Vanishing terrain

[Cee64E]

I don't know if this is truly a bug or my machine's fault, but here goes.
I often see buildings slowly vanish.  They just seem to get wiped away from one side to the other only to reappear a moment later.  I've seen GVs do this too or seen an invisible GV fire at my GV.

My machine is a laptop with an intell video chipset that has 128Mb memory available to it though it never uses it all.  Not great I know.  My total machine memory is 2Gb with a P4 running at 1.8GHz.  I thought upping the memory to 2 gigs would solve the problem but vid memory usage didn't change much.  My in-game detail settings are all default and this bug happens even when I'm right near a building, say less than 1000 yards off.

Is this happening to anyone else or just my cheap video chip's fault.  My video does pass all DX9 tests, btw.

[Reapr]

I have never heard of this nor have I seen it. I have heard people say they have seen weird things useing laptops though. Is this problem from the air or when your in a GV? About the invisable GV make sure when while your in a tank use the ground vis mode (shift F4).

[The Fugitive]

Originally posted by Cee64E
...........My machine is a laptop with an intell video chipset that has 128Mb memory available to it though it never uses it all.  

If your going by the on screen info you can bring up in the game, DON'T. Video cards don't have a "standard" and report the info wrong in most cases. With an intel set-up you most likely don't even have the 128 megs avalible you think you have. Laptop do a lot of swap file type stuff and will use your hard drive as some of the memory.

I have seen this happen before, so I don't think its a bug. What texture sizes are you using? ....resolution? Your most likely going to have the run the lowest setting., my guess is you have the sliders turned way down. The fading in and out is you hitting the distance threshold.

[Skuzzy]

Go into the "Video Settings" for the game and set the "Maximum Texture Size" to 256 and see if that helps.  Also, disable skins.

The Intel video chip does not have any dedicated video RAM available.  It uses system RAM for its memory.

[Cee64E]

Originally posted by Reapr
I have never heard of this nor have I seen it. I have heard people say they have seen weird things useing laptops though. Is this problem from the air or when your in a GV? About the invisable GV make sure when while your in a tank use the ground vis mode (shift F4).

I was unaware that there was a ground vis mode.  I'll give that a try, thanks for the info.

[Cee64E]

Originally posted by The Fugitive
Laptop do a lot of swap file type stuff and will use your hard drive as some of the memory....   What texture sizes are you using? ....resolution? Your most likely going to have the run the lowest setting., my guess is you have the sliders turned way down. The fading in and out is you hitting the distance threshold.

I use a resolution of 1024X768 since my screen only goes to 1200X800 and not 1280.  Texture size is the default 512 and my distance and detail sliders are at the default setting.  I still regularly see 30+ FPS unless and only when I'm involved in a mass takeoff at the begining of a mission.  My machine documentation indicates that with more than one gig of memory, upto 128Mb is used for video memory and I just recently upped to 2 Gigs.  I saw the problem when I had only 512 megs so I'm not certain it's memory related.  It could be the crappy on-board chipset though...  I've never been impressed with Intel's video sets.

[Cee64E]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Go into the "Video Settings" for the game and set the "Maximum Texture Size" to 256 and see if that helps.  Also, disable skins.

The Intel video chip does not have any dedicated video RAM available.  It uses system RAM for its memory.

I'll give this a try.  Thanks, everyone for all the advice.