Game is Unplayable

[335th_GRAthos]

Well, I dislike the title of this thread and did not want to post here but, I see the discussion is going on.

There has been a big misunderstanding: This was never meant to be a game, this is a very hard core simulation.

You need to have been flying a few yeas IL2FB at full real levels and knowing the IL2FB conf.ini by heart in order to dare to load this "game" on your hard disk.

So how did such a hard core simulation become something which anybody can buy of the self and offload his frustration later, I do not understand.
Apparently, the original IL2 and subsequent versions sold approx 650.000 units in Russia and another 600.000 in the rest of the world
(numbers are not equal to users, I have 8 of the IL2FB and two of CoD but it still gives a good idea of the community).
This is a big community of hard core sim players and a market big enough to create a specialised "game" for.
Some 15years ago, I was looking at a Silicon Graphics Workstation demonstrating a flight simulator and had promised myself to buy one of these things one day.
Of course I didn't the price tag was USD$ 500.000 those days. So, I am happy I can pay 30-40-50 USD and have this game on my PC.

Somebody was kind enough (thanks!) to post a video of the complexity of getting an airplane off the ground in real settings.
This is what I am concened about and not how much is the impact on my fps when the windmills are turning in high resolutions or if many chimneys pop up smoke:

(I have problems to shoe the Youtube link, look at Sven's post in the thread below)
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=20466

As far as eye candy is concerned, there is a lot and everybody's hardware has extreme limitations.
You need to use GPU-Z to see how much the RAM of your GPUis used and you will know your limits (at least befor the next patch arrives).

To answer the title "This game is unplayable" yes, I believe you are right if you do not know how to open the conf.ini or do not know how to tune your graphics cards and PC
or have not being flying flight simulations in full real settings for a couple of years then, this game is not what you should be buying.
I do not want to step on anybody's toes here, it just that we need to be objective, this is not an easy game to load on your PC and play with it!
There have been a lot of games which had excellent graphics and were easy to setup and play (I recall my excellent experience with one of these Call of Duty 4 or 5 etc).
THIS ONE IS NOT

If on the other side, you know how to open the conf.ini, know how to tune your graphics cards and PC and have being flying flight simulations in full real settings
for a couple of years then, this game rocks and here is the proof below:

Finaly after three days of hard work testing the new setup under Win7 I noticed following interesting things
probably worthwhile sharing.

Yes, it is playable but your GPU must have lot's of memory!
Back in Christmas when I was buying my new GTX-570 with 1280Mb RAM I though the Nvidia guys had gone crazy.
I am happy now I kept that thought to myself.

Win7-64bit is a must, otherwise in WinXP you will be stuck to run the game at 640x480 kai 800x600 resolution (maybe also 1024x768 )

Sorry the photos are big because my desktop has 3840x1024 resolution (three monitors) and the game runs in the middle window at 1280x1024.
At the far right are the interesting stats on CPU and GPU workload:

#1 The game appears to be using nicely many CPUs, I have Process Affinity=6 (using cores 1+2 out of the four 0,1,2,3)
the system runs very smoothly and total CPU usage is 30% (whereas WinXP had only 13%).
So, thanks to Win7-64 the CPU doubled, this is good news!
It is a bit surprising though as it conflicts with the statement that the game poorly support multiple-cores.
You will see that the CPU usage is very evenly spread around the four cores, I am also surprised myself.

#2 The less good news is the consumption of GPU memory. The freeware GPU-Z is an excellent way to monitor this in real time.
Here GPU-Z shows the results of the first GTX-570 (the second being idle).
The most important is in the middle of the GPU-Z window, the Memory Used
Above the sea, 1280x1024 Memory Used is 959Mb RAM :excl:
Above land, 1128Mb RAM :excl: :excl:
MY GPU has 1280Gb RAM so it can still run smoothly but if the GPU has less then problems will start and you will have
to lower the resolution or the quality (grass, roads, shadows, etc, etc).

Mission 1, bombers intercept with 12 airplanes in the air


Quick mission over land with 6 airplanes



I must underline that I am more interesting in flying dogfight than enjoying eye-candy;
The new game has endless capabilities in graphics and it is definitively very heavy for most graphics cards available today
(at least until the next patch arrives) but I do not care that much; if I wanted nice graphics I could have been flying MS FSX four years earlier...
What I find very annoying on the other side though is the unconfirmed information that AI can see through thick clouds
(they had promised us they would fix this in the IL2FB days, it will be a major issue if they did not) -
I can not confirm as I have not tested it yet myself - too busy trimming my rig.

Using GPU-Z you can easily check whether you reached the limits of your system, watching Memory Used and Memory Controller load.
I hope this helps somebody, especialy those who start frustrated "my resolution is 1600x... the game is unplayable" types of threads

~S~

resolution: 1280x1024
anti aliasing: 0x (I get very bad errors when I try to raise AA)
Epilepsy: Off
Model: high
building: very low
land:medium
forest: off
effects:high
damage decals:high
buildings:low
land shading: low
grass: on
shadows: on
roads: on
__________________________________________________ ___________
Look also at my post at
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...t=19777&page=3
for the performance on 800x and 1024x under WinXP.

Also look at Skinny's post http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=20438



Sorry for being too long but, we should get a bit more mature dealing with this and all new buyers
who did not know where they were stepping into the hard core simulation field have my full sympathy!


~S~

[norulz]

Originally Posted by klem

norulz, have you forgotten that Oleg said a long time ago that you would need a PC that runs IL-2 VERY WELL to run CoD at low settings. If you expect your PC to run CoD on Max settings you are deluding yourself. It won't.

You don't need a Core 2 Duo at 3GHz 4GB of RAM (which IL2 cannot even address) nor a GT460 tu run IL2 at absolute best settings.

This is a screenshot at low settings (and poor FPS) from the wonder CloD, tell me... you rather play IL-2 1946 or this... you give it a name.




If you say I should expect under 30FPS for that garbage quality at my rig because IL-2 that looks 1000 times better runs OK on it... you loose me as debate partner.


P.S> This level of quality should had not existed in CloD... it's simply shameful. period!

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by Sasha

The only insult here is - insult to Il-2 worldwide community that was lured to prepay unplayable product (Are you reading any other related forums except this one ? )

No, I'm not reading other foruns, I'm playing the game. I thought it was running on my PC pretty nicely, but if what you say is true, and that people on another forum say it's unplayable, well I guess I must be mistaken.

[RocketDog]

Originally Posted by norulz

This is a screenshot at low settings (and poor FPS) from the wonder CloD, tell me... you rather play IL-2 1946 or this... you give it a name.

That really is a quite remarkable shade of green .

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by RocketDog

For example, I have RoF on my i7 920 @ 3.8 HGz, 6GB RAM, GTX285 PC and it runs very smoothly.

I don't have RoF, but I understand that it ran poorly when it was released.

But the name change from BoB to CloD suggests that 1C know they have little hope of delivering large aerial battles over land. Hardly an encouraging sign.

Are you trying to be witty? You're not are you - you're suggesting that the change in name is because the developers couldn't get the game as optimised as they'd hoped. Wow, even for this forum that's some imagination you have. It's still called Battle if Britain in Russia isn't it? Maybe they can have battles over land but we can't.

[GloDark7]

This game does indeed become playable with some tweaking.

If you don't mind abandoning your monitors native resolution, discarding anti-ailiasing and disabling half the terrain detail.

Yep, playable, but ugly as a bag of spanners...

[Il2Pongo]

he had to accept that the game, despite his best efforts has issues.

Imagine if the devs could have concentrated on what matters in this game instead of all the "that lorry drivers hat was introduced in 1944!"
and
London bridge was this colour in 1940 not that colour
and
that shade of green has never existed in england!
and
that kind of tree doesn't grow beside river's


LOL

The engine has issues. It is obviously a big disappointment for the devs, for Oleg, for all of us.

But for Tree its heaven!
HEAVEN
HEAVEN ON A STICK WITH BUTTER

THE GAME HAS ISSUES!
tree tried to save us, to fix the game, but he couldn't do it because we just didn't love tree enough. lol

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by Il2Pongo

he had to accept that the game, despite his best efforts has issues.

Imagine if the devs could have concentrated on what matters in this game instead of all the "that lorry drivers hat was introduced in 1944!"
and
London bridge was this colour in 1940 not that colour
and
that shade of green has never existed in england!
and
that kind of tree doesn't grow beside river's


LOL

The engine has issues. It is obviously a big disappointment for the devs, for Oleg, for all of us.

But for Tree its heaven!
HEAVEN
HEAVEN ON A STICK WITH BUTTER

THE GAME HAS ISSUES!
tree tried to save us, to fix the game, but he couldn't do it because we just didn't love tree enough. lol

heh...

+1

[nearmiss]

Working yourselves into a corner, are you?

Go do the IL2 with TD upgrades... very excellent. The BOB COD will be a quantum leap better.

335 Grathos nailed it above.

Think of it like this, it is not a gamers game. Configuration and setup has always been an issue with IL2, why should BOB COD be any different. All of us, that have been with IL2 know. It is what we expect. Many of us has stated as much. The issues may persist for a month or more after initial release. All the users with their hot systems, and not so hot systems will have to tweak their systems for best use of BOB COD.

Just getting the key commands, setup with HOTAS is time consuming and mostly trial and error. You can literally spend several days trying to get the HOTAS setup, and then it can vary between Online and Offline play. LOL

It is the nature of the beast. If you must have plug n play, you need to be console player.

Calling BOB COD a game really doesn't describe it, except to say it is sold as one. The elements of what most gamers look for in a game don't exist.

I recall many times I've been involved in air combat. The action and immersion were so real my heart was actually pounding like my life was in peril.
I have never been affected like that by any game and certainly not a console game.

[335th_GRAthos]

Excellent News on this post (first post of second page):
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...t=20472&page=2

Originally Posted by nearmiss

I recall many times I've been involved in air combat. The action and immersion were so real my heart was actually pounding like my life was in peril.

+1, unforgetable experience


Jumping on the subject of this thread but with Good in mind, since you mentioned the HOTAS ordeal, the easiest way is to directly edit your confuser.ini (if you have not done it already, of course) It is a two-way process:
#1. Open a backup confuser.ini from now on "original.confuser"
Record your joysticks' (I have three) keystrokes on a neutral location (in my case, it is the change player commands or something like that, by default it is the keystrokes ALT-1, ALT-2, ALT-3, ALT-4. Exit the game so that everything is written on the confuser.ini from now on "confuser"
In "original.confuser" you can text search for ALT-1. Now you know where your new keystrokes will be saved in the confuser
Create a list of the names of your joysticks' keys.

#2. Open confuser and manually edit (add) the keystrokes to the functions you want.
The nice thing is that you can keep the old keystrokes AND ADD the new keystrokes as well. It is like the old IL2FB that could accept two different keys for the same command; I was very annoyed when I could not do the same in CoD (until I realised that the New command kept the old keystrokes and created an additional). And I was very happy when I saw I could do it directly on the confuser.ini

~S~