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Originally posted by TheFamilyMan:
From nvidia's NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Architecture Technical Brief in regards to their "Lumenex Engine"

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In many games, the new 16× high quality mode will yield frame-per-second performance results similar to standard 4× multisampled mode, but with much improved image quality. In certain cases, such as the edge of stencil shadow volumes, the new antialiasing modes will not be enabled and those portions of the scene will fall back to 4× multisampled mode.

I guess this means those jaggies on the coasts are there to stay for us 8800/9800 series owners. It's a feature, not a problem.

Too bad I didn't get a 3780, the main reasons I didn't was its flawed implementation for processing AA and ATI driver/control panel issues I've had.

Hmm, the result may still be the same but I don't beleive the coastlines are affected by what they are talking about here. The coastlines are made up of alpha textures, not stencil volume shadows AFAIK.

I was also concerned with the lead-in "In certain cases, such as...". Apparently their engine can't handle all cases so they punt in those cases. Possibly alpha textures also fall into this catagory. Seeing this stuff as an engine limitation is what I find most irritating. Hopefully future drivers may improve this situation. What helped my rig the most was the 4.09b landgeom=3 setting.

I just spent most of my two days off trying every scenario that I could think of to get a tolerable grapics view & today just minutes before I had to shut er down & flee out the door to work I finely came up with something workable for me at least...

I re-set all il2 settings to their lowest & then started up one at a time until I got the UGLYs out...

in il2 video:
high, high, exc, exc, exc, detail clouds

In il2 setup: Bilinear/none & all else checked except clip hint & dither...

in nvidia panel from the top 1, 2, 3, etc...
16x, on, override, 8xQ, super S, Use Open GL, OffOff, Bilinear, 3, multi, n, clamp, performance, off, auto, on, force...

with these settings I get fine (but not Perfect) graphics throughout the map with only a small area of shimmer in the trees here & there.

I am going to go into config.ini & put the forest, clouds & water to 1 when I get home for testing.

Using black death:
1280 x 960 AV 48 Min 29 Max 61
1024 x 768 AV 54 Min 36 Max 63

Actually the pic is very good in the Slovakia map with no shimmering...I am modded to 9 1bm.
The only problem is that the distance is very hazy & the mountains keep changing shapes, but it is far enough away that I can live with it for now.

Bummer, I did expect more from this card for this money... I could get an ati 3870 for 1/2 the price & the graphs would most likely be just as good.

Actually my ati X1900XT gave just as good graphics, but I couldn't pick the aircraft or ground targets out as well...
I will say this for this Nvidia card, I can see other aircraft & ground targets better and that is my main motivation for the card.

Urufu_Shinjiro mentioned about the AA not working because of aplha textures...I hope Nvidia is aware of this & working on helping us out.

Anyway...in summery...**Perfect** is the problem! (Only my humble opinion of course)

Take perfedt out & step each setting down one level & the reboot & start coming up slowly on each one testing as you go.

Then do the same with the Nvidia control panel..

It is a bummer to have to go through this, but il2 is a 6-7 year old game...it is a bit out of date as far as new tech stuff...

Well, you kinda honed in on it but not like you think. The clear water lapping on the shores is the alpha textures in question, these are only present with perfect water, no perfect, no alpha on shores.

Yeah, that's kinda a "back door" approach.

This morning I reset everything back to Perfect & setup back to all checked & highest settings and went into the Slovakia map & it was back to being fairly good again. just a bit if shimmer here & there. This I don't understand..
same settings yesterday were just horrible...Today they are fine. doesn't compute in my little brain.

With everything in the game set to max & water=3 & Forest=4 I am wondering just what combination of settings in the Nvidia control Panel would really help to fine tune things.

It's wierd which areas within the game are shimmering.. around the edge of one forest it will shimmer like crazy while another forest area right next to that one is perfectly calm. One side on the windshield post is jaggy while the other side is perfect.

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This I don't understand..
same settings yesterday were just horrible...Today they are fine. doesn't compute in my little brain.

This sounds familiar...

In my opinion, things are way too complicated to test really thouroughly, and to really draw conclusions.

Too many settings, too many variables. (Video card settings, in game settings / conf.ini, other dll versions... and your OS and its settings...)

One has to really put alot of effort into setting up a perfect test-environment, with a start-configuration, to which one can fall back on all the time. Recording and Documenting all changes, and their results...

Have thought about it, have tried sometimes (mainly for reasons of performance vs. looks) and in the end... not worth the effort... new video driver, new patch... later DirectX and one is back to square one...

Nowadays, I just wait... and hope for it to get better... by some change.
(As for performance: have thrown some money into the game ... much easier ... much faster results)

why did I start typing this anyways?
Oh yeah, just to share: I know the feeling...

LOL...Yeah FT I hear ya..
I feel the same way myself. I put a bunch of $$$ into a solid stable OHZ 600Watt Power supply & then a good quality newly released Gigabyte motherboard & put an older Asus 8800GTS graphics card in it.. The card has good reviews & most fokes seem to like it. I couldn't afford more, but I think it will hold up for some time to come..

I have done a lot of reading up on the Nvidia settings & what each individule setting is suppose to do then try to put it together. There are fokes here who understand these setting much better then I do so I learn a bit more from those who share that knowledge.. I have always been thankful for them sharing.

I try to not pay attension to the air heads who come here just to bitch & moan & disrupt the exchange of useful info being shared. We all get a bit frustrated from time to time, but just staying with it usually gets things working.

I think some fokes (like me) tend to focus to much on the BlackDeath track & FPS results. That map isn't the best for getting useful image control. There are just to many Islands & water ways to really help with an objective setting up of things. A less busy map may work better.

I have just gone through several maps I am satisfied with the way things are. They have some graphics flutter, but not that much...

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I have just gone through several maps I am satisfied with the way things are. They have some graphics flutter, but not that much...

Now that's cool! Start enjoying it now... (I should do that some more too... and not wonder so much about the technics and the performance and optimization...)

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I think some fokes (like me) tend to focus to much on the BlackDeath track & FPS results.

Lol, I renamed that track, so it's called 0TheBlackDeath.ntrk ... so it'll always be on top of the list, and I can just press 'Play Track' ... it's faster that way.

Hey, anyone tried to rename that track to Intro.ntrk and have it run at IL2's startup... that's an even faster way to start testing performance...

Wow FT, you got the benchmark bug bad, lol.

I also am running the 4.09b mod and I ried to set landgeom=3. however, it keeps resetting back to landgeom=2

how do you get it to hold?

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how do you get it to hold?

Me thinks you'll be needing the special .dll files... the ones dated March 13th, 2008.

4.09 Beta dlls @ Mission4today.
(Note that these can also be used for 4.08!)

Just to set things straight...
With the new Nvidia 175.19 drivers things are as good as advertised... Even the Black Death track is beautiful...Just a small bit of movement off to the far right where all of those waterways & islands are...
getting rid of the pure white runway in the mods makes the runway completely stable...
beautiful card..love it.