BirdDogICT

The Black Knight, Not sure for whom your last post was intended, but you're correct, 5 for clouds is a FPS hog. BUT it prevents enemy aircraft from seeing you through the clouds.

Tanyrhiew, After trying many combinations of graphics settings over the past 10 months, I have to agree with you that turning shadows off has a big impact on frame rate. The only time I've found shadows to be useful is near the ground, and who wants to fight there? The shadows are rendered with lots of jaggies, anyway. Turning shadows off as you suggest allows me to run sliders of 53355 with avg FPS of 30 @ 1920X1050, 8XAA, 8XAF, with a 512MB 4870 and 4MB 800MHz DDR memory running in XP. I'm limited some by my 939 dual core processor, overclocked to 3GHz. Smooth as glass, though. Hard to justify a upgrade with those settings. Cheers

Bullethead, Plenty of us out here. I started college on a voice scholarship, found that singers are a dime a dozen, so started working as an aide in surgery, then stumbled into respiratory therapy and spent the next 10 years flying with an air ambulance service, working with traumas, premies, and high risk moms. During that time, I earned an MA in Psychology and spent the next 20 years doing business research and strategic planning, mostly in healthcare. Also taught health administration and business courses at local universites and ran my own full service marketing research company. Was laid off several times the past few years due to Medicare cutbacks and hospital mergers, so am back working as a clinician again. Wondering what I want to do next. Nothing like rescuscitating people for a living, but don't want to be doing it when I'm 70. BTW, I lived in Slidell in 1964 when my dad worked at the Michoud plant. Got a pretty good idea of the kind of landscape where you live... Cheers

Welcome Sieben, Every new member here gets one free turd in the punchbowl. Looks like you just used yours. Like Bullethead, I have also "spent a large part of my life picking up the pieces left after amazing acts of stupidity that have shattered countless lives and given me constant nightmares" working in healthcare since the mid-70s. I'm writing this while relaxing with some nice cabernet after spending the last 14 hours working with "train wreck" patients in a long term acute care center. You have to have a lot of compassion for people that are suffering, but many put their friends and families through hell through selfish, stupid behaviors that result in chronic, incurable illnesses. If Bullethead is cynical, sounds to me like he's earned the right to be so. My experience is that the cynicism is what protects the caring, compassionate, intelligent person from the stupidity around them. Need proof that people are stupid? Just review each year's Darwin Awards. Cheers

Pappy55, Trust Uncle Al. He has more experience with this game than just about anyone. You might review the following, it gives a basic description of how your graphics card works: http://www.tweakguid...Graphics_4.html As the article describes, there are numerous steps in graphics processing, and your problem appears to be related to "Step 8: the Data Is Sent To The Frame Buffer". When you reduce sliders in OFF, you're reducing the amount of data that your ATI frame buffer has to handle. There are numerous tweaks that should help performance due to frame buffer limitations, including some described in the article (e.g., Fullscreen Page Flipping and VSync). If you haven't done so, consider applying the tweaks described in the OFF FAQ here: http://www.overfland...ds.com/Tips.htm You probably won't be able to run high slider settings with a 3870. As a frame of reference, in my 3GHz machine, my X1950XTX is barely adequate with 2-2-2-2-2 sliders, but my 4870 works pretty well, giving avg 28 FPS with 5-3-2-3-2 sliders at 1920X1050 resolution with 8XAA and 8XAF. The 3870 has roughly 1/3 less graphical computing power than the 4870. Of course, your mileage may vary. Hope this helps.

Defiitely not a DVD, but in a DVD case. Bought it a month ago as a backup copy. The CFS.EXE is version3.1.030203.01 so it doesn't have to be patched.

very cool. one question: can I have your books when you're through with them?

This reminds me of describing my interests when I joined Match.com several years ago. Let's see, I love long walks on the beach, sunsets, puppies, sharing my feelings, etc. LOL Coached premier soccer for 12 years, ran the largest soccer club in our area (40 teams), & organized large tournaments (sound familiar Grumpybear?) Building computers Sing with the local symphony Collecting classical music, jazz, blues Read anything I find interesting, especially history, philosophy, psychology, lately developed an interest in behavioral economics Home remodeling, interior design: totally gutted and rebuilt my last home Auto repair Hunting, fishing, & backpacking Flight sims Currently looking for an old Goldwing to work on this winter

Widowmaker, I had the same problem last January when I first loaded BHaH with an ATI 4870. Turned out to be a problem with my memory timings. Once I relaxed them to SPD timings, the problems went away. Hope this helps.

Thanks for that. I now have a firm grasp of the obvious.

It looks weird, because the pilot is clearly holding onto invisible risers. CFS3 has parachutes...the OFF designers simply removed that graphical detail for historical accuracy.

Stupmjumper, Although they're a bit dated, I have a single core FX55 CPU (Socket 939, overclockable to 2.8 with Zalman cooler) and an ATI X1950XTX you can have. I used them with BHaH before I upgraded, and are pretty similar to other systems here (e.g., Olham is happy with his 1950). Overclockable Socket 939 boards and DDR memory are cheap on EBay. PM me if you are interested. Cheers

Greg, Isn't it great having so many helpful folks here??? One additional cure for stuttering mentioned in the Graphics FAQ is turning off all messages in the CFSConfig Overrides (e.g., Disable Warning Boxes, Advisor Messages, and Simulation Warnings). I found ingame messages to cause serious lags when flying low near the airfield or over the trenches (due to, as Von Paulus pointed out, the number of objects that must be rendered). Cheers

No issues with OFF Manager.exe as far as Kapersky Internet Security 2009 is concerned.

I read The Hurricane Story when I was a kid, don't remember any mention of a biplane.

Simon, I'm running a similar setup, as far as processor speed goes. Your performance appears to be limited some by your AGP card. I originally had a X1950XTX, but upgraded to a 4870, and have had good luck. The ATI tweaks are mandatory, especially index and vertex buffer settings. I also turn all messages off in the overrides...I had serious lags until I turned them off. Your Catalyst settings could be changed a little. Start by setting your cfsconfig.exe setting to 8XAA, then use Catalyst to set your AA and AF where you like them. I use 4XAA (12 Samples) with Edge Detect and 8X AF. I also turn off Catalyst AI and Adaptive AF. Have you upgraded to the latest Catalyst 9.9 drivers? Most report FPS improvement. (BTW, ATI has improved the process for installing new drivers...their FAQ is a bit unclear, but I had the best luck by not uninstalling the old drivers first, and let the new install program take care of that for me.) Other than that, I prefer to max out sliders for aircraft, but use lower settings (2 or 3) for terrain and scenery. I had a big FPS hit from the clouds setting with the 1950, but haven't noticed it with the 4870. You can also reduce regional air traffic, ground object density, and in cloud fog. Hope this helps.

Cameljockey, As I often say, Bluegrass is music sung from the heart, and through the nose. LOL Actually, I'm a big fan...never miss a chance to go the the Winfield Bluegrass Festival, just a few miles north of Darrel's stomping ground of Norman.

ATI has apparently made some improvements in their installation routines (their installation notes were a bit unclear). In the past, you've been required to uninstall drivers and Catalyst softwares before upgrading to the latest driver and Catalyst softwares, but no longer. You only have to uninstall your current drivers and Catalyst Control Panel if you are running legacy drivers. Drivers for legacy cards can be found here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Legacy/Pages/radeonaiw_xp.aspx?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.13&lang=English I had problems because I uninstalled 9.8 drivers and Catalyst Control Panel and installed the new 9.9 release, but Catalyst Control Panel didn't install properly. So I uninstalled 9.9, reinstalled 9.8, and then installed 9.9 over 9.8. Presto, everything worked fine. BHaH runs great, as before.

<br /><br /><br /> Sitting Duck, Those 4870s run hot even at stock settings. I have seven case fans running, and massive CPU & memory coolers, so didn't overheat, but it's very easy to run the temps past 100C. Overclocking wasn't worth the risk for me, since BHaH runs fine. Best regards, BirdDogICT

FYI, I wouldn't be too eager to update from 9.8 to 9.9. For some reason, the 9.9 installation of Catalyst in XP SP3 is porked. Don't have time this morning to sort it out, but will get back to this later today.

Polovski, Thanks for the correction. I misquoted the Installation & Graphics FAQ, which states: Note sliders in OFF are +2 in quality over CFS3 sliders ("3" in OFF = "5" in CFS3!) so please don't choose too high settings.

Duck, I tried Rabu's tweaks, and did increase FPS from 18 sitting on the runway to 23. FPS was 25-35 in a two plane dogfight over the airfield. TrackIR worked flawlessly, and great looking graphics. But I noticed some microstutters..something I never experience with the recommended ATI tweaks...can only speculate as to why. The big differences in the ATI tweaks (versus Rabu's) are Disabled Dual pass render Disabled Vertex and Index buffers Disabled Write Only Vertex and Index buffers

Duck, I hadn't thought of applying those particular tweaks, since nVidia cards handle DirectX vertex textures very differently than ATI cards. But I'll try it and let you know. With sliders at 53353, medium workshop settings, 8XAA, 8XAF @1600X1280, I'm hitting 60 FPS in the air, dropping down to 20-25 in big furrballs over the front. Smooth as silk, too. I'm still using a 512MB HD4870. I'll try them and let you know.

British_eh, Aggravating, ain't it? Please note the following from Installation & Graphics FAQ: http://www.overfland...on_and_settings ...if you ever update your video card driver, you will need to re run Graphics Config, to accept the new video driver for OFF (just as you do in vanilla CFS3). Usually, all you need to do is click on Graphics Config in Workshops and reconfigure your video card.

Generally speaking, if your sliders are on 4 for Phase II, they'll be on 2 (or maybe even 1) in Phase III. Phase III still looks great at those levels, even with AA and AF turned off. There is so much going on the Phase III world that it needs raw CPU power more than anything. I can't find Phase II system recommendations in the old FAQ, but I'm guessing that they would be about the same as CFS3: 128MB RAM, 400MHz Processor, 900 MB Hard Drive, 16 MB 3D video card.