BETA PATCH v1.06.17582 - May 05, 2012

[Osprey]

Game crashes aside it now looks like 109's can turn inside the Spitfires, so now we have 109's with higher speeds (below 6km), better climb, better dive, stronger DM and better firepower lol

The light is fading, and with the crashes we still cannot run a campaign. With 1946 releasing 4.11.1 I may bite the bullet and run our campaign on that, at least it'll work.

[Volksieg]

Lastnight I was incredibly happy with the patch.... though not as happy as the dev team suggested I would be. Seems it is that way for most on here.

Ok.... today I have seen a huge performance drop. I lowered my settings back to how they were pre-patch..... still appalling performance.

I lowered the settings to less than pre-patch.... still appalling performance.

Then along came the CTDs.....

I have also noticed that there are hardly any ground shadows, no cloud shadows whatsoever, the few ground shadows there are only seem to appear when directly underneath the plane. The sites are so dim they are almost impossible to see. Textures have been downgraded. Clouds, by the dev teams own admission, have been cut back drastically until they can be fixed......... is it any wonder there was a small performance boost? (That somehow only lasted a couple of hours!!!)

We were told there would be a HUGE patch and yet the size of the download is actually surprisingly small.

I feel I have to ask this.....

Has any work been done on this patch whatsoever or did everyone sit around for months, feed us false information and, at the last minute panic and actually just remove all the problem areas from the game and hope noone would notice?

I hate to say it but I feel utterly hoodwinked. I was actually teetering on the edge of "fanboy" status..... not now.

No faith left in the development team whatsoever.

Please make me change my mind. Is that too much to ask?

[David198502]

had 6 gamecrashes during 30minutes.
the game even crashes when playing offline(which it hardly did before) and 2 out of 3times when i try to connect to a server....

the textures are a joke now

the flight models....mäh
109 feels sluggish and isnt responsive to inputs anymore(dont know if that is more realistic now) but its almost impossible to stall this crate now, and i just outturned 5(two of them were spitIIa)spitfires on atag in one sortie....not vertical but horizontal...they seemed to stall before me..thats a joke.im a 109 guy exclusively and i want the fms historical correct and not historically incorrect even if its in my favor.its no challenge at all now.

their is such a long way to go, and given the "improvements" with the former patches and now this one, i really fear, that this engine will get completely before they can control that unleashed beast...

[Volksieg]

Well.. I can already see the responses from some quarters....

"This isn't even a beta patch! This is an alpha for testing! You know this.... blah blah blah"

Sorry but... on examination, apart from a few added sounds and a snazzy little extra effect on explosions......

This isn't a patch at all! We were told to expect optimisations not omissions! All they have done is remove the things that were causing problems (Which they claim they have been working on and, in some cases, actually fixed!)...... of course there would be performance increases from that! lol...... but, ultimately, it has just made it more unstable. (Like taking half the engine out of a car and saying "Well.. it's lighter!" )

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Mad Mike67

Quick question... I was under the impresion that being a title through Steam that the updates would be auto applied when the game was initiated via steam. I'm not a wiz kid but I figured it was going to be that simple, am I missing something?


Thanks
Mike

That happens with the final, official patches. The testing patches (alpha and beta versions) like this one do not get applied through Steam but manually.

The reason is that this allows us to test for bugs on a voluntary basis and be able to revert back to the last stable version through Steam if something goes wrong (eg, you can see some people are very happy with the new patch and some are not).

If the beta patches were applied through Steam, then there would be no way to revert back, they would be applied to everyone in a mandatory fashion and everyone would be stuck with a testing version.

This way, only those that want to deal with bug hunting and providing feedback are installing the test patches and the rest wait for the official release through Steam.

[Lurker_71]

I reinstalled the game and reinstalled the patch to give it another shot (after reading Bliss' reports that the new patch rock). Nope. Worse FPS than before, stutters, and overall not smooth. Before the patch, my only two gripes were AI and launcher.exe crashes. AI seems a bit better, but not sure. Since performance is very poor I didn't care to even try online, so I do not know whether the launcher exe crash is still there.

The fact is, I had better performance with full clouds and higher settings. Now, it is worse. I'll go back to previous version. Very disappointed, after so many months of waiting.

You folks have fun with the placebo. I'll skip.


Regards

My system: Win64, 8 GB ram, i7 870, gtx 460, game on SSD.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by Volksieg

I hate to say this but...... somehow the patch, which I was actually rather happy(ish) with just doesn't seem to be working anymore.

Last night I had great performance with shadows on (Which was new for me) and was able to fly at my proper resolution.....

Today? It has all changed.

In response to this sudden difference, I tried switching shadows off.... went back to the lowest resolution possible, tried even lower settings than before this "patch"..... no difference.

I have now gone from an average fps of 36 to an average fps of 16!!!

Volksieg, it does not make sense,

One day it works great, 24hrs later performance is crap!
Something must have changed and wejust do not know what caused it.

Maybe Steam re-installed old files again?

ATAG-Keller made a suggestion to those having crash-to-desktops in the new patch:

Originally Posted by ATAG-Keller

1) Do a Steam Verify of your current game to return it back to a verified 1.5950 version
2) Delete the Cache folder in Documents/1C Softclub/IL2 Sturmovik
3) Copy and paste the new beta/alpha Parts folder into the core C:/Steam/Steam Apps/Common/IL2 Sturmovik folder and overwrite the old Parts folder.

When you run the game the new version should take effect and eliminate the computer crashes.

The other advice I will offer is to watch carfully your VRAM % utilisation. They said that the new patch loads many more things into the RAM (VRAM?) in order to avoid stutters &fps drops if these things would be loaded when required. This sounds like an increase of VRAM requirements (which is hopefully compensated by the tone-down of the other graphics).
Maybe that people with small VRAM (<1Gb) reach the limit much faster than 1c expected... [ASSUMPTION]
When my 1,3Gb VRAM becomes full I have a 50% drop in my fps.


~S~

[Volksieg]

That is definitely a mystery... for sure.

I made sure it isn't connected to the cloud and automatic updates are off also.... nothing else has changed.... apart from the negative performance, of course.

You may be right and it's a VRAM issue.... though after all this time they really should have fixed that. They really should have fixed most of these problems a long time ago and to present a patch, in whatever stage it may be advertised as, that only seems to have removed the problem than actually fixing it is worrying to say the least.... the very least.

If we consider CloD as being like a particularly difficult child, there are two options:

1) Discipline the child and adjust their behaviour

2) Send the kid into care.

One is a solution, the other a cop out..... though either way, your Sunday afternoons are a lot quieter.

This "patch" has sent the kid off to the children's home.

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that this little escapade could lead to all the people I played online with jumping ship back to 1946!

[SiThSpAwN]

Yeah, it makes sense to clean up the game install completely... I have not had one CTD so far.

[Luftwaffepilot]

I can't understand how a patch (no matter if beta or even alpha) with a rewritten graphics engine can show the same issues (CTDs, stutters (caused by clouds, grass, particles, ...)) like before the so highly praised "major graphics rewrite". This sim is not showing any progress.