Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mick]

Hangman - I improved most of the effects for train destruction in 4.3 and tested them extensively, during which time I experienced no crashes whatsoever.  Therefore I must conclude that crashes when destroying trains are not directly related to this mod.

... I remember having the very same crashes when destroying trains, while trying to adapt your wonderful 4.3 effects mod to my 4.09m version of the game, and it is only after I removed several class files that I was able to fix this "issue" ... 

[kpn.kardif]

The path for my modded install is C:\notsteamgames\IL 2 Sturmovik 1946.  The path for the unmodded steam version is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\IL 2 Sturmovik 1946, which is the default path that steam installs it to.  I know that trying to mess with anything inside the Program Files folder causes problems, which is one of the reasons I moved it out into the notsteamgames directory.  I didn't think about how this would impact the registry though...

Thanks for the link for that affinity mask utility, definitely a nifty piece of software.  I messed with it for a bit and didn't receive any errors, but task manager still said only core 3 was being used.  Then I noticed that radeonpro also has an affinity mask section, and the 2 box was checked.  This must have been overriding the conf.ni, because when I unchecked it, I am able to make it run on whatever core (or multiple cores) that I want, so problem solved there.  I also noticed that when I push all graphical setting to the max in radeonpro, the gpu usage smooths out a lot.  The game looks great, and this with the processor affinity has improved frames a little bit more, now topping out around 25 in black death when the camera is pointed more towards the ground.  Whenever it looks up though, frames drop back down to 9 or 10.  I did have a problem with the power saver not working properly when I first got the card, which turned out to be a driver issue that has since been solved.  I am using Catalyst 13.4 at the moment.  I do not have crossfire enabled, nor have I ever used it. 

So back to the registry...  I looked where you said, and I don't even have a Ubi Soft folder in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE.  Doing a search for IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 finds it in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Winrar SFX, which seems a little strange.  Data column says C:\Program Files\IL 2 Sturmovik, which as far as I can remember isn't a place that I have ever installed the game, at least not since I was on XP, which was a couple of years ago. 

Long story short, when I started using Ultrapack (before DBW existed), whenever I tried to apply it to my steam install I would get the craziest graphical anomalies... black sky, pink clouds, geometric shapes all over the place, etc.  I read that steam can sometimes cause problems with that, so I reinstalled, copy/pasted to it's own directory, installed ultrapack, and bingo everything works.  A few years later after a hiatus from IL 2, I wanted to come back to it and discovered DBW.  I figured the same sort of things would happen with it since it's based to some extent on ultrapack.  It also gave me the ability to have two installs, one clean and one modded.  Somehow the dbw/ultrapack selector launcher overrides whatever drm mechanism steam has and I can run the game via the launcher and outside of the steam directory.  Again, I never thought about how this would effect the registry, and I've never had a problem until I tried running this particular version of Gurner's effects. 

I know that these days Steam will give you the option to install games in folders other than it's default one, which is in Program Files (x86).  What I might try is uninstalling my current steam version, re-installing it in a different folder outside of Program Files, apply DBW to it, and see if it works.  Probably a project that would take a few hours, so the earliest I could get on that would be tomorrow night. 

Thanks for the advice so far, Bob.  I've done a little bit of registry editing in the past, but only in emergency situations, i.e. virus problems.  If you think the problem might lie within the registry, well... it'd be a good learning experience!

[Claw]

Well, there are a couple of things I'm certain of.

1) it seems I get better performance as a whole with my crappy 10 year old P4 system and a 7600 GT than people with i7's and video cards that are at least 6 times more powerfull than mine.

2) I bought my copy of IL-2 at a tag sale along with CFS2 and Air Warrior III  all for $10.00. I don't think mine is the steam version but I'm not sure. It installed as 4.07 and never had a problem. I have no steam entries on my computer anywhere. Steam sounds like horse droppings to me.

I installed it last fall and always needed the CD to play it. Now the CD is packed in a box somewhere because I had to move because I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had surgery to remove it. As my recovery progressed, I decided I wanted to play it again but couldn’t find the CD. I did some googleing and found this IL-2 NoCD Crack and viola, I could play again. Then I started patching it and looking for add on stuff which caused me to stumble upon sas1946. Then the moding began.

To date, I still don't know which box the CD is in and I'm still playing it moded and vanilla. I even setup an IL2 server. It's right here next to my right foot. All error free and acceptable performance.

The WinRar SFX entry is there because at some point in history, you extracted a winrar archive to that location.

When I was using an ATI card, I used ATI Tray Tools. It will tell you your default clocks and current clocks. Mine always stayed at about 70% of the default clocks. I used ATI tray tools to manually lock it in at 100% and things began to pick up. I hear Radeon Pro is an excellent replacement for ATI Tray Tools on a Windows Vista and higher OS. I'm told that with that, you can get rid of Catalyst Control Center and use Radeon Pro exclusively. Does it show you the default clocks and current clocks?

With Radeon Pro, can you create a custom graphics profile for your moded IL2 installation? If so, do that and set all the settings like AA, AF, Sampling etc to  Application Controlled where available or Off. Then one by one adjust them and test and  see where things go. This is just a speculation on my end that you should be getting no less than 30 fps. That’s a massive card you have there. Turn AF down to like 8x and AA down to around 4x leaving all the settings in IL-2 to max.

[Claw]

Oh yeah. One more thing. Turn Vertical Sync(VSync) off.

[Wulfy]

Wait how do you turn off Vsync?

[Claw]

It should be somewhere in Radeon Pro or Catalyst control center.

[Gurner]

But you might want to leave v-synch on because if you turn it off you'll see horrible tearing!

A decent system should be running this at over 60fps most of the time anyway - mine does, and I have gtx 580, 2500k, 8gb ram, 64 bit os.

Resolution can make a big difference.  I play on my TV, so I use 1920 x 1080

[Claw]

Gurner can I have your card? he he. Nice card.

I wish I got frame rates high enough where I would have to turn V-Sync on to prevent tearing. LOL

If he reports back and says Hey I'm averaging 60 fps !!! But now I have tearing, then I would say try turning on V-Sync.

I'm a believer in setting everything to minimum and working my way up from there. The reason I say to set everything to in IL-2 to max is because I know for a fact that it works on my system that is a fart in the wind compared to his.

That being said, he has an ATI card and we have NVidia. There are about 4 or 5 settings in the OpenGL section of the conf.ini file that are spacific for ATI.

Here

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=28387


That reminds me.

Please tell me you don't have a file named atioglxx.dll or OpenGL32.dll in any of your IL-2 folders.

[kpn.kardif]

Nope, I have neither of those files in my il2 folder.  When I had this running fine I did experience frame tearing, especially right across the prop, so I used v-sync, which worked fine. 

I think for me, getting to the bottom of this will likely require a re-install.  I haven't had the time to do much with this the past few days, too much work stuff.  Hopefully this weekend.  I'll report back and let you guys know how it goes once I have the time to work on it. 

[kpn.kardif]

Ok, so I re-installed.  Again through steam, as I don't actually own a physical copy of Il2.  Some people do think steam is a load of horse droppings, personally I've been using it for years and have had very few problems with it.  It's basically just a digital download service run by Valve (the guys that did Half-Life and Portal).  They often put stuff up for really cheap, and it's an easy way to keep games organized and not have a bunch of discs and cases to keep track of.  I also have a buddy that works for them, so I can get quick and easy tech support when I need it and a few freebies here and there.  The problem specific to this is that I still can't run the setup tool.  Trying to run it from the root folder just launches the game.  I might ask my buddy about it, but I don't think it's of too big a consequence.

Back on topic, it seems to have done the trick, though not quite to the extent that I would like.  I did some research and came across this forum:

http://www.battle-fields.com/commscentre/showthread.php?21901-Want-to-buy-a-new-videocard-for-IL2-Think-again...-%28and-testers-needed%29

It's a few years old post, but basically what this shows is that Il2 is extremely processor dependent, and having a screaming vid card doesn't make a whole ton of difference.  After installing DBW, enabling the widescreen mod and Gurner's, it runs on average between 30 and 40fps on black death, which is totally playable.  It does drop to about 15 in a few places, but not for very long.  I did turn on v-sync and was pretty surprised at how my vid card reacted.  Usage smoothed right out, with all settings maxed out in radeonpro, my card runs between 40 and 50%, without the weird spikes that it was having before.  I disable v-sync, frames sometime shoot up to about 80, i get image tearing, and my vid card has a spike.  V-sync = good, at least in my case. 

My processor is the oldest part of my system.  It is an AMD quad core going on about 4 years old now, stock speed is 3.1ghz which I turn up to 3.6 for gaming.  Testing it at stock speeds vs overclocked speed definitely shows an fps boost, approx 3-5 frames a second in most places. 

Bottom line, I can run it ok now, even with the distance mod it runs ok.  So thanks for the advice guys.  Hopefully all this might help somebody else along the line as well. 

Kardif

[Claw]

I'm glad you got it going at an acceptable frame rate. You might try checking to see that your using more than one core, Also check the permissions on the conf.ini file.

I have a 7 year old P-4 3.8 GHz CPU with 2 Gig ram and a 7600 GT. I average about 24 on land missions and 32 on carrier missions using HSFX and gurner FX. I had a 9800 GT in here and the improvement was very little. Only about 5 - 7 frames yet in other games, the improvement was substantial like 25 frames. The 9800 GT was advertised as an EVGA but it turned out to be a 1st generation Forsa so I returned it.

One thing I did notice is that overclocking the cards shows very little if any improvement in frame rate. It does in other games though. I did notice that IL-2 likes wider memory bus over speed. A slower card with a wider memory bus seems to perform better than a faster card with lower memory bus. Effective VRam speed of 1800 MHz on a 256 memory bus seems to perform better than effective memory of 2200 MHz on a 192 bus. Even if the GPU is faster on the card with the 192 bus.

A friend of mine lent me two GTX 460’s to try out. One is this one.

http://www.evga.com/products/pdf/01G-P3-1361.pdf

It show very little improvement in IL-2 over the 9800 GT. About 9 frames.

And this one.

http://www.evga.com/products/pdf/01G-P3-1373.pdf

Showed an improvement of 26 frames.

Compare the Clock speeds and memory bus width on those cards.

In all cases my CPU stays around 52%

There are some articles here at sas1946 on optimizing the ATI cards.

Bob

[Claw]

I just looked at that article you posted and it kinda confirms what I just said about video card. As for the CPU portion of it, I can't confirm. I only know what I have and the results I get with variouse cards.

I do have a board here that will take up to an E8600 Core 2 Duo or a Q6700 Core 2 Quad. I'm going for the E8600 as it's optimized for single thread operations and has a high bus speed.

I'de really like to be able to use DBW without it being a slide show. All in good time I guess. I see why you like it. The visuals are absolutely stunning.