I have a 1 gig AMD atholon processor and a 32 meg radeon by ATI. With this system I can say with no question the graphics quality I am having to endure and the performance degradation have rendered this new incarnation a net loss. My graphics quality is almost as poor as Air Warrior used to be. My frame rate is wildly variable going from 5 to 40. In many places my text buffer gets flooded with low vid memory messages that demand I reduce the max texture size. But my texture size is already set to the minimum of 128. And last but no least inorder to keep these messages at a minimum I am finding I have to bump my windows color depth down to 16 bit color.
But this all sounds like a lot of whining. So I thought I would share my graphics with you.
This first image is from the prettiest terrain I ever flew over in a sim. Mindanao, base A44. The image is of the big rock just east of base.
The first shot is from AH1 base A44 Mindanao. (The prettiest terrain I ever flew over is Mindanoa in AH1)
Notice the nice horizon shading? Notice the almost photorealistic texturing on the stone escarpment?
The next image is that same rock in AHII
Notice that my horizon shading is absent from the sky, (Yes I do have it turned on in the settings.)? Notice how the mountains in the distance look like the sky should look? Notice no rock face texturing at all? I can't run with transitions between the texture overlays because they reduce my fps so much. These are my default graphics. If I try to run any higher than this my text buffer gets buried in endless lines of warning text as the same message just scrolls and scrolls and scrolls, further tanking my frame rate.
I can actually say that miserable old Air Warrior could boast of graphics as good as this at three times the frame rate.
This net loss in game performance and graphics quality seems a little extreme to me. But maybe some paying customers just don't count.
But hey, that's just me. Who am I to complain?
Needless to say, I have my eyes open for something else. Maybe the latest iteration of War Birds? Probably not, but now it is definitely worth a look.
