Massive improvement for me. Now my Ati 4890 automatically increases its clock speeds when i'm flying. I would still get higher FPS if i forced it to constantly use max factory clock speeds with the previous beta patch but that ended up with high temps and reboots, so i'm definitely glad that it can now detect i'm running a game and scales up on its own without issues.
Even though it hovers around 30 FPS with the occasional dip in the low 20s, i find that the improved consistency of the frame-rates makes it completely imperceptible to me. Now all i need is a frame limiter to set it to about 30 FPS so that it can catch up a bit easier and i'm set.
That being said, i didn't try skimming the roof-tops over London, but the QMB ground attack missions that have a lot of ground objects (static and units) and aircraft run fine.
I use Win7 x64, i7 920 @ 2.7 Ghz, Ati 4890 1GB and only 3GB of RAM and it runs very very well, despite even my RAM being close to full all the time (maybe that's the only thing i should upgrade at some point and double it to 6GB).
My settings are:
1680x1050 (native monitor resolution)
Models, effects and land shadows on high
Building detail on low
Most of the rest on medium
Roads, grass and shadows on
SSAO off
AA off (or x1-x2, i can't really remember)
Not bad at all i'd say, especially if you consider that i have a two year old system. I'm very glad i didn't start throwing money and hardware at the problem, waiting for the optimizations instead.
I just downloaded the patch, copied it into the game folder (just in case) and extracted there, pressing "yes to all" when it asked me about over-writing existing files, then deleted the compressed archive file i had previously copied over (i keep them in a separate folder anyway).
Then, i went into my documents\1c softclub\etc folder and emptied my cache so that it rebuilds it properly after launch.
It does take a bit longer to load up which i would say is a good sign, it probably means it loads more of what it needs before spawning into the mission, making it easier to reduce stutters.
Enjoy your well deserved rest, it seems i finally have a playable sim as far as performance is concerned.
I think that it will only take 1-2 more patches to completely sort out the final performance issues, enable crossfire/SLI for the people that use it, etc, then it's on to the gameplay bugs which should hopefully be much simpler to correct.
Although i do secretly hope that the Ju88's gyrocompass will be fixed in the final live patch on Friday (just checked it and it's still stuck) along with a few other things (mixture settings in the Hurri and mixture controls in the Tiger moth for example), i can certainly keep busy for 2-3 weeks with what i have now.
As a final note i would like to echo what another user said, it would be useful to have a list of changes so that we know what to test for. Other than that, bloody good job overall
