What is Aero and where do I find it?

[timholt]

I recently upgraded and am now running Win7 64 bit. I see others are turning Aero on or off to better performance.

What exactly does it do and how do I get to it to see if it is on or off?

[SsSsSsSsSnake]

control panel. personalization. themes aero is in the middle section just choose basic window at bottom row

[furbs]

Is the aero setting still affecting performance? i thought the full screen fix with the beta patch means we dont have to worry about it now?

[Les]

Aero is a Windows 7 graphical feature that gives your 'windows' things like semi-transparent edges and other cosmetic possibilities. It can take up some computer resources so people have been turning it off when running 'Cliff of Dover'.

You can turn it off altogether in Windows options, or you can make CloDo switch it off only when running the game.

You make CloDo do it by right-clicking on your Cliffs of Dover 'Launcher' Application (.exe) file and selecting, in the 'Compatibility' section of the 'Properties' box, 'Disable desktop composition'.

Your Cliffs of Dover 'Launcher' Application (.exe) file is located wherever it was on your system you installed Steam, along the path Steam/steamapps/common/il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover.

[Les]

Is the aero setting still affecting performance? i thought the full screen fix with the beta patch means we dont have to worry about it now?

I'm not sure about performance, but with Aero re-enabled I've found when I Alt Tab out of the game I can't right-click on the desktop to bring up the nVidia control panel without automatically going back into the game. That and the fact that I'm not using v-sync in-game, which requires Aero being switched back on, along with a couple of other trivial reasons, means I'm still preferring to play with Aero switched off. I just find it better that way overall, at the moment anyway, but I doubt it really matters in most cases. Aero on's only advantage is that it's essential for enabling v-sync, as far as I know.

[MadTommy]

What is Aero and where do I find it?

Found at your local shop, a very tasty chocolate bar.. best in the mint version..

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Aero-Mint-Wrapper-Small.jpg

:grin:

[timholt]

Thanks for the quick replies gents.
I selected the basic window as per Snakes suggestion but that gave me extremely bad tearing, so I have reset it to what it was.
There did seem to be a slight improvement with smoother panning with TIR in the cockpit, but to me that is a better option than tearing.
For info I don't have any Beta patches installed.

Edit: Mad Tommy, they are the first thing I tried - I had 4 but there was no improvement in the game.

[Rattlehead]

Disabling aero chopped my framerates in half, so the results seem a bit inconsistent.