Growing Irate with this Game

[Oldschool61]

Originally Posted by nodlew

Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2
System Model: Inspiron 530s
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4600 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 3326MB RAM
Nvidia 9800 Gt


Yes Hooves, I tried the kegetys mods and they did improve things, so now I can play over water with things looking pretty good. The campaign remains unplayable no matter what I do.

Robotek, as to what I should be "grateful" for, I think that is for me to decide.

Minimum system requirements are not the minimum system requirements to "start a game". They are the minimum requirements to "play a game". And if they are not, this is the first I have heard of it, and I have been playing computer games since PONG. I wrote a program for the TRS-80 in high-school, so don't play word games with me, sonny boy.

The minimum system requirements are there to tell people the range of computers capable of playing the game and they are a marketing tool in that they cause people within, even if tending toward the bottom, to spend money to buy the game. Successful computer games are made to function on a broad spectrum of hardware. Games that are made only to work on cutting edge systems miss out on a huge market share, probably the largest, which is people with mid-range systems.

Anyway, as you can see, with my system I in fact exceed the minimum system requirements.

When they gave out the minimum specs I dont think they really knew what would be required as the game was so far from optimized that it was in all likely hood a guess.

Also what resolution are you running at??

[nodlew]

Thank you all for your helpful responses.

Helrza, I believe I have already copied and pasted your conf.ini settings (changing the process aff mask, of course)--I think I've tried every tweak currently proposed by anyone. The game is just barely playable with low terrain settings when launching from airfields near the coast, but stutters are still an immersion-killer, so I prefer to just play as far away from land as I can get at the moment, hoping that patches will make the campaign a more pleasant and less painful experience.

Oldschool, my native resolution is 1440 x 900, so that's the res at which I've been playing the game. Wide-screen, there is only one lower res really available to me, which I briefly tried. I don't think it made any detectable difference to performance, and the degradation of visual clarity was pretty bad. Maybe I should try that again.

I've disabled Aero, tried multiple page-file changes, used a flash drive to "Ready Boost" my OS, defragged the game and the HD, OC'ed my GPU (can't OC my CPU in any way with this MOBO), installed the performance mods, disabled all unnecessary services, created exceptions for the game folders and the .exe in my anti-virus, tweaked the NVCP no end, although I don't think NVCP has any effect on the game at present, tried all possible Options graphics combinations, tried setting process affinity and game priority in task manager, and installed the latest Beta drivers from NVIDIA.

I've been somewhat haphazard while attempting all of this, and I am sure there is a specific combination of all the above that would be ideal for my particular set-up, but like IL-2 1946, apparently, it is going to take a lot of research and experimentation to hit upon it. And the knowledge base for the research only exists as yet in a primordial form.

Good news about the patch, Bewolf--at least they are coming out quickly. Hopeful about giving it a try.

I don't think the process affinity mask is working for me. I have it set to 2, which should cause COD to run on my 1 core, leaving 0 for the OS. But tabbing out of the game, Task Manager shows Launcher.exe to be running on both cores. Setting affinity in task manager to use only core 1 causes the game to load missions very slowly, and I do not see any improvement over land. I see no difference setting a higher priority in TM either and that seems to cause audio sputters.

Does anything in NVCP work at all? What about Anistropic? Something I read about the game not being in true Full-Screen mode, and about that breaking driver imposed AA has me befuddled about all of that. Anyone know?

[TonyD]

Originally Posted by nodlew

...

Does anything in NVCP work at all? What about Anistropic? Something I read about the game not being in true Full-Screen mode, and about that breaking driver imposed AA has me befuddled about all of that. Anyone know?

Since the game runs in a 'pseudo' full-screen mode, AA doesn't work as it should. I have found that AF works, in that it gets ride of those black lines (texture joints) seen in the sea when the land detail is set to anything below 'high' (thanks, supernaturalist)

[Edit: no need to force AF anymore with the new update - lines are gone ]

[Oldschool61]

Originally Posted by nodlew

Thank you all for your helpful responses.

Helrza, I believe I have already copied and pasted your conf.ini settings (changing the process aff mask, of course)--I think I've tried every tweak currently proposed by anyone. The game is just barely playable with low terrain settings when launching from airfields near the coast, but stutters are still an immersion-killer, so I prefer to just play as far away from land as I can get at the moment, hoping that patches will make the campaign a more pleasant and less painful experience.

Oldschool, my native resolution is 1440 x 900, so that's the res at which I've been playing the game. Wide-screen, there is only one lower res really available to me, which I briefly tried. I don't think it made any detectable difference to performance, and the degradation of visual clarity was pretty bad. Maybe I should try that again.

I've disabled Aero, tried multiple page-file changes, used a flash drive to "Ready Boost" my OS, defragged the game and the HD, OC'ed my GPU (can't OC my CPU in any way with this MOBO), installed the performance mods, disabled all unnecessary services, created exceptions for the game folders and the .exe in my anti-virus, tweaked the NVCP no end, although I don't think NVCP has any effect on the game at present, tried all possible Options graphics combinations, tried setting process affinity and game priority in task manager, and installed the latest Beta drivers from NVIDIA.

I've been somewhat haphazard while attempting all of this, and I am sure there is a specific combination of all the above that would be ideal for my particular set-up, but like IL-2 1946, apparently, it is going to take a lot of research and experimentation to hit upon it. And the knowledge base for the research only exists as yet in a primordial form.

Good news about the patch, Bewolf--at least they are coming out quickly. Hopeful about giving it a try.

I don't think the process affinity mask is working for me. I have it set to 2, which should cause COD to run on my 1 core, leaving 0 for the OS. But tabbing out of the game, Task Manager shows Launcher.exe to be running on both cores. Setting affinity in task manager to use only core 1 causes the game to load missions very slowly, and I do not see any improvement over land. I see no difference setting a higher priority in TM either and that seems to cause audio sputters.

Does anything in NVCP work at all? What about Anistropic? Something I read about the game not being in true Full-Screen mode, and about that breaking driver imposed AA has me befuddled about all of that. Anyone know?

Just remember that anything you turn on to clean up the eye candy (AA or AF) will have an impact on your fps. 4X AA can lower your fps by 30-50%. As well as increasing your resolution. Im starting to think that most people here dont realize what effects fps. EVERYTHING effects fps especially resolution, AA, AF etc etc. AA and resolution have the biggest impact.

Originally Posted by Oldschool61

Just remember that anything you turn on to clean up the eye candy (AA or AF) will have an impact on your fps. 4X AA can lower your fps by 30-50%. As well as increasing your resolution. Im starting to think that most people here dont realize what effects fps. EVERYTHING effects fps especially resolution, AA, AF etc etc. AA and resolution have the biggest impact.

I have avg fps of 65-85 depends how many planes and what is near bit still game is not smooth at all, specially above the land...so its more about optimisation of the sim than our hardware

[nodlew]

Well, I'm back following my one week ban for telling one of the site administrators what I thought of him (wasn't a COD guy, and was unrelated to this game). It was definitely worth it, but from now on I suppose I will simply treat the individual in question as if he does not exist. Everybody wins.

Thanks all for your responses and advice in the meantime--I have read and utilized most of it. The latest patch has definitely improved things for my humble computer. By reducing the texture quality to High or Medium and turning the Land Shaders down to low, I'm able to actually play missions over terra firma that are smooth enough to enjoy, although I still get some stutters. I think one thing that improved performance for me was to turn AA off completely in NVCP. I have it set to 8x in the game options--something I might reduce, although I don't see much difference between 8x and 1x or any lower setting on my computer. I'll have to test it more.

The patch definitely makes the game possible to play and enjoy and really begin to appreciate all of the details at work.

Breathlessly awaiting the next patch, hopefully with the most glaring bugs repaired and perhaps greater performance enhancements.

[Oldschool61]

Originally Posted by Tvrdi

I have avg fps of 65-85 depends how many planes and what is near bit still game is not smooth at all, specially above the land...so its more about optimisation of the sim than our hardware

Stuttering and fps are two completly different animals. Optimization will help both problems but they are totally unrelated.

[Gryphon_]

If the video memory gets overloaded that will cause stutters for sure. You are unlikely to see the stuttering go away until the game textures are reduced in size or compressed so that the video memory in use is below 1Gb for the high end players and 500Mb for the mass market. Turning off all AA and AF will certainly help keep video memory use down but the main problem is almost certainly high resolution textures.

It would be interesting to see some results from Rivatuner of video memory in use at various settings.

[Reider]

Originally Posted by Gryphon_

If the video memory gets overloaded that will cause stutters for sure. You are unlikely to see the stuttering go away until the game textures are reduced in size or compressed so that the video memory in use is below 1Gb for the high end players and 500Mb for the mass market. Turning off all AA and AF will certainly help keep video memory use down but the main problem is almost certainly high resolution textures.

It would be interesting to see some results from Rivatuner of video memory in use at various settings.

It never Drops below 700-800 for me at all settings Low.
On mid and High it goes up to 1200-1400 immediately.

But this test was befor the last Beta.
I noticed the last beta reduces GPU load but i dont made a detailed test.