Hellshade

Over50, Try BirdDogICTs solution. "In my case, I have everything synced to my monitor refresh rate, 1920X1080@60Hz: With MaxFPS=0, Vertical Sync On, TrackIR speed 0.8, I get 45-60 FPS, absolutely no jaggies. The key for me was to sync my GPU refresh rate to the monitor and then adjust the TrackIR speed to the speed that would eliminate jaggies. Without knowing how the TrackIR speed setting actually works, it required a little trial and error." I tried it and it also worked for me. I think his solution is more comprehensive than mine. Hellshade

Just messing with some settings to try and make it look as realistic as possible. Work in progress but getting there. Over Flanders Fields HD Dogfight - settings test (2:44) HD Hellshade

Just tried your settings and it worked beautifully. TrackIR at 0.8 worked great for me. Excellent solution BirdDogICT! Hellshade

Screenshots would rock. It's entirely possible there is a refresh disparity issue too bud. Anything is possible until it gets specifically ruled out, right? Hellshade

Turning off Vsync will pretty much always give you screen tear. That's a normal effect, but it also "uncaps" you from the refresh rate so that you can go higher than it in frames per second. Which is why you jumped to 125. I don't believe having a 16:10 ratio instead of the standard 16:9 would matter, but I could be mistaken. But just for giggles, OFF can be set in the Workshop to be either 4:3 ratio or 16:10. You could always trying switching to whichever one it currently isn't set to. Then restart the game for it to take effect and give it a try. I believe it defaults to 4:3 ratio. That would be great if switching it to 16:10 actually fixed the issue, eh? Hellshade

So you are running 1920 x 1200 @ 72 hz, 45 FPS and settings on 5-4-4-4-5 with no tearing at all with TrackIR 4 w/clip (5.0b software) on an 8800GTX video card. Sweet. What kind of AA and texture filtering are you running? Is Vertical Sync on? Hellshade

I usually run at 1680 x 1050. I bumped mine up to 1920 x 1200 and the jaggies came back. If you are so inclinded, drop yours down to 1680 x 1050 and see if they dissappear or are greatly reduced. I sometimes find they show up for the first 10 seconds or so of flying and then go away once I have looked around for a few seconds. So, did you see any hot ones? :) Hellshade

Now this sounds like an interesting counter example. You are running at 45 FPS with 72hz refresh rate and you get no tearing / jaggies with TrackIR on an 8800gtx & 24" monitor. May I ask what your sliders are set at? Most importantly Terrain and Scenery. Do you get tearing or jaggies if you run them at 4 or 5? Hellshade

Three questions Lou. 1. Do you have vertical sync turned on? I haven't tried it with vertical sync turned off. 2. What is your monitor refresh rate set to? 3. What is the frame rate you usually get when you have MaxFPS set to 0? Because you say it works awesome for you normally with it set to 0. I'm wondering what your FPS usually runs at in contrast to your refresh rate. Thanks for posting your experience. (and the plane! Man I love that thing.) Hellshade

If you try this, please double check with FRAPS or some other real time frame rate checking program to be sure that you are actually getting a solid 60 FPS on your screen when flying. Setting MaxFPS will tell the computer how many you want it to do. It doesn't mean your computer will necessarily be able to hit that number consistently. If it can't, then try bumping your scenery and terrain settings down a point at a time to see if that allows you to hit the 60 FPS. Also, please not what the refresh rate of your monitor is set at. Thank you. Hellshade

Makes sense to me, although I'm not ready to say it doesn't work in all cases until the people who still have the jaggies confirm two things. 1. That when they are getting the TrackIR jaggies (even after putting MaxFPS up to 60) that they are actually running at 60FPS when the problem happens. I can set MaxFPS to 200, but getting there is a different story, right? 2. It's possible also that the FPS being pushed out needs to be at a 1:1 ratio with the refresh rate on the monitor. I'm not saying it does. But since my monitor is limited to a mere 60hz, I can't push it higher to test if the jaggies come back while still running at 60 FPS. It may be a total coincidence that my jaggies go away when FPS are running equal to refresh rate or it may be the number you need to reach to make the magic happen. When we get the answer to those two questions, we'll know better if it works for everyone or just some people. My gut says both of those are a factor. Hellshade

My math must be a bit fuzzy. At one point you say you did the total cost of the setup for about $500, then you say "So, for $100 (not several hundreds or thousands)...". Was it $100 or $500 total? Just trying to be clear on the cost sir. I have no doubt that they helped reduced stuttering though. The SSD drives look sweet to me and as you have pointed out in the past, the drives are usually the slowest part of the system. I don't mind spending money (if I have it) to fix a problem. But I'm always happier when I can fix it for free. Hellshade

We won't know if the solution of raising FPS doesn't work to fix the problem for everyone until Over50 lets us know what his FPS rate is at the moment the TrackIR tearing occurs as well as what his refresh rate is set at. You can set MaxFPS to 60 but that doesn't really mean that's the actual FPS that it's always pushing, does it? It's an easy detail to miss. No worries bud. Hellshade

Over50, You have a very nice rig bud. I presume you have a program (either FRAPS or something like it) to give you real time feedback of your frames per second while in game, After you switched MaxFPS to 60 and were still getting tearing in TrackIR during fast head turns, what actual frames per second were you getting when you noticed the tearing sir? If, for example, you were flying over an airfield and high enough to get a good fairly large view of the land around you, your frames per second may be dropping to well below 60 at that time and the jaggies would show up. If, however, you're still getting 60 frames per second at the moment you are getting the TrackIR screen tears and Vsync is turned on then my next question would be "what is the refresh rate of your monitor?" Mine is set to 60 and perhaps matching FPS to refresh rate is the issue. If your refresh rate is set to 72, 75 or higher it's very possible the TrackIR prefers a 1:1 ratio of FPS to refresh rate in order to remove the jaggies. That would explain why my jaggies all but dissappear at the 55 - 60 FPS rate. If you put MaxFPS down to 30 as a test, do you find the TrackIR screen tears get worse? Hellshade PS. I agree with you that setting the Terrain sliders to 3 really makes a quality hit to the level of detail. However Creaghorn put a little zip file up on the downloads section called "Creaghorns Homebrew". In it theres a couple of files that can change HDR & Bloom factors and for me at least, after some tweaking, I was able to get some very nice quality terrain even set at 3. Here's a quick video that shows what my game looks like. Aircraft 5, Terrain 3, Scenery 4, Effects 5, Clouds 5. Obviously you always lose some detail when you compress a 3.9 GB video down to less than 200MB but it still looks pretty good. Might be worth downloading it and giving it a try. Hellshades Wings (2:44) HD

Thanks to RAF_Louvert for painting me such a magnificent plane! It's truly amazing work and you, Sir, are an artist of exceptional talent. I love it! Hellshades Wings (2:44) HD Hellshade

I'm not worried about anything. I've changed the setting back and forth about 9 times tonight and it behaves as expected every time. When you only change one variable and it always has the same effect, it's gets pretty academic after that. Hellshade

I find it interesting that when you question my empirical evidence, it's because good work should welcome scrutiny. But when anyone questioned your statements, you found it insulting. I stand by my work. Check it all you want my friend. Hellshade

Ok, here's your help. I didn't buy and install an SSD drive. Sorry your theory that you argued so hard for turned out to be completely wrong about TrackIR jaggies. I raised the the MaxFPS value in my rig to 60 and the problem went away immediately. I lowered them back to 30 and the problem showed up again. Please explain how it could be anything else. It's that simple. Seriously. Hellshade

I somewhat beg to differ that it's a theory. If the only thing I change is the MaxFPS value from 30 to 60 and the TrackIR jaggies go away, what else could be the cause? When I bump the number back down from 60 to 30, they show up again. No hardware changed. No other video card settings changed. No in-game sliders or values changed except MaxFPS. What other "theory" could fit, really? By all means let everyone test it. I've done it enough times myself tonight to know it works. Plus I posted a video to show it working. Hellshade

I don't see any rain to my solution. By changing the setting for MaxFPS to low numbers, the TrackIR tearing shows up. By changing it to numbers above 55, ir reduces it dramatically or eliminates it. With no other values being changed, what other explanation is there to account for the difference? Hellshade

Most folks don't have MaxFPS set to zero because the Stickies tell them to switch it to around 30 or so if they have any stuttering. Yes, '0' = no limit which is what the default is. Very few people leave it there though unless they have a high end rig. So when people set it to 20 - 30 or so, the stuttering goes away because their HD, CPU and Video card are able to process the reduced number of FPS without dropping any. They basically have more time to do their jobs. TrackIR however seems to want a higher MaxFPS otherwise it creates the jaggies. I couldn't explain why as I imagine it has to do with the way they coded it to work with CFS3. What I'm positive of is I can use all the same settings at MaxFPS=30 and get plenty of jaggies with TrackIR. Bump that number to 55 - 60 and leave everything else the same and the jaggies all but dissappear. I get some stuttering in return because my HD is just a 7200 RPM drive. I'm sure a Raptor or SSD would fix that. and yes, refresh rate is different from frame per second. What I ment to refer to was the frames per second. When not recording in FRAPS, the sim uses the MaxFPS rate set in the CFS3 file. When running FRAPS and recording, it uses the value of FPS selected in the FRAPS software as an override. So even if I had MaxFPS=60 in the CFS config file, once I start recording in FRAPS, the value listed in FRAPS for FPS takes over. Originally I had FRAPS set to record at 25 FPS, so as soon as I started recording, the TrackIR tearing would come back. Once I bumped the FRAPS recording FPS up to 60, the problem stopped. It wasn't the HD activity of recording the video that brought the jaggies back. It was the FPS recording over-ride of FRAPS that lowered it back down to 25 that did it. In short, when not recording with FRAPS, the MaxFPS value defines the frames per second in the game. When recording a FRAPS video, the FRAPS FPS selection determines the frames per second. Hellshade

I just found the solution to this tonight and your post helps confirm it. It's your 60 FPS refresh rate that keeps you from having many jaggies. Drop it to 25 or 30 and you'll see plenty with TrackIR. Hellshade

Ok guys, I have what I firmly believe to be the solution and anyone with a TrackIR can test it for themselves to see if they can duplicate my findings. The TrackIR screen tearing, unlike normal CFS3 stutters, is inversely tied to the refresh rate of your display. Meaning if you lower the refresh rate of your screen to around 25, you'll see some pretty big screen tears with TrackIR. Conversely, if you bump it up to around 60, you will see them all but dissappear. Of course, the higher your refresh rate, the more likely you are to have stutters. This theory - as I've experienced it - explains the following: How at least 3 people, some with modest systems, can run TrackIR without the tearing issue even though they obviously DON'T have SSD drives. My guess is their FPS is set pretty close to 60 or higher. How I could remove most of the tears with Lou's settings, but they show up the moment I turn on FRAPS. It wasn't the HD access that was causing the tears, it's that FRAPS has an option to select the FPS capture rate and mine was set at 25. As soon as I bumped it up to 60, no more tears in FRAPS while using TrackIR. Here's a video I made of me running FRAPS at 60 FPS. You'll notice some stutter as my HD tries to keep up with the textures (and SSD drive would probably fix that!), but you'll also notice the screen tears are almost non-existant. Jaggies Be Gone (1:51) HD Try it for yourself guys if you have a TrackIR. Go to C:\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\default and edit the cfs file with notepad. Change 'MaxFPS="0"/>' to 25 and try using TrackIR. Lots of Jaggies. Bump it to 60 and see if they dissappear. The exact number they dissappear at may change with your slider settings, etc. But Jaggies are definately more prominate at lower refresh rates. Hellshade

Obviously I can't make an offical advertisement video for Over Flanders Fields, however I thought I might make a video that gives people a better feeling of what flying in an authentic World War One flight simulator is really like. Please check it out and if you think it does a good job of showing off just some of what Over Flanders Fields has to offer, then post comments on the youtube page to keep it active and send the link to anyone you think might enjoy it. It can be view in up to 1080 HD format, so if you have a slow connection, just click on the video and then pause it until the red bar at the bottom fills up. You will then be able to watch it without any skips. Hellshade

TrackIR 4 Pro w/clip. Software 5.0b CPU: i7 920 Quad Core OC to 3.8Ghz RAM : 6GB Corsair XMS OC'd to 1443Mhz Video: GTX280 Nvidia w/1GB RAM DDR3 28" I-INC widescreen Flat Panel Monitor HD: 1TB Western Digital 7200 RPM drive SATA-2 PS 850 Watt BFG Tech w/12v OS: Windows 7 x64 edition OFF BH&H, HitR patched to 1.47 Tearing occurs only when using TrackIR to look left or right very quickly usually. More prominent when recording video to hard disk w/FRAPS. I have no tearing in OFF at all when I don't use the TrackIR. I have no tearing at all in any other game, even when using TrackIR such as Wings of Prey. Hellshade