So - whats your FPS on the new Black Death track?

[TonyD]

After some time-consuming testing with a number of different settings, many of which seem to have little impact on the average frame rate in Black Death, I use the following:

Resolution: 1920 x 1080, 50Hz (50Hz reduces the work load, with no visual impact at 2ms)
Full Screen: On
Model detail: High
Buildings Detail: Medium
Land Detail: Medium
Forest: Medium
Visual Effects: High
Texture Quality: High
Anti-Aliasing: 2x (no visual difference when increasing this)
Anti-Epilepsy Filter: Off
SSAO: Off
VSYNC: On (‘Off’ for the benchmark, reduces ‘tearing’ in game when panning around the cockpit)
Damage Decals: High
Buildings Amount: Medium
Land Shading: Medium
Grass: Off
Shadows: On
Roads: On

Black Death track, using the in-game fps display (avg, max, min): 39, 85, 15

I use the ‘Free Flight – England’ quick mission for in-game testing because of its combination of towns, forests and sea. With these settings I get a frame rate of 40 to 45 fps at around 1000 feet over Dover, dropping to ~35 fps when looking at the burning fuel depot (~28 fps close up) and at tree-top height. I don’t usually fly with the frame rate displayed when playing, but it is fluid enough to be immersive. It does appear that these settings do not result in the graphics memory demand exceeding what my card has, as there is no visible stuttering. I have noticed no increase in the LOD when increasing the ‘Buildings Amount’ setting (even to ‘Unlimited’), but this may have something to do with the amount of VRAM I have. With the above settings, the buildings are textured when they come into view (no initial brown boxes), except over London where this still happens, but I have the same frame rate here as I do over Dover.

My current driver version is 11.5, CCC 3D settings are all at default, game version is 1.00.14413 beta with a default ‘config.ini’ file. I use ‘Overdrive’ to tweak my card’s clocks to 775/1100, and ‘MSI AfterBurner’ to alter the cooling fan profile to achieve a max gpu temperature of 70⁰C under full load. At default speed, the cpu usage is approximately (Task Manager) 70%, 45%, 25% and 20% across the cores, and using VSYNC results in gpu usage varying between 60% and 80%. I have no problems running the game for hours – no CTD, BSD, freezes or graphic anomalies apart from the occasional long rectangles between land and sea (which have been around from the beginning, but are infrequent).