I have a new computer and I was asking myself....
 

Hello guys,

I have a brand new computer and I wanted advices to get the maximum out of it for IL2. Here's the specification :

AMB Athlon 6400 +
Geforce 9800 GTX
4 GO Ram (3.25 with XP)

What do I need to put in the conf.ini file to get IL2 to works best?

BTW, I'm already running on water 3. Can it go higher? I have noticed a strange graphical bug with the water on certain angles. Is there a way to fix it?

Many thanks.

Hi Oktober!

4Gig on a 32bit system, well, you know that you won't benefit much from it, maybe even less than with 3 gig, if you don't have an nForce board, but considering how cheap memory is at the moment, I understand why people are tempted.

You have to set water to "2", because that is the optimized water for ATI/AMD. Other than that, you should try highest settings:
(AFAIK VideoSetupId differs after running il2setup.exe, as I have an nVidia-GFX-card.)

TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=3
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=1
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=1
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=1

HardwareShaders=1

Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2
Forest=2
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2
LandGeom=2
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=17

ForceShaders1x=0

Water=1
Effects=1
3DBridges=1

TypeClouds=1

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0

nvidia card (9800gtx) should be able to run water=3/4, other than that i think that conf should set everything to max, could follow the guide here - http://www.mission4today.com/index.p...dge_Base&cat=7 and see if there's anything else that can be nudged up. for antialiasing and anisotrophic settings, you'll need to alter them in the nvidia control panel (x16 for both with that set up i imagine)

LOL - true.

Sorry, 9800 for me still is the 9800pro from ATI. Shouldn't post and talk on telephone the same time.

You should be able to run Water on 4. You will experience graphics issues, though with nVidia, like texture flickering and problems with the water, depending on driver version and chipset used. You CAN try to set Effects=2, too, but I wouldn't recommend it. Smoke and clouds will look a lot more 3D, but it has a large effect on performance, especially when bombing or shooting your 110s guns at groundtargets ;)

Try these Dll's, they sorted out any texture flickering on my 8800gtx.

They are from the 4.09beta, but you can use them in 4.08 as well. With the new Dll you can set LandGeom=3 to get increased view distance.

...and turning the flak puffs pink... performance hit could be noticeable, dunno... should have enough ooomph to run it with the 2gig (that's detectable in 32 bit OS), 9800gtx (what's the memory on that) and the dual amd at some 3ghz. test, fraps benchmarks, test again. could also depend what screen res you are running at... native res on a large widescreen tft can be a pita

Hi guys,

I'll try what you have recommended. I run on water 3 already, didn't now I could run at 4. I put effects 2 already and I have not the slightest lag at the moment. Anyway I need to go home and stop posting from the office to try that :)

Yeah, aren't we nVidia-customers a blessed community? :-P


Performance hit on a 9800gtx should be huge, too. It was posted several times that this was primarily implemented as a test-basis. On normal explosions there is little to notice, but when you have multiple explosions or drop a bomb in a city, you'll have some nice performance-testing.

~S~ Feuerfalke

Where did you find 3Dbridges and what does it do?

That's in my ini since the original IL2-days IIRC. I read it somewhere at that time and just copy'n'pasted it into the newer versions. I don't know if it makes any difference at all, but it didn't do any harm either, so I guess that's why it survived. ;)

Your link is not working :(

Ah, thought I didn't recognise it.....thanks for coming back

Try setting this in your conf.ini:

ProcessAffinityMask=2

This tells windows to run IL-2 only on core 1. For AMD dual core processors, this can make a considerable difference. I run an ancient 939 4200+ X2 @ 2.64G; if I don't use this setting my display occasionally freezes for a second or so (usually upon encountering a combat situation :(), and if something explodes, the FPS goes to down to about 3 for a second or so. Good Luck!

The problem with "ProcessAffinityMask=2" is, that IL2 was not built to use multiple cores and therefore it can cause stutters to run IL2 on 2 cores. I rather recommend assigning IL2 to one core, Teamspeak, TrackIR and other programs you need, to the second. That solved a lot of microstutters for me, but you should try that one out yourself, as it probably really depends on the system configuration.

That is not the maximum!
This is:

Water=4
//4 = improved display quality with vertex Shader 3.0 (NVIDIA 6800 and later models)
Effects=2
//2 = (explosion) effects for later hardware
HardwareShaders=1
Shadows=2
Specular=3
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
//Detailed degree of the objects in the game (0=Lego|1=box |2=normal)
VisibilityDistance=3
Sky=2
//Cloud representation 0 = no clouds (only offline available) 1 = less clouds 2 = normal clouds
Forest=3
//If Hardwareshaders=1 there is still the option 3. The single textures of the stratified woods are increased once more and trees in the town are replaced (on newer maps faster).
LandShading=3
//3 = buildings receive shadows
LandDetails=2
//groundtextures in low level flight become more multifaceted
LandGeom=2
TexLarge=1
//high-resolution textures (planes)
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1
//high-resolution textures (landscape)

Try it out! :grin:

Cheers,


KarlHeinz

True. But I said these are the best settings working for me.

Forests=3 add an additional forest-layer that causes a drop in fps with barely any visual difference at all. It even does not make the forest more visible from the sides, where I'd really like to see some more details

Water=4 causes artifacts on my machine

Effects=2 causes pink FlaK-Puffs and flickering 3D-smoke

Specular=3 has no effect, as there is only 0,1,2 supported to my knowledge, but I'd be glad if you can show me a link that defines the difference.

I don't have such problems, probably you have installed an old or too new driver
-->artifacts on water=4

Since patch 4.03:
2 = this mode corresponds Water = 3, however it runs also on ATI graphics cards with chipsets 9800, X800, X1800 and later models
3 = quick Render mode with vertex shader 3.0
4 = improved display quality with vert Shader 3.0

forests=3: "barely any visual difference" true
effects=2: immense difference in the explosions, very recommendable!
specular=3: the game doesn't alter "specular" 3 to 2 as it is always the case if anyone enters unacceptable values, therefore, there is specular 3

I know what the settings are, but yes, with the latest drivers I have installed and the betas mentioned in this thread, I still get some odd artifacts.

Can anybody confirm what "Specular=3" really changes against "Specular=2"?

There is so much confusion over the use of ProcessAffinityMask. As its name implies, its value is a mask (or more specificly a bit mask), which means the following: each bit of the value specifies a cpu (core) to be used. A value of 1 means only use CPU 0, a value of 2 means only use CPU1, a value of 3 means only use CPU0 & CPU1, a value of 4 means only use CPU2, a value of 5 means only use CPU0 & CPU2, and so on. For more info on what is going on here, do a wikipedia on binary numbers. Enjoy!

Unfortunately, if the affinity mask is not specified (the default for conf.ini), windows will run the program on all available cpus which can cause problems for IL-2.

Ow..... I don't want to have it so complicated !!!

Look at the black death track and see what average fps you get