Patch 75

[Skuzzy]

New patch up!

Cloudy, with a chance of bombing!

[bustr]

Under ten minutes offline with everything but clutter enabled. Screen goes black, then rapidly flashes black and white until I ctrl-alt-del and end the alpha.exe.

Clutter off driving around FPS 40-51. Clutter on, 30's.
Tower - 30s
Hanger - 22-27

Never got around to flying. I'll test that knowing I have under ten minutes for the error.

Oh, post lighting off and environment slider at "0". 50's in the tower, 35 in the hanger.

[FLS]

No problems with patch.

Rear windows in tower show a giant clock reflection. 

[bustr]

Latest tweeks do not like my memory speed at 1330Mhz. Had to reduce to 1290Mhz.

Tested clouds offline and discovered this. Once I reduced memory speed a freezup upon entering clouds stopped.

CM Gods eye view in clouds.

Post lighting on - FPS 28-44
Lighting off - FPS 28-56

[FLS]

Flying B17 mission offline.

Default settings with no EM.

Solo away from formation 95 FPS
In formation                     37-41 FPS
Formation under attack      10-11 FPS
Formation under attack with post light off 12-14 FPS

No clouds yet. Will test later.

[hitech]

Flying B17 mission offline.

Default settings with no EM.

Solo away from formation 95 FPS
In formation                     37-41 FPS
Formation under attack      10-11 FPS
Formation under attack with post light off 12-14 FPS

No clouds yet. Will test later.

Did you test online?

HiTech

[bustr]

Can a player queue up the B17 mission online on demand or do you have to wait for it to cycle around?

I was in the P51B mission and the P38J vs 190A8 with everything enabled but clutter. FPS stayed in the 40's.

[hitech]

Can a player queue up the B17 mission online on demand or do you have to wait for it to cycle around?

I was in the P51B mission and the P38J vs 190A8 with everything enabled but clutter. FPS stayed in the 40's.

Ill change the schedual so only that mission is running.

HiTech

[bustr]

Waaaaa I was in a 262 lining up on a B17 and got disconnected. Someone took down the arena...waaaaaaaaaaaa. FPS was in high 40-50 over cloud layers defaults on.

[bustr]

When the Euro arena opened joined the mission in a 262 again, defaults on, clutter disabled. First time my flight got to see the bombers at a distance, were were warped back to our starting point. Never really found the bombers again. FPS above clouds in the upper 40-50. Flew in the clouds FPS 22-40. I'll have to grab a different ride and fly the mission again so I'm in the first intercept groups.

Going auto level in an AI mission is a sickening vertigo inducing wiggle waggle. Blech phoohy......

[715]

My experience with Patch 75 is below but I doubt it will be useful.

Like Patches 73 and 74, the Sheep and the Europe terrains in Patch 75 hard crash my machine very quickly (black screen and then reboot).  Offline they crash sometimes a mere second after first rendering the terrain, so I doubt it is a temperature issue.  Online, for some bizarre reason, they often last a few minutes or so before crashing.

The ndisles terrain does not (often) crash my machine unless I drive a Jeep through a corn field.  That crashes the computer reproducibly.  Other fields don't do that, including the tomato plants.   Unfortunately I couldn't find any clouds in ndisles and the mission arena (also ndisle terrain) didn't have a B17 mission when I tested, so I can't say what effect clouds have on my fps.

I have to say that (up until the computer crashes) the alpha looks really, really good and my frame rate is good now that I've switched from SSAA to adaptive MSAA.

E8400 @ 3GHz, 4GB RAM, Radeon HD7870 w 2G, WinXP 32bit, DX9.0c, 1920x1080, 4K textures, everything max except Environment 0 and Post Lighting disabled.

PS: are those Windows crash reports that pop up on reboot of any use?

[FLS]

Did you test online?

HiTech

Didn't have time before work. I looked for clouds online then ran the B-17 mission offline.

[bustr]

Defaults enabled, clutter off.

1024 Mode

Got back in the Euro arena mission several times by exiting and going back in. All but the last time I got a B17. Gunnery was no problem inside of the mass bomber stream. FPS 30s-40s. One time when I came back in it was to a parachute stuck looking down with only the clipboard and .45cals red sighting dot. I floated down from about 20k looking at 20 other chutes. My FPS looking down at them was in the beginning 18. By about 5k it dropped to 2 and never recovered.

I finally got in a 152 with a large group of interceptors. Above and below the cloud layer FPS 40's-50's. In the cloud layer center 22-27. FPS was good enough I killed 5 bombers and bagged 2 P51 before landing.

A very immersive experience. I hope future tweeks increase FPS while inside of clouds at least into the 30's for my video card. A toggle to reset your session so that the mission offers the yes\no window to join back in would be nice. Possibly with a choice of sides and rides. This is like FSO but with one very important difference. Quicker to engage and more sustained action with massive numbers of planes on both sides. Having the Icons show out to about 10k really helps find the enemy.

Too bad we don't have all the period Japanese plane set to really do the flying tigers on this scale yet. With the period plane sets filled out, could even start missions from the Spanish Civil war and pre BoB WWII with French and Polish fighters. Even WWI with a broader plane set. Only the imagination of the terrain and mission builder along with missing rides can limit this. The AvA guys are gonna have missiongasims.

[715]

Tried to edit my post but apparently it's too late.

This evening I was able to get into an online B17 mission and fly through clouds.  To do that I had to leave the main flight.  In external F3 view looking at my bomber from behind while flying through, below, and above clouds the frame rate was 60.  In the cockpit it was about 45.  During the fight back in the pack with the many other B17s and 109s and 110s my frame rate was between 40 and 20 depending on where I looked (this wasn't in the clouds).  20 is low but then that's a lot of B17s (and I had shadows on).

I noticed that I could fly the whole mission without the alpha crashing my machine.  At the end of the mission I went off on my own and dropped down in altitude.  When I got close enough to the ground that trees were rendered at fairly high detail my system crashed.  I tried turning off ground clutter to see if that was causing my reboot crashes when on the ground but that didn't help.  Staying near the ground for any length of time in the Europe terrain crashes my machine.

Then I set Tree Detail to minimum.  I could drive around Europe in a Jeep offline (something that immediately crashes my system with Tree Detail set at max) as long as I didn't get close enough to a tree that it rendered in high detail.  If I did, the alpha immediately crashed.  There must be some particular tree in the Europe and Sheep terrains that my system doesn't like to render in high detail

E8400 @ 3GHz, 4GB RAM, Radeon HD7870 w 2G, WinXP 32bit, DX9.0c, 1920x1080, 4K textures, everything max except Environment 0 and Post Lighting disabled.

[Bruv119]

my machine was choking a little with the last set of clouds so looking forward to testing it when I get back home later.