Official Fulqrum Publishing forum - To the kind attention of developers # Re: Performance issue

Official Fulqrum Publishing forum (http://forum.fulqrumpublishing.com/index.php)

- IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover (http://forum.fulqrumpublishing.com/forumdisplay.php?f=189)

- - To the kind attention of developers # Re: Performance issue (http://forum.fulqrumpublishing.com/showthread.php?t=21732)

Quote:

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos (Post 267901)

I have the feeling I fly the smallest resolution anybody ever tried in this forum!

Don't know about this particular forum, but someone on simhq.com was flying at 400x200 or something similarly ridiculous, vids and all :)

I do agree on the main point though - performance does need to be improved, particulalry for low-mid end system. Whether this comes from optimisation of the code itself, or better tuning of the available graphics settings - I don't know.

As someone suggested earlier, I've found "Land Shading" to be a big resource hog. Setting it to low basically got rid of stutters for me.

Here are the settings I'm currently using to get the game to run on my 4870 (512MB):

Resolution: 1920*1080@60
Full Screen: On
Model Detail: High
Buildings Detail: Very Low
Land Detail: Medium
Forest: Very Low/Low
Visual Effects: High
Texture Quality: Medium
AA: Off
Epilepsy: Off
SSAO: Off
Damage Decals: High
Buildings Amount: Unlimited
Land Shading: Low
Grass: Off
Shadows: On
Roads: On

Its not completely smooth (when low down for example) but it is acceptable. Finally able to use the game somewhat over england (havent experimented there much).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Heliocon (Post 267793)

ABsolutely nothing to do with hardware - its to do with horrible programming/optimization. Buildings should not be an issue (neither should tree hitboxes).

I'm agree with you. Do you remember the Slovakia map in IL2 1946? They put those new brand buildings which causes fps drops and microstutters even to the galactic computer systems while the original ones didnt give problems. And everybody here know that IL2 runs wonderfully with other maps and mods even at full details. I wonder if the devs used same kind of buildings for this new sim and if they are able or not to solve this problem! They never solved those in Slovakia map.
Cliffs of Dover is an horrible programmed and optimized game at present state...it is also uncomplete in the percentage of 50 . I really hope the devs in a month or 2 will give us a full, repeat FULL, playable game!

Tally ho!

Land shading has nothing to do with landscape shadows.
Shadows can only be turned on/off.
Shading controls the way hardware shaders render the terrain textures and how landscape reflects light (Do you think terrain is too happy greenish?, turn shading to its best and behold beauty). Shading is all computed in gpu, so it is a killer in ancients video cards and as it is calculated for every pixel performance is very dependant of resolution you play: For example you could play with the better shading settings in a very old gpu if you play with a very slow resolution 300x400 or so XD. So better shading is better and detailed terrain ilumination not shadows.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFC_Dolphin (Post 267908)

I'll test again later, setting SSAO off.
Maybe it'll make the difference.

I do not want to spoil your optimism but I am afraid it will not...

You are right Dolphin, we definitively had less cities in the online wars, but the job was done, same as when we were near those German flaks (Opel Blitz) and the AAA of the battleships, frame show.

In this game the graphic detail of the houses is amazing. Only problem is that for us flying dogfight full real, nobody will ever be so near to enjoy the artistic detail so it is a bad overkill and the biggest problem the programmers have seems to be how to sensibly remove it (or gradually present it).

Anyway, 1,5Gb is the magic number (the min RAM your GPU has to have nowadays...).

~S~

PS. @squidgyb: Good to hear that someone does fly smaller resolutions than me after all... :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by W0ef (Post 267802)

While I agree there can still be progress made on optimization, especially of the houses, I do not agree this has nothing to do at all with hardware and the way you set your system up. People with very similar specs (like me) have the game running smooth with everything maxed out.

As stated many times by now this game eats VRAM for breakfast. I think the bottleneck in your system therefore might be your HD6850 which is a fine card but probably just not good enough for running this game on max, running with everything maxed out requires over 1gb VRAM. I think the biggest optimizations are to be made in this department (VRAM usage of the engine).

You read my system specs wrong...:rolleyes:

-Also its not an issue with vram (well it is but it "shouldnt be") because the flight sim should not be maxing it out, if its maxing out it means the programming is crappy and they are not removing rescources/textures from Vram memory when they arent needed, or equally as bad they are loading stuff into vram that should be stored in system ram then sent to vram when needed (its hard drive paging thats slow). Why is it maxing vram but not using more than a couple of gigs of system ram? (from what I have been told/seen).
Why are they not offloading tree hit boxes to another thread? They said it would require them to raise the games min requirments (although if it was optional it wouldnt) but if the games build for the future why are they afriad to use more than 4 threads?

I think the perforamnce is getting there.. I run the "BLack Death" track at an average of 64 with a high of 192 at 1920X1200 with everything on HIGH except SSAO OFF and SHADOWS OFF