Windows 7 and IL2... No love?

[mazex]

Hi!

Anyone else that has tried IL2 on the Windows 7 beta? I've tried some other games that seem to run better than on Vista (that hog), but unfortunately IL2 on OpenGL settings does not work for me...

I have an Nvidia 8800GTX card with the 181.20 drivers and IL2 4.08 with the latest (?) graphic dll's ( 02/27 2008 ). When I run it the screen gets vertical oscillating tears/ripples all over like an old CRT that is about to die... Naturally it works on DirectX - but with bad FPS and quality etc...

I know Windows 7 is just a beta - but it's interesting to hear if the problem affects others (ATI users for example)... Since Vista was so bad at OpenGL until SP1 I had hoped that SP2 (Windows 7 ) was going to be even better at OpenGL... Yeah - that's stupid.

Going back to trusty old XP again...

/Mazex

[GOZR]

http://gozr.net/iocl/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=176

Read some good tests by EcoDragon

[mazex]

Originally Posted by GOZR

http://gozr.net/iocl/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=176

Read some good tests by EcoDragon

Mmm, that looks rather promising - and EcoDragon obviously got it running in W7. He does not say his videocard - but he at least has the same CPU as me, and the same overclock

The score is not better that XP, but it's close enough. W7 generally feels a lot snappier than Vista so I have good vibes about it - even though I get a lot of bluescreens right now... As the expected release is late 09 they have a lot of time for fixing them. As it is now it almost feels like running Ubuntu sometimes - and thats good!

[Codex]

"Windows 7 and IL2... No love?"
Don't bother making any decisions on the new OS now. Test results showing how poorly IL-2 runs on Vista or W7 is a pointless exercise. Wait for SoW and the retail release of W7 and then worry about weather the new OS is worth your hard earned $$$.

[JG52Uther]

Originally Posted by Codex

"Windows 7 and IL2... No love?"
Don't bother making any decisions on the new OS now. Test results showing how poorly IL-2 runs on Vista or W7 is a pointless exercise. Wait for SoW and the retail release of W7 and then worry about weather the new OS is worth your hard earned $$$.

Give that man a cookie! Be amazed that such an old game even runs on these new operating systems!

[Thunderbolt56]

I'm pretty sure Eco uses an 8800GTS. As far as the Windows7 beta, I'm not too concerned. While is popular (even politically correct at times) to bash MS, their track record in learning from their mistakes is pretty good. I doubt Windows7 will be any different. I'm still running XP Pro SP3 and intend to leap-frog Vista altogether. Preliminary reports on driver support, speed and compatibility of W7 all sound like things are moving in the right direction.

my .02c

[mazex]

Originally Posted by JG52Uther

Give that man a cookie! Be amazed that such an old game even runs on these new operating systems!

Mmm, the thing that worries me a bit though is that Vista has performed miserably in OGL and Vista 1.1 (Windows 7) seems to continue that tradition. The only modern "in engine" clip of SoW we have seen lately (the editor") was running in OpenGL...

A problem? Hope not... SoW will probably have DirectX support as well, lets just hope that it's not as bad as the dx mode in IL2 in that case. I don't really understand why to bother doing both OpenGL and dx if you only release the game on the Windows platform though...

Anyway - it's the first public beta and it's so much better than Vista was 12 months before release...

[IceFire]

I have no performance issues using OpenGL in Vista. Whats the problem?

Indeed it is good to see that Windows 7's development even in beta form is quite good. I was reading about the UI and usability of the new taskbar/dock system and it sounds fantastic once people get used to it.

[Codex]

Originally Posted by mazex

Mmm, the thing that worries me a bit though is that Vista has performed miserably in OGL and Vista 1.1 (Windows 7) seems to continue that tradition. The only modern "in engine" clip of SoW we have seen lately (the editor") was running in OpenGL...

A problem? Hope not... SoW will probably have DirectX support as well, lets just hope that it's not as bad as the dx mode in IL2 in that case. I don't really understand why to bother doing both OpenGL and dx if you only release the game on the Windows platform though...

Anyway - it's the first public beta and it's so much better than Vista was 12 months before release...

It's not OpenGL that is the issue, it's running IL-2 on a modern Windows OS that has a completely different way of displaying dots on the screen than XP. Under XP OpenGL, DX and the GDI existed side by side and all on top of the NT Kernal which meant function calls made via any one of the APIs could directly access the hardware.

With Vista and future versions of Windows, all OpenGL graphical function calls are now made through a couple more layers before getting to the hardware, where DX function calls go straight through to the hardware.





While you may say this means is OpenGL is slower, I would argue only very slightly. The real reason IL-2 is slower on Vista than XP is that it doesn't make use of the new WDDM. As DX10 games basically have unhindered access system memory, CPU and GPU resources, where older games have to share with other apps.

[TX-EcoDragon]

Yes, I run an 8800GTS 512 card, and was running 178 series drivers in each OS (though a different version is provided by nVidia for Win7).

I did see a few fps less in win 7 vs vista, but keep in mind that we are talking about 2.6% average fps decrease.

I've added system specs to that post (at the end).

FSX saw a 7.8% performance loss at Medium-High settings, and pretty much no loss at Ultra High settings. My usual settings are in between, so I see about 3 fps less than usual by running 7 vs XP.

Black Shark had crazy GAINS in performance, minimum fps increased by more than a factor of 4, average fps were nearly doubled.

So for the imperceptible loss in IL-2, the nearly imperceptible loss in FSX, and major gains in Black Shark, I'd give it a thumbs up!

That says nothing about the desktop user experience which is certainly much better than XP, and reportedly a bit better than Vista. I wouldnt so much blame the OS for any hits, it actually appears to handle resources with much more intelligence than XP does - the apps you run just have to allow it to do that!

[edit] Here are the other benchmarks I've run with Win 7 vs XP - Nothing fancy, but quick and dirty and get's the job done: http://www.txsquadron.com/forum/index.php?topic=2675.0