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Gunrunner

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Everything posted by Gunrunner

  1. Flight Sims, Circa 1990

    Gunship, 1986 F-19 Stealth Fighter, 1988 A-10 Tank Killer, 1989 M1 Tank Platoon, 1989 F-15 Strike Eagle II, 1989 MiG-29 Fulcrum, 1990 Red Baron, 1990 Birds of Prey, 1991 Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, 1991 F-117A Nighthawk, 1991 Gunship 2000, 1991 Harrier Jump Jet, 1992 Task Force 1942, 1992 F-15 Strike Eagle III, 1992 Dogfight, 1993 Strike Commander, 1993 (first game to offer both Gouraud shading and texture-mapping in software, as far as I remember) TFX, 1993 Star Wars : X-Wing, 1993 Dawn Patrol, 1994 Pacific Strike, 1994 1942: The Pacific Air, 1994 F-14 Fleet Defender, 1994 Star Wars : TIE Fighter, 1994 Wing Commander III, 1994 EF2000, 1995 Su-27 Flanker, 1995 Mechwarrior 2, 1995 Wing Commander IV, 1995 Star Wars : Dark Forces, 1995 And that's only those I can cite off the top of my head... So yes, 3D games were definitely not a thing prior to 1996 and 3DFX... PS : Added a few more, and that's not even counting the games using 2D sprites for planes in a 3D world.
  2. My, what a click-baity title that was... Have you ever noticed that, beyond the known bug of engine sound playing only when the game feels like it, there are some planes which simply refuse to play their engine sounds ? I've recently had the problem with some F4U/AU-1 and couldn't figure it out, the engine sound worked fine on another plane and other engine sounds known to work simply refused to play. After an hour of testing (mostly waiting for the game to load), here's the solution I found for the Corsairs. The Corsairs use two engineIDs, one for the actual engine, the other for additional exhaust effects, which is a perfectly valid technique but which prevents the sound from playing. The Data ini looks something like : [Fuselage] ModelNodeName=Fuselage [...] SystemName[001]=CenterlineStation SystemName[002]=FuselageFuelCell SystemName[003]=TopRedLight SystemName[004]=Pilot SystemName[005]=BottomRedLight SystemName[006]=TailGear SystemName[007]=Canopy SystemName[008]=Tailhook SystemName[009]=WingFold [Nose] ParentComponentName=Fuselage ModelNodeName=Nose [...] SystemName[001]=Engine SystemName[002]=Nozzle SystemName[003]=ExhaustEngine <- This is the problem The solution is simple, move the "fake" engines to the [Fuselage] or other relevant parent and suddenly you will have engine sounds without losing the additional effects. [Fuselage] ModelNodeName=Fuselage [...] SystemName[001]=CenterlineStation SystemName[002]=FuselageFuelCell SystemName[003]=TopRedLight SystemName[004]=Pilot SystemName[005]=BottomRedLight SystemName[006]=TailGear SystemName[007]=Canopy SystemName[008]=Tailhook SystemName[009]=WingFold SystemName[010]=ExhaustEngine <- ExhaustEngine has a new home, notice the SystemName number changed to fit the sequence [Nose] ParentComponentName=Fuselage ModelNodeName=Nose [...] SystemName[001]=Engine SystemName[002]=Nozzle In case you wondered, changing the EngineID doesn't work (and yes, it works on some planes with other types of fake engines, specifically those are set as 0 thrust engines, while all the problematic fake engines are set up as pure effect emitters).
  3. It's not the GPU guys, it's the code, I'm having the same problem but considering that : - I'm between 12 and 15 percent total CPU usage when allowing the use of all cores. - When dedicating a single core to SF2, I'm never above 70% core usage and lose a maximum of 5 FPS over allowing all cores to be used. - I'm well below in total memory usage, as well as below the memory allocation for a 32 bits process and data transfers are not reaching any bottleneck. - Even at full load, I'm at most at 50% GPU usage. - Even at full load, memory usage, memory controller load and bus interface load are never above 40%. - With my configuration and settings, below 1680x1050 the lower the resolution, the higher the max and average FPS, above 1680x1050 average and max FPS are about the same until at least 2560x1440, but the higher the resolution, the lower the minimum FPS. The only possible conclusion is that the code/engine is the limiting factor. You can grab a handful of FPS with a beefier GPU, but this has quickly diminishing returns. You can grab a handful of FPS with a CPU with higher single core performance, but once again, it has quickly diminishing returns (and in your case, an i7 3770, the improvements would be in the single digits realm, all other things being equal). You can avoid FPS drops by replacing some image formats. You can increase your FPS by going for lower AA and AF settings or removing custom shaders and configs. The only true benefit of a GPU upgrade is the ability to increase the resolution and have better AA and AF settings (in fact, curiously, with the GTX 970 I have almost the same performance - within the margin of error - whether I play at 1920x1200 or 2560x1440). We are dealing with a 14 years old game engine last seriously updated 4 years ago.
  4. You had the right idea with your pylons trick, now... just put the gunner and your doors in the same weapons group... (and make sure your dummy weapons have the same SpecificStationCode as your gunner). That should do the trick... Alternatively you could use dummy, empty, lodless, non-jettissonable fuel tanks for the doors, it's way less messy than fake pylons and inert, invisible weapons.
  5. Independence Day

    What the Brexit and proud Brexiters inspire me
  6. F-35s land in the UK

    The first and only comment yet on that article is hilarious : "A feat like this has not been achieved since Charles Lindbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis!" MiGBuster, well that also depends whether you're paying in dollars or sterlings. Also, off the top of my head, that's the largest attrition reserve the RAF planned in recent history for any type, I think you'd have to go back to the 60's to have anything near it. That might mean 3 things, a) they are expected to operate for a long time/have a very active operational career, b) a high loss rate is expected and/or c) they are expected to be hangar queens.
  7. So, for about a year some people started having problems with newer GPU or drivers and there's little coordinated effort so far, this will be an attempt to do so. The idea is simple, everyone will report what they have tested and if it works or not, so others can benefit from it. I'll only take reports from moderately to heavily modded installs, not stock or lightly modded ones. I'll only take reports from DX10 running versions, no DX9. Reports must follow the following format : GPU / VRAM / OS / Driver / SF2PatchLevel / DetailLevel / CustomShaders / Reporter / Outcome GPU is the model of your graphic card. VRAM is the amount of RAM your graphic card has. OS is the version of Windows you use. Driver is the version of the driver you tested SF2PatchLevel is the patch level of SF2 you run. DetailLevel is the detail level you're running at, it can be High, Unlimited or Custom (I'm not interested in Low or Medium, Custom is only for settings better than the stock Unlimited through the use of modified INIs). CustomShaders, whether or not you are using custom shaders. Reporter is who made the report. Outcome is the result of your test, Occasional means it happens less than once per mission, Frequent means it happens around once per mission but for only a small part of it, Constant means it's almost always present. Yes, a lot of it is subjective and relative, but it's better than nothing. In addition you can give your driver settings and performance tweaks if you feel so inclined. I've left out my results designed especially to break things, only installs as I play them. Ok, now it's up to you to report your own findings and I'll add them to the table. Due to the limitations of the forums, the table is now a Google doc (link : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iOzDXda8uDCByqq5CbNQHAz3JJfYy15gwcV8CW47ECk/edit?usp=sharing ) Latest nVidia driver known to work for everyone : 353.62 Latest nVidia driver known to work for GTX970 + Windows 7 : 364.72 Latest AMD driver known to work for everyone : 15.7.1 Latest AMD driver known to work for Radeon R7/9 series : 16.03 Known problems and solutions : Problem: Anti-aliasing not working properly on Windows 10 (aka, the jaggies) Solution: Set [GraphicsOptions] AntiAliasing=0 in OPTIONS.INI and set anti-aliasing as a per-game setting using nVidia Control Panel. Problem: Video stutter in certain situations Solution: Set "Maximum pre-rendered frames" to 1 as a per-game setting using nVidia Control Panel Problem: Framerate stuck to 60FPS on AMD cards even with VSync Off Solution: None yet
  8. Star Citizen

    Let's see, considering the money poured into the game, and the development time, I must say it's underwhelming... The on-foot part of the game is bad, it's buggy as hell, movements, even though motion-captured, are comically bad, I mean early 00's bad. The ship part, not that impressive. Graphics, sure they are meant to be impressive, but if you stop gushing over how shiny it is, you quickly see all the bugs, the crap texturing. The net code and servers ? Oh dear... it's a running joke. It's not as if EVE Online and Elite: Dangerous weren't already out. I think Star Citizen will collapse under its own weight; even though it will find enough backers, by the time it's actually playable it will only be a marginal improvements over games with an established player base and will never manage to enough players to justify the running costs. Also, from the direction it's taking, it's gearing to be as boring and grind oriented as both EVE and Elite... I'm still keeping my package (a Constellation Aquila and a Freelancer DUR, both without LTI) for now, but in my eyes Star Citizen is already a failure. Not to mention that with all the pledge ships, packages, stand-alone ships already sold to help cover the development costs of the game, the game economy, supposedly player-driven, will be a hot mess. No really, I love the ambition and the intent, but the execution is a festival of failures on every level. It's utterly fascinating to see this train wreck in action. I never thought that Chris Roberts would pull a Peter Molyneux with Star Citizen, but it is seriously heading that way. In the end, it's the outsider, the one I would've bet would end up being vapourware that is keeping my attention and getting me actually interested, No Man's Sky. It's the only one that seems like it will actually be any fun to play, being a game rather than a virtual job.
  9. Going Rogue

    No bloody Jedis prancing everywhere in sight ? Fantastic. The ISDs look and feel like (unpainted ahem) minis rather than CG ? Cute. Wait, is she wearing a TIE Fighter pilot uniform at the end ? Oooh, shiny ! That certainly look more fun and interesting than any Star Wars movie since the 80's. @Palpatine, of course you disliked Episode 7, it's the only one in which you play no part at all.
  10. @tiopilotos, Good point, I forgot that's how TK "fixed" it, never mind 3) then. @Nicholas Bell, for 1. what you want to do is mess with NormaMissionRadius and MaxMissionRadius in the planes DATA.INI (that's a much cleaner way to do it), for 2. there's little you can do AFAIR.
  11. A few reasons not to mess with this : 1) Some maps are 1:1, messing with the planes is a recipe for disaster. 2) Mixing and matching planes with artificially scaled performances and planes with "real-world" performances would be a mess. 3) It's already easy to run out of fuel, especially for wingmen who make an unrealistic use of afterburner at time, artificially reducing range further would mean that your wingmen WILL crash out of fuel on missions that, even at the reduced scale, they should have been able to accomplish with you. 4) The mix of scales within the same dataset makes me grit my teeth, it's simply not done.
  12. So I'm computer shopping can you lend a hand?

    Yep, out of your choices, Number 2 is the best value for money, Number 4 might shave a few seconds in video editing depending on the task and video software used, but it's not worth the money in my opinion. Avoid Number 3 as the GT 720 is an underperformer for a gaming rig nowadays. Number 1's R7 240 is an old model now, it can't compete with the GT 750Ti, it's barely better than the GT 720, it's the least value for money of the four.
  13. Disclaimer, I don't know how moving pylons work and have not yet investigated them, however, a suggestion... Are your moving "pylons" a system attached to the Wing or the OuterWing ? Because it might be that movement is restricted relative to the bounding box of the parent component, if your parent component is the "inner" wing movement range will indeed be more limited. This may not work as I described, but that's how I'd have coded it, it might be worth checking if making your pylons a system [Left|Right]OuterWing and attaching them to Wing[R|L]Out changes anything (and yes, doing both, if only so that they detach when the outerwing is damaged/destroyed but not the inner part).
  14. Not yet, thanks for signalling it, I'll have a try. On a GTX 970, under Windows 7, it seems ok so far. I'll have a try under Windows 10 later.
  15. @allenjb42, that's because the DATA.ini of the Superbugs are f*ed up when it comes to parking. Let me explain how it works: All your SystemType=LANDING_GEAR entries referencing an AnimationID will use it when the plane is parked, whether it is on land or on a carrier (on the Superbugs it's AnimationID=1). IF your SystemType=PILOT_COCKPIT entries reference a CanopyAnimationID, it will be used when the plane is parked on land, but for some reason it doesn't seem to work on carriers (on the Superbugs it's AnimationID=7, which combines canopy and wingfold). IF your [MissionData] has CarrierBased=TRUE and a CarrierParkAnimationID entry, this will be used when the plane is parked on a carrier but, logically, not on land. The Superbugs either miss CarrierParkAnimationID entirely or have it set to 1 (the landing gear, which is redundant) instead of 7, which is why they have their wings folded and canopy opened on land but not on carriers. A corollary of that method is that you might have multiple animations used when parked on land (say one for canopy, one for wingfold, one for a ladder) by using multiple SystemType=PILOT_COCKPIT entries, but you can only have one animation used when parked on a carrier, meaning modders need to plan their animations ahead for carrier-based planes (which EricJ and FC did, they just missed some of the idiosyncrasies of the INI).
  16. Windows 10 is an untested piece of shit forcing untested piece of shit updates upon consumers and SMBs (since December, updates have been breaking more things than they have fixed). It was supposed to be to Windows 8 what Windows 7 had been to Windows Vista, but the damn thing is a disaster akin to Windows Me, in theory it has a lot a nice under the hood improvements and if you happen to have the right hardware and the right softwares and settings, it works like a dream, but step out of its comfort zone and it's a nightmare, and every new update seem to make it worse.
  17. 10 Worst British aircraft designs

    I can't fathom how the Sea Vixen made the list yet they failed to include the Attacker... I heard a joke about the Attacker's only strength being how fast it was, so fast it was out of service almost as soon as it entered it.
  18. Everything's in the title, I was wondering if anyone had tested something along the following lines: [Soviet] ServiceStartYear=1950 ServiceEndYear=1951 Availability=VERY_RARE [Soviet] ServiceStartYear=1951 ServiceEndYear=1952 Availability=RARE [Soviet] ServiceStartYear=1953 ServiceEndYear=1960 Availability=VERY_COMMON [Soviet] ServiceStartYear=1961 ServiceEndYear=1972 Availability=RARE and whether it's know to work (or not).
  19. Yes, I know the theory, and given the parsing style I doubt it would work there, but there are places where TK does parse INI files differently (can't remember which ini file accepts duplicate keys)... anyway... I guess I'll have to make do with multiple INI files and a clever use of junctions.
  20. The trick apparently is to deactivate anti-aliasing in OPTIONS.INI and then only force it for the game through nVidia Control Panel, that seemed to work for others, I can't test it myself at the moment but there's been a thread by FalconC45 on that topic a few days ago.
  21. @Nicholas Bell, Well, I was about to angrily describe the dozens of hours and test procedures I used (using two different machines, 4 GPU and 5 sets of drivers) to reach my opinion on the matter, while I bet you have no idea how much VRAM a typical mission on your install consumes and whether or not swapping occurs... then I decided testing 364 drivers was a better use of both our time... Ok, after few tests, I have a good news and a bad news. Good news, under Windows 7 x64, drivers 364.51 seem to work great in modded conditions, I haven't pushed things to the limit yet, but it's encouraging. Bad news, under Windows 10, the game crashes to desktop after loading the mission even in lightly modded conditions. Anyone care to test it ?
  22. @JonathanRL, not that I'm aware of, the trouble being reproducibility, the problem being mostly absent on stock installs. @streakeagle, I'd say it came back about a year ago, I remember it didn't happen when I first tested a R9 270X, but at some point it came back and it's present with every newer AMD card and drivers.
  23. Unfortunately I can't help you there, I've been running 353.62 on Windows 7 for as long as they were out (on more than one machine), except when I tried updating, without any of the problems reported. I can't even guarantee they're the best for W10 as I am still under W7 when it comes to gaming. One thing I notice with the stuttering reported is that it happens with games I don't even own, so I can't tell you if it's just bad luck or game-related. However that might be the reason for Crusader's comment. All I can tell you is that crashes are not an issue in my experience (nor is stuttering with SF2). If you have time to spare you can try 358 drivers, or the latest ones to see if you have more luck than me, if you don't want to spend an inordinate amount of time testing though, from what I've been reading up since you asked, it seems the safest bet might be 353.30 (but that might be a problem if you intend to play some really recent games I guess).
  24. @Piecemeal, Yes, you have to uninstall the previous drivers first, sorry. Windows 10 shouldn't be a huge issue, you will get a bit less FPS compared to Windows 7 but nothing too drastic (and that common to most DX9/DX10 games under Windows 10), and there has been reports of problems of a loss of quality with some shaders and when it comes to anti-aliasing but I've read nothing game breaking. Personally I run a dual-boot with Windows 7 stuck at 353 level drivers and Windows 10 with up to date drivers for anything that absolutely requires it, but I've come to hate Windows 10 with a fiery passion (due to the broken networking when it comes to VLAN and LACP teaming on Intel network cards). Keep in mind that some people have reported having luck with newer drivers, mostly the 358 series, none with a GTX 970 though. For me only the 353 works 100%. @Nicholas Bell, you are, partially, correct, if you are running the game stock or near-stock, but I did not mention it as it wasn't Piecemeal's purpose nor what most of us do. Note however that even in pure stock, if you run in Unlimited in some extreme situations, like SAM heavy action, or B-52 bomb runs over Vietnam, you WILL have the same problem with any driver beyond 353, but it will be temporary (and might be less prone to happen at certain resolutions) and going to map view an back usually solves it.
  25. Revert to 353 series drivers, it's the only way to entirely get rid of it, the only alternative is to get rid of custom shaders, custom environment.ini and the problem will happen slightly less, but there is no combination of settings that will make it go away entirely. There is no interest from TK to correct it game-side and since it's specific to SF2 and SF2 is low profile, I doubt there's any interest from nVidia to solve it when it's probably game-side. As it stands now, the only way to play Strike Fighters as we used to is to either use an AMD graphic card (and even then, the next generation might break things), or a nVidia one supporting 353 series drivers (meaning no card beyond the current generation and no GTX 950). The bad news is that AMD cards still have their max FPS at 60 and offer a lower average FPS than similarly priced nVidia cards, the good news is that they offer better minimum FPS. It is the end of the road for SF2, within two to 5 years it won't be playable except on legacy machines.
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