Help make my game playable
 

Hello all

I'm having big problems with this game and hoping you can help me.

Like others, the problem I have is bad FPS drops and stutters constantly.

I've read a few threads here and many people have older systems than I do and can play the game relatively smooth with good FPS. Some even on high settings so i'm a bit confused.

Here's some things i've tried so far with very little difference and the game is still unplayable:

-every game setting (verylow, low, medium, etc...)
-clouds off
-forests off
-buildings low
-ground low
-shadows off
-flying over water (apparently better performance for some. no different to me)
-all settings in nvidia control panel to fastest performance for launcher.exe
-different AA settings off, forced and in game
-forced vsync, triple buff, etc
-disable antivirus
-Nvidia Driver 270.51

Is there anything else I can try? All I want is to be able to play the game smooth. I don't even care if graphics look crap anymore. Please help before I have a breakdown :)

This is my system:
WIN 7 x64
Asus P8P67 PRO
Intel i5-2500K @ 4.4 GHz
Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 1600MHz
MSI GTX 460 HAWK 1GB (overclocked little)
20" monitor 1680x1050

Also I made a small video here to show how bad the performance is for me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bMxG4IpZ3E

20-30 fps seems like par for the course at present.

Seems odd that lowering settings doesn't make much difference though, especially if you were to turn off shadows, roads, lower building/land detail and amount of buildings/trees. Have you tried Kegetys mod?

The graphical futures shown in the vid don’t match with the low setting you posted, I.e. shadows, the amount of trees, building detail, roads, etc.

Have you tried defragmenting you HDD that your game is on.

Have the used ATA channels (for HDD's etc) in device manager had enable DMA under there advanced settings

Thats about what i get on a similar spec to yours...

again wait for the next patch that will hopefully use your CPU more

Hi there. You say 20-30 fps seems average but why are people with lower systems getting 60+ average?. Regardless it would be playable at 30fps constant but it dips to under 10 constantly.

Haven't tried the kegetys mod. I did read about that but assumed it was for people with lesser capable systems? anyway i'll look into that again


You are correct, that vid was recorded on default high settings. maybe I should of been clearer. What i meant was I get the same performance as in that clip regardless of the settings it seems. I could record another at very low settings and it would look the same performance wise which I find odd.

I don't defrag as I use SSD's which you don't defrag.

I really hope your're right. Am just disappointed I can't play now and feel ripped off. Never had a game so badly optimised at release if i'm honest.

Interesting, I get 60 ave with a much lower card BUT stutters like a bitch. If I had a 40 fps steady I'd be much happier, I only run 1280 x 800 res. I also found the 270 Nvidia drivers bogged my system down out of the game so I can't use those. I found even though the 270s helped the game FPS a little it still stuttered making it unplayable so no help really. So whilst I can gain good FPS reasonably easily I cannot stop the stutters which ruin the experience for me.

Have you disabled aero in win 7? If i leave it on the sim stutters like hell, with it off it's very playable. The vid shows you have shadows on. I have to turn them off atm to get good fps. Also opening the canopy gives me 3-4 fps more over land. Turn mirrors off too.
Kegety's mods made mine playable when before it was a slide show, definatly do that first.

Use the kegetys mod..it works wonders , i was on average hitting 20-27 fps , after i installed the mod im hitting 60+ , EASY TO INSTALL

Try this:

Create a link to task manager on your desktop. It's somewhere in the windows directory. This is so you can run as admin, because on my pc when I don't I can't change processes affinity/priority.

After the game starts up go back to the desktop, right click on task manager and run as administrator. When in task manager find launcher.exe, right click on it and set priority to real time and set affinity mask so it uses all cores except core 0.

See if that does anything, might not though... Just a thought.