B-17 large formations - FPS problem

[lister]

Recently I've been flying with the squadron with ~4 plane formations of B-17s, flying at under 150m distance. Whilst this should be extremely good for defending against attacks, the problem is the framerate sinks to less than 10! All the members of the formation complain of this, and we have varying hardware set-ups. I have a Pentium II 350 which has a frame rate of at least 25fps when gunning for one aircraft. Is there any chance we could get an option to decrease the detail level of nearby B-17s?

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lister

XO, Red Dragons
(Aces High Division)

 http://www.reddragons.de

[Central]

Lister,

It just might have been a bad night\day. We have flown with formations of 5-6 17s with several escorts no problem. In tight formations as well, between 78-190.

Was mid-day, around 60 players in arena. If that has anything to do with it.

Central
Dickweed FG
 http://bombergroup.com

[iculus]

I experience this as well.  Frame rate drops considerably.  I usually get 30fps, in buff formations, 10-15fps.

Thanks for posting this!

IC

[214CaveJ]

I've led/flown in a lot of 17 formations (though none yet in .43)  The only time I've had frame rate problems was when we'd all head for the runway and my fps would drop to 2-3/sec.  Once we got rolling and our birds weren't overlapping anymore they climbed back up.  6-ship, 2 rows of 3, all aircraft inside of 800yrd horizontally and 150yds fore/aft and I was still getting 20+fps.  Dinnae notice a big hit when we got jumped either, gunning was nice and smooth.

[tshred]

I've noticed this since day one. When in cockpit of B17, my frame rate drops to an average of about 21 to 22 fps. I couldn't imagine flying in a formation near the clouds! I'd probably freeze up! In fighters, I avge mid to hi 40's, never drop below mid 30's even in a huge furball, but step into a 17 and it goes to hell! To much 17 art. I run a 366 celery o/c to 458 with 128 PC100 cas2 and agp Voodoo 3 3000 o/c to 180. That should be enough for the cockpit of any aircraft! Oh well.

ts

[Duckwing6]

yep i have bad framerates in the B17 too .. guess it's all that 3d modelling of the props and the complex cockpit... my framerate goes down to about 11 (from 21) ... when attacking a single B17 FPS drop to about 13 when he opens up fire (i can tell you that spoils your aim)... if it's more than one .. well talk about dia show

AMD K6 350 (333 overclocked)
Asus Motherboard 100Mhz Bus
Creative Banshee PCI 16Mb
Dx7a
128 MB Ram

[StarKnite]

Hmm.. I haven't seemed to have that problem. I flew amongs 4-17s in a fighter, and they all had their guns firing, had no freezups during flyby, and I've also been in a 17 formation and have had no frame rate problems.

Celery 464, 128M Ram, TNT2 Ultra (32M). Res: 1024x768 32Bit color. Running Hires texture pack, and the most it dropped during those flights was from 38-44 down to 32-35
Still very playable for me.

[Azrael]

This problem may be new to 0.43, i formely flew buff flights w/ 3 ac and didn't mention a frame rate hit otr already, but this flight w/ 4 or 5 ac otr dropped frames to single digits. A friendly fighter pilot nearby had a look and did some flyby passes, he also reported his frame rate went down to single digits. Although 8th AF style raids are absolutely senseless in the current arena due to target distribution, this frame rate hit could have a very negative impact on possible scenarios in that style.

Az

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Azrael
 Red Dragons