gerwin

Almost 10 years later... I plan to upload an update to this terrain. I worked on three of the Novalogic Terrains, adding target-areas, making and adapting the tiles to suit these. This was made easier by using Mue's new TOD editor. The three Novalogic terrains being Steppe, Scrub and Island Jungle. ( These are available for download on my website. ) Was thinking of doing the same for the Novalogic's Glacial terrain. But even though that terrain looks nice at times, I find the deposition of snow areas illogical there. That withheld me. Maybe it would be better to put effort in Novalogic's Savannah2? Yesterday I decided to adapt the target-area work to IcelandNA, which has similarities with Glacial. Added some cities, then ported over the harbor, one for blue and one for red. See screenshot of Husavik harbor. Such changes did require the addition of two target-areas, which may change the stock campaign game balance. I am thinking, maybe just branch of into IcalanNA2 or something, and keep the previous IcelandNA package as-is for the campaign. That would allow me to change these stock target-areas more extensively. I always found them a bit crappy anyways. Also considering again, to add some river tiles...

Oh, that was what madvad meant... I already wondered how the package could be just 2MB, but did not download and check it. It shows 15MB now. >>madvad: I found these small issues in left flap and right elevator, here is the fixes. Confirmed. Thanks!

There were efforts to organize a two week course in bomb-sight usage. Including a live fire exam, bombing a small village nobody cared about anyways. But in the end some of the paperwork did not get through, and the idea was dropped. (just a joke) Thanks Wrench, for updating the Invader package in such short notice!

Back then, Falcon 3 was on the home computer briefly. But it was too difficult for me at the time. Instead I played F-15 Strike Eagle II by Microprose, Novalogic's Comanche, also Secret Weapons of the luftwaffe SWOTL a bit. Soon after: EA's US Navy Fighters + Advanced Tactical Fighters took over.

It works. For example; I have a few spitfires with a cockpit.ini as below. But the actual model+texture files are in a .cat. They are found and used. [CockpitData] Directory=cockpit ... [CockpitSeat001] ModelName=spitfire_F45_cockpit

FYI CatPack can do that. You have to select format version 2 two when it asks. (version 1 is the older format for SF1). It does not support folders (I could add that, but who cares?). All versions of SF2 work fine with the created cat files.

Linux Wine Compat. Layer would be preferable over a slower virtual machine, here is a report on the functionality with WOFF: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=40352&iTestingId=111344

Glad to hear that. Yes, I was in doubt there. Also because I normally don't like to come into the discussion saying "buy something better if you want it to work." Which is always easy to say. Instead, I like old hardware and still have about 30 older videocards here: AGP, PCI and even ISA and Vesa Local Bus slotted ones. Nothing intel based from around 2003 though, so cannot test anything like that.

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.

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.