Opt test discussion

[humble]

Originally posted by Schatzi
You have to go to video setup and check OP terr and OP obj. They are off by default.

Thanks

[LYNX]

Skuzzy me old mucker. Could you have a butchers at this and tell me the obvious.  I get best fps in 800 x 600 x512 but much prefer 1024 x 768 x 1024. Aces High is still playable for me with these lower fps's.  My vid driver is 77.77 with everything "off", set to "PERFORMANCE".  Now bear in mind my perpencity for beer and cigs = limited funds what would you recommend that I upgrade??  Your advice would be most welcomed and eventually acted uppon.  I may even go a month without beer:rolleyes:

I suspect more RAM and a better vid card. Or are there any "tweaks" for the short term ?

CPU AMD 64 3000+ 2.0 Ghz Mem 512MB Page file used 228MB 1253 available DirectX 9.0c

Graphics card Nvidia 5200 128 MB in 1024X768 (32bit) & (85Hz)
Oldie Goldie plug and play Monitor maxed to 85 Hz

OS Windows XP Home (not 64 Home)

1024 x 768 x 1024 511.2M 299.8M Tex=79.2M

F1 AH Test Obj Both
40 44 45 47
34 38 40 41
37 41 43 44
35 39 39 41
F4
22 25 38 39
22 24 32 33
17 20 33 34
19 22 30 31
P51
36 42 44 46
29 32 33 35

Another test below but in 1024 x 768 x 512 511.2M 386.8M TEX= 80.9M

45 38 45 47
39 33 40 41
43 36 43 44
41 35 39 41

25 25 38 39
25 24 32 33
19 20 33 34
21 22 30 31

41 42 44 46
33 32 34 35


__________________
LYNX ~SOB~

[SkyGnome]

LYNX, that 5200 is kind of a problem.  NVidia would have been much more honest by giving it a "MX" monikor or something, as it's often slower than the old Geforce4 series.  A Radeon 9800Pro or X700 or Geforce 6600 will cost you quite a bit of beer, but allow you to do 1280x960 with AA and AF or better pegged at your monitor refresh rate much of the time.  The radeons are cool because they offer a free step of AA that costs no frame rate.

The 512 meg ram is a bit of a problem, but just being careful to run as little crap in the background as possible will help.  Look in the process list in your "Ctrl-Alt-Del" window.  A lot of "small" utilities actually chew up quite a lot of memory.  The low memory will be responsible for mini freezes, though, not overall bad frame rate.  Using smaller textures, and no user skins will also save you a bit of memory.

[Skuzzy]

With only 512MB of system RAM, you are best to stick with 512 texture sizes as 1024 texture sizes will cause some errant stutters due to lack of RAM space for them.

That said, the 5200 is your bottleneck for sure and is where I would first spend some cash.  Next would be a RAM upgrade to 1GB.

[LYNX]

Thanks SkyGnome and thanks Skuzzy (Sunday and i get a reply...thats service).  As it goes I have a stick of ram knocking about some place.  I just hope it's compatible.

I'll be trawling about E-bay for a cheepy Radion me thinks.  Although more is best the configuration i use is still playable.  I hardly ever get any stutters.  However, if I Gv it to the fuel factory and start loads of fires the fps drops to 8 hehe.  Now that is a pain but at least it's a rarity.

Thanks again especially Skuzzy.

[eagl]

Lynx,

An ATI 9600 of some sort ought to be the absolute lowest card you consider getting...  Either a 9800 or go for a geforce 6600 or better would be my recommendation.  You have plenty of cpu power to drive a vid card up to a 6800GT or X800 quite nicely, so don't short yourself with your replacement vid card.

Also, get a card with 256 meg ram at least.  Don't settle for 128 meg memory or you'll max out the memory before you run out of GPU speed as you increase the card's quality settings.  With that cpu and the right vid card that has at least 256 meg memory, there's no reason why you couldn't run 1280x1024 with 512 textures and 2x FSAA.

[SkyGnome]

Ok, with Op Test 3, Temporal AA is kind of whacked.  Up in the high skies where I'm easilly pegged at refresh, Temporal will kick on.  However, if it gets kicked off, it will stay off for 30 seconds or so.  Then something as little as changing view (or opening clipboard, obviously) will kick it off again for another 30 seconds.

I checked this against the production version - there Temporal works exactly as expected.  Open the clipboard - it turns off.  The second the clipboard disapears, it comes back on.

The new patch really defeats this feature, which is a damn nice feature for us radeon folks - a full level of AA for free.  Can someone else who uses Temporal verify that they see the same behavior?

[Smiggyy]

Since running the tests and seeing, like everyone else more or less, a marked increase in FPS I decided to run the Optest online.

Over the last few days the game has periodically frozen mid flight for a period of about 30 secs to 1 minute.

In most cases by the time the game "unlocks" I've crashed. On one occasion I had to reset the PC as the expected recovery didn't happen.

Any ideas? Would be a pity not to be able to run this as it enhances my gameplay no end.

Any ideas?

Smiggs.

[Skuzzy]

My best guess is you have an NVidia card, like an FX5xxx series or older and are running the latest NVidia drivers.  If this is the case, then you need to be running the 61.77 drivers.

If the above is not the case, then email me the DXDIAG output and let's see what it shows.

[Mustaine]

Originally posted by streakeagle
Most people are running at 1280x1024 and little or no FSAA, which puts both of my scores at a disadvantage.
 

just an FYI i think this statement is incorrect.

everyone i know runs 1024x768 (and i have spoke to many in game)

myself i run 1024, because moniter only does 60hz @ 1280

[Smiggyy]

Am running a GeForce3 Ti200 with latest drivers from website, loaded other day.

They date from begining of August.
Will roll back as you suggested.

Many thanks.

Smiggs.

[AKDogg]

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=88&var2=0


This website is for all video cards ever made to present.  It tells u everything about every video card.  

Skuzzy U might even want to sticky this website.  The best one I have found that is accurate and has every video card going way back to the old riva chips by nvidia to present video cards.

[rshubert]

Originally posted by Siaf__csf
My framerates doubled with optest 2. Lost udp session once on MA which is rare to me.

But the most notable thing was that as long as I flew optest version I didn't land more than 1-2 kills in 10 sorties. Died 8 out of 10.

When I returned to old version with half the framerates, I landed 13 kills in two consecutive flights before logging off for the night. Seems a bit strange, the situation was normal furballing in both cases.

I have a suspicion that the optest somehow changed my gameplay. Call me crazy but with optest I died over double the amount from normal and my k/d rate took a hit of 2 in one day.

I wish I had been filming, but I wasn't

I am not the best shot in the game, or the worst.  When running the optest, however, I noticed that I couldn't hit an enemy plane.  Not even with an LA-7 at D200.  

Then I did finally get a kill.  with NOBODY else around, I was fighting an Me-109. We did a high-frontal-deflection pass.  I shot, he had no shot.  We both reversed, then his tailfeathers fell off.

Things that make you say, "hmmmm...."

[MANDO]

While optimizing the code is the most obvious way to increase performance, a better level of detail management should be also considered.

As an example, with default settings and in the middle of a furball with 10 - 15 planes fighting at low level I get between 50 and 70 fps with short visual range, between 30 and 40 fps with medium visual range and between 19 and 25 fps with full visual range. In that situation, the real visual difference seems to be only the terrain, as all the enemies and friendlies fighting nearby are clearly visible at any visual range. Now, visually, terrain at medium visual range and full visual range seems the very same but the frame rate hit is very noticeable, on the other hand, with short visual range you lose most references to surrounding terrain.

I would like a more flexible and extended level of detail management. As a minimum, let the player to set the ranges associated with short, medium and full visual ranges for the terrain (asociated also with GVs visibility ranges), and also the three visual ranges associated with displayed flying planes.

The player would be able to set the following ground level ranges:
- Minimum visual range for short range associated with terrain and ground vehicles/grounded planes.
- Minimum visual range for medium range associated with terrain and ground vehicles/grounded planes.
- Minimum visual range for full range associated with terrain and ground vehicles/grounded planes.
- Minimum visual range for short range associated with airborne planes.
- Minimum visual range for medium range associated with airborne planes.
- Minimum visual range for full range associated with airborne planes.

A "level of detail calibration mode" would also be very helpful.
The player set three minimum FPS, each one for the three visual ranges (short, medium or full). Then switch on the "level of detail calibration mode". Now the system increase of decrease the visual range to achieve the desired FPSs (+- 2%) for the three ranges.

Also, make these ranges proportional with your current altitude over the ground, decreasing automatically as you get lower and increasing as you fly higher, being the minimum range that set by the player at ground level.

Of course, the best way to make the game as playable as possible would consist on an automatic level of detail management, so it keeps adjusting dinamically the level of detail to achieve a minimum FPS set by the player.

[Ack-Ack]

So I take it the no rocket selection for the P-38 is going to be fixed with the 2.05 release?


ack-ack