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squid

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Posts posted by squid

  1. Posted

    1. Can you post a screenshot of your water ?

    2. Have you set the water detail to at least High in Graphics Options of NA?

    3. Which nVidia card exactly is your VGA?

    4. It appears your PC is fully capable of running 64 bit Windows 7, why are you calling it 32 bit and using 32 bit Win7? With Windows 7 32 you are utilizing only 3.5Gb of your 8Gb RAM (using ramdisk i am not sure is much help for overall System + Games memory management) (Not that 64bit has anything to do with the water rendering in NA)

    5. Which exactly is your CPU ? (4 cores @ 3Ghz its definitely 64bit capable CPU)

    6. Have you checked with dxdiag.exe what is you current DX version ?

  2. Posted

    I was working on that, will be done this weekend, can only run so many wavs a day before i get a head ache listening to "asp one, asp two, asp lead, cowboy one, cowboy two, cowboy lead............................) Im done with all the other wavs, just have to finish the Flight/Leads/Groups. so are crazy quiet after being filtered too. ~330 wavs... run them through eq board during playback, record filtered wav, cut and edit to match original's length, add white 2% noise, save.

     

    jeee .... i am exhausted already only by reading it ..... drinks.gif

  4. Posted

    post-3226-0-69890700-1332365071.jpg

     

     

    There's the winner. It even has the late 80's "TOP GUN" feel. Can't wait . If he is working on the other pages GUI too, i'll piss my pants. :grin: Cant wait also for the reworked Hawkeye voice (is it JonathanRL's work if i am not wrong?) Now, if only the coastlines would be smoothed out and get some sort of water / land transition then i'll be SO content with NA :grin:

  7. Posted · Edited by squid

    LOL , I miss the days of SF1 Europe and boxed software ....

     

    on the other hand , gives more stuff for the community to play with (instead of flying lol) and some people , including me, find it fun periodically to improve stuff as the GUI. If he won't lock the menu files too that is :tongue:

  8. Posted · Edited by squid

    I really can't understand why the main screen, the one new customer sees as first thing in the title! looks like 5 minutes paint.net work of a 2nd grade kid

     

    to give credit, paint.net is in fact quite a handy program

     

    +1

     

    OT i suspect chronic lack of thinking flexibility, not very uncommon maybe ....

    U spend so much time researching, building, coding, to produce such a complex software product, in other words INVEST on it, then throw it in a 2012 market asking 30 usd for it , while offering quite less than the competition at the almost same price, and on top of it you wrap it on a way like you don't give a s***t about your own work, also in a market where all competition wrapping is of high design level ? something weird about the marketing sense behind this .... It doesn't take a seasoned art director to make a decent UI. Any intelligent person creative enough to produce such beautiful stuff as the stock models and skins of TW can make a decent UI with a day or week of considerate work ... The chronic one man show resources restrictions argument works with the community and is more than understood and accepted but on the other hand, besides the blunt market ("new customer") who wouldn't care or know about that, even the -supporting- community deserves, kind of saying, maybe after all these years a little present . )

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    I have flown a couple of missions in SF2 NA and I have been a bit disappointed that the ocean appears to be nothing more than polygons (ice paks) somewhat like flight sims of some 20 years ago. Did I miss something in the installation? Are their terrain packs that can make the water, at least, look like water? The North Atlantic ocean is usually rough and, if you don't have to make your way through it, quite beautiful. The NA sim is fun in all other aspects, but the water, just doesn't look right at all. Anybody else out there have the same problem?

     

    some screenshot & maybe some of your hard / software specs ?

  21. Posted · Edited by squid

    just made some classics...

    post-26946-0-41400200-1331585743.jpg

    post-26946-0-42411100-1331585760.jpg

    post-26946-0-80167700-1331585785.jpg

    post-26946-0-32412100-1331585801.jpg

     

    good.gif

     

    The terrain Detail has gone up almost 10x in the polygon dept.

     

    People are not grasping at how much the poly count of the terrain has been increased.

    Run SF2/Nov2011 with debug on everything on high and unlimited w/ 1 F-4J, note the poly count on the debug,

    Now Run SF2/NA, with debug on everything on high and unlimited w/ 1 F-4J, note the poly count on the debug.

     

    Not only that, but now that the terrain is 3D LOD based it also casts a Shadow.

     

    Objects on the Terrain are now all 3d Based, the trees, bushes, donkey's, mules, out houses, everything, and they also cast shadows.

     

    So you can take the terrain Polygons count, and essentially double it for the shadow.

     

    then you have to look at the texture layers, there are UV Maps, Specular Maps, and Bump Maps across the entire Terrain.

     

    The Basic Water Terrain is most likely a large flat face square w/ UV, Specular, Bump, and now Reflection and Diffuse Maps as well as the Flow/Motion/Wave Layer which is 3d Polygon/Normal based. the Ships on the Water now use upwards of 5-10 TGA Emmitter effects for movement alone.

     

    So the Terrain and water both have been increased in polygon and texture usage.

     

    During night time, the bloom shaders have been increased, on Afterburner Emmitters, Lights, Explosions, reflections etc.

    And objects that are lighted via 3ds max (the lights on my carrier at night look entirely different than they do in SF2/Nov2011)

     

    Put it this way:

    My 8800GTS Ran SF2 Nov 2011 at a solid 60 Frames/sec even with Hi Poly 3rd party Planes. only dipping to 25 or so Frames/Sec when i use my carrier which was 100,000 Polys + Hi-Res Textures + Alot of TGA Emmiter effects. Everything High/Unlimited

     

    I Built a New System.

    Powered by an 8 Core FX CPU 16 GB of Ram, and a AMD /Saphire 7950 3GB GPU, in SF2/NA, I get around 45 Fr/Sec over the water, 25-35 over the land, and low 20s on any carrier (stock or 3rd party). Again, everything on High/Unlimited.

     

    only time i hit the 60/Fr sec VSYNC cap is when im above the overcast and its the cloud layer below and blue skies above w/ a dozen or so AI planes flying around. as soon as dive through the clouds and the terrain shows up, Fr/sec cuts in half.

     

    So lets look at some options:

     

    Horizon Distance, Setting this lower will bring in the horizon and render LESS of the 3D terrain, I think at LOW you are Rendering half of what you would be on Unlimited. (I will double check figures).

     

    Terrain Detail, Setting this lower will make some of the hills/mountains more "Square" similar but a bit better than the old terrain's Level of detail, some areas look like checker boards w/ land/water..

     

    Shadows, Setting this lower will decrease the shadows poly count, by rendering shadows with a lower LOD and Lower visible distance, thus cutting the Poly count.

     

    Water Detail, Setting it lower will remove some of the Shader Diffuse/Reflection usage.

     

    Effects Detail, Seriously I can set up an Effect that will kill your Fr/Sec to under 10 from 60+, Apparently Rendering the TGAs of the effects drops your Fr/Sec, lowering this option will decrease the quality of the TGAs being rendered for effects, and might be a good source for a Fr/Sec increase.

     

    Objects/Aircraft Detail, Lowering this will help, as it lowers your planes Poly count as well as parked statics and wingmen.

     

    To run High/Unlimited you need a lot of GPU Power and A lot of VRAM.

     

    I have that aplenty and am Still barely able to run at Max Details. (though AMD hasnt officially released any 7950 drivers, 12.2 is still beta).

     

    This could be a sticky. Comprehensive guide for the new graphics settings

  22. Posted · Edited by squid

    How are people with lower end PC's finding this?

     

    I have a dual core 2.4 , 4gigs ram and a Geforce 2600M GT.

     

    Over the ocean its playable, but if a do a quick mission so that iceland is actually visible it just chugs horribly to the point that its unplayable.

     

    On the previous games I had graphins set to high with a couple of unlimiteds and it ran fine.

     

    Im hoping future patches might make it a little more playable in the future.

     

    as mentioned elsewhere, reducing mainly the terrain detail to medium / low, combined with horizon distance to normal or low , improves performance significantly while eyecandy is reduced only in the sense of horizon distance which again is ok, it gets on the distance levels of previous SF2. Give that a try. Combines also with reducing some textures like 'pit textures for example and terrain textures to normal or high at most

  23. Posted

    Alrighty then...

     

    The question is always value...are the benefits of the purchase enough to offset the detriments?

     

    Modern combat aircraft simulations, especially those with electronic warfare included, are very complex programs...which is why most software companies have gone bankrupt or have abandoned the serious air combat simulation market. You can count on one hand (and have several fingers left over) the number of companies that still exist that put out air combat simulations that include electronic warfare.

     

    One company is large, putting out simulations that focus in detail on one aircraft, have closed systems, cost tons of money and lots of people to develop, and benefit from work done for the government.

     

    One company is very small, putting out simulations that are more survey sims, has an open system for 3rd party modifications, and has very little budget.

     

    One thing no one has mentioned really is that payware has a budget. Every day that product is not released is another day money is being spent with no return. That tends to put increasing pressure on a developer to get the product out...regardless of what potential customers want. It is always a tradeoff between how long a feature will take to make and how much money it will make...all superimposed on the relentless pace of technology. Freeware has no such constraints...because there is no monetary pressure (ie cost) to get it done, an infinite amount of time can be taken to release the product.

     

    All things considered, what TK has done is quite remarkable, making a simulation that in many ways is very detailed in terms of what it has to model (AI, electronic warfare, aerodynamics, ballistics, graphics, etc), yet still trying to keep it backwards compatible and open.

     

    Is that an excuse for a crappy product? Of course not...the market can be unforgiving for a non-functional product. SF2:NA is certainly functional, with a lot of little bugs, and a few large ones (Fringe ships, co-mixing fleets, A-7E campaign start crash). For any product, the idea of 'release now, fix later' can hurt long term sales. However, the developer may feel boxed into a corner...no money to spend on beta testers (or bad past experiences with extensive beta testing), but no money left to continue development of the current title, especially if that title has implemented several new core features (new terrain engine, new avionics, new dlls, etc). The pressure to release may become overwhelming...if the product gets out there now, revenue will be available to spend on fixing post-release bugs.

     

    I am not saying that's what happened here.

     

    I will say, there is nothing out there on the market that is like the TW sims...period. I challenge anyone to find sims that cover the time period, aircraft, gameplay and remain available to freely modify.

     

    FC

     

    +1

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