This is to help you transition from AH2 to AH3 (Beta patch 1)
The current minimum requirement to play AH3 includes a dedicated video card with a minimum of one gigabyte of DDR5 memory. You will NOT be able to play AH3 without such a card, and if your video card isn't less then two or three years old, then you probably won't be able to turn on all the graphic bells and whistles. Check the Video card discussions about bandwidth, shaders and throughput.
Assuming you have anything close to that video card in your machine, here are the things to know that will make the new game engine feel like you're playing the old familiar game.
The first splash screen you see is were you set the Field of View and the size of the textures your system will use. Both affect frame rates and the game chooses some defaults for you.
Open Video Settings at the first splash screen.
Field of View
In AH2, the FoV is 106 degrees but the default FoV in AH3 is 80 degrees. The smaller FoV is said to equal a bit better frame rate and match most other games in the market, however, it's not what we're used to so we can click Set Custom Field of View and change it back to 106 degrees.
Max Texture Size
Leave this at its current setting until you see how the game plays but don't forget about it. You may decide to reduce the texture size to 2048 or 1024. If you think you must go below that, you should consider upgrading your PC.
Font Size
The most important thing this affects is the radio text input buffer and the text size in the list of people on your radio channel.
This will also affect the size of the Loading dialog box when the game loads a terrain and the size of the hints displayed when you pass your mouse cursor over items on the clipboard.
Now for in-game options before tackling head positions and controllers.
Options > Graphic Details
(Before I continue, you should know that I have my three range slider set to Max at the beginning of this discussion. My middle of the road video card is an XFX AMD HD 6850 with 1 GB of DDR5. However, the DxDiag says that it's really a 6739 chip.)
Disable Post Lighting
If Disable Post Lighting is checked, then the game has decided your card isn't fast enough for those effects, no worries.
If Disable Post Lighting is UNchecked, then you have a second page to the clipboard with four additional options. Thanks to Chilli, I can tell you to use outside view, and F8 to look at the Sun. Then try checking and unchecking the four options to see how it affects the Sun.
My personal preference is to leave Disable Post Lighting unchecked and then uncheck all 4 of the options on the second page, but this is beta, and I think most of the effects are turned off at this writing. This increases my frame rate +2. The Hints suggest these affect water but I can see no difference on my frontend at this patch.
The Environmental Slider - All, 2, 1, None
Hitech described it this way:
Number of faces of the environment cube to update per frame. None will only update the cube when you change view types I.E. tower to plane external to internal.
In-game, in the Tower, with the clipboard up on avafinru, my frame rates run 27 at None, 23 at 1 and 18 at All. Your results may vary. I leave it at 1, which is the default chosen by the game with my hardware. To see the difference in the look, set the slider to None, click OK and Alt Tab to the desktop. Then re-enter the game and change the slider. On my frontend, I see a marked difference when moving the slider from None to 1.
Range Sliders
The same situation; avafinru at v21, in the tower with the clipboard up and seeing the normal CBM map, and offline with the four drones overhead.
If I move all three range sliders, Object Detail, Ground Detail Range, and Tree Detail to their minimum limits, then my frame rates are 26 to 27 fps. This is with the graphics options closed and seeing the normal CBM.
When moving these three slider to their maximum limits, the frame rates drop to 22 to 23 fps. That gives you an idea of how powerful these video cards really are.
Twenty three frames per second in the tower, launch a P51D and the frame rate jumps to 27. Clear the trees and the frame rate jumps again to 38 and smooth, 31 to 32 back at treetop level. I don't know how my hardware will do in a furball.
Checkboxes
This is where you can, if you must, pick up substantial frames per second. If I set all the check boxes EXCEPT Disable Post Lighting, by that I mean I'm disabling everything else, then in the tower with the clipboard up and seeing the normal CBM map, I see 42 fps, up from ~23 with everything enabled.
If you still don't have decent frame rates, go back to the original splash screen and change the Max Texture size and reduce the Field of View back to 80 degrees.
MY VIEWS ARE PORKED
Now that you have the best graphics you can get at an acceptable frame rate, it's time to recover your head positions, views and joystick settings that you have become accustom to.
Note: that the path to the AH3 settings folder will undoubtedly change when the new version goes into production.
Head Positions - file extension .hps
The old head positions folder:
C:\Hitech Creations\Aces High\settings\planes
The new head position folder:
C:\Hitech Creations\Aces High Alpha Game\settings\planes
Copy the entire plane folder from the old settings folder and paste it into the new settings folder.
Joystick and Keyboard Map files - file extensions .jsm and .kmp
Find all the old keyboard and joystick files in the settings folder:
C:\Hitech Creations\Aces High\settings
There are the six keyboard files
CHUTE.kmp
global.kmp
GUNNER.kmp
PLANE.kmp
VEHICLE.kmp
view.kmp
Copy and Paste a copy of these into the new game settings folder:
C:\Hitech Creations\Aces High Alpha Game\settings
Find all the .jsm files in the old settings folder for your particular joystick, throttle and rudder pedals. Copy them and paste them into the new game's settings folder.
From C:\Hitech Creations\Aces High\settings
To C:\Hitech Creations\Aces High Alpha Game\settings
Skins are not supported at this writing.
On-Line Arena Tabs
For now there are 4 tabs, Mission, Melee, Events and Player
Entering the old Main style arena isn't one of the choices, for now.
The Mission tab lists a number of arena with missions running.
The Melee tab lists an MA style arena
The Events tab lists the Allied vs Axis (AvA) arena and the Special Events Arena
The Player tab is for Player spawned custom arena
Lastly, at this writing, AH3 is still in Beta. It's not the final product. Read the sticky posts by Hitech, Skuzzy and Waffle.
