Tuesday April 5th Development Update
 

We’ve finalized the patch tonight. We’ll be testing it all day ourselves, and hopefully release a beta version by the end of the day. The main reason for this is that we don’t want to make it live for everyone in case anything else was accidentally broken, and if we do a public test of the patch we can figure out whether we broke anything or not much sooner if we just test it ourselves. Anyone will be able to try it, see how much their performance has improved. If nothing major is found, we’ll make the patch live for everyone at the end of the day this Friday.
What we’ve done today:

1. Started figuring out SLI and Crossfire.
2. Finalized trees improvements. The overall framerate gain was actually smaller than we thought, but it can still be optimized further, just not in the time we have. The microfreezes are gone.
3. Got to the bottom of the server search issue. It will get fixed with the Friday night live release.
4. We have made some improvements to the engine sounds – exact description will be released with the patch.
5. Cleaned out the memory a lot. Whereas flying over an online map in the live version today takes up 700 megs of memory, in the developer version we have today it only takes 380. This does not affect FPS but it does affect the overall stability, loading times, etc. This is especially important for DX9 users.
6. We are also aggressively continuing to expand multicore support.

No screenshots today because visually nothing in the game changed.

Thxs for the Update luthier Looking forward to it.

Thankyou :)

This is fantastic. Just touching base with your fans is a great idea. It's also very fascinating... I (and I'm sure many others) really enjoy hearing about the progress and issues as the team goes along...

Thanks.

Thanks for the update.

Thumbs up gentlemen.

Keep up the good work!!!!

It is very appreciated :)

Great job, always looking forward to every update from you guys. Things can only get better. :)

The update on the situation is appreciated and gives me hope and confidence.

Rock on :grin:

Thank You Sir !

sg

Excellent!

Thankyou for your continued efforts!

When the open beta is released it's going on my computer!

Cheers!

I really don't envy Maddox Games at this moment... working too many hours, too many days. :(

But I really like how you keep us informed on the patch, without lies and with real expectations. Thanks to everyone!!!!! :grin:

Luthier what performance boost we should expect???

Thanks for the update. :)

Running in DX9 on winxp over london I was experiencing fairly smooth flight with a single plane but after a while I would get the Laucher has encountered a problem and needs to close box. Will the memory fixes you are implementing help that? I think its a memory leak issue.

my specs

Antec Nine Hundred Two Case,
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Vapor-X 2GB,
Akasa PowerMax 850W Power supply,
Asus P6T Motherboard LGA1 366 Intel X58 ATX RAID SA,
Intel Core i7-920 D0 Step Processor (8M Cache),
Corsair XMS3 3GB (3x1024M B) DDR3 Memory 1600MHz,
Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler SE1366,
LG GH22NP20 22x DVDRW/ RAM,
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB Hard Disk Drive 72 (Two),
Windows XP Home Edition. updated to SP3
No overclocking done and everything running at stock speeds

Hello,

From the original IL2 on until now, Maddox team is the best.
Thanks a lot.

Thanks,

This is a best that you give as those updates where we are going, important to us who is sitting front of computer and refreshing the page. ;)

S!

Sounds promising :) Got rest of week off work, gotta love asthma, NOT! But can test the patch to the maximum :) And Moscow time is GMT+4 I think...

Sounds good to me, thank you Luthier! Keep up the good community work!

Verry nice news. Cant wait for the update. Thanx to whole team

That's great news! One thing that many people are going to key on is the Trees/FPS statement. Did you mean the fps improvement from the tree optimization wasn't as high or did you mean that the overall FPS improvements for the Beta patch wasn't as high as you hoped? I saw the buildings were not mentioned in today's update so maybe you assumed we were aware of that improvement already

Thanks Luthier, Do you know when work will start on fixing MSAA?

And is anyone working on the small gameplay bugs...skins, loadouts etc??

Thanks for keeping us updated!

Ilya, how soon should we expect to be able to play the game without problems in modern hardware setups?
Should we expect more patches soon?

My quess is next patch is scheduled on 19.04, US launch day.

Kankkis

Good job :cool:
we are expecting more;)

Thanks Luthier

I assume that the patch also includes the work to the buildings.

And can you confirm if there is or isn't a 64 bit version of the game.

thx for the update.. now drink your water ...eat your bread... and get back to work... lol...:-P

Somehow the suffering that came along with this long-waited game, and the efforts and progresses to make it shine the way it deserves, are a fascinating experience. Difficult, but with a nice prize at the end of the road.

Many thanks for the update Luhtier! I said this will be THE flightsim!!! Keep up the pace and good work!

Winger

I have been a gamer for many many years now and i have seen teams much larger than 1c put out games that have had major issues at launch.

NEVER have i seen a company so dedicated to taking time to talk to the customer base, let them know what they are doing and generally show so much care about the product they have released...

Really is top stuff.. Thank you!

This dedication to the work and this excellent community, led me to buying the simulator, still knowing his problems.

It cost me work to obtain it before April 19, so quite I could buy it and I do not repent of anything, thanks to the team for the work that they realize.

outstanding customer service!....great job C1 thx Luhtier :grin:

I hope that you are looking into Split frames Rendering and not only "Alternate frames rendering" Having a "Split frame" for the SLi help a "lot" for the Memory loads..

Thanks

It's nice to have these regular, informal updates Luthier. Bravo! And keep up the good work. :-)

Cheers for the update!

Thanks chaps.. looking forward to it.

I don't understand if anybody will be able to try the patch or there will be only a selected group of testers ?

Thanks for all your hard work and dedication Luthier. I've every confidence you'll make this sim a real winner.

Everybody as the post says:

Great! I've gotta say, the dedication you're putting into fixing this up ASAP, and above all else communicating with us about it, is amazing. Never before have I seen a devteam work with such dedication. You've earned at least one new long-term customer here.

i just registered to say i look forward to this and more patches. as the game stands right now it is unplayable for me with a decent syste. 6gb ram,i7 and gtx 295 i barely get 15fps but mayor choppyness makes it unusable.

good to see this is getting some attention. its my first IL 2 game and im really wanting to go online on this

keep it up

Thanks for the update and keep going. It looks like you can make some very positive changes quite quickly.

Much appreciated!

okay, thats a beginning.....

i have disabled trees and roads. so the tree chance shouldnt remove my problem. im playing from low to medium up to high settings, all mixed. The Multicore support would help much but i guess it takes alot of time until this works.

Great news :) this will be a nice day :mrgreen:

Until the patch are released I think that I´ll kill the time making a Mission :grin:

Yes, thanks very much.
Perhaps you`ve set the benchmark in reguards to your update statements.

4. We have made some improvements to the engine sounds – exact description will be released with the patch.
..............................

hope we hear merlin engine tones and 109s sweet. :-P

How many are actually going to wait till Friday?

I'm eagerly awaiting this beta patch!

Not expecting perfect performance with it though, but certainly improved.

Hello Luthier, I offer volunteer to test your patch beta... surely many us offer volunteers to test this patch...it help in it as necessary to ensure that it does not fall the urge you... further encouragement of its Simulator is very large...many are waiting for you to see your great work...:grin:

That's great!
I highly appreciate such updates. Keeping in touch with the community is very important, but rare these days.
Thx very much!

The link for the download of the beta patch, where will we find it?


Looking forward to it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looking forward to see this game become as playable as once IL2 Sturmovik was. :)

p.s.
Would you fix damn multiplayer search option already? :/

well... i hope it will work... and hope FPS will be really really improve... (we'll see friday)

if yes thx a lot and good work

if not... COD is dead! us release is in short time...

I have been waiting with purchase until I could see that they really will try to fix all the problems with the game, but now i am convinced and just bought the game :)
(I tried the "less legal" version of CoD a few days ago to see if my old computer could handle it, and it ran really good above water)

hey, since i was able to fly over land and stuff b4 ok, doe sthat mean itll run even better an ill be able to put the forest setting all the way up??? :D :D :D that would be awsome :D

Thanks a lot luthier & Co, I hope you really understand just how much we appreciate your efforts.

Also "I expect! I expect! I expect! I expect! I expect! I expect!", really guys? Give them a break.

Thank you for again ignoring the issue with 64 bit and dedicated server.

Thanks for the update.
How well does SLI/Crossfire work currently?
How many cores do you plan on Cliffs of Dover supporting?

I think you'll find they are prioritizing things, and he mentioned about MP.

Performance > server and 64bit.

Some people. :p

Hi Luthier, and thanks for all the work you and team are doing!

Any official word on the ffb yet??

S!

Erm....?

Yes a few more FPS though very marginal...but at least we have servers which we can look at

Im so exited..

Thanks a lot Devs !!
Looking forward to test beta patch ;)

How did you get off my ignore list? Get back in there, naughty boy!

Where is this beta patch, where do we download it?

Thanks for the update, Ilya. It's really something to watch this baby "grow up".

Jolly good show, Maddox Leader! And watch out, more bugs at 7 o'clock high!

*vrooooooooom, teka teka teka teka teka*

;)

But we have to admit that though Luthier is doing extraordinary work and is even putting his personnal health at risk for COD, this 64 bits question has been evaded in every thread since COD's release...It has been politly asked at least 100 times...We have had answers for SLI, multithread, MP, but 64 bits questions have been completely ignored..Zero...ZIp...
IMHO, it is not 64 bits...That is all...It wouldn't mean COD wont be great, but it would mean possible future limitations in terms of performances...
But if COD is 64 bits, well, a simple " yes it is ", or" will be soon" would make the job...

Salute !

Why don't you look in the task manager when running the game? All 32 bit apps have process name*32.

OMG, the question is not whether it's 32 bit at the moment, but, when we will get the 64 bit exe as promised long before.

I'm not surprised considering how much aggravation has been caused over 'broken promises' as some have said, I get the feeling that is Luthier even utters '64bit' under his breath inadvertently, there will be an instant barrage of 'you promised!!!'

why is anyone calling for 64 bit version? the only reason for 64 bits is to address more than 4 gig of memory. if the game does not use past the 32 bit memory limitations then the 64 bit version won't do anything.

Without hacking a 32bit Windows (/3GB switch in boot.ini), a single Process can just allocate 2GB max. Usually it's even less, somewhere around 1,3-1,5GB. Never have seen a game with more RAM usage except a MMO with a nice memory leak growing up to 3,6GB (on a 64bit system). Could have been more, I just stopped raising it :D
64bit Systems are up to 6 years old, it's time to get some 64bit support nevertheless :D

Yes, but why not take the advantage of loads of fast RAM instead of annoying the slow HDD (even SSD is slow compared to RAM).
Wasted possibilities.

if you are on a 32 bit OS then demanding a 64 bit application will do nothing for you. since your system cannot alocate more than 4 gb of ram (actually more like 3.5gb with a single gpu or 3 gb with SLI) and the fact that windows 7 or vista enjoys gobbling up at least 1 gig of ram with "nothing" running that usually leaves you a max of 2.5gb of available ram for a game. if you run win xp 32 bit then you have another 500 megs of ram so the total goes up to 3 gb.

if the game starts chewing past your available ram then it will be using the hard drive's swap file or crashing running out of memory. a 64 bit executable won't save you from this.

32 bits can address up to 4 gigs of ram. that is more than enough for this game and any game out there. what you need to do is upgrade to a 64 bit OS and have at least 6 gigs of ram on the system itself and you will not have any issues with ram usage in the game. 64 bit does not mean the game or executable runs faster or you get more fps.

Good work! :o

But nothing on the buildings/houses and shadows that caused so big fps-drop...?

Read this: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=20055

"1. Performance increase. Over terrain, the two things that slow things down the most are trees and buildings. We are currently in final stages of testing optimized buildings that almost double the FPS over London on a test machine."

and this from the 4th april update

I know the 4th April update.
Thats why I wondered why there was nothing on the 5th...but I see now they say :"What we’ve done today"...
ie the buildings were optimized yesterday already.

Thought for a moment this was what would be in the patch, but guess building-improvement is there already then...

Great work gents!

I know I'm new here, but maybe it would actually help a little if people stopped angrily berating the devs. They're doing what they can, but it's going to take time no matter what. Hollering for things that you want isn't going to help anything get done faster.

I'm new here too, so are many of the complainers, you have every right to make this wise statement.

Clock is 18.40 in Moscow, i think no betapatch today:(

it should take a few hours until you could really say that. also, they might do some overtime in there, so nothing should be settled for today yet.

1am here. I'm for bed. Enjoy chaps, hope it's a winner! ;)

Thank you Luthier.

Oh i really hope there will be beta patch today :) it will be awesome!

Looking bad, moscow time now allmost 21.00

I Would absolutely love a patch test today. I saw this post at work today. Could not wait to get home :D Hope it will be up later. Anyone know how to access the new patch if they release it today?

I'm waiting for all the 'beta patch screwed my install' posts!

Remember,its a beta patch,don't play with it if you don't know what you are doing... ;)

lol...what should happen.

i think possible performance boost is worth the risk to maybe re-install.


people always panic if they read BETA... ;)

May be tomorrow??

Maybe.....maybe things went better than planned and we will get a shiny steam update next time we log on......who knows...

Ten points for optimism for sure.. :grin:

We need to be full optimism right now!! hehe

Thanks for the update and for being up-front and honest with your customers, it goes a long way towards building a committed fan base when you have the courage to admit the existence of problems and present a clear roadmap for their solution.

For people who are worried about possible implications with the patch, if you have 3-4GB of available hard drive space you can backup your existing version. Normally i would just copy the entire folder over to another part of the drive, but since this uses Steam i guess you have to use the built-in backup feature.

Open your steam library, right-click on the CoD icon for the pop-up menu and select "backup game files".
If you find the beta patch causes you trouble, you can revert to the current version: click the "steam" menu on the menu bar at the top of the interface, select "backup and restore games", then "restore a previous backup" and point it to the folder you initially saved the backup to.

I would simply copy the contents of the folder over to another one but i don't know if the dependency on steam would cause problems, so i followed the built-in method.

Once COD is installed and activated, it will work without being logged in to your Steam account

"Once COD is installed and activated, it will work without being logged in to your Steam account"
Yea? How?

I don't think so!

Nor me.

S!

Start Steam -> Top left corner select Steam -> Select Go Offline.

maybe he means that steam could be in offline mode too.
well i can deal with steam and use it with lot of other games since hl2 release.

its the best antipirate-system and VAC is the best anticheat. i dont understand why people have so much problems with steam in times of facebook and co.
your IP could be logged anyway and there is no need to give them your real name ;)

ps sorry for off topic

Yes but steam still has to be running,so you definitely do have to be logged in...