SF2: North Atlantic

[+Stary 2,426]

"Don't try, just do it"

[ArturR 17]

Trying to figure out things without extractor

 

ILS first attempt

 

[+Stary 2,426]

swapped dll pointer, eh Artur?

[+Monty CZ 209]

ILS is nothing new in SF2 ...or is it?

I had ILS in L-39 cockpit and it worked well

 

So the question for today "should I buy or should I go" (it was some song wasnt it?)

this mean is it good enough today or do I need to wait for patch to be satisfied?

I want to run the game for the first time and say "Whoa!" :-)

 

Monty CZ

[stingray77 4]

...depends on what makes you "whoa!"....

 

I think it's great - but it still needs some bugs to get ironed out - and furtherly enhanced by mods after that!

[+daddyairplanes 8,718]

from what i see so far budget or computer specs should be the only thing stopping one from buying this. unfortuneatly i fall into the previous category for the moment. sspent the gas money getting the new car!

[kerosene 1]

How are people with lower end PC's finding this?

 

I have a dual core 2.4 , 4gigs ram and a Geforce 2600M GT.

 

Over the ocean its playable, but if a do a quick mission so that iceland is actually visible it just chugs horribly to the point that its unplayable.

 

On the previous games I had graphins set to high with a couple of unlimiteds and it ran fine.

 

Im hoping future patches might make it a little more playable in the future.

[squid 21]

How are people with lower end PC's finding this?

 

I have a dual core 2.4 , 4gigs ram and a Geforce 2600M GT.

 

Over the ocean its playable, but if a do a quick mission so that iceland is actually visible it just chugs horribly to the point that its unplayable.

 

On the previous games I had graphins set to high with a couple of unlimiteds and it ran fine.

 

Im hoping future patches might make it a little more playable in the future.

 

as mentioned elsewhere, reducing mainly the terrain detail to medium / low, combined with horizon distance to normal or low , improves performance significantly while eyecandy is reduced only in the sense of horizon distance which again is ok, it gets on the distance levels of previous SF2. Give that a try. Combines also with reducing some textures like 'pit textures for example and terrain textures to normal or high at most

Edited March 12, 2012 by squid

[+SkateZilla 49]

159437 F-14A 11-Feb-1992

160378 NF-14A 21-Aug-2000

161866 F-14A 23-Oct-2003

158628 F-14A 03-Aug-2004

162610 F-14A 13-Sep-2004

163409 F-14B 11-Apr-2005

161424 F-14B 29-Jun-2005

162691 F-14B 21-Sep-2005

164602 F-14D 28-Mar-2006

164345 F-14D 15-Sep-2006

164341 F-14D 20-Sep-2006

160671 F-14A 19-Mar-2007

160928 F-14A 02-Apr-2007

 

 

These were all in AMARG Inventory last June 2011.

 

Looking at their Status on the Grumman BuNos List Printed in August 2011:

3 Serials is Listed as INOP, the other 10 have a status code of "Unavailable"

 

Now put your soda/coffee/drink down for a second, there are 3 (THREE) Serial Numbers in the 1639xx Range that are Listed as "Active", "Last Location" field of the list was blank for all Three Serials.

Edited March 12, 2012 by SkateZilla

[+KnightWolf45 1,147]

as mentioned elsewhere, reducing mainly the terrain detail to medium / low, combined with horizon distance to normal or low , improves performance significantly while eyecandy is reduced only in the sense of horizon distance which again is ok, it gets on the distance levels of previous SF2. Give that a try. Combines also with reducing some textures like 'pit textures for example and terrain textures to normal or high at most

i have to lower terrain detail, texture,shadows adn water to low to have 25 fps on iceland

my specs

I3 dual core 3.1o ghz

Ram 4 gb

Gforfe 210 1gb ram

directX 11 ddr 3

[+SkateZilla 49]

The terrain Detail has gone up almost 10x in the polygon dept.

 

People are not grasping at how much the poly count of the terrain has been increased.

Run SF2/Nov2011 with debug on everything on high and unlimited w/ 1 F-4J, note the poly count on the debug,

Now Run SF2/NA, with debug on everything on high and unlimited w/ 1 F-4J, note the poly count on the debug.

 

Not only that, but now that the terrain is 3D LOD based it also casts a Shadow.

 

Objects on the Terrain are now all 3d Based, the trees, bushes, donkey's, mules, out houses, everything, and they also cast shadows.

 

So you can take the terrain Polygons count, and essentially double it for the shadow.

 

 

 

then you have to look at the texture layers, there are UV Maps, Specular Maps, and Bump Maps across the entire Terrain.

 

The Basic Water Terrain is most likely a large flat face square w/ UV, Specular, Bump, and now Reflection and Diffuse Maps as well as the Flow/Motion/Wave Layer which is 3d Polygon/Normal based. the Ships on the Water now use upwards of 5-10 TGA Emmitter effects for movement alone.

 

So the Terrain and water both have been increased in polygon and texture usage.

 

During night time, the bloom shaders have been increased, on Afterburner Emmitters, Lights, Explosions, reflections etc.

And objects that are lighted via 3ds max (the lights on my carrier at night look entirely different than they do in SF2/Nov2011)

 

Put it this way:

My 8800GTS Ran SF2 Nov 2011 at a solid 60 Frames/sec even with Hi Poly 3rd party Planes. only dipping to 25 or so Frames/Sec when i use my carrier which was 100,000 Polys + Hi-Res Textures + Alot of TGA Emmiter effects. Everything High/Unlimited

 

I Built a New System.

Powered by an 8 Core FX CPU 16 GB of Ram, and a AMD /Saphire 7950 3GB GPU, in SF2/NA, I get around 45 Fr/Sec over the water, 25-35 over the land, and low 20s on any carrier (stock or 3rd party). Again, everything on High/Unlimited.

 

only time i hit the 60/Fr sec VSYNC cap is when im above the overcast and its the cloud layer below and blue skies above w/ a dozen or so AI planes flying around. as soon as dive through the clouds and the terrain shows up, Fr/sec cuts in half.

 

So lets look at some options:

 

Horizon Distance, Setting this lower will bring in the horizon and render LESS of the 3D terrain, I think at LOW you are Rendering half of what you would be on Unlimited. (I will double check figures).

 

Terrain Detail, Setting this lower will make some of the hills/mountains more "Square" similar but a bit better than the old terrain's Level of detail, some areas look like checker boards w/ land/water..

 

Shadows, Setting this lower will decrease the shadows poly count, by rendering shadows with a lower LOD and Lower visible distance, thus cutting the Poly count.

 

Water Detail, Setting it lower will remove some of the Shader Diffuse/Reflection usage.

 

Effects Detail, Seriously I can set up an Effect that will kill your Fr/Sec to under 10 from 60+, Apparently Rendering the TGAs of the effects drops your Fr/Sec, lowering this option will decrease the quality of the TGAs being rendered for effects, and might be a good source for a Fr/Sec increase.

 

Objects/Aircraft Detail, Lowering this will help, as it lowers your planes Poly count as well as parked statics and wingmen.

 

To run High/Unlimited you need a lot of GPU Power and A lot of VRAM.

 

I have that aplenty and am Still barely able to run at Max Details. (though AMD hasnt officially released any 7950 drivers, 12.2 is still beta).

Edited March 12, 2012 by SkateZilla

[+Julhelm 266]

The terrain Detail has gone up almost 10x in the polygon dept.

 

People are not grasping at how much the poly count of the terrain has been increased.

Run SF2/Nov2011 with debug on everything on high and unlimited w/ 1 F-4J, note the poly count on the debug,

Now Run SF2/NA, with debug on everything on high and unlimited w/ 1 F-4J, note the poly count on the debug.

So in other words it's not very optimized at all, since there are now almost no objects at all on the ground.

[Gr.Viper 131]

Ship SAM launchers reload... Now to teach SA-2 the same trick...

[+SkateZilla 49]

erm, i flew over a few bases that had planes parked, buildings, a mess load of trees and support vehicles (AAA and such) all around it, all casting shadows.

 

the hills cast shadows on the valleys too.

 

with the old terrains, the ground did not cast shadows.

 

 

Forgot to mention, with the water reflection, everything is rendered twice, and one render has an extra few shaders applied to it.

Edited March 12, 2012 by SkateZilla

[+Stary 2,426]

we can forget this amount of ground cover for some time IMO:

 

 

but I'd still take new engine over old one anytime

[+SkateZilla 49]

now ground objects have collision detection...

 

no more flying under the trees and through the trunks.,

[+Brain32 265]

erm, i flew over a few bases that had planes parked, buildings, a mess load of trees and support vehicles (AAA and such) all around it, all casting shadows.

 

the hills cast shadows on the valleys too.

 

with the old terrains, the ground did not cast shadows.

 

 

Forgot to mention, with the water reflection, everything is rendered twice, and one render has an extra few shaders applied to it.

 

Terrain mesh simply has too many polys no other reasons here for such performance drop...

[+Stary 2,426]

now ground objects have collision detection...

 

no more flying under the trees and through the trunks.,

 

given the trees are standard ground objects vs TOD generated fake entities, no suprise really

[Gr.Viper 131]

You can even score kills on trees. Nam mods could use defoliant.

[+Brain32 265]

given the trees are standard ground objects vs TOD generated fake entities, no suprise really

 

Yes but they are separate trees, not really forrests which need to have a different approach because let's face it, making renders for 3D art is one thing, making objects for a game another.

 

I understand TK's approach to Iceland because it's most prominent geographic features are cliffs and mountains and hills he went for high poly on them cutting on everything else, still I think he(his team) overdone it a bit because you just can't slap millions of polys all around and hope people will not complain on performance, sure those few with uber machines probably will not but...

[+Julhelm 266]

And more importantly the ground doesn't even look like it has millions of polys. There are no objects except for on 4 places on the entire terrain. Any tree mod for old terrains still has to render a buttload of polys since each tree = 4 triangles. Yet iceland doesn't have any trees on it yet still has 10x polys drawn? That just screams unoptimized. If it looked better than modded stock desert terrain I could buy the performance hit but it just doesn't.

 

As much as I enjoy the SH-style water and naval combat element I honestly feel he failed to deliver on the terrain. Modders here have set a benchmark for what can be achieved with the old tech so any new tech should look better than that IMHO.

[Canadair 16]

And more importantly the ground doesn't even look like it has millions of polys. There are no objects except for on 4 places on the entire terrain. Any tree mod for old terrains still has to render a buttload of polys since each tree = 4 triangles. Yet iceland doesn't have any trees on it yet still has 10x polys drawn? That just screams unoptimized. If it looked better than modded stock desert terrain I could buy the performance hit but it just doesn't.

 

As much as I enjoy the SH-style water and naval combat element I honestly feel he failed to deliver on the terrain. Modders here have set a benchmark for what can be achieved with the old tech so any new tech should look better than that IMHO.

 

 

+41250

[+SkateZilla 49]

Yes but they are separate trees, not really forrests which need to have a different approach because let's face it, making renders for 3D art is one thing, making objects for a game another.

 

I understand TK's approach to Iceland because it's most prominent geographic features are cliffs and mountains and hills he went for high poly on them cutting on everything else, still I think he(his team) overdone it a bit because you just can't slap millions of polys all around and hope people will not complain on performance, sure those few with uber machines probably will not but...

 

 

[+Brain32 265]

/clip

 

Looks like something for FPS games, not sims...

[+SkateZilla 49]

im pretty sure a common "Forrest" can be made in Max using low polys,

 

Build the outter edge trees, then build the canopy of the forrest and attach them together, merge into terrain scene, place.

 

you dont need to model every last branch/trunk as you wont be able to see down into them and you wont be able to fly into them now anyway.