FlighEngine.ini questions

[madvad 655]

Guys, analyzing the reason why sometimes my game crashes at 80% of loading, and the reason appears to be something related to directx10.dll (even though I have a 4gb video card, which I consider OK for an old game like this), I went to take a look at this flightengine.ini file and found some entries that I would like to know what they do, such as the ones I pointed out:

[GraphicsSettings]
ZBufferDepth=24
MaxVertexCount=16384
MaxIndexCount=98303
MaxTextureCount=4096
MaxModelType=2024
//MaxModelType=2048
MaxMeshPerScene=4096
//MaxLightPerScene=256
MaxLightPerScene=512
MaxModelPerScene=2024
//MaxModelPerScene=2048
AspectRatio=1.333333
MinPixelSize=1.0

[UnlimitedDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=62000.0
//HorizonDistance=70000.0
DetailMeshSize=11    
DetailLevel=2
WaterEffect=2
NoiseTexture=1
//MaxTextureRes=-1
MaxTextureRes=3072

The ones that are listed as commented // I probably copied them from someone over the years, but to be honest, apart from the obvious ones, I don't know what they improve individually.

And if anyone has a file like this that allows some improvement in the game, or even that fixes what might be wrong with mine, I'd appreciate it.

Edited October 21 by madvad

[+Sundowner 4,858]

Chances are that even with a 4gb card you are still running out of video memory, especially if you've got lots of 4096x4096 textures to load. 

[madvad 655]

14 minutes ago, Sundowner said:

Chances are that even with a 4gb card you are still running out of video memory, especially if you've got lots of 4096x4096 textures to load. 

Well, that's what I believe.

Missions with large maps full of details like Anatolia are a matter of luck, they often crash.

I remember that in the past everything ran without any problems, but then I also remember that in the past there were no mods with textures of such high quality.

When I see that the mod has very high textures, I convert and reduce them to 2048 or 1024.

But...

[+EricJ 4,260]

I mean as mods come by more and more the larger the textures will be, so upgrading your video card will probably be needed at the minimum. I mean you can only hold on to it for so long before newer mods wreck it.

[madvad 655]

12 minutes ago, EricJ said:

I mean as mods come by more and more the larger the textures will be, so upgrading your video card will probably be needed at the minimum. I mean you can only hold on to it for so long before newer mods wreck it.

Yes, but apart from that SF2 itself has a problem related to the allocated memory hash, and it crashes after some missions.
If the mods are getting heavier and heavier, what are we going to do?

[+EricJ 4,260]

Well my gaming laptop handles SF2 fine. I mean it's a bit wonky with some things but it runs fine as it comes, even with newer mods and bigger textures. Like I said upgrading would only fix the issue if it's a memory problem, regardless of card or whatnot. I can understand money issues but yeah, a 4GB card needs to be upgraded, regardless of how old it is. I honestly can't suggest otherwise with very old hardware, and upgrading it would solve the issue.

[+ravenclaw_007 7,633]

i updated my old 8gb grafics card to a 12gb  Gigabyte RTX 3060 but on some terrains i still run in to problems, actually there are only 2 terrains that causes problems that is the Anatolia terrain ( final version ) and the Germany CE from Rents ( final version ) on this 2 terrains i have problems even with stock aircrafts not to mention with heavily modded ones 

all other terrains work fine  , i have some early versions of this 2 terrains and they work better but sometimes even this early versions causing problems

my flight engine ini is set up to have trees / buildings visible up to the horizon

i´m using 

• Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H mainbord
• Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming OC LHR 12 GB
• Intel Core I7-4790K  4 x 4.00 GHz
• G.Skill 32 GB Ram DDR3-1333
• Windows 7 pro 64 bit

so it is a old computer but i´m happy with it , and for all the guys who are telling me that Windows 7 is no longer supported , i still get regular updates from Microsoft 

 

thats my FlightEngine.ini settings

[GraphicsSettings]
ZBufferDepth=24
MaxVertexCount=16384
MaxIndexCount=32768
MaxTextureCount=4096
MaxModelType=2024
MaxMeshPerScene=4096
MaxModelPerScene=2024
MaxLightPerScene=256
AspectRatio=1.333333
MinPixelSize=1.0

[BackgroundSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=80000.0
NearClipDistance=3000.0

[ForegroundSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=14000.0
NearClipDistance=0.45

[InsideSceneClip]
FarClipDistance=250.0
NearClipDistance=0.01

[LowDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=30000.0
DetailMeshSize=2
DetailLevel=0
WaterEffect=0
NoiseTexture=0
MaxTextureRes=128

[MedDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=52000.0
DetailMeshSize=2
DetailLevel=1
WaterEffect=1
NoiseTexture=0
MaxTextureRes=256

[HighDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=60000.0
DetailMeshSize=14
DetailLevel=2
WaterEffect=2
NoiseTexture=1
MaxTextureRes=512

[UnlimitedDetailOption]
HorizonDistance=72000.0
DetailMeshSize=19
DetailLevel=2
WaterEffect=2
NoiseTexture=1
MaxTextureRes=-1

 

and that is the result from that setting , you have trees up to the horizon , and yes that may have something to do that the Anatolia and the Germany CE terrain from Rents is not working well on my computer but i dont like this near clipping where trees or buildings are popping up out of nowhere , this picture is from the North Vietnam terrain , the area with the red arrows is enlarged on the top of the picture

 

so it is up to you , if you want the Anatolia terrain and the Germany CE terrain from Rent to work in your game you have to reduce a lot of this settings and accept the near clipping distance and that objects pop up from nowhere ( basically the original TW settings )  or you modify your FlightEngine.ini and you game Detail settings and use the other terrains available , its your choice 

aaahhhh...... or buy a super / new computer that may help as well 

the grapihc card alone will not solve your problems as you can see with my RTX 3060 , i still have the problems 

 

Edited October 22 by ravenclaw_007

[madvad 655]

18 hours ago, ravenclaw_007 said:

the grapihc card alone will not solve your problems as you can see with my RTX 3060 , i still have the problems 

Yeah, this is what I talking about.
Video cards aside, I think there is another reason for these crashes.

As you mentioned, I used to run the campaign in Anatolia without any problems, and with the new terrain, and using the same aircraft, etc., I have been having crashes.

I don't know if it has to do with some NVIDIA update, there was one of them that my game didn't run at all, I reverted to the previous one and it worked.

And today with the latest driver, it works as well.

I know that my video card (1050Ti) is far from powerful by today's standards, but I don't consider my machine that bad (I5 from not so old generation, 16Gb RAM), and I run several current games with graphics set to good settings without any problems, such as ArmA Reforger, GTA V, Assetto Corsa and others.

Another example is my notebook, with a 3GB video card that used to run smoothly what I can't run today (like ODS 30Th for example).

For example, the "Iraq 80" and "IraqWA" maps from ODS suddenly stopped working, even though I had already reinstalled them and done everything.
"Iraq 03" and "IranIraq" work fine, just like the GermanyCE (you mention doesn't work for you, it's ok for me).
I have the impression that something is corrupted, I don't know...

I still don't understand... :)

Edited October 22 by madvad

[+EricJ 4,260]

25 minutes ago, madvad said:

I know that my video card (1050Ti) is far from powerful by today's standards, but I don't consider my machine that bad (I5 from not so old generation, 16Gb RAM), and I run several current games with graphics set to good settings without any problems, such as ArmA Reforger, GTA V, Assetto Corsa and others.

 

Aside, I'm waiting for Arma 4 instead. As a modder I like some stability when modding

[madvad 655]

1 hour ago, EricJ said:

Aside, I'm waiting for Arma 4 instead. As a modder I like some stability when modding

OFFtopic:

The ArmA series is the game of my life.
I started with Operation Flashpoint, then I moved on to ArmA2+OA, where I have thousands of hours, created mods, servers... for me, it's the perfect MilSim game.
When A3 came out, I bought all the DLCs and was super excited, only to be deeply saddened, because, in my opinion, they ruined the game.
The graphics were obviously a huge improvement over OA, and the Workshop was an innovation, but other than that, the gameplay and storyline, I found horrible.
They tried to make ArmA more palatable to FPS players like BF and CoD, and I didn't like that.
I went to play Reforger without high expectations, and to my surprise, it's basically an A2 brought to 2024, obviously with its limitations, after all, it's just a "test mule" for A4.

[+EricJ 4,260]

10 minutes ago, madvad said:

OFFtopic:

The ArmA series is the game of my life.
I started with Operation Flashpoint, then I moved on to ArmA2+OA, where I have thousands of hours, created mods, servers... for me, it's the perfect MilSim game.
When A3 came out, I bought all the DLCs and was super excited, only to be deeply saddened, because, in my opinion, they ruined the game.
The graphics were obviously a huge improvement over OA, and the Workshop was an innovation, but other than that, the gameplay and storyline, I found horrible.
They tried to make ArmA more palatable to FPS players like BF and CoD, and I didn't like that.
I went to play Reforger without high expectations, and to my surprise, it's basically an A2 brought to 2024, obviously with its limitations, after all, it's just a "test mule" for A4.

I personally don't think A3 is that bad, and some DLCs like the helo, and Marksman were good, and I like playing it still, and when A4 comes out I'll be moving to that depending on how it works out, but good to know.

Edited October 22 by EricJ

[simonmiller416 1,927]

The edit of FlightEngine.ini may not solve the most CTD problem, but may only delay it.

I think this is all caused by SF2's poor RAM management. I have to close the game and restart it after playing for a certain period of time to force unload resources.

When the progress bar is around 80%, I think the game is loading the ground resources.

If you set Ground Objects to Low separately in the graphics settings, I think it will be solved immediately, but the map will make you feel like playing an Android game.

P.S. Maybe you can check if your Ground Objects all have high-definition textures? This will undoubtedly increase the loading burden of the game.

I personally usually downsize them to 1024x1024 or even lower, I've run into situations like what you describe before and these solutions have helped alleviate the problem even I cound set ground object to high.

 

OFF TOPIC:

9 hours ago, EricJ said:

I personally don't think A3 is that bad, and some DLCs like the helo, and Marksman were good, and I like playing it still, and when A4 comes out I'll be moving to that depending on how it works out, but good to know.

 

9 hours ago, madvad said:

OFFtopic:

The ArmA series is the game of my life.
I started with Operation Flashpoint, then I moved on to ArmA2+OA, where I have thousands of hours, created mods, servers... for me, it's the perfect MilSim game.
When A3 came out, I bought all the DLCs and was super excited, only to be deeply saddened, because, in my opinion, they ruined the game.
The graphics were obviously a huge improvement over OA, and the Workshop was an innovation, but other than that, the gameplay and storyline, I found horrible.
They tried to make ArmA more palatable to FPS players like BF and CoD, and I didn't like that.
I went to play Reforger without high expectations, and to my surprise, it's basically an A2 brought to 2024, obviously with its limitations, after all, it's just a "test mule" for A4.

ARMA2/3 player here, I started playing ARMA3 when it came out in 2013, and bought all the DLCs I was interested in.

I agree with both opinions. ARMA3 does simplify many of the excellent settings in ARMA2, making the game very entertaining for all players (unfortunately this is the direction of the market).But the player can decide how to play it, follow those IRL rules and so on, it can still be what we want.

 

Edited October 23 by simonmiller416

[bazillius 1,259]

16 hours ago, madvad said:

(1050Ti)

I play on GF 460 with 1 Gb and with 8Gb RAM and everything is okay. set Direct X9. SF2 Crashes because it crashes sometimes.

[madvad 655]

10 hours ago, simonmiller416 said:

The edit of FlightEngine.ini may not solve the most CTD problem, but may only delay it.

I think this is all caused by SF2's poor RAM management. I have to close the game and restart it after playing for a certain period of time to force unload resources.

When the progress bar is around 80%, I think the game is loading the ground resources.

If you set Ground Objects to Low separately in the graphics settings, I think it will be solved immediately, but the map will make you feel like playing an Android game.

P.S. Maybe you can check if your Ground Objects all have high-definition textures? This will undoubtedly increase the loading burden of the game.

I personally usually downsize them to 1024x1024 or even lower, I've run into situations like what you describe before and these solutions have helped alleviate the problem even I cound set ground object to high.

And I agree with you.

I've already checked my GroundObjects folder and there weren't many high-res textures.

The ones I found, I reduced to 1024, and to be honest, I didn't see any difference in gameplay in terms of visual quality.

There are things that don't make sense to me, like a missile or rocketpod with 4096 textures, for example.I think it's unnecessary, it's such a small object to have such a refined texture, taking up resources, especially in SF2, which everyone here knows has terrible memory management.

(It would be great if there was an automatic memory cleanup in the engine, between one mission and another, it would solve a lot. This probably wasn't a problem when the game was created, and it used textures in 256, 512 and few objects).

As I said before, I understand that many may think that my video card is insufficient, but in my opinion, the crashes that occur have more to do with some failure like this at 80% than with graphical inability.

Remembering that this doesn't always happen, generally only on maps where the map creator himself has already warned that CTDs can occur.

What bothers me is that I used to play without any problems, but now I don't.

Maybe some recent NVIDIA driver started causing this, because when I look in the event viewer, the error is associated with "DX10.dll".
Who knows 

That's why I thought that maybe some different configuration in those flightengine.ini parameters could fix this.

Quote

 

OFF TOPIC:

ARMA2/3 player here, I started playing ARMA3 when it came out in 2013, and bought all the DLCs I was interested in.

I agree with both opinions. ARMA3 does simplify many of the excellent settings in ARMA2, making the game very entertaining for all players (unfortunately this is the direction of the market).But the player can decide how to play it, follow those IRL rules and so on, it can still be what we want.

 

ArmA has always been a co-op game, focused on milSim.
So much so that it didn't appeal to the average competitive FPS player, like BF or CoD.
When A3 came out, and I saw that strange gameplay, the strange physics, those weird animations, the strange way enemies died, that standard FPS crosshair instead of the excellent one from previous games, I left a bad taste in my mouth.
For me, it didn't have the same immersion as the previous games, where you felt immersed in a conflict in Afghanistan, or Eastern Europe.
Those futuristic weapons that were so senseless, were unbearable to me (And yes, I know why).
I tried to play it for months, but not even the people I played with liked it, and we always went back to the fights in Fallujah and etc. in the good old OA with ACE and other mods.

But I understand that for Bohemia it was a financial success, even if it displeased the more hardcore fans.
The Reforger seems to me like a call to these old fans, the Cold War era, if the A4 continues on this path, I think it will be cool.

[madvad 655]

6 hours ago, bazillius said:

I play on GF 460 with 1 Gb and with 8Gb RAM and everything is okay. set Direct X9. SF2 Crashes because it crashes sometimes.

I will try to force DX9=TRUE and see whats gonna happen...
 It doesn't seem right to me that a crash while the game is still loading the objects has to do with the graphics capacity of the video card being powerful or not, because the action hasn't even started yet, and if it did, theoretically it would run with very low fps, or it would crash while the game was running.

[simonmiller416 1,927]

10 hours ago, madvad said:

What bothers me is that I used to play without any problems, but now I don't.

Maybe some recent NVIDIA driver started causing this, because when I look in the event viewer, the error is associated with "DX10.dll".
Who knows 

That's why I thought that maybe some different configuration in those flightengine.ini parameters could fix this.

I also believe it's a similar reason, but lowering the Ground Object quality works for me.

For example, on the Donbass map, when I set the Ground Object(in options) quality to high or very high,I get CTD in 5 of 10 rounds of playing.

But when I change that to low, everything will be fine, no CTD, but there will be almost no trees and buildings on the map (this is why I said it will become an Android game lol)

I'm not criticizing the terrain itself, on the contrary, I like it very much, I can notice that the Donbass terrain has a lot of well-designed engagement zones and key positions, so there are a lot of unit spawns.This must be the cause of the CTD, but the direct cause is still those high quality vehicles, yes, NOT the terrain.

About NVIDIA driver, indeed.About five years ago, I had a laptop with a GTX950M, i5-6xxx, 8GB DDR4, and everything was working fine.I believe older versions of the driver will be fine (iirc there was a thread mentioning this),but unfortunately they don't work with more modern games and software.

Edited October 24 by simonmiller416

[madvad 655]

13 hours ago, simonmiller416 said:

About NVIDIA driver, indeed.About five years ago, I had a laptop with a GTX950M, i5-6xxx, 8GB DDR4, and everything was working fine.I believe older versions of the driver will be fine (iirc there was a thread mentioning this),but unfortunately they don't work with more modern games and software.

Yes...I can play Rent´s GermanyCE whitout a problem, Anatolia V1 and others heavy detailed maps whitout a problem, but others like Anatolia V2, IraqWA80 and ODS 30Th I used to play smoothly, but not anymore, crash almost 50/50.
Something is changed, and I dunno what.
Probably something changed in the NVIDIA/Windows drivers a while ago and is causing this.