gerwin

Yeah, sorry about the lecture. ;) Here is a nice graph I just found. Intel extreme graphics 2 is the second bar (yellow). The red bar below that is the cheapest addon videocard by ATI at that time. Your Geforce FX should be at least on par with that ATI R9200. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/integrated-graphics-performance,674-17.html Yeah I know the Glide to OpenGL wrapper method a little. I used some of them briefly.

Oh man, I never really considered this properly. You cannot expect much 3D gaming on Intel graphics in the Pentium 4 era. 2D will work, but 3D.... https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Extreme-Graphics-2.2179.0.html That is december 2003. And intel was not serious about their 3D hardware, it was just an integrated solution for users who did not game much. In 2003 NVidia came with the GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series. Which was miles ahead of intel in 3D rendering. Same for ATI cards. In comparison, I have this netbook from 2009 with intel graphics, even that was very limited for 3D games. At most it could run Call of Duty 1 from 2003, at rather poor framerate. That is an OpenGL game btw. Then this EAW test I did earlier in this topic, that was a 2011/2012 laptop with intel graphics. The intel graphics being the weakest part of the laptop of course, but at least it never overheats. :) 2011/2012 is when many vendors chose to stop supplying any Windows XP drivers.

For what it is worth. I have this laptop with Windows XP and intel Graphics (i3-2310M), and decided to quickly try the GOG version of EAW on there. Their latest installer is setup_european_air_war_1.20_(45828).exe. (The GOG installer is doing something with DirectX 9 redist and also some command prompt commands which quickly popped up an disappeared again. Edit: firewall.cmd?) To my surprise it works OK out of the box. Movies, Menu's, 3D hardware rendering. By default it was configured to use Direct 3D through their wrapper. This gives a rather poor frame-rate. Also when I change FSAA in dxcfg.exe things go wrong, so I had to set that back again.Instead I selected Glide in the game menu and that gives a way better frame-rate, through nGlide that is.

This list is the most extensive one I know. It starts in 1983. http://avionics.g1.xrea.com/sim-list-e.html It seems to keep non-combat flight sims in the 2nd column on the right.

AFAIK it is the other way around. The muzzle flash and bullets go to target, but the 3D model of the sub-turret is pointing in the wrong way. AFAIK it is because the game cannot handle the rotation of a sub-turret placed on another rotating turret. It is like that with all such ground objects that I made new in 3DS Max. It is a cosmetic thing only. Though in both your screenshots the MG muzzle flash is pointing in the main gun barrel direction, which may indicate something else is wrong there.

This evening I made a little tool that can open terrain tilemaps (TFD). The intentention is to fix some strange tile placements in VietnamSEA. Only tested it briefly, all seems to work well so far, (I never had much luck with the official Thirdwire TerrainEditor myself.) http://www.gb-homepage.nl (click on the Strike Fighters page, there you can find the download)

When 1600 is not a comfortable limit either, what would be required for your project? 2048? more?

Are you using "TFDtool_1600-Textures.exe" ? I just did a quick test with that one: I succesfully loaded 1099 textures. So no 1024 limit there.

More then the current 1024 you mean? I suppose one could try. When you download the TFDtool again, it includes a special version where I set texture limit to 1600 instead. I have not stress-tested this new amount though, you will have to test it yourself.

Good to know. Commander Keen is finally on GOG too. ;)

I suppose it depends on whether or not you have fun and patience with preparatory work, setting up the software. Understandable. I never played DI's F/A-18E. Maybe you find this list useful: https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/aircraft-fa-18-hornet I also grew op with the early Jane's Sims USNF(97)/ATF(Gold)/FA, and they are still kinda fun if you can look past the shortcomings. Tried USAF later and modded it a bit, but it was such a mess to mod it. Someone pointed out that the flight characteristics were flawed too, he played at 2x time-accel. to make it better...

There is VirtualBox, Qemu, maybe VMware. But they do not emulate a 3D accelerator. Unless something changed recently. PCem emulates a 3DFX Voodoo accelerator. But it may not be that easy to use, it emulates very specific machines and requires matching BIOS ROM files to work. Another possible approach, (Dual)boot Linux OS with Wine and try it with that. PS: Jane's USAF kinda sucks. Fighters Anthology has way more retro appeal, and Strike Fighters 2 beats it in the other departments. - As for Jane's F/A-18: its 3D renderer is troublesome and gives issues even on semi-old hardware. PCem may be able to run it, I have not checked. Edit: there is also partial emulation: NGlide, DGVoodoo, DXwnd etc.

The labels "not efficient" or "not well optimized" are easy to put on any game when it does not do what you want. But consider that any game engine can be brought to a crawl, by just adding one single resource sucking object to it, with unmanageable poly count. Particularly when multiple instances of that object are in view. PS. I assume the laptop has an SSD. Because these 2,5" mechanical drives, with spin-down power saving, are another story.

Now you are throwing in loading hickups or something, or are you describing an effect of hitting texture/GPU memory limits? I don't know. But downsizing textures is easy. My previous reply was purely about framerate issues caused by poly-count.

You are saying FPS issues with mods - Probably because of too high poly count in the scene, in other words, too much detail to be drawn at once. Look at the mods you use, look at the .Lod files of the objects. Then ask yourself: 1) How big is the main lod file? IIRC stock ones are around 1 to 2MB, giving a rough indication of the poly count there. 2) Does the object come with low poly distance lods to use at a distance? Scenes with parked planes are the most heavy to render, so optionally decrease parking spots for airfields and carriers.

At Osprey Publishing they will now do a special every week, for 4 weeks in a row. In those weeks you get five of their ebooks for free. In pdf or epub format or both. The selection for this week is as follows: - CBT 8: US Marine vs Japanese Infantryman by Gordon L. Rottman - DUE 65: Bf 109E/F vs Yak-1/7 by Dmitriy Khazanov, Aleksander Medved - ELI 110: Sassanian Elite Cavalry AD 224–642 by Kaveh Farrokh - RAID 37: Blackbeard’s Last Fight by Angus Konstam - WPN 26: The Martini-Henry Rifle by Stephen Manning Link: https://ospreypublishing.com/blog/Free_eBooks_week_1/

Yesterday their server was a bit overloaded. Maybe try again when things cool down? Otherwise PM me, and I will help you out.

I just mentioned Turbosquid File404 because it is a convenient way to actually see some aircraft models that are in YAP products. Sure though; It is a lot of work either way: Both the modelling, texture mapping, skinning - then later configuring pivot points, aerodynamic wizardry, hardpoints, damage nodes, damage textures, distance lods etc. I can spare multiple $44 no problem. But stick to ground objects as nice bite-size hobby projects.

Week 2 is there already: https://ospreypublishing.com/blog/Free_eBooks_week_2/ - AVG 6: Hawker Hurricane Mk I–V by Martyn Chorlton - CAM 276: Waterloo 1815 (1) by John Franklin - MAA 447: The Czech Legion 1914–20 by David Bullock - NVG 214: US Heavy Cruisers 1943–75 by Mark Stile - WAR 7: Samurai 1550–1600 by Anthony J Bryant

File404 at Turbosquid: It is priced well below similar offerings there. Also I think a lot of hours went into each model. Maybe one can contact bobrock by PM here and purchase directly, to avoid Turbosquid royalties? Edit: Turbosquid has some sale periods as well.

My take on YAP products - Out of the box can be pretty frustrating. Tried some Rising Sun missions. Then got mission accomplished when I was just taking off. Wondered what to do, could only find two enemy tanks on an island which I destroyed. Guess that stopped the invasion? - Hinchinbrooke's ship models - They are pretty good. Some USN stuff is top notch, especially the Carriers and Battleships/Cruisers, some Destroyers. Sometimes though corners were cut on some vessels, or stand-in models were used. With all the little crew figures and no distance lods these carrier models are not framerate friendly. Also the deck crew is a problem for conversion to a general usage SF2NA carrier. - Aircraft models in later releases are from Giuseppe Valfre (Which I understand to also go by the name of Bobrock here, and File404 at turbosquid). These are excellent. SF2 suitable poly count and details. Skins are good too. SFP1 A-team also works with his payware models. Look File404 up in turbosquid to see his work, his prices there are very reasonable.

Good efforts there, promoting their martial law / police state protocols. Getting better with the day. Unfortunately it is still unconvincing, so i'll go outside now to catch some more spring sun.

Yeah obviously the virus has a preference for celebrities.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid "As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK. ... They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall)" Now open the local bar again , I am bored.