Video Tearing in OFF - Who has it, Who doesn't?

[Tamper 9]

Right there with you Rabu. Morris and I have both said SSDs worked *for us*, in our cases - but I don't think either of us said it would fix all the cases out there.

 

What's becoming apparent to me is that this varies, a lot - and so far, machines of the same class seem to vary, and no one 'solution' works for every case. (Of course, I'm sure many of you knew that already).

 

The latest idea - changes in MaxFPS, seem to make all the difference on Hellshade's rig - but I did notice he has a fairly high-end setup. Meanwhile, Lou (relatively conservative setup) didn't notice the difference with Hellshade's suggestions...and, to make it more interesting, Duce has a very conservative rig (perhaps moreso than Lou) and *did* note Hellshade's reported improvement.

 

And, at the same time, you obviously have reason for thinking it's related to power - and it could be.

 

Taking all this in together, it seems to me that there is at least one other factor which no one's identified, that, while it is obviously affected by MaxFPS settings in some cases, it definitely appears to be somehow an interaction between more than any one single factor.

 

In other words, it looks like MaxFPS settings will work in some cases, but maybe (I'm saying MAYBE - no one get all excited, please) it doesn't work unless combined with something else.

 

Make sense?

Edited May 29, 2010 by Tamper

[Hellshade 110]

Makes sense to me, although I'm not ready to say it doesn't work in all cases until the people who still have the jaggies confirm two things.

 

1. That when they are getting the TrackIR jaggies (even after putting MaxFPS up to 60) that they are actually running at 60FPS when the problem happens. I can set MaxFPS to 200, but getting there is a different story, right?

 

2. It's possible also that the FPS being pushed out needs to be at a 1:1 ratio with the refresh rate on the monitor. I'm not saying it does. But since my monitor is limited to a mere 60hz, I can't push it higher to test if the jaggies come back while still running at 60 FPS. It may be a total coincidence that my jaggies go away when FPS are running equal to refresh rate or it may be the number you need to reach to make the magic happen.

 

When we get the answer to those two questions, we'll know better if it works for everyone or just some people. My gut says both of those are a factor.

 

Hellshade

[rabu 9]

Yep, makes sense, Tamper.. #%*%! computers!

 

OK, looking at the voting stats, and there aren't a lot, but hopefully more will join this weekend, here's the results that seem relevant:

 

Use TrackIR and have NO Tearing: RAF-Lovert, TSmoke, TheMightySRC, Fentiswlf, Hood, Bigfish3

 

Use TrackIR and HAVE Tearing: Hellshade (Maxfps fixed), Duce Lewis (Maxfps fixed), VonPaulus, WinstonDoRight, Barkhorn, Cameljockey, BurningBeard, Velvet.

 

I'm going to leave out the non TrackIR users for now, but they can try this out to.

 

For those haveing the problem, will you please try out Hellshades solution and see if it works?

 

Re Hellshade: Go to C:\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\default folder and edit the cfs3.xml 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.

[Hellshade 110]

If you try this, please double check with FRAPS or some other real time frame rate checking program to be sure that you are actually getting a solid 60 FPS on your screen when flying. Setting MaxFPS will tell the computer how many you want it to do. It doesn't mean your computer will necessarily be able to hit that number consistently. If it can't, then try bumping your scenery and terrain settings down a point at a time to see if that allows you to hit the 60 FPS. Also, please not what the refresh rate of your monitor is set at. Thank you.

 

Hellshade

[BirdDogICT 3]

Hellshade...be kind enough to point out where you see 60 FPS in BirdDog's settings? He says he has Vertical Refresh 'always on' (I assume this functions as VSYNC does, locking the FPS to the monitor's refresh rate) and does say his monitor is set to 60Hz...but he also says he uses D3DOverrider to control refresh, and doesn't say how it's set.

 

I see no other mention of anything that would control his FPS.

 

Help me out?

Tamper,

 

Sorry I didn't reply sooner...real life intruding.

 

My situation applies to those with ATI cards. First off, ATI's Catalyst Control Center has menu items allowing one to turn on Vertical Refresh (same as Vsync) and OpenGL Triple Buffering. But there is a known bug with the ATI Drivers that prevents those settings to operate with some versions of DirectX. Even if the're turned on, they don't work with some applications.

 

SO...I run D3DOverrider in the background, and it enables the VSync and Triple Buffering that I setup in Catalyst. D3DOverrider is bundled with RivaTuner, but I use a standalone version.

 

Hope this helps.

[Morris 2]

BirdDogICT.

 

can you pls give me a link for downloading D3DOverrider?

 

Thanking you

 

Morris

[Von Paulus 8]

BirdDogICT.

 

can you pls give me a link for downloading D3DOverrider?

 

Thanking you

 

Morris

D3DOverrider belongs to RivaTuner. Only it won't work with your ATI's graphic card. Probably there's a workaround.

However you don't have to bother with that if you just only want D3DOverrrider (it'll run independently from RivaTuner). When installing RivaTuner it will also install D3dOverrider.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

I discovered another tweak this AM in regards to the tearing and/or stuttering issues associated with TrackIR and OFF. Since CFS3 was not designed to support multi-core technology it runs as good, if not better, on a single core as it does on two or more. I remembered an article many moons ago that touched on this very issue and the solution at that time was to go into your program processes via Task Manager and set CFS3's affinity for only one of the CPU's, as this would cure the stutters and shakes numerous flyers were experiencing at that time. So, I decided to give this a try myself with my OFF/TIR set-up. I launched TIR and OFF, then brought up Task Manager and set program priorities to "high" for each, then set TIR affinity for "CPU 0" and OFF affinity for "CPU 1", (so that basically they each have their own CPU to work with). Lo and behold I got even smoother performance from my TrackIR. I encourage others to test this out and see if they gain an advantage in their situation as well. Good luck.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

 

.

[Morris 2]

Von Paulus,

 

thanks for the info. I have installed RivaTuner and it works fine.

 

cheers

 

Morris

[BirdDogICT 3]

BirdDogICT.

 

can you pls give me a link for downloading D3DOverrider?

 

Thanking you

 

Morris

Morris,

 

Here's the link to standalone version of D3DOverrider: http://www.mediafire.com/?2zzymudjfbh

 

As Van Morris noted, it's usually bundled with RivaTuner, but this version doesn't require RivaTuner to be loaded.

 

BTW, I started using this utility as a way to eliminate screen tearing with TrackIR in BOBII and IL-2. The recommended solution is to turn on VSync, but this is not possible in ATI Catalyst without third party utilities (this is a known problem with ATI drivers, still not fixed as of Catalyst 10.4). Video anomalies with TrackIR aren't unique to BHaH.

Edited May 31, 2010 by BirdDogICT

[Von Paulus 8]

As Van Morris noted

Eheheheh. BirDog were you thinking in Van Morrison?

[Morris 2]

BirdDog,

 

Ur the man.

[BirdDogICT 3]

Eheheheh. BirDog were you thinking in Van Morrison?

Is my Freudian slip showing??

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

Shorten the shoulder straps BirdDog. I have to do that to mine regularly.

 

.

[rabu 9]

Just want to encourage anyone who may have missed this to please read the first two posts and then please post your information. Hopefully some of the techs on the site will be able to use the information to help find a solution to the tearing problem. Thanks to all to took the time on this.

[Tamper 9]

And thank you, rabu, for your efforts to organize input and hopefully resolve this issue.

 

(I changed my vote just now, having recently acquired TIR5 and the trackclip no stutters or trianagles here). Just to reiterate:

 

CPU: C2D e8400, o/c to 3.7G

RAM : 4GB Crucial Dominator PC2-6400

Video: eVGA GTX260 /core216 896M GDDR3

MB: eVGA 780iFTW

Viewsonic 19"wide (16:10 aspect; 1440x900)

HD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 500G in RAID0 (C:); 2x OCZ Vertex 30G SSD RAID0 (D: - OFF installed on this volume)

- ALL SATA300 drives; ALL on AMCC/3Ware 9650SE PCIe 2.0-16x "hardware" RAID controller

On-board RealTek sound

PS 750 Watt Corsair HX750

OS: Windows XP 32-bit, SP3

OFF BH&H, HitR patched to 1.47

video settings (generally) per sticky and OFF home page recommendations

Use NVCP to set video hardware options (no Nhancer at this time)

Also use an app called Prio to set OFF CPU priority to "above normal"; both TrackIR and CFS3.exe are set to run on both CPU cores - still experimenting with affinity/priority.

 

No stutter or tearing at all since SSD RAID array set up, even when using on-board RAID controller. BUT definitely had both stutters and tearing - without TIR - prior to SSDs.

Edited June 4, 2010 by Tamper

[Parky 8]

Yes....I second that.

 

Thanks Rob

 

 

Mobo: Asus P6X58D-Premium

CPU: i7-920, O/C to 3.6GHz

RAM : 6GB G-Skill PC3-16000@ 1804MHz 9-9-9-24 CR 1T

Video: Sapphire 5970 OC/Core 735/Memory 1010/ 2 Gig GDDR5

Catalyst 10.4

Asus 26"wide (16:10 aspect; 1920x1200)

HD: 4x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200rpm in RAID10 (C:); 1x Western Digital Raptor 36G 10000 RPM (Nothing but Page File for RAID10 Array on this drive)

ALL SATA300 drives; ALL controlled by Onboard ICH10r

Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Pro (PCI-1x)

PS: 850 Watt Corsair HX850 Modular

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

OFF BH&H, HitR patched to 1.47

Video settings (They vary from day to day as I suffer from Chronic Tweakitis)

TrackIR 4 Pro w/clip. Software 5.0b

 

Stuttering has never been an issue with this setup. Occasional, but not very obvious tearing when lighting conditions are "normal" and blue sky is present during normal gameplay. Much more pronounced when capturing a clip in FRAPS under same condtions. Capturing at higher framerate (60FPS as opposed to 30FPS) helps condition somewhat, but does not completely eliminate it.

 

I can eliminate the problem almost entirely by adjusting filtering levels and adjusting sliders lower, but I ain't doing that....mostly because I'm a stubborn sonofabitch and I think there has to be another way around it.

 

Seriously toying with the idea of installing a single SSD (for now) strictly to hold the OFF install in order to see what happens. If it fixes the issue, I'm going to be proposing marriage to both Tamper AND Morris, and then they can fight over who gets to wear the wedding dress.

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

Edited June 4, 2010 by Parky

[Tamper 9]

*lmao* Parky...let's not go picking out curtains just yet...I still want to 'play around' with all this stuff to see if I can *make* the problem happen. Stands to reason that I should be able to, if the folks with much stronger systems than mine have issues. Could be that just raising the sliders would work (mine are fairly conservative for now; 5-3-3-4-3 I think).

 

Kidding aside, I thikn it might be just as important to break one that's running, as it is to fix one that's not. 'Course, trouble with that theory is I don't want to break mine now that I'm enjoying TIR

 

But, in the interest of science...

 

We're doing a garage sale today/tomorrow, so time is at a premium for flying (wife scowls at me every time I glance at the sporty new 'thingamajiggie'). And I also just got an upgrade CPU from eBay for one of my older rigs that I need to install and try out...*sigh*

Edited June 4, 2010 by Tamper

[Morris 2]

Gentlemen,

 

I need some info on overclocking my CPU please.

 

I'm reading that everybody is doing it but if never tried. Always worried that i will stuff-up the whole machine.

 

I have a Mobo: Asus P6t Deluxe v2 and CPU: i7-950 @ 3.07GHz

 

Thanking you in advance.

 

Morris

 

 

 

 

[Tamper 9]

Morris, can't speak for 'core' cpu's, but overclocking has gotten easier and easier over the past couple years. most often now it's usually just a matter of going into BIOS and changing a value, maybe two - unless you wanted to get real crazy, of course. I've found overclocking 10-20% very easy, almost as simple literally as changing one or two settings. One suggestion is go to the Asus forums and read what others have to say about overclocking *that* particular board. More experience with it there than probably anywhere.

 

Good luck.

[Morris 2]

Thanx Tamper

 

[Von Paulus 8]

If you don't feel confident to mess with BIOS, Asus has a program that do it automatically for you.

Just download the last version of Turbo V from Asus site.

Of course all depend how far you want to go. If you want more than 10%-20% than you'll have to mess with voltages and other BIOS settings.

You'll need a better CPU cooler than the Intel in box.

[rabu 9]

.

 

I discovered another tweak this AM in regards to the tearing and/or stuttering issues associated with TrackIR and OFF. Since CFS3 was not designed to support multi-core technology it runs as good, if not better, on a single core as it does on two or more. I remembered an article many moons ago that touched on this very issue and the solution at that time was to go into your program processes via Task Manager and set CFS3's affinity for only one of the CPU's, as this would cure the stutters and shakes numerous flyers were experiencing at that time. So, I decided to give this a try myself with my OFF/TIR set-up. I launched TIR and OFF, then brought up Task Manager and set program priorities to "high" for each, then set TIR affinity for "CPU 0" and OFF affinity for "CPU 1", (so that basically they each have their own CPU to work with). Lo and behold I got even smoother performance from my TrackIR. I encourage others to test this out and see if they gain an advantage in their situation as well. Good luck.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

 

.

 

Lou: I tried this this afternoon and couldn't get it to work. I assume that the CFS3 part of OFF has to be running when you set the priorities and affinity. So I started a quick mission in OFF and then tried to get into task manager but couldn't. What were the steps you took and is there another way to alter these for the cfs3.exe file with out actually having to run the program while doing it?

[Morris 2]

Thanx VP

 

m