Hi-Res Pack ?? Jitters??

[Sincraft]

Ok, just found this Hi-Res pack people have been talking about in game.
It's very nice to play at 1280x1024 on my 19" Sony.

However, I did notice some jitters - like HD hits that last for a 1/10th of a second.  When the game initialized, I set the graphics to preload including textures and skins.  I figured it would speed it up.

Not sure what's up because I have

-2 gigs of ram
-256 megs of video ram (7600GT)
-Also have two sata 3 drives running in raid for speed!

Cpu is a 3200+ venice core - and I have solid solid power coming in through the system with great cooling.

I want this to be a FLUID feeling game as it's reqs are rather low.  So I am not sure why I am seeing a few jitters until I've been up for a bit when I have everything set to preload??

I did notice that in the lowres pack, my frames never stray from 85 (which I have set to unlimited in settings), with the hi-res pack (same settings) - I've seen it drop from 85 - 50 when I see the HD, ram or whatever it is...hit.

Any super longterm players here with ideas and suggestions?  

Also - do you notice any better game play ability because you can see more 'stuff'.

I'm SO getting a widescreen 24" asap  Just saw this game on one, very elite.

S

[The Fugitive]

I think you need 2 megs of ram just to preload skins these days, there are a bunch of them. That might be the problem. Your box might be starved for ram. Try not pre-loading the skins. This will free up ram, and with the speed of your system you might not even notice the skin loading on the planes as they get close enough.

[Kermit de frog]

The fugitive.  Your post is contradicting and confusing.

Sincraft, I have the same problem.  I downloaded the Hi-res.  I thought I installed it, but for some reason, when I play, I am currently downloading skins.  Can this be causing my framerates to drop to 20 when on the deck with trees?  I recently got a new card (7800 GS OC 256MB) and was never going below 35 framerates.

I have 1.5Gb of ram.  Control + I says I'm only using 700MB of system memory and 100 for textures.

[Sincraft]

No my game never uses even a third of my system or gpu memory.
That is not the problem.

Possibly cpu?  3200+ a64?

No, my video card can handle anything this game can throw at it.  It's a 7600gt and runs like a champ, EVERY game I play that is new and graphics intensive.

Are people locking their frames or leaving them as unlimited?

[38ruk]

my video card can handle anything this game can throw at it. It's a 7600gt and runs like a champ

Uhh..... a 7600GT is a decent midrange card but to say that i can handle "anything" AH2 can throw at it isn't accurate. This game can put my 7800 down in 1024 tex in a big furball or formation of bombers on fire .  

If i was going to upgrade something in that system it would be the processor, get the best 939 socket cpu that you can before they are gone . IF its a 754 socket then you are prolly stuck where your at until you want to replace the motherboard too .

[The Fugitive]

Originally posted by The Fugitive
I think you need 2 megs of ram just to preload skins these days, there are a bunch of them. That might be the problem.

OK, to clarify, When you "pre-load" skins it holds ALL the skins in you RAM so it has quick access to them. How ever, if you look at the skin pac, you'll see thats it huge. I think Skuzzy said its over 2 megs now so if you pre-load skins you are using most of your ram for that, which can slow the other things needing ram to display

Your box might be starved for ram. Try not pre-loading the skins. This will free up ram, and with the speed of your system you might not even notice the skin loading on the planes as they get close enough. by the "skins loading on the plane" I mean that as you get to the point where your computer needs to display a custom skin it will hit your HD and display it. The fraction of a second your computer needs to retreive this info "could" give you a studder, but with a good system it very well may be fast enough that you won't notice it.

Sincraft, you mentioned "No my game never uses even a third of my system or gpu memory." If you are using the ingame data for this info its wrong. I'v read that they are used by the programmers and don't reflect what is really happening when it comes to the use on your system.

Also you can not compare AH2 with other games for computer power. Flight simulations use a lot of computing power for the  math involved with flight, 3 dimensional space and so on.  

Check out Skuzzy's info on hi-res here

[Hoarach]

Thats odd....Im using the high res pack and have only 512 MB RAM and a 7600GS with 512 MB.  I have a AMD A64 3200+.  With my LCD monitor I get nothing lower than 90 with an occasional 70 when in large furball over a field with lots of building burning.  Im usually around 120-150 and this is all with downloading skins since I was stupid to not copy my skins folder from my old AH folder as I redownloaded AH.

Ive yet to get a jitter and your system is better than mine.

I have all my sliders all the way up and nothing disabled such as skins or
weapons effect.


PS- Stupid question, first time the high res pack is used should it say highrestex for cache?

[Sincraft]

Depends on what 7800 you have.  The 7600gt will fry the 7800 in many tests.  I know it sounds stupid but I did alot of research before purchasing and, although I know it was 2nd from the top before I purchased it in rankings, I did this as it was a huge savings from the option of the top top card at the time. Btw teh 7600 is great at overclocking, as is the 3200+ venice with the core I have.  I can do some SERIOUS overclocking on this machine.
I did have the intentions on getting a faster chip as I purchased the chip on the cheap because the next step wasn't viable.  BUT then they fubard the whole pricing structure for awhile there, haven't looked lately but I'm pretty amazed that there isn't much as far as great price drops almost a year later.  Yea I know it's a mid range card NOW btw.  Yes I would prefer something with more pixel pipes, but the 7600gt runs soooo cool I don't have to worry about it and could overclock it even on the stock cooler.

As far as this game goes, if I can play on highest settings with anti alias on with all the newer or newest games, I really don't think this qualifies as a graf(x) card issue.

It MAY be my lame AMD chip.  First time going with it and from what I understand, great for games but anything too mathmatically intensive could result in more problematic conflicts vs the graf(x) gpu.

Like I said, with AH2 being a rather old game, with very limited ground graphics, I really doubt its a graf(x) card issue.

Someone mentioned the in game meters are wrong?  Why do they have them up there then for the gen pub?  Does anyone know of a low intensity monitor I could download (open source) that would record my usage during times?

I unchecked preload the skins/terrain and it ran better tonight.  However, I fubard my graphics drivers and downloaded the newest nvidia drivers.  Any response on the viability of these drivers vs older drivers on single core systems please?

I did get a few jitters tonight.  VERY little warping however.  If any.  I got a jitter JUST as I sixed an unsuspecting spit..and then BAM he was gone from my sights   !!!!!!!!!!!!!  VERY frustrating.

I'm kinda wondering if my new monitor is going to alleviate this issue.  I'm finally going to switch to widescreen 21 or 24" lcd.  
I feel like Im landing more hits since downloading this new hires pack also.  Anyone notice a difference on their end due to this?  

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help.  I'm about to wipe this system as it was a test bed for a million apps, and although my drives are completely defraged, I may have some things burning up some ram or resources...who knows.  I want ABSOLUTE fluid flying.  Jitters made me quit ww2online a million times.  It's the main reason I think most people jump out.  Too many bugs and perf issues.  Game ran fine on a P2-300, then each patch it would take more and more to run the game.  Now a kick butt duo is having issues in that game, and the graphics are still some of the poorest for the era we are in.

[Skuzzy]

It is all about resources.  And you cannot go by the amount of video RAM being reported as used.  The manufacturers do not give an accurate amount.

If your hard drive is continually being hit while playing the game, then you are simply running out of resources.  Any hard drive hit will cause a stutter.

It currently takes about 2.5GB of RAM to preload the skins.  After the next batch is released, it will take over 3GB of RAM.

Every computer is different.  Every computer has a different set of background processes running on it, which all take up resources.

[38ruk]

Depends on what 7800 you have. The 7600gt will fry the 7800 in many tests. I know it sounds stupid but I did alot of research before purchasing and, although I know it was 2nd from the top before I purchased it in rankings, I did this as it was a huge savings from the option of the top top card at the time. Btw teh 7600 is great at overclocking, as is the 3200+ venice with the core I have. I can do some SERIOUS overclocking on this machine.

I have a 7800GT clocked at 500/1240 mhz . Ive seen quite a few 3200+'s overclocked and they do alright , it's the lower multiplier that hurts them . I just pulled a 3700+ out of my machine that was clocked at 3ghz for over a year with water , if you can find one of those they were the best bang for the buck for overclocking . I;m currently running a 4400+ witha 600mhz overclock @ 2.8ghz (200mhz over FX-60)  and havent tried 1024 after the switch , i'll post back after i do .  Resources usage is low , i only have 11 processes running in task manager .  Later   38

[Schatzi]

Im using the highres pack too.

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3700+,  MMX,  3DNow, ~2.2GHz
2 GB RAM
7600GT
Sound Blaster

Im NOT preloading skins (only textures). I do occasionally run out of ressources but avidly refuse to return to the lower settings Skuzzy recommended to solve the problems. So I live with the very occasional game lockup (once or twice a tour).


On startup screen, go to VIDEO SETTINGS and uncheck the "Preload Skins into System Mem". keep the "preload textures" checked.
When playing, you might encounter a very short stutter when seeing a skin for the first time, but thats pretty much unnoticable untill you really go looking for it.

[humble]

another potential issue here is soundcard or onboard sound. I had a potentially similiar issue on my new build. I've got a e6600/7900GT(84.66) 2G (DDR2 667m)....the onboard sound is a VIA C/S. If I got in a large furball with alot of sounds or down in the weeds and fired my guns I'd get F/R drop or stutter. My AMD3200 venice/7900GT/1G ran the game fine on hi-res with max sliders. But the NVidia OB sound chip is actually faster then almost all sound cards on the market. I threw in an old turtlebeach santacruz. My benchmarks actually dropped a bit?....but in AH game play is now flawless.

[numb1]

First off horach u can not have everything preloaded in sys mem and run at highest settings with hi res pack at 1024 with only 512 ram lol.The only reason ur frame rates are so high is ur prolly running 256 tex.Plus u have a lcd and ur getting 150fps lol.Whats ur refresh rate?If i turn off my vsync i get 260fps but monitor cant keep up.Turn u vsync on guys this could be part of problem.I have FX57 at 3 ghz 2 gigs ddr2 7800gtx.I think my cpu takes the biggest hit from game.In order 2 run this game at 1280/1024 at 1024 tex size u need a fast cpu.Even with my comp when i go over animated water my fps goes to 40.I do have antitropic at 16x and antialising at 8xs.I preload skins and textures and have no problem,i usually use about 1400mb of ram and 200 on my video card.Also i turn everything off and get down to 19 running processes before i play.hope this.And ur soundcard shouldnt matter if u got a headset via usb

[Hoarach]

Originally posted by numb1
First off horach u can not have everything preloaded in sys mem and run at highest settings with hi res pack at 1024 with only 512 ram lol.The only reason ur frame rates are so high is ur prolly running 256 tex.Plus u have a lcd and ur getting 150fps lol.Whats ur refresh rate?If i turn off my vsync i get 260fps but monitor cant keep up.Turn u vsync on guys this could be part of problem.I have FX57 at 3 ghz 2 gigs ddr2 7800gtx.I think my cpu takes the biggest hit from game.In order 2 run this game at 1280/1024 at 1024 tex size u need a fast cpu.Even with my comp when i go over animated water my fps goes to 40.I do have antitropic at 16x and antialising at 8xs.I preload skins and textures and have no problem,i usually use about 1400mb of ram and 200 on my video card.Also i turn everything off and get down to 19 running processes before i play.hope this.And ur soundcard shouldnt matter if u got a headset via usb

Alright I have nothing preloaded and I AM running high res textures.  You dont believe fine come over my house and see.  My refresh rate is 75 hertz.  My sliders all the way up.  Why bother turning vsync on if I am already getting good frames.  I have antialiasing and aniscoping off.  Animated water looks like hell so I have it off.  I plug my Sennheiser 650 through my SB Audigy 2.  I get down to about 15 processes.

[38ruk]

Hoarach , the reason to turn vsync on is to prevent image tearing , if you move your views quickly , the tearing should show up . If your not getting it, or it doesnt bother you thats fine but skuzzy has said that it can cause *rubber bullets* .

There are reasons some people can run 1024 textures and some have issues,  it comes down to resolution and video card quality settings . I personally run 1280X1024 with 4X Anti Aliasing  and image quality set at high in the nvidia control panel . I like to run high AA so i have to sacrifice 1024 textures to play the game at what i consider the smoothest possible .

 Alot of people have different opinions as to what is playable and what is smooth . When i play ANY minor hiccup or slight slowdown bothers me . If you have ever rolled your plane over a burning airfield and noticed it seems to slow alittle when the field is in view, that is what i consider  unacceptiable. To other people its smooth . I guess im just kinda nut's heeh