Ok yet another Vista ? - beating the dead horse..

[Sincraft]

Ok this is my last attempt before I have to reinstall.  I have learned my lesson and will not use a development/business machine for gaming purposes.  It's just too hard when you have to reinstall all of those apps!

SO - I have been having issues, thought I had things nailed down - then I BSOD again.  I read in here about people having BSOD since patch and sound issues, so I reinstalled AH2 and all seems well.

However I did notice some weird things that maybe are attributed to this...

Skuzzy maybe you can answer this one...

My system shows the CNT at like 40 when I log in and takes FOREVER to load those textures.

I also notice that preloading textures and skins is grayed out - as in I don't have the option to click those.

In game - my video memory shows 1308 m and 9.2m used and my video memory shows 255 with 30.5 used.

That seems backwards??  Not to mention, I have 512 on my video card.

8800gts (g92) core.  (I am running the hi-res pack)

Thanks

[wrongwayric]

Try taking out the Hi res pack. I tried to use it with vista and my 8600gt card and had similar issues. Got rid of the hi-res pack and lowered my video settings a tad and it works fine for me now. There is a warning at the hi-res download site that it may cause issues so that's were i'd look first.

[Sincraft]

Yea that's not an issue really, I don't think.  This game is pretty low res.  I have an 8800gts (g92 core).  I can pull down 60 fps in COD4 at 1920x1200 with everything up on ultra....
It's ultra realistic.  Crysis which has become the benchmark for what poor coding can do to a machine coupled with good graphics - in that game I get great fps on avg with settings on high in vista.


I think AH2 is addressing something incorrectly or something.  Dunno how best to interpret it.

Initially when I loaded up the game I had no problems (other than my sound issues which I'm not sure if I corrected this time)

Might be dropping back down to xp, I just hate to do that - load up everything.  It's a full day's work basically.  Sucks.

[Skuzzy]

Aces High II can be a resource monster and will eat most machines alive, if you configure it incorectly.  Do not let pretty artwork make you think a game is doing more work.  Hardly.  Flight modeling is one of the more intense operations you can run on a computer.

If Aces High II had the artwork of a Crysis, along with the flight modeling code we have, then it would take a Cray to run it.  It is about balance.

The problem you are witnessing is the slow texture loads by Vista due to the way Vista decides it will use memory.  Set the "Maximum Texture Size" to 512 if you are having texture loading issues.  It is not the game causing what you are seeing.  That is Vista at work.  How much RAM does that computer have?  If it has less than 2GB of RAM, then you are going to have severe load issues.

[Sincraft]

Why can't I select to preload textures anymore?

I just popped 2 gigs more in.  Total of 4 now.

While I agree with you about flight modeling, keep in mind that the texture loads are unrelated when it comes to skins over wireframes ie: landscapes/aircraft etc ...correct?

The processor isn't even hitting 60% usage so I doubt that's the issue.

[Skuzzy]

You do not get it.  It is Vista causing this.  I can duplicate this problem all day long in Vista.  There is nothing we can do about it.  Running with the high resolution texture pack is going to exacerbate the problem.

Remove the "video8.cfg" file to force the game to retest so you can preload the textures into system RAM.  If you are running Vista in anything near its stock configuration, you will have to preload textures into system RAM to prevent slow texture loads.

It is the neature of Vista.  Other games automatically preload textures without allowing you a choice. For Aces High II, due to our loader, it really has not been an issue until Vista came along.  I could go into all manner of technical explanation for this, but it really does not matter.

Skins are textures.  Everything that covers a poly is a texture of some kind and is a resource that has to be loaded.

[Sincraft]

Ok, yea someone else said something about another game and how vista was reporting memory.

Geesh makes you wonder.  I've heard some really good things about vista's 'ability' if used fully and properly, yet I've yet to see it.

I am running pretty quick and like some of the beefier items ultimate has over the other editions - but at this point, I think I'll just use this free ultimate copy and replace the premium on my one laptop.....

AND SWITCH BACK to xp.  I'm testing some things in server2008 right now. 

-NOW IIS supports PHP!  (well geesh M$, it's about time..but how about mysql? Or the fact that I was doing this on unix derivative system for YEARS)

So again, this makes you wonder about vista and what their true motives are and what their intentions were for this operating system.

Remember when people made products for the purpose of the product to do as advertised and make money that way?  Why does there have to be ulterior motives to everything?? ehhe.

[33Vortex]

Had the same issue after a fresh install of AH with new patch and hi-res pack. Tried removing the video8.cfg file but to no effect. Finally removed the compatibility option 'XP SP2' and now it will preload skin textures also. The system info readout also makes a lot more sense now.
This is what it looked like a few minutes ago when doing a quick test. Running AA x16Q and texture supersampling through Nvidia CP. The image is compressed in progressive .jpg format.




Vista HP 32-bit
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4 GB Corsair DDR2 800MHz
XFX GTX280i SLI
Samsung 305T 30" widescreen

[Chalenge]

Make sure you have SuperFetch and ReadyBoost disabled. I made the mistake of trying to use them with a flash drive (32GB) and it did speed up Vista functions but made AHII load time go to something like 15 minutes! Literally after logging in I would wait in the tower for several minutes before the CNT would reach 0. Now I have Vista 64 which Skuzzy will tell you is much more unstable (it may be I dont have enough time on Vista 32 to compare) and 8 Gigs of RAM to play with (so AHII runs in 4 Gigs of its own) but turning OFF Superfetch and ReadyBoost and excluding the AHII folder from indexing really sped things up. When I log in CNT is at 60 and 1 second later its at 0. I can go from computer off to in AHII in less than a minute and Im also ready to takeoff (except I calibrate before I do).

Everyday I expect things to fall apart and Vista wont be so smooth anymore because of all the issues people have had and what Skuzzy has said. I do think the 'self-healing' traits of Vista backfire for some people when they make too many changes too quickly so I have a True Image backup of Vista in its smoothest state just in case. Be careful what background processes you shutdown also. I tried following a few suggestions from one reputable site and loading AHII slowed down again so now I just leave it alone and Im guessing I just have enough good hardware and very few driver issues because everything gets along finally!

[33Vortex]

Was using Vista HP 64-bit up til about 6 months ago and will agree 32-bit is more stable. I could never run 64-bit without using some compatibility alternative, XP or W98. 32-bit is running stable without compatibility options on, evidently a lot better with it off. It could be some of the problems I encountered back then has been adressed with recent updates as I've not run AH on 64-bit in at least 6 months.