RAF_Louvert

. That reminds me Carrick: It's Valentine's Day and my wife sweetly whispered a request in my ear first thing this morning. So, ever the dutiful husband, I began explaining to her in great detail how best to field strip an M1 Garand rifle. About midway through she stopped me and asked what I was on about. Silly me, I thought she had said do something pedantic. .

. Good outline Olham, well done. My opinion on DiD, (as if it weren't already known), is that everyone should at least give it a go. Really changes the entire sim. However, I can't imagine trying to fly DiD without Track IR. That's just crazy talk. .

. I am right there with you Baldric. White knuckle indeed! Exciting, nerve-wracking, heart-pounding, breathtaking, and more. And all at the same time! You just gotta love this sim. .

. Thanks Olham, and I've been very satisfied with how my system runs OFF ever since I built it, but now I can at last have the additional ground objects in the Alsace and still keep everything running nice and smooth. .

. They have the same affect on me, mein Freund. .

. Greetings All, After reading through Redpiano's recent posts I thought I would mention again that while state-of-the-art gaming systems are very cool, you do not need one to push OFF well above and beyond. Now then, if you will all indulge me, ("What, again Lou?!") ... yes, I know, I can be tedious. But please, allow me to outline briefly my system and the most recent adjustments and tweaks I’ve made. To start with, here is what I am now flying after the latest graphics card upgrade: CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0ghz Wolfdale 6mb 1333fsb 45nm with Arctic Cooler, (OC'd to 3.33) Memory: 8gb DDR2 PC2-6400 800mhz, (set on ‘auto’ via the ASUS control panel) Mobo: ASUS P5QL Pro Hard Drive: 2 Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA Opti Drive: LG 22X DVD+/RW Dual Layer SATA Rewrite Video Card: EVGA GTX 460 SC PS: Corsair HX 850 Watt Windows XP Pro 64-bit OS LG 22" flat screen LCD monitor, 1920 x 1080 native resolution Three large case fans, plus the PS, CPU, and card fans Saitek AV8R joystick Saitek Pro Flight rudder pedals Track IR4 with IR5 software Out-of-the-box card speeds are as follows: core clock 867, shader clock 1735, memory clock 2025, with the fan at auto. I have not bothered to tweak these at all as this is already the OC version and everything is working great just as it is. On my Windows XP Pro 64 I have gone through and disabled all the superfluous MicroSquish programs that run even if you don’t need them, (and believe me there are a lot of those). I also have my ‘C’ drive dedicated to the OS, with the ‘D’ drive carrying everything else, including the paging file. With my current system tweaked as described I can now run sliders at 5-4-3-5-5. I initially had the sliders at 5-4-4-5-5 but discovered that the landscape actually looks better with the ‘Scenery’ moved down to ‘3’. I also have Ground Object Density on ‘high’. Temps inside the box are quite constant, running at a cool 20-to-30 C. I used the Alsace region in August of 1918 as my benchmark, and even on a bright sunny day in a massive dogfight above the mud I have beautiful, smooth performance throughout the entire affair. The only artifacting I encounter are the occasional tiny white triangles along the very edge of the screen when I snap my head around very quickly, and only occasionally. And, I can make this go away entirely by moving ‘Terrain’ down to ‘3’ if I wish. Here are a few screenshots of what the vistas are now like when flying my favorite WWI combat flight sim: Notice in particular the density of the trees and how far away they actually fill in. Really gives the landscape a much richer look. I hope some of our newer flyers who are running older systems will find this info useful and encouraging. Cheers! Lou .

. Not to worry RP, it will be a virtual black-n-tan for me as well. I've been flying sober for the last 25 years myself. .

. Redpiano, based on the few bits and pieces of your system you've already listed I will hazard a guess that you'll be able to push OFF just as far as your heart desires. And welcome to the madhouse Sir, always nice to have another lunatic to join in the fun. BTW, if it hasn't already been mentioned, new lads buy the drinks, so a nice black-n-tan for me my good man! Cheers! Lou .

. Very neat! I built a few dioramas as a kid myself, but nothing along the scale of that. .

. Sweet! Glad to learn you're enjoying the scenery as well Olham. And what card will you be receiving soon? I will also post a screenshot or two from the Alsace when I pop over there in the A.M. . .

. Not to make you even more envious Olham, but rather to give you a better idea of what things look like with the settings I described above, here is a screenshot I just snapped as I was climbing away from Walmer Aerodrome along the southern coast of England. Even the typical April weather in Blighty can't diminsh the "new" view I now enjoy. I only wish all my fellow OFF fliers could enjoy the lush scenery I am now privy to. .

. Oh yes, he greased that one just as nice as you please. Picture perfect. .

. Update on my upgrade. The new GTX 460 SC arrived Friday and I installed it right away yesterday morning and spent the remainder of the day tweaking and benchmarking. I am very pleased to report that it is a winner! It runs flawlessly with silky smooth TrackIR, with sliders at 5-4-3-5-5 and Object Ground Density on 'high'. Even in the Alsace in a massive furball above the mud, a solid, smooth 50 to 60 FPS. It is B-E-A-U-tiful! .

. Some of you may remember a while back when I put together an entire flight of Belgian Camel skins for the 1ère 9ème to replace the RNAS 4 skins, just so folks could fly for this brave little country. Unfortunately, I lost the set when my HD crashed, and the link I posted the download to no longer exists. If anyone has this set it would be wonderful if you could send it to me so that I could make it available again. Here is a link to the original thread: Belgium 9eme Escadrille de Chasse Camels .

. Thanks Olham, I had not seen that particular film before, though I have seen others demonstrating the blip switch operation to control speed. It always amazes me that the Great War pilots who flew these kites with the blip switch system were not only capable of controlling their speed with it but were actually very adept at it. Proves you can get use to nearly anything. .

. F'eh, what the heck, I'll give it a shot for you ... ahem ... Oh great and powerful Wizards of Off. It is I, Lou, the small and meek. If you please Sirs, might I ask for a Hansa-Brandenbu "SILENCE, whippersnapper! We know full well what you are about to ask! You dare to request of the great Wizards of OFF yet another thing? In the same day?! And a Hansa-Brandenburg W-29 no less! If Hauksbee has something to ask of us, let him step forward. Well? We said step FORWARD HAUKSBEE! " Jiminy Dolittle! You're on your own Hauksbee! I'm outta here! .

. Glad to know you have finally sorted it out Hauksbee. However, this business about going out to ruin some Crumpets' collective day? Bad form! The Crumpets pitched in to help you every bit as much as the Bratwursts did. .

. Blackbaron, if you happened to find the reference to 'two weeks' in my post from earlier today, and that is what you are basing your enquiry on, it was in jest. The standing joke has been, for the last year or so, that P4 will be released in two weeks. Sorry about getting your hopes up. .

. No wonder they call you great and powerful. And I didn't even have to bring you the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. .

. I know our ever-vigilant devs are busy wrapping up P4 so that they can release it in two weeks, and I don't wish to distract them from this Herculean task, but I do have one tiny, little, miniscule, itsy-bitsy request. If it pleases the mighty devs, might I ask that we are allowed some time on the field where all the planes in our flight are started and warmed up before take-off. As it is now, everyone else, (i.e. the AI), is ready to go when we pop onto the field, and for those of us who use the multi-step start process and engage in a pre-flight check it is a bit disconcerting to have the rest of the flight zipping by or chewing at our rudder as we get ready. Thank you for deigning to consider my puny request, oh great and powerful Wizards of OFF. Lou, (the small and meek) .

. Yes, you definitely want VSync on, (at least with the nVidia cards), because without it you get that nasty graphics tearing, where it looks like the images are being ripped apart at the edges. Not to be confused with the dreaded white, (or sometimes blue), triangles that can appear if your system can't keep up with the frame filling demands, (back to the speed issue again). .

. I am encouraged to hear the positive reports from others running the GTX 460 with OFF. Thank you TSmoke and Andy73. Andy and Olham, you are correct that CFS3, (and therefore OFF), makes use of Direct3D rather than OpenGL, so that upgrade won't have an affect. Although, I do seem to recall comments in the past from some folks who claim that enabling Triple Buffering does make a difference, so go figure. Herr Prop-Wasche, you might want to consider an upgrade sometime in the future ... maybe. Nbryant, I was also looking hard at a 560Ti 448, but decided I would give the 460 a go at half the price. I should mention that with my current system tweaked up I can usually run sliders at 5-4-4-5-5, (or 5-3-3-5-5 depending on the mood of the computer gods), and have beautiful, smooth performance throughout a mission. Here are my system specs at the moment: CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0ghz Wolfdale 6mb 1333fsb 45nm with Arctic Cooler, (OC'd to 3.90) Memory: 8gb DDR2 PC2-6400 800mhz, (OC'd to 890 with volts set at 2.1) Mobo: ASUS P5QL Pro Hard Drive: 2 Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA, (with the OS and OFF installed on 'C' drive, and nearly every other program parked on 'D' drive) Opti Drive: LG 22X DVD+/RW Dual Layer SATA Rewrite Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512mb PS: Corsair HX 850 Watt Windows XP Pro 64-bit OS LG 22" flat screen LCD monitor Three large case fans I have the card speeds on the 9800 bumped up to: core clock 820, shader clock 2040, memory clock 1275, with the fan at 70%. Speed and memory, OFF loves them in that order. .

. Actually, if the issues are being caused by old bits and pieces left in the registry and cache, I strongly recommend installing and running CCleaner. It is an excellent, and free, cache and registry cleaner that will do the job very well. I have been using it for the last few years myself, and running it once a week does wonders, (or after uninstalling old programs and after installing updates). Here is a link to the download at FIle Hippo: CCleaner Latest Download .

. Olham, a good starting point is at the manufacturer's website. They list the specs for most of their cards, current and past. You can also go to the various benchmarking sites and look at their reviews. Just Google the card model you are interested in along with the word 'specs' and you should find all the info you desire. .

. Thanks RugbyFan, Olham, and Carrick. I'll be sure and let you know when I have it installed and tweaked. Olham, here are some of the pertinent differences between the GTX 460 SC and my current card: ................................................. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SC ................. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9800+ CUDA Cores ............................................. 336 .......................................................... 128 Memory Config ....................................... 1024 mb ................................................... 512 mb Memory Bandwidth ............................... 97.2 gb/sec ............................................ 70.4 gb/sec Memory Clock ....................................... 4050 mhz ............................................... 1100 mhz Graphics Clock ....................................... 867 mhz ................................................. 738 mhz Shader Clock ........................................ 1734 mhz ............................................... 1836 mhz APIs ..................................................... DirectX 11 ................................................ DirectX 10 ........................................................... OpenGL 4.2 ............................................. OpenGL 2.1 Anti-aliasing ............................................ 32x ........................................................... 16x Quite a jump in performance and memory, both of which OFF will appreciate, as will I. .