Author Topic: Forgotten Battles (Read 1955 times)

AKS\/\/ulfe · « **on:** March 05, 2003, 04:30:31 PM »

Picked it up today from Babbage's and as I figured, the pixel shaders on the GF4 slow the game down to somewhere between 10fps and 16fps.

Oh well, disabled it (got a good look at it, unfortunately have to wait another year and a half before I get a system powerful enough to run it at an acceptable framerate, I figure 3 or 4 Ghz is required to run it well)... game looks almost like Il2... but it appears they've extended the landscape viewing distance and new graphics for the atmosphere and the how it blends with the terrain.

New planes look nice, buta couple of them have very obvious bugs. (I-153 M-62, upper wing surface turns blue in cockpit when damaged, Brewster's flaps stay on even tho wings are gone)

And the sound... yikes, they should of left that alone... now I get funny sounds in external views, engines don't appear to rev up or rev down with the throttle and a whole mess of other problems.. this is on a SB Live!

For anyone who already has the game, or was a beta tester... PLEASE tell me where I can get a no-CD crack for it. If you want, I can go through the process of reciting words on pages of the manual or tell you whats on the CD jewel case.

Either way, I hate leaving CDs in the CD drive... and for the most part, those CD protection programs are complete crap and actually degrade computer performance, and I can't afford even a 2% loss in performance.

TIA.
-SW

AKIron · « **Reply #1 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:35:41 PM »

I was looking forward to picking this one up SW. What's the verdict? Get it now or wait? Too soon for you to say?

Wlfgng · « **Reply #2 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:42:48 PM »

I'll have mine Friday
ATI 9700 pro
SB audigy 2 (prolly part of your problem is SB live)
512mb pcram
p4 2.8

from what I've heard, the ati is much better than the g4 with pixel shading ..

time will tell

XNachoX · « **Reply #3 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:43:07 PM »

Check out the Simhq.com bbs and look at the several user reviews. From reading that I'd say pick it up. I've been hunting for it high and low, but the bastards at EB didn't get their shipment in because they said no one pre-ordered it....ugh.

AKS\/\/ulfe · « **Reply #4 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:43:28 PM »

May as well get it now unless you want to wait for a price drop, as it is, there is atleast one guaranteed (and I'm sure more to follow) patch that will introduce new planes and fix any bugs in the current software.

Not to mention you'll need the time to adjust to the new engine management that's been added (I haven't even turned it on yet, and after an hour, I'm still learning the new planes

).

All in all, it's definitely better than Il2 out of the box and it has a list of flyable planes that will keep you entertained for hours and hours and hours(including 2 flyable heavy bombers with multiple crew positions). I haven't tried out the new campaign system yet, still setting up my devices and getting to understand what some of the new options do.. but compared to Il2(even fully patched), it's simply leaps and bounds beyond. Although the interface is virtually identical to Il2 in terms of how it's laid out, making it difficult to navigate initially for the new user, it's still pretty easy to understand.

I went to EB today, 2 stores and they didn't have it in at either. Went to Babbages and they had it in stock, so picked it up from them.

So I give it the SW seal of approval.

-SW

Wlfgng · « **Reply #5 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:44:21 PM »

sweet

AKS\/\/ulfe · « **Reply #6 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:48:17 PM »

Yeah I'm pretty sure the 9700Pro will rock, visually I can tell its significantly better than the GF4. Performance wise, it probably is too, considering it can run anisotropic at 16x with very little to no performance hit while the GF4 needs a monster CPU to run even at 2x anisotropic.

I would of had a Audigy 2, but every store I went to when I wanted to pick one up only had the Pro (or whatever it is, not the basic model) in stock- and that was about $80 more expensive which made my wallet sad and I had to run out of the stores with tears in my eyes.

I'm still looking for the Audigy 2, the SB Live! (as I realised with Unreal2) lost it's last leg several months ago.

-SW

AKIron · « **Reply #7 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:49:24 PM »

Thanks for the tip, will pick it up tonight if I can find it.

Eagler · « **Reply #8 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:50:59 PM »

is it any easier to hit anything or do you have to be so close as to smell his exhaust?

and when/if you hit anything does the plane take damage sooner or does it take a crap load of lead to bring one down?

Wlfgng · « **Reply #9 on:** March 05, 2003, 04:51:00 PM »

I'll seel you my Audigy 2 if you want..
I'm looking to buy the Audigy 2 EX or Pro or whatever...
I need it for my music studio...

the Audigy 2 I have doesn't have the ports I need (midi, etc)

capt. apathy · « **Reply #10 on:** March 05, 2003, 05:00:52 PM »

it runs pretty good on my set-up (p3 1g, sb audigy, radeon 7200)
all vid settings to excellent.

fps is about 35. I liked the sound better on the original. but so far the rest of this game rocks.

right now I'm about 3 missions into the finish campaign flying the brewster. tons of fun

AKS\/\/ulfe · « **Reply #11 on:** March 05, 2003, 05:10:21 PM »

Thanks for the offer Wolf, but at this point in time I'm somewhat strapped so I'm going to put off the sound upgrade for as long as I can. (Maybe I can get enough cash to make it coincide with a mobo/CPU/memory combo upgrade too )

The game itself runs smooth as glass, actually smoother than Il2 ran on my system. With Il2 I was getting pauses whenever a plane blew up or crashed, now it runs perfectly... and looks better than Il2 in every aspect (especially with the 1024x1024 skins).

I found one of the problems with the audio was a switch- "Enable Audio Extensions" or something like that in the advanced audio properties... it was causing funny/misplaced sounds, and echos in the cockpit (apparently the latter is actually a feature of this setting, so beware).. disabled that and am getting much better framerates and audio performance/clarity.

Eagler, the damage model has been reworked, but I haven't had time to extensively test it against most of the planes- but the .50/.30 armed planes (Brewster Buffalo and P40, haven't tried P47 yet) work over the bombers with ease from fairly long distances. Engines catch fire much quicker, and if you hit the bombers in their bomb bay, instant confetti. As far as the fighters, I only quickly shot up my wingman (another Buffalo) and it only took a quick burst before he caught fire and his engine turned off (the prop actually slowly spun to a halt!).

Of course there's still the wierd axis oscillation that the original Il2 had, but I don't think it's modelled as strongly as it was in Il2... atleast the planes seem to be a little more stable.

Anyway, I'll try to give a better review by friday.
-SW

Wlfgng · « **Reply #12 on:** March 05, 2003, 05:48:48 PM »

I know about the audio thing.
when I got my new sound card and saw the audio options available in IL2 I had to try them out..
yech.. horrible as you described.

to make things worse, RW was doing the same..
so people spoke to me in an echo-chamber/long-tube kinda way..

Ralistic Occlusions and something else...yech

Kirin · « **Reply #13 on:** March 06, 2003, 12:26:58 AM »

Damn US conspiracy - euros have to wait 'till 20th for FB release!!! Well, I just get the US version from my fav. gameshop today or tomorrow...

So looking forward to it. Had my hands on the beta - pixel shader wasn't working properly back then (bad tearing, like flying on LSD) - other than than the sim looked and ran fine!

---

Eagler, with a little practise it's very possible to down 6 planes with the 109G2 standard weapon outload. You have to be close - true, but wasn't it like that?

The .50s are real killers in FB - which really concerns me...

moose · « **Reply #14 on:** March 06, 2003, 01:32:55 AM »

I'm gonna trade my gf4 4600 in for a 9700 pro this weekend so i won't be disappointed

soundwise, i gave up on SB live after Spinter Cell and Battlefield 1942 had problems. (winxp)

turtle beach is where its at.