Cliffs of XP

[Phil S]

I am an early adapter of "Cliffs of Dover" having received a day of release copy from Amazon.com. A 1C/Ubisoft CD which to my surprise was STEAM dependant. New product releases that receive frequent, often Beta, upgrades are best kept outside STEAM whose policy is to implement upgrades that are only full engineering tested.

Waiting for that complete version upgrade was getting lost in Beta releases that seemed, at least according to members of SimHQ, to bring value to the simulator. So on 5 October when the newest patch and then its hotfix on 6 October, I decided to upgrade my STEAM installation.

My system is an Intel dual core 3.32Ghz, supported by 4Gb DRAM and Nvidia GTX285 (1Gb VRAM). These basics meet the recommended system requirements. However, I have a XP SP3 operating system. This also "meets" the system specifications, but I am beginning to wonder if it in truth does. I am beginning to find that "Cliffs of Dover" is moving toward System7 (x32/x64) in order to address new video demands such as Dx10/11 that XP is unable to handle. Eagle Dynamics followed this path in early 2011 by requiring a 3Gb Boot.ini launch statement for DCS A10 so as to meet this demand and not at the same time obsolete its 32bit installed base.

Now 10 October, I am on my third installation attempt of "Cliffs of Dover" and contemplating a fourth. I persist in getting screen stuttering and especially program lockups and crashes to desktop early in the program. These negative events do not happen with any custom mission or campaign. They occur early in 'official' Training or Single Missions as flights over Kent or worst over London. My settings are not extreme, "Very High". They are "High" without any Vsync or other post processing operations.

I have modified my Boot.ini as follows:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3GB

This follows the Eagle Dynamics recommendation for emulating System7 (x32) in a XP environment. I have tried "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 3GB" /3GB /fastdetect". However, this statement obliges a bootup selection that my USB keyboard will not permit. This leads to a standard 2GB XP setup. Messing with my Bios to amend this is not an option for me.

Along with this change to the Boot.ini, I also verified the integrity of my STEAM cache and deleted the contents of the "Shaders" folder before applying the two new beta patches to my STEAM.APPS main folder. The "Shaders" folder has subsequently repopulated.

In spite of this work, I still lockup or crash to desktop on the most basic single missions. The members of SimHq do not have an answer apart from rants or advice to change to System7. I thought best to go to the product source at the 1C Forums to obtain clear advice on my condition. I have no plans to upgrade my operating system from XP.

I look forward to your advice and guidance on this situation.

[badfinger]

Phil,

I, too, had XP prior to CoD coming out. I had my hard drive sectioned and Win7 64 bit added. The major reason for getting Win7 was it allowed me to add more RAM, which I think you will need. I don't think 4 is going to be enough.

As you can see from my specs, I also sprung for a better graphics card, also.

binky9

[CWMV]

XP is obsolete and the 285 isn't doing you any favors either, a few of the guys from our VJG have 285's and have the same issues.

[MadBlaster]

did you set the dx9 switch in your config.ini file?

[window]
Render=D3D9

The config.ini file is located in your My Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover folder accessed through your desktop icon.

Btw, there is also a config.ini in your steam folder. Don't touch that. It is default parameters the game uses if you delete the one your My Documents folder.

[arthursmedley]

I have no plans to upgrade my operating system from XP.

Then you're stuffed I'm afraid. CoD needs DX10 which WinXP does not have. Although your graphics card is a bit marginal the rest of your system is adequate to run CoD. I have very similar specs except I run a GTX460 - and Win7 64bit.

I got CoD on it's launch day and I was running WinXP. I was getting exactly what you describe. Oh yeah, despite what some people might tell you, you can't hack DX10 into XP.
I took the plunge and switched to Win7 and have no regrets whatsoever.

[MadBlaster]

XP was listed in the official system requirements before the game was released. Who is to say they won't optimize it for DX9 at some point down the road? We know today that the game is alpha/beta/unfinished. DX10 probably has priority now because they feel guilty for all the customers that already spent a bunch of money on new hardware and software, only to have their expectations shattered and lowered after a 6 year wait and $8 million dollars later. So, be smart. Don't invest a nickel in this game until it all goes official version. Then run it with whatever you have and make a decision if it is worth upgrading.

[macro]

I too had xp, and really bad performance, i installed win 7 64bit and got a massive improvement. i also upgraded my graphics card to a gtx 560 after that and got another massiv increase now the games runs smooth, on a 2.8 gig dual core and 4gb ram.

win 7 is the way my man!

[blackmme]

I too had xp, and really bad performance, i installed win 7 64bit and got a massive improvement. i also upgraded my graphics card to a gtx 560 after that and got another massiv increase now the games runs smooth, on a 2.8 gig dual core and 4gb ram.

win 7 is the way my man!

Ditto for me. Huge increase in stability and reasonable increase in performance.

Regards Mike

[TonyD]

... Who is to say they won't optimize it for DX9 at some point down the road? ...

Can you really see that happening? If it is on their list it must be pretty far down it, and by the time that they get around to it the number of people still gaming on a decade-old OS will be so few, it won’t warrant the effort. I’ll wager we’ll see DX11 support before any improvement to DX9, but I may be wrong. IMO, the only reason to stick with XP is if you cannot afford to replace it, and I’d definitely recommend Win7 before any further hardware upgrades.

[hc_wolf]

To anyone on XP. Save, Beg, Borrow or Steal (just not from me) But bite the bullet and buy Win7. I had xp and switched to Win7 and will never look back. It is awesome compared to xp.

ok i have High rig now. But before I spent a little cash my first upgrade was to Win7 with everything else standard.

Next il2 responds best to VRAM not just Ram. so the more Video Ram you have on your card the smoother the ride.

You really should be moving towards DX10/11 rig. Good CPU, medium grafics card and ram.

[zanzark]

DX9 is like 10 years old, which in computer terms means 1500 years.
I don't see the point of developing a game for DX9, nor the point of NOT using Windows 7.

Vista was suicidal, ok, but Windows 7 is really good.

Another thing is, that you will loose performance on multi-core systems in windows xp, and have a limited amount of RAM.

I think your GXT285 is ok for the game, the bottleneck in CoD right now seems to be the lack of multithread support for the main sim thread.

[MadBlaster]

Well then that makes CLoD already 900 years old "in computer terms". DX10 is no spring chicken either.:rolleyes:

Everyone seems to have forgotten...original IL-2 ran like crap under DX9. That's why most people run it today under Open G/L. Open G/L..that's gotta be like a million years old!!!. But it gives good performance. Anyway, I have doubts about Direct X any version. It could be that Direct X will always be glitchy for the type of programming used in this game. Maybe they need to re-write CLoD in the latest version of Open G/L?:-P

[Jumo211]

IL-2 Original and IL-2 1946 is DirectX 8.0 :mrgreen:
you wish it was DirectX 9.0

[TonyD]

IL-2 Original and IL-2 1946 is DirectX 8.0 :mrgreen:
you wish it was DirectX 9.0

Not quite true - remember the 'Perfect' terrain setting? That was the result of a Shader Model 2 (DirectX 9 spec) sub-routine, in OpenGL, that made the water look real .

[Jumo211]

I was talking about DirectX not OpenGL , of course the main engine was
done and optimized for the best graphics ( water etc.. ) with OpenGL but
when run under DirectX it was and it is 8.0 version , sorry . :cool:

EDIT: It's DirectX 8.1 to be precise updated for Windows 98, Windows Me
and Windows 2000 which was latter on just backward compatible with DirectX 9.0 ;)
Game is using d3d8.dll when DX is selected .

[Codex]

I don't see the point of developing a game for DX9, nor the point of NOT using Windows 7.


Just to clarify your statement, you can't actually escape DX9 or DX8 for that matter when developing games for DX11. The reason is that each DX version is not a complete overhaul, it's just an incremental addition of features.

For example if I wanted hardware tessellation then I need to use the DX11 function calls to do it, however if I wanted to read the joystick states and apply force-feed back, under DX11 specifications, I would still be using the DX8 DirectInput function calls which haven't changed since being introduced since 2000, or under XNA (C#) I'd be using DX9's XInput which came in 2002.

What I'm trying to say is if you develop a game saying it's DX11 you can, with very little effort ensure it also runs under DX9.

With regards to CloD, and the requirement to have .NET4.0 installed, I think CloD's main game code sits in the managed space but all the graphics routines are done in the unmanaged space. This can slow things down a little, but reduces the possibility of memory leaks (not eliminate) and the need to manage garbage collection.

[Jumo211]

from wiki:

Prior to DirectX 10, DirectX runtime was designed to be backward compatible with older drivers, meaning that newer versions of the APIs were designed to interoperate with older drivers written against a previous version's DDI. The application programmer had to query the available hardware capabilities using a complex system of "cap bits" each tied to a particular hardware feature. For example, a game designed for and running on Direct3D 9 with a graphics adapter driver designed for Direct3D 6 would still work, albeit most likely with degraded functionality.

However, the Direct3D 10 runtime in Windows Vista cannot run on older hardware drivers due to the significantly updated DDI, which requires a unified feature set and abandons the use of "cap bits".

Direct3D 11 runtime introduces Direct3D 9, 10, and 10.1 "feature levels", compatibility modes which allow use of only the hardware features defined in the specified version of Direct3D. For Direct3D 9 hardware, there are three different feature levels, grouped by common capabilities of "low", "med" and "high-end" video cards; the runtime directly uses Direct3D 9 DDI provided in all WDDM drivers.