Frame Rate

[SCUBAdevine]

My frame rate is ok in any A-A engagements, but any strike missions are pretty much unplayable. I've turned off mirrors and shadows.... changed to x16...put all graphics to minimum. Still nothing. I've searched the forum and read about problems with Radeon cards, but they are all old posts -- and any problems were supposed to be fixed by patches. I have a VisionTek Xtasy9600 (cheapo Radeon) AGP 245MB, P4 2.53 MHz, 1022 MB RAM, and the latest patch.

[+Dave]

Your vid card is hurting you big time.

[SCUBAdevine]

Your vid card is hurting you big time.

I know it is... but I also know it shouldn't be hurting me that much. I play IL2 with the settings all the way up and it's fine.

[+Dave]

You would be surpised how much it does effect.

[Guest MGonzales]

I don't know much about video cards but my system is...

 

- 1.7Ghz

- 512MB SDRAM

- PowerColor Radeon 9600SE (128MB)

 

...and my frame rates are fine with Shadows / Mirrors Off at 1024x768. And that's with the crappy "SE" model. Isn't your card better?

 

BTW, I had to go with this video card because it's the best low-profile (half-size) video card you can buy (or was at the time, maybe still is) which fits inside of my Dell small form factor case (only 4" wide). It's also fanless which was another requirement for my slim-line case.

--

 

 

Mark

Edited October 19, 2005 by MGonzales

[+Fubar512]

Judging by your system specs, I'd say the problem is more an issue of system configuration, rather than inadequate hardware.

 

First, make sure that there aren't any any unnecessary apps running in the background, as they can sap CPU cycles, in effect rendering your 2.53 gHZ CPU far less potent than a 1.5 gHZ model. Also, make sure that your display drivers are up to snuff (my understanding is that the 5.2 Cats are the best ATI drivers for SF/WoV), and that you have DirectX 9.0C installed.

 

Assuming that you're running at 1024x768x32bpp resolution, I'd suggest that you run at no more than 4x Anisotropic filtering, but I'd keep the FSAA at 4x (anti-aliasing is far more important than anisotropic filtering in a flight sim). In Options, I'd set the view distance and the horizon distance to normal, turn mirrors and shadows off, and leave everything else on high.

 

Next, we'll get under the hood and perform a few .ini edits :) . In your Flight folder, locate the FlightEngine.ini file, open it with notepad, then scroll down to where it says "HighDetailOption", and edit it to match the one below (*NOTE* You may be required to extract it from the Flightdata.cat file, using the SFP1E extraction tool, which is available in our downloads section):

 

[HighDetailOption]

HorizonDistance=85000.0

DetailMeshSize=6

DetailLevel=1

WaterEffect=1

NoiseTexture=1

MaxTextureRes=512

 

Give these settings a try, I'm sure that you'll see quite an improvement.

[+streakeagle]

I have much experience running SFP1/WOV with Radeon 8500, 9000, Mobility 9000, and 9100 series cards. Your low end 9600 card should be close in performance.

 

If you have shadows and mirrors turned off, the only thing left that could be killing your performance is FSAA and texture sizes. Since you are encountering the problem on air-to ground missions, it is more than likely releated to ground object detail and terrain textures. The in-game settings allow you to control texture sizes.

 

If you have your card set to default settings, the application is allowed to determine FSAA and I believe it automatically chooses FSAAx4. My old Radeons could not run it at that level. Force Performance FSAAx2 and AFx16 (in my experience AFx16 has little or no affect on FPS). With a P3 1.2GHz, a Radeon 8500 128MB, FSAAx2, AFx16, and 1600x1200x32, mirrors and shadows off, terrain detail and textures to low, I typically saw frame rates in the 20 - 30 FPS region. However, if SAM and flak is intensive, this may cause a dramatic drop in FPS and there are no settings you can really use to fix this other than decreasing the difficulty level for ground defenses.

 

My work laptop has a 2.0GHz P4 and a mobility 9000: much less capable hardware than yours. I can run 1600x1200 with no FSAA or 1280x1024x32 with FSAAx2 with the rest of the settings as above. Do not use 16 bit color. The way these GPUs were designed, it doesn't buy you any performance and it seriously degrades your image quality.

Edited October 19, 2005 by streakeagle

[SCUBAdevine]

Thanks for the help guys, I tried all the things you told me. I just ran a mission and it seems good so far!