stevevag

Turns out my sub par system performance in running WoV was greatly alliviated by performing some Windows XP tweeks that I forgot to do when I bought my new system. These tweeks originally came from an article in PC Aviator magazine. I got them a few years ago from a forum on the www.Hovercontrol.com website, and used them to boost the performance of my FS2002 sim on my old Toshiba notebook PC. Here's the Windows XP tweeks I performed. Disable Last File Access Stamping: To turn this off go to the command prompt: At the command prompt enter the following: FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 1 If you ever want to turn it back on again enter: FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 0 . Then Reboot computer. Turn Off Windows Indexing: To turn it off go to Control Panel => Add/Remove Programs => Windows Components. Then deselect Indexing Service. Increase File System Cache: Perform the following: CONTROL PANEL => SYSTEM => ADVANCED => PERFORMANCE => SETTINGS => ADVANCED => MEMORY USAGE. Change the option from Programs to System Cache. Reboot computer. Clean Windows Registry: A great Trialware program called Ace Utilities that will clean out your Windows registry from old, obsolete, and incorrect Windows registry settings is. You can get this free at: http://www.acelogix.com/downloads/aceutils.exe But before I ran the Ace utilities, I first created a restore point I could rollback the system to if anything went wrong. Anytime one messes with the Windows registry there's always the possibility of screwing up the XP operating system. After you have cleaned your Windows registry then reboot. Set the "Launch folder windows in separate process setting": Open the "My Computer\Tools\Folder Options\View -and tick the "Launch folder windows in separate process" box. Window XP will open any new window (including program) in its own memory and in separate process priority. This increases stability and speed but uses much more RAM than before. So I think you need lots of extra RAM to see any benefit from this. In addition, I got this last performance tip from www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#page_executive If you have 512 megs or more of memory, you can increase system performance by having the core system kept in memory. But before I made the registry changes, I first created a restore point I could rollback the system to if anything went wrong. Start Regedit. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive Set the value to be 1 Reboot the computer. Instead of using Regedit to make this change, I downloaded a program from this website and executed it. It made the change for me. Now I'm getting much better performance from all my flight simulators, and can run WoV on higher graphics settings without any stuttering from low frame rates. But I'm not sure which of the above tips made the most difference. Perhaps some of the tips may have a nasty side effect I'm not yet aware of? If anyone knows about these or any other Windows XP performance tips, I'd be interested in hearing from you. Perhaps these kinds of tips are already available somewhere on www.combatace.com or another combat flight sim forum?

<<Try the following mod as found in the knowledge base. With it I can now run mostly medium/high level graphics without a hitch with my crappy system. [HighDetailOption] HorizonDistance=75000.0 DetailMeshSize=6 DetailLevel=1 WaterEffect=1 NoiseTexture=1 MaxTextureRes=0 (you will read -1 here) >> I put in the above mod a few days ago, and it seemed to improve on the frame rates during a dogfight considerably. However, I think there's still room for improvement, considering you guys are getting better performance running similar hardware. Also, other simulators like CFS2 and FS2004 don't seem to run as well as they should on the higher graphics settings. I wonder if I have some security programs running in the background that are slowing things down?

Thanks Guys, for your comments. Sounds like I don't need a more powerful graphics card for WoV. Perhaps more tweaking is needed to get more out of my current system. I'd like to run effects at medium, but the game stutters when I'm firing onboard guns at enemy jets or ground targets at close range. My WoV graphics settings are currently: Object detail medium Object texture medium Cockpit mirrors off cockpit reflection off Shadow off Horizon distance near everything else: effects, terrain, ground, etc set to low. 800x600x16 screen 4:3 display aspect ratio

Hi Guys, I'm new to WoV, been playing it stand alone for about a month. Have found some good tips in the forums on improving the frame rate. But I still need to have most of the game's graphics settings on low to prevent stuttering, mostly during attacks on ground targets. Dogfights don't seem to be a problem. Was wondering if I should upgrade my graphics card to something more powerful? Here's my system: Celeron CPU 2.8GHz memory 1022MB RAM NViDA GeForce FX5500, display memory 256MB Windows XP Home Edition, Directx 9.0c I've added the WoV service patches frome Third Wire, so it should be up to date. Where do you think the bottleneck is? Any suggestions would be most appreciated.