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[TheIdiot]

I've been playing on the latest version of BAT and I've noticed there are still a number of performance issues that don't occur in the vanilla game or the one other modpack I've tried, the VP Modpack. Namely:

1. Missions with more than about 80 planes total turn into a slideshow. This is especially bad in some DCG campaigns (Battle of France, Stalingrad) - for this reason, I can't raise the amount of flights in DCG above Sparse in any campaign. The shift+tab log doesn't give me the "time overflow" message when this happens, either. In VP I was able to fly 150+ plane missions with no problem.

2. Looking at towns where too many buildings are being rendered lowers performance significantly, to the point that attempting to fly over towns is dangerous due to the performance drop it causes. It seems to happen specifically when you look at a certain threshold number of buildings - 50 buildings might be okay, but 51, nope. This makes large cities like London and Berlin virtually unplayable.

3. Looking across the horizon in general on larger maps (English Channel, Western Europe, Italy-Africa-Greece) also lowers performance - not by a lot, but by a noticeable amount, especially when you're on the runway.

Is there any reason for this, and is there anything I could do to fix this? Like I said, these issues don't occur in vanilla or VP Modpack at all - I'm wondering if perhaps the dreaded Java Wall is still to blame here, or if the sheer size and amount of stuff in BAT is simply too much? I should add that the log doesn't say anything noteworthy when I play missions fitting the above criteria.

[whistler]

Hi TheIdiot,

Interesting symptoms, we just need a blood sample to confirm a diagnosis. Share a mission that underperforms in BAT but plays well elsewhere.

Regards,

[vonofterdingen]

Regarding number of planes: I'm playing DCG campaigns on Full to Dense settings and have had no performance issues since the latest BAT release.

Flying over a populated city is and always was a performance hit. This it true in the stock game as well.

I see no issues when using big maps. My most-played campaign uses DCG and the War Over Italy map (a larger version of Italy-Africa-Greece) and I have no performance issues with either the map or the DCG using Full density.

I saw the problems with number of planes in earlier versions of BAT, but not now.

[SAS~Storebror]

Missions with more than about 80 planes total turn into a slideshow.
(...)
The shift+tab log doesn't give me the "time overflow" message when this happens, either.

That simply doesn't make sense.
Please provide a sample like whistler said.

We have a couple more sophisticated effects in BAT compared to other game versions.
As always in life, there's a tradeoff between eye candy and performance, and that's probably all there is to your reports.
This however doesn't turn the game into a "slideshow", it will just impact the FPS by 10% or so.
And if anything would cause a "slideshow", you would definitely get the "time overflow" messages, that's a given.
In summary, for the time being your report has an "exaggerated" smell to it.


Mike

[SAS~Poltava]

I have yet to encounter any significant performance loss (FPS) with the new version of BAT, drops to to the 30-ies, yes, a slide-show never once. And I am updating a number of old campaigns and have found out that I can double, even triple the number of aircraft in a single mission without any noticable FPS loss. In static object rich environments, yes, there can be a drop, also when there is a LOT of ground activity, flak etc, but never even close to slide-show. (Sometimes it seems to help to look skyward, and then the FPS are restored to a steady 60, but I don’t know if the effect is steady.)

Berlin has always been a FPS-killer, in ALL versions, but VP media made a new version of the city that has helped to alleviate the problem a lot.

But yes, some special environments will affect the FPS and dogfighting with a lot of aircraft over a very big city will come at a price, in all systems.

[David Prosser]

I've done WWI missions with up to 50 planes in them. No probs. All on the Somme, or West Front maps. And with tons of ground traffic too.

[TheIdiot]

You guys need an example - try generating a mission for the BAT DCG Battle of France campaign. Put the squadron density on Moderate and Column + Ground density on Full and see what happens - for me, the FPS drops down into like the low 10s. On Sparse it runs a lot better (30ish FPS), but not as good as most missions.
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,61365.0.html
I sadly don't have any specific mission for this, but it happens every time I try generating a mission with the above parameters.

SAS~Storebror, the "slideshow" (meaning something like 2-3 FPS) isn't a common occurrence, but it has happened before, especially on the above Battle of France campaign, as well as for instance DCG BAT Battle of Britain. It only seems to get really bad when you put the squadron density above Sparse, though. I have had situations on the runway however where the framerate became so bad that it was difficult to even click the button to end the mission. And the log DOES NOT give the Time Overflow error in this situation, I double checked.
The next time I manage to come up with a mission like this, I'll upload it so you guys can check it out.

[vonofterdingen]

I am super confused.  You say the DCG Battle of France campaign causes the issue but your link is to Poltava's Battle of France.  Are you having trouble with both or one? Would be good if you could just post one mission that gives you problems. That way others could confirm.

[TheIdiot]

Sorry - it's supposed to be the DCG campaign, I posted the wrong link. This is the actual link:
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,58428.0.html

[SAS~Storebror]

After having found out a missing advice about DCG (you must select "Replace Career Generator (DGen)" before selecting "Off-Line Career" mode first), I've just ran a first sample mission for Luftwaffe / 109 E-3.
Squadron density moderate, column and statics full (that's the default setting anyway).
The campaign seems not to have been adjusted to BAT ever because it throws a ton of errors in the log about missing classes, ground objects etc.
Add to that, the "Skins" folder of the campaign download file is empty - which is particularly nasty because it's mandatory to have the skins copied to your game folder before running the campaign, as stated in the installation instructions.
All in all, the campaign is broken and not BAT compatible.
Nevertheless, after getting it to run (by selecting custom player skin "default"), the frame rates are rock solid 60FPS at 4-times speed when I tried to run that first mission.

Conclusion: Invalid campaign, yet still working smooth as silk.


Mike

[TheIdiot]

Okay, so here's a mission file I just generated using the same Battle of France DCG. I loaded it up as the 3rd Hurricane in the flight of Hurris in multiplayer and immediately the mission started running at maybe 2-5 FPS.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/qegxvczont36y3n/mission.zip/file
I included the log output in the zip file as well - maybe that will help to figure out what's going on? It also puts out a ton of errors for me, but it's mostly just missing planes. At the moment, I simply don't understand what's wrong...the only line that really sticks out as odd in the log is this one:

[2019-07-05 04:00:46.164]   dT:    9   Cannot setup 3d algorithm.Settings will be reset to DEFAULT.

No idea what that means, but it sounds kind of strange. Could there be an issue with my conf.ini, perhaps?

I should also mention I now have a new problem where the game keeps resetting my conf.ini Water settings to 0 every time I change it to 3 or 4. I used to have it set to 4 without a problem until I tried IL2GE for a short time (which requires you to set Water to 0) before removing it again - and yes, I removed ALL of IL2GE's files.

[SAS~Storebror]

Can't confirm.
I've watched the mission until the flights left the circle around Brussels and headed to Lille (too boring to watch them another half an hour, nothing ever happens on this mission).
All the time, rock solid 60 FPS.
Even when accellerating to 2x speed, and even when I look straight down at the city of Brussels.
4x speed drops FPS to ~20, but that's just normal for a map of that size with that amount of planes in the air.

[2019-07-05 04:00:46.164]   dT:    9   Cannot setup 3d algorithm.Settings will be reset to DEFAULT.

No idea what that means, but it sounds kind of strange. Could there be an issue with my conf.ini, perhaps?[/quote]
That's just normal, the game's trying to tell you that the sound cannot use 3D EAX extensions. This is because any OS past XP lacks EAX support.

my conf.ini Water settings to 0 every time I change it to 3 or 4.

This could mean that "HardwareShaders" have reset to 0 in your conf.ini, which would also explain why your FPS are generally low.
Now that you said that other 4.12 based games work fine for you, it'd be time to compare the conf.ini files of both, copy a known working conf.ini to your BAT folder and/or showing your conf.ini to us.


Mike