

Hellshade

[Tamper 9]

Not saying there is any other explanation. What with all the high tensions around here, just thought I'd preface any questions with a disclaimer. That's all. Wasn't necessarily saying you were wrong or anything.

 

I'm sure you are quite confident in your findings, and there's a whole bunch of people here who would be grateful if you're right. But, being the hopelessly empirical, measurement, cross check and verify kind of guy I am, I have proposed we seek a "third party" test, to confirm, over on your thread.

 

Good work should welcome scrutiny. Nothing to be concerned about, when your conclusions are sound. Who knows? By tomorrow, you could be a real hero around here.

[Hellshade 110]

Not saying there is any other explanation. What with all the high tensions around here, just thought I'd preface any questions with a disclaimer. That's all. Wasn't necessarily saying you were wrong or anything.

 

I'm sure you are quite confident in your findings, and there's a whole bunch of people here who would be grateful if you're right. But, being the hopelessly empirical, measurement, cross check and verify kind of guy I am, I have proposed we seek a "third party" test, to confirm, over on your thread.

 

Good work should welcome scrutiny. Nothing to be concerned about, when your conclusions are sound. Who knows? By tomorrow, you could be a real hero around here.

 

I find it interesting that when you question my empirical evidence, it's because good work should welcome scrutiny. But when anyone questioned your statements, you found it insulting. I stand by my work. Check it all you want my friend.

 

Hellshade

[Over50 0]

I find it interesting that when you question my empirical evidence, it's because good work should welcome scrutiny. But when anyone questioned your statements, you found it insulting. I stand by my work. Check it all you want my friend.

 

Hellshade

 

 

Hellshade..

 

I tried your suggestion to set the default fps value from "0" to 60. While it did help some for my rig/setup, I still have 'em with rapid head movements. And just to mention, I have my TIR speed set to "1" and smoothing at 25.

 

The prime head scratcher for me is even with all graphics sliders set to (5) I don't get the tearing just setting on the ground (engine running) and doing a fast rear scan or when airborne looking above the wing with mostly blue sky and doing the quick rear scan. But when I lower my view to the horizon which takes in trees and terrain while scanning to the rear and front again the jaggies show up.

 

I've also played with the Nvidia "render ahead" setting by increasing it from the default "3" frames to the max but didn't help. About the only sure way for me to eliminate 98% of the jaggies is to run with minimum terrain and complexity slider settings - but makes the graphics look like a mid-90's throwback.

 

I dunno. There are so many variables given each of our systems (hardware, software) I don't know if there is a one size fits all magic bullet. What works for one person doesn't for another and/or none of the suggestions work.

 

(Sigh).....All said, this is just a game after all. And the scan jaggies are a CFS3/OFF occurance only for me, meaning I don't see it with FSX or IL2 1946 using the TIR and fast rear to front scanning. Early on someone said it's a known problem with OFF so just get used to it (or words to the effect). I'm inclined to agree, especially since nothing I've read so far (and tried) has totally resolved the jaggies with my particular setup/hardware. And since it is a OFF thing only there's no way I'm going to drop $700 on a SSD (assuming it is the fix) just for one game.

 

And with this....it's waaay past my bedtime.......

Edited May 29, 2010 by Over50

[Hellshade 110]

Over50,

 

You have a very nice rig bud. I presume you have a program (either FRAPS or something like it) to give you real time feedback of your frames per second while in game, After you switched MaxFPS to 60 and were still getting tearing in TrackIR during fast head turns, what actual frames per second were you getting when you noticed the tearing sir? If, for example, you were flying over an airfield and high enough to get a good fairly large view of the land around you, your frames per second may be dropping to well below 60 at that time and the jaggies would show up. If, however, you're still getting 60 frames per second at the moment you are getting the TrackIR screen tears and Vsync is turned on then my next question would be "what is the refresh rate of your monitor?" Mine is set to 60 and perhaps matching FPS to refresh rate is the issue. If your refresh rate is set to 72, 75 or higher it's very possible the TrackIR prefers a 1:1 ratio of FPS to refresh rate in order to remove the jaggies. That would explain why my jaggies all but dissappear at the 55 - 60 FPS rate. If you put MaxFPS down to 30 as a test, do you find the TrackIR screen tears get worse?

 

Hellshade

 

PS. I agree with you that setting the Terrain sliders to 3 really makes a quality hit to the level of detail. However Creaghorn put a little zip file up on the downloads section called "Creaghorns Homebrew". In it theres a couple of files that can change HDR & Bloom factors and for me at least, after some tweaking, I was able to get some very nice quality terrain even set at 3. Here's a quick video that shows what my game looks like. Aircraft 5, Terrain 3, Scenery 4, Effects 5, Clouds 5. Obviously you always lose some detail when you compress a 3.9 GB video down to less than 200MB but it still looks pretty good. Might be worth downloading it and giving it a try.

 

Hellshades Wings (2:44) HD

Edited May 29, 2010 by Hellshade

[Tamper 9]

It's interesting that the solution proposed doesn't seem to work in every case. And this was exctly my point behind seeking corroboration on other setups. What works on one might not on another, and I think there's a ton of evidence for that.

 

Even though some don't apparently understand, my point is to identify something that works on even the more conservative setups - and the reason for this is simple: There are lots of people with more conservative rigs, who might benefit from whatever the solution is, and perhaps not having to spend a dime to do so.

 

If Lou's poll result is any indication, a super-high-end rig isn't really necessary to get good performance.

 

On the subject of cost, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the cost of implementing SSDs. I'd like to point out the actual costs:

 

Cost for one OCZ Vertex 30G SSD, about $100 after rebate

Two drives, on-board RAID, total cost about $200.

Hardware RAID controller, $300 - Total cost about $500.

 

The hardware controller is really not essential, I did this more for research and on other unrelated work I do. My experience shows that even a single 30G SSD is enough space to load OFF; doesn't need to be the boot drive, and does make a night-and-day difference in the performance of OFF with regard to tearing and stutters. Of course, if you can afford it, the second drive on a FREE onboard RAID array is definitely worth another $100. (Morris recommends Intel X-25M drives if I'm not mistaken, which are reportedly excellent drives. But I think the smallest they make is 80G, so the price is nearer $200/unit - one reason I chose the smaller OCZ drive.)

 

So, for as little as $100 (not several hundreds or thousands)...well, people have spent way more on other upgrades just to get OFF running better. And Lou's "conservative rig" result in the poll thread shows that those other high-end expensive upgrades may not even be necessary.

 

Again, like Morris and I have both said: A question of biggest bang for the buck.

 

 

[Hellshade 110]

We won't know if the solution of raising FPS doesn't work to fix the problem for everyone until Over50 lets us know what his FPS rate is at the moment the TrackIR tearing occurs as well as what his refresh rate is set at. You can set MaxFPS to 60 but that doesn't really mean that's the actual FPS that it's always pushing, does it? It's an easy detail to miss. No worries bud.

 

Hellshade

[Over50 0]

It's interesting that the solution proposed doesn't seem to work in every case. And this was exctly my point behind seeking corroboration on other setups. What works on one might not on another, and I think there's a ton of evidence for that.

 

Even though some don't apparently understand, my point is to identify something that works on even the more conservative setups - and the reason for this is simple: There are lots of people with more conservative rigs, who might benefit from whatever the solution is, and perhaps not having to spend a dime to do so.

 

If Lou's poll result is any indication, a super-high-end rig isn't really necessary to get good performance.

 

On the subject of cost, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the cost of implementing SSDs. I'd like to point out the actual costs:

 

Cost for one OCZ Vertex 30G SSD, about $100 after rebate

Two drives, on-board RAID, total cost about $200.

Hardware RAID controller, $300 - Total cost about $500.

 

The hardware controller is really not essential, I did this more for research and on other unrelated work I do. My experience shows that even a single 30G SSD is enough space to load OFF; doesn't need to be the boot drive, and does make a night-and-day difference in the performance of OFF with regard to tearing and stutters. Of course, if you can afford it, the second drive on a FREE onboard RAID array is definitely worth another $100. (Morris recommends Intel X-25M drives if I'm not mistaken, which are reportedly excellent drives. But I think the smallest they make is 80G, so the price is nearer $200/unit - one reason I chose the smaller OCZ drive.)

 

So, for as little as $100 (not several hundreds or thousands)...well, people have spent way more on other upgrades just to get OFF running better. And Lou's "conservative rig" result in the poll thread shows that those other high-end expensive upgrades may not even be necessary.

 

Again, like Morris and I have both said: A question of biggest bang for the buck.

 

 

 

As I noted in another post, my prime interest for owning a PC in the first place is gaming (and personal financial mgm't, etc) and as such a separate 30 GB or even a 60 GB SSD wouldn't be practical when I regularly keep (and play) up to ten games or more installed (currently 11) plus all of the office, security and misc other software apps I regularly use. My 300 GB Raptor is half full right now for example.

 

More power to you for your decision on a SSD specifically to play OFF. Same for other folks who elect to shell out $500 or more for the latest GPU for one or two games. But in my case my now getting-to-be-long-in-tooth GTX 260-216 cards in SLI (yes I know SLI doesn't work with OFF) can handle any current PC game available without having to resort to tweaks, etc., at 1920x1600 and at near to max graphics settings. As for relative cost, I was not a first adopter of the GTX 260-216 GPU's when released (around $360 if I remember right) and picked them up for under $200 each later on - and then not at the same time. The GTX 285's had taken top seat at the time and there was no way I was going to spend $900 to $1000 for a pair of 'em (and factor in a wife to contend with ..... ).

 

Anyway, to keep this in perspective, the tearing only became an issue after purchasing the TIR5. And it only occurs in this game with TIR - and not in FSX, RoF, the IL2 series or Wings of Prey that I play regularly.

 

And, too, as I mentioned sometime after starting this thread I'm a casual simmer (but not arcade), meaning while I really enjoy the experience and marvel at the progress of graphics detail over the past 15 years I try to avoid getting into the deep end of the pool with the hard core simmers so to speak which exist in all flight sim communities (but obviously didn't in this case). To each his own and I don't begrudge anyone devoting as much time or money as they wish toward whatever it takes to run a game to their satisfaction. But I do appreciate the hard core simmers as a resource when I have a question or issue with a game - as witness this thread.

[Over50 0]

We won't know if the solution of raising FPS doesn't work to fix the problem for everyone until Over50 lets us know what his FPS rate is at the moment the TrackIR tearing occurs as well as what his refresh rate is set at. You can set MaxFPS to 60 but that doesn't really mean that's the actual FPS that it's always pushing, does it? It's an easy detail to miss. No worries bud.

 

Hellshade

 

Yup, I was running with FRAPS enabled after changing the max fps setting to 60 as you noted to gage what if any improvement. But - and of note - while there was less tearing, it was still present with Vsync at 60 FPS and with Vsync forced off (Nvidia control panel) with my frame rates varying from the low 70's to above 100.

 

Keep in mind in my case, as I posted, interestingly the tearing does not occur sitting on the ground and fast scanning front to rear back or when airborne and fast scanning above the wing with blue sky and clouds. It only happens in my case when airborne and fast scanning horizontally which includes the terrain (again, TIR speed at 1 and smoothing at 25).

 

And repeating, I can fast scan in every other sim (which includes FSX which in my opinion has a more complex graphics content than OFF) at near max detail settings using TIR with no tearing, which to me rules out my hardware or subsystem as a factor.

 

You (I think it was you...) mentioned HDR and Bloom which I hadn't considered but know from other games can greatly affect performance in some games. Where are the options listed in CFS3/OFF ?

 

OK, enough grief for now....I'm going to McDonald's for a McChicken and a Coke and ogle the sweet young things in their "summer" attire .... which is about all I can manage at my age now...

Edited May 29, 2010 by Over50

[Tamper 9]

Over50, I do much the same as you with my PC. Primarily games, but also some work (both employment and 'home' work in my case). I regularly keep and play several games as well as doing some work with digital media (music, video, etc., nothing too involved). Interestingly enough, I also own a GTX260/216, and also have tried SLI before (don't get me started, because most people will try to say it's a waste of money - but not in my experience). And I think we all have a budget of some sort that affects what we buy for our computers.

 

I may have misimpressed you, so let me try and clear that up: I wasn't suggesting you remove your existing drive(s) and replace them with a 30G SSD. I don't have that arrangement, and as you say it would be impractical. The SSDs are there strictly for speed. Here's my storage configuration, maybe that'll help clear it up:

 

2 SSDs, 30G each, in a RAID0 volume (appears as one 60G drive to Windows). Plenty of room for OFF and probably another game or two - but is explicitly reserved for those games that *need* the performance offered by the pricey SSD size-to-cost ratio. On my machine, this is my D: drive, and where OFF is installed.

 

2 "platter-based" Seagate 7200rpm Barracudas in a RAID0 volume, appears in Windows like a single, 1TB drive. Nowhere near as fast as the SSD's, but much cheaper for the size and (because of the RAID0 array) still much faster than a single drive. *Plenty* of room for anything else I do. This is my boot drive (C:) where Windows is loaded, as well as all the other games I play (which don't require the speed of the SSDs).

 

In this arrangement, I still get very good overall system response and loading times - better than a single drive. I get a night-and-day difference in OFF's graphical performance. best of both worlds.

 

If I could presume to suggest a moment: In a case like yours, the idea would be to use a single SSD as a D: drive and load OFF there (to get the performance benefit at a total cost of $100). My experience shows you will see substantial improvement, for the $100 you spent.

 

*IF* you could afford another $100, and have a motherboard that has RAID support (most do, today), a second SSD connected to the FREE onboard RAID controller will increase performance further still. Total cost, $200.

 

And you're not limited to the 60G on the two SSDs - you keep your 300G drive and everything on it, as is. No need to even reload anything except what you move to the new, fast SSD array. You now have two drives: a 300G C: drive and a 60G D: drive. C is for space, D is for speed.

 

I hope this clarifies that I am not suggesting anyone try to run an entire system on a single, 30G SSD.

[Over50 0]

Over50, I do much the same as you with my PC. Primarily games, but also some work (both employment and 'home' work in my case). I regularly keep and play several games as well as doing some work with digital media (music, video, etc., nothing too involved). Interestingly enough, I also own a GTX260/216, and also have tried SLI before (don't get me started, because most people will try to say it's a waste of money - but not in my experience). And I think we all have a budget of some sort that affects what we buy for our computers.

 

I may have misimpressed you, so let me try and clear that up: I wasn't suggesting you remove your existing drive(s) and replace them with a 30G SSD. I don't have that arrangement, and as you say it would be impractical. The SSDs are there strictly for speed. Here's my storage configuration, maybe that'll help clear it up:

 

2 SSDs, 30G each, in a RAID0 volume (appears as one 60G drive to Windows). Plenty of room for OFF and probably another game or two - but is explicitly reserved for those games that *need* the performance offered by the pricey SSD size-to-cost ratio. On my machine, this is my D: drive, and where OFF is installed.

 

2 "platter-based" Seagate 7200rpm Barracudas in a RAID0 volume, appears in Windows like a single, 1TB drive. Nowhere near as fast as the SSD's, but much cheaper for the size and (because of the RAID0 array) still much faster than a single drive. *Plenty* of room for anything else I do. This is my boot drive (C:) where Windows is loaded, as well as all the other games I play (which don't require the speed of the SSDs).

 

In this arrangement, I still get very good overall system response and loading times - better than a single drive. I get a night-and-day difference in OFF's graphical performance. best of both worlds.

 

If I could presume to suggest a moment: In a case like yours, the idea would be to use a single SSD as a D: drive and load OFF there (to get the performance benefit at a total cost of $100). My experience shows you will see substantial improvement, for the $100 you spent.

 

*IF* you could afford another $100, and have a motherboard that has RAID support (most do, today), a second SSD connected to the FREE onboard RAID controller will increase performance further still. Total cost, $200.

 

And you're not limited to the 60G on the two SSDs - you keep your 300G drive and everything on it, as is. No need to even reload anything except what you move to the new, fast SSD array. You now have two drives: a 300G C: drive and a 60G D: drive. C is for space, D is for speed.

 

I hope this clarifies that I am not suggesting anyone try to run an entire system on a single, 30G SSD.

 

No, I understand. But again, I'm really not inclined to spend the money for a SSD and/or SSD RAID configuration for just one game - which is what it comes down to as OFF is the only current game/sim I play in tandem with TIR where the edge jaggies occur.

 

At the risk of being redundant - but I am - the TIR/jaggies thing is a OFF-only thing. Attempting to isolate the root cause has been and remains the issue. In your case SSD speed worked for you. If this is because of the game paging out to the SSD to render the terrain then this has more to do with the way CFS3 and/or the OFF overlay is written. As I don't see the jaggies with FSX running at near max scenery settings in tandem with TIR - and surely FSX's scenery detail is at least equal to that of OFF - with the identical subsystem and hardware just confirms my opinion that it's how the game (CFS3) is written and incorporated along with some refinements with the OFF overlay.

 

I can alleviate the jaggies with one or more of the suggestions posted but not eliminate them entirely. I mean, with a W7 64 bit, I7-930 overclocked to 3. 8 GHz, 6 GB of DDR3 running at 1600 MHz system my rig isn't what I'd call a pig in terms of processing ability. And it isn't with all other games I run except for the jaggies with OFF.

 

I learned early on there as some things in life that aren't worth getting worked up about and this is one of them, where my earlier posted jaunt to McDonalds for a chicken sandwich, Coke and oggling the sweet young things was by far more worthwhile...

Edited May 29, 2010 by Over50

[Tamper 9]

Well, Over50, I'm glad we can agree on a few things:

 

Most importantly, that oggling pretty girls is way more fun than anything to do with computers (and no SSD required).

 

Also, I agree absolutely that this is something OFF (CFS3) seems to suffer alone, out of the myriad other games I play - like you, with no problems. It's funny you mentioned SLI earlier, because for a long time everyone blamed it on my SLI setup - which I ultimately disproved by going back to a single card, and was still having tearing and stutters. This was after having upgraded video card, CPU, memory...all the 'usual suspects'. And still, the damned stutters and triangles.

 

Cue the research with mass media storage subsystem. I can't claim I was real smart about it - honestly, it was the only thing *left* after all the other upgrades. But, having thought about it, it started to make sense: Everything you see on the screen has to be loaded at some point; it is all loaded ultimately from the hard disk, and it has to be loaded fast to be smooth. What's the slowest part of most systems, by far? The hard disk. What's the best path to "fast" loading? Well, SSDs and RAID, that's what.

 

Now, I'll agree I've spent a silly amount of time and money to figure this out...but for me, it wasn't (only) about the game, it was about finding out why these two problems stubbornly persisted in an otherwise capable rig. Plus, I'm "allowed" (wife, after all) to spend money on my computer every year or so - I was looking at a choice between going to all new Core i7 stuff (meaning new motherboard, memory, a new CPU...) This could easily wind up costing me well over the price of my SSD/RAID setup.

 

So, at least in my unique position, I actually saved money - and got the performance I wanted.

 

Of couse, your machine is fine. A lot of people blamed everything in my machine over time about this - your video card has too little memory; your CPU isn't fast enough; your SLI is causing stutters, blah, blah, blah...

 

But now I see where at least a couple guys - with far more conservative rigs than you or I have; without SSDs or even RAID - have no problem with the tearing and stutters. But still, no firm "solution".

 

I genuinely hope all this results in someone figuring out the real solution. I sincerly hope it's some configuration setting that costs absolutely nothing - the best thing that could happen for OFF is that it DOESN'T require a supercomputer to run well.

 

And I honestly could give a tinker's damn whether it involves anyone buying SSDs. I have nothing to gain or lose either way, and I won't feel bad about it at all, because I am absolutely pleased with the money I spent on SSDs and the RAID controller. It does MORE for me for than just OFF, by far. (I also own RoF, and though I currently don't have it loaded, it's a total pig in terms of loading times. I'd like to get my money's worth from RoF when it finally gets all the bugs worked out, and the SSDs will definitely help with that).

 

When your question came up, I was only trying to offer up my experiences as a possible solution.

[Over50 0]

Over50,

 

You have a very nice rig bud. I presume you have a program (either FRAPS or something like it) to give you real time feedback of your frames per second while in game, After you switched MaxFPS to 60 and were still getting tearing in TrackIR during fast head turns, what actual frames per second were you getting when you noticed the tearing sir? If, for example, you were flying over an airfield and high enough to get a good fairly large view of the land around you, your frames per second may be dropping to well below 60 at that time and the jaggies would show up. If, however, you're still getting 60 frames per second at the moment you are getting the TrackIR screen tears and Vsync is turned on then my next question would be "what is the refresh rate of your monitor?" Mine is set to 60 and perhaps matching FPS to refresh rate is the issue. If your refresh rate is set to 72, 75 or higher it's very possible the TrackIR prefers a 1:1 ratio of FPS to refresh rate in order to remove the jaggies. That would explain why my jaggies all but dissappear at the 55 - 60 FPS rate. If you put MaxFPS down to 30 as a test, do you find the TrackIR screen tears get worse?

 

Hellshade

 

PS. I agree with you that setting the Terrain sliders to 3 really makes a quality hit to the level of detail. However Creaghorn put a little zip file up on the downloads section called "Creaghorns Homebrew". In it theres a couple of files that can change HDR & Bloom factors and for me at least, after some tweaking, I was able to get some very nice quality terrain even set at 3. Here's a quick video that shows what my game looks like. Aircraft 5, Terrain 3, Scenery 4, Effects 5, Clouds 5. Obviously you always lose some detail when you compress a 3.9 GB video down to less than 200MB but it still looks pretty good. Might be worth downloading it and giving it a try.

 

Hellshades Wings (2:44) HD

 

 

Hellshade..

 

My 1920x1200 IPS LCD native monitor refresh is 60 Hz with no other refresh options supported running DVI. So in my case setting the Max fps to 60 matches my monitor refresh rate, which as mentioned helped some but still have the jaggies with terrain included in the fast scanning but as noted none when sitting on the ground with the engine running and scenery detail and terrain at 4 or when airborne looking above the wing with blue sky and clouds while scanning.

[Hellshade 110]

Hellshade..

 

My 1920x1200 IPS LCD native monitor refresh is 60 Hz with no other refresh options supported running DVI. So in my case setting the Max fps to 60 matches my monitor refresh rate, which as mentioned helped some but still have the jaggies with terrain included in the fast scanning but as noted none when sitting on the ground with the engine running and scenery detail and terrain at 4 or when airborne looking above the wing with blue sky and clouds while scanning.

 

I usually run at 1680 x 1050. I bumped mine up to 1920 x 1200 and the jaggies came back. If you are so inclinded, drop yours down to 1680 x 1050 and see if they dissappear or are greatly reduced. I sometimes find they show up for the first 10 seconds or so of flying and then go away once I have looked around for a few seconds.

 

So, did you see any hot ones? :)

 

Hellshade

[Over50 0]

I usually run at 1680 x 1050. I bumped mine up to 1920 x 1200 and the jaggies came back. If you are so inclinded, drop yours down to 1680 x 1050 and see if they dissappear or are greatly reduced. I sometimes find they show up for the first 10 seconds or so of flying and then go away once I have looked around for a few seconds.

 

So, did you see any hot ones? :)

 

Hellshade

 

I did try a lower resolution w/o success. Also disabled one of my GPU's so as to ensure just one running, forced Vsync on and off in the Nvidia control panel, none of which helped except with Vsync forced off my FRAPS reported fps ran as high as 125 - right where I capped it in the default "Max" setting. But again, even with the higher frames number I still had the jaggies plus the added (and common) problem of display tearing with rapid motion where I had none with Vsync enabled.

 

Just occurred to me that my Dell 24" IPS LCD has a 16:10 ratio format vs the standard 16:9. Someone smarter than me will have to decide whether that is preventing your "Max" 60 fps setting to address the jaggies in my case.

 

As for "the hot ones"...well, at my age most every woman under the age of 60 would fall into that category in varying degrees. Sad I know...but it comes with living this long...

[Hellshade 110]

I did try a lower resolution w/o success. Also disabled one of my GPU's so as to ensure just one running, forced Vsync on and off in the Nvidia control panel, none of which helped except with Vsync forced off my FRAPS reported fps ran as high as 125 - right where I capped it in the default "Max" setting. But again, even with the higher frames number I still had the jaggies plus the added (and common) problem of display tearing with rapid motion where I had none with Vsync enabled.

 

Just occurred to me that my Dell 24" IPS LCD has a 16:10 ratio format vs the standard 16:9. Someone smarter than me will have to decide whether that is preventing your "Max" 60 fps setting to address the jaggies in my case.

 

As for "the hot ones"...well, at my age most every woman under the age of 60 would fall into that category in varying degrees. Sad I know...but it comes with living this long...

 

Turning off Vsync will pretty much always give you screen tear. That's a normal effect, but it also "uncaps" you from the refresh rate so that you can go higher than it in frames per second. Which is why you jumped to 125. I don't believe having a 16:10 ratio instead of the standard 16:9 would matter, but I could be mistaken. But just for giggles, OFF can be set in the Workshop to be either 4:3 ratio or 16:10. You could always trying switching to whichever one it currently isn't set to. Then restart the game for it to take effect and give it a try. I believe it defaults to 4:3 ratio. That would be great if switching it to 16:10 actually fixed the issue, eh?

 

Hellshade

Edited May 30, 2010 by Hellshade

[Hellshade 110]

I did try a lower resolution w/o success. Also disabled one of my GPU's so as to ensure just one running, forced Vsync on and off in the Nvidia control panel, none of which helped except with Vsync forced off my FRAPS reported fps ran as high as 125 - right where I capped it in the default "Max" setting. But again, even with the higher frames number I still had the jaggies plus the added (and common) problem of display tearing with rapid motion where I had none with Vsync enabled.

 

Just occurred to me that my Dell 24" IPS LCD has a 16:10 ratio format vs the standard 16:9. Someone smarter than me will have to decide whether that is preventing your "Max" 60 fps setting to address the jaggies in my case.

 

As for "the hot ones"...well, at my age most every woman under the age of 60 would fall into that category in varying degrees. Sad I know...but it comes with living this long...

 

Over50,

 

Try BirdDogICTs solution.

 

"In my case, I have everything synced to my monitor refresh rate, 1920X1080@60Hz:

 

With MaxFPS=0, Vertical Sync On, TrackIR speed 0.8, I get 45-60 FPS, absolutely no jaggies. The key for me was to sync my GPU refresh rate to the monitor and then adjust the TrackIR speed to the speed that would eliminate jaggies. Without knowing how the TrackIR speed setting actually works, it required a little trial and error."

 

I tried it and it also worked for me. I think his solution is more comprehensive than mine.

 

Hellshade

[Over50 0]

Over50,

 

Try BirdDogICTs solution.

 

"In my case, I have everything synced to my monitor refresh rate, 1920X1080@60Hz:

 

With MaxFPS=0, Vertical Sync On, TrackIR speed 0.8, I get 45-60 FPS, absolutely no jaggies. The key for me was to sync my GPU refresh rate to the monitor and then adjust the TrackIR speed to the speed that would eliminate jaggies. Without knowing how the TrackIR speed setting actually works, it required a little trial and error."

 

I tried it and it also worked for me. I think his solution is more comprehensive than mine.

 

Hellshade

 

 

Many thanks for the reference. I'm currently running TIR at "1" speed and 25 smoothing and I already run every game with Vsync on to prevent general image tearing which is a constant without it on with this 24" monitor. Didn't really affect my previous 20" LCD monitor that much (vsync off to gain fps) but then there weren't as many pixels to push around either. Anyway, I'll set the MaxFPS back to zero and then see if I find a TIR speed setting that works.