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XyZspineZyX
11-27-2003, 04:51 AM
If you find that changing the graphical options from within the game doesn't help you much, try the following:

Inside the Config folder is the file graphics.cfg
Open it with edit, scroll down and find a large section following the label "camera". These are the settings for your game's viewing range, lots of things can be done here.

For example, under Low Settings:

far clip = 60000;
structure = 30, 2000;
trees = 60000, 3000;
dynamic = 300, 20000;
objects = 3000, 40000;
mirage = 3000, 10000;
surface = 10000, 50000;
lights = 50, 10000;
lod = 0.7;

The following are my guesses of what the names and numbers mean.

far clip: unit in meters
structure: max number of structures shown, unit in meters
trees: max number of trees shown, unit in meters
dynamic: moving objects, aircraft, ground units
objects: 40km range, probably clouds
mirage: fog?
lights: lighting applied to objects, including shadows
lod: bigger the better / slower

After applying the numbers to the setting you like (ie medium or high), just go back to the game and choose that setting for it to take effect.


For a quick tweak, try toning down the options in this order..

water
- heavily dependent on the pixel shader capability, I don't think any hardware right now can run highest at a good framerate.

scenes and visibility
- scenes by itself is no big deal, but extending visibility gives your system an exponential performance hit. If you have 512mb of system memory, keep visibility to medium to avoid sluggish play. If you have directx 7 generation card and / or a midrange cpu, keep both to medium or lower

shadows
- i haven't found a way to disable world shadowing separate from the aircraft, turn this off it you need to as it is very cpu sensitive (especially combined with a long visibility range).

haze
- its a matter of preference, but if flying in a thunderstorm, my system slows to a crawl.

heat blur
- i saw someone posting that heat blur doesn't work. Note that it only appears when your aircraft is flying at a slow speed, around 500 km/h or lower.


Personally I have all of the settings within the game set to the highest at 1024 x 768 32bp, with the exception of water, which is set to high.

System spec:

athlon xp @ 2.3 ghz
radeon 9700 stock catalyst 3.9 with hotfix
asus a7n8x deluxe (haven't tried multiplay)
1 gig pc3500
nforce 2 audio

My settings:

structure = 100, 10000;
trees = 100000, 10000;
dynamic = 300, 20000;
objects = 3000, 50000;
mirage = 3000, 15000;
surface = 14000, 80000;
lights = 100, 30000;
lod = 1.5;

On these settings my system averages between 25 - 30 fps near towns and lots of trees, and totally rocking in open fields.

Happy Tweaking^^
:

XyZspineZyX
11-27-2003, 04:51 AM
If you find that changing the graphical options from within the game doesn't help you much, try the following:

Inside the Config folder is the file graphics.cfg
Open it with edit, scroll down and find a large section following the label "camera". These are the settings for your game's viewing range, lots of things can be done here.

For example, under Low Settings:

far clip = 60000;
structure = 30, 2000;
trees = 60000, 3000;
dynamic = 300, 20000;
objects = 3000, 40000;
mirage = 3000, 10000;
surface = 10000, 50000;
lights = 50, 10000;
lod = 0.7;

The following are my guesses of what the names and numbers mean.

far clip: unit in meters
structure: max number of structures shown, unit in meters
trees: max number of trees shown, unit in meters
dynamic: moving objects, aircraft, ground units
objects: 40km range, probably clouds
mirage: fog?
lights: lighting applied to objects, including shadows
lod: bigger the better / slower

After applying the numbers to the setting you like (ie medium or high), just go back to the game and choose that setting for it to take effect.


For a quick tweak, try toning down the options in this order..

water
- heavily dependent on the pixel shader capability, I don't think any hardware right now can run highest at a good framerate.

scenes and visibility
- scenes by itself is no big deal, but extending visibility gives your system an exponential performance hit. If you have 512mb of system memory, keep visibility to medium to avoid sluggish play. If you have directx 7 generation card and / or a midrange cpu, keep both to medium or lower

shadows
- i haven't found a way to disable world shadowing separate from the aircraft, turn this off it you need to as it is very cpu sensitive (especially combined with a long visibility range).

haze
- its a matter of preference, but if flying in a thunderstorm, my system slows to a crawl.

heat blur
- i saw someone posting that heat blur doesn't work. Note that it only appears when your aircraft is flying at a slow speed, around 500 km/h or lower.


Personally I have all of the settings within the game set to the highest at 1024 x 768 32bp, with the exception of water, which is set to high.

System spec:

athlon xp @ 2.3 ghz
radeon 9700 stock catalyst 3.9 with hotfix
asus a7n8x deluxe (haven't tried multiplay)
1 gig pc3500
nforce 2 audio

My settings:

structure = 100, 10000;
trees = 100000, 10000;
dynamic = 300, 20000;
objects = 3000, 50000;
mirage = 3000, 15000;
surface = 14000, 80000;
lights = 100, 30000;
lod = 1.5;

On these settings my system averages between 25 - 30 fps near towns and lots of trees, and totally rocking in open fields.

Happy Tweaking^^
:

DayGlow
11-27-2003, 05:15 AM
good post, I just found the the graphics.cfg file as well and am going to start mucking about.

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XyZspineZyX
11-27-2003, 05:22 PM
Don't be patting yourself on the back just yet. I get 25-35fps in all cases on my rig except for two:

1) Looking into an overcast
2) Looking at flare smoke just as the flares burn out.

Even with everything at lowest settings, and 800x600x16, my FPS drops to 5-8 in these two cases. There is some technique in how "white smoke" is drawn that just eats up CPU/GPU time.

I have a DirectX-9 compatible video card (Nvidia FX 5600 Ultra), so it has the latest hardware.

Try it yourself: enable FPS counter (Ctrl-backspace) go to fly by view, and drop a bunch of flares as you zoom by and as the flares start to disappate (the tight white smoke trails begin to expand), watch your frame rate.

Also, set up a mission with a Cloud base of 2000', Density 9 or 10 (those give you overcast, there 5-8 don't seem to do anything except give you 'scattered' -- but that's a different issue). Look down into the cockpit or at the ground, then pan up and look at the overcast sky. I get a big hit in FPS. It's really jarring in a dogfight or pull-up as suddenly everything starts crawling as I view the clouds.

Can't figure out a setting that would simplify the cloud/smoke complexity.