Waste of money

[Bryan21cag]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Well, i really don't know why it gives so many problems on your rig, but i have a lower-spec PC than yours and everything runs fine on mostly medium settings at 1680x1050. I even lowered a couple of settings (forests and building detail to low) and this allowed me to set land shading to high and building detail to unlimited and i'm only running this:

win7 x64, i7 920 @ 2.7 Ghz, Ati 4890 1Gb and only 3GB of RAM.

It runs well and flies like a dream, seriously. I really don't know why so many people with beefier PCs seem to be having problems.

The most important thing that affects performance at high graphics settings seems to be the amount of VRAM. In other words, don't expect to run everything on high with original size textures on a 1Gb video card. I run medium textures and it's the one single setting that has the biggest effect on performance, allowing me to increase other settings to where it looks much better than IL2 and still flies in a fluid manner.

If i had a faster DX11 GPU with 1GB of VRAM i would still be running medium textures, but this would mean that i would be able to increase other settings to high.

What i care about is "does it look better than the previous one?", not "are the settings maxed out?". As long as it looks good i don't need to have everything on high.

hmmm..... I have the box listed below (two DX11 1G cards btw) and even on medium settings its playable but not very pleasurable. Over water it runs like I would want it to run with 50 planes all battling over London but only there.

I know i stated this before in another post but it really takes me out of the game when the only way to make it play silk smooth is to cut its (clears Throat)..... ball bearings off, graphically speaking of coarse

Any way I really hope that this is due to lack of crossfire optimization as this would at least mean that I was not looking at an accurate representation of how the game operates in general but just on my machine.

But then im left feeling like crap again because i just built this box and will not be building another one any time soon and at this point i may rather eat the cost of the game rather than drop another 700 bucks on a new card that may only give me a marginal performance boost at best.

it is starting to get on my nerves though that i can youtube about a thousand videos these days showing the smoothest running all graphics maxed version of CLOD and not be able to tell if its movie magic or if its actual game play. sigh

here's hoping for a smoother running future

Cheers

[335th_GRAthos]

I am one of the guys who are
1. - Delighted with the game
2. - "reasonably happy" with the performance and features

Let me explain:
The graphics and attention to small detail is incredible. Probably 90% of this detail-depth will go unnoticed for most of us.
The damage model goes well beyond anything we have experienced so far.

On the other side the game is a graphics and performance monster. It eats any HW you will put to it for breakfast and asks for more.
It is my personal opinion (and 20years experience in the flight sim world) that, there is no hardware available today to make this game work properly so I am waiting for a year until the new graphics cards will have double the performance of today's top models and at least 3Gb VRAM so that I can at least enjoy some decent performance. Until then it will be compromises.

Of course some will say that "the game should be more optimised". Guys, forget it, they optimised it as much as they could by removing some things and making the distance radius of detail as small as it could become (that'why so many people complain about the "blocked houses"), do not expect too much "optimisation" more...
AND big kudos goes to kegetys who made theMOD and found the optimisations (which later became part of the graphics menu in the game), without his contribution we would still be playing at 15fps...

So, I have 70-100fps at 3070x resolution (not boasting you can see enough screenshots posted on my SLI thread) and no sound problems at all and I enjoy playing online.

I do agree that pretending that this was a game that would run on a min configuration of WinXP and DX10 was a very overstated idea....

Something else worthwhile bringing to your attention gentlemen is the retail price of the game:
This game costs approx 15.00 Dollars (this is the price you pay for it in Russia)
If anybody tells me that this is a waste of money for this product, I would advice him to a psychiatrist as his system of values has been seriously imbalanced (probably too many bankers' advice).
Why this game costs 50.00 Dollars (or 50.00 Euros) in other countries is interesting and maybe you can deduct who cashes in the difference (50 - 15 = 35)... No need for answers from marketeers thanks!
Still, at 50.00 EUR I would not accept that this game is a waste of money.

The only critisism I would make is that this game did not write: WARNING! You are about to spend hundreds of dollars buying new hardware in order to start playing this game and further hundreds of dollars buying more hardware a few months later!


This is my 2cents, as I said before, there are things I am very unhappy with the game (I can not fly Bf109 because of this stupid head restriction in gunsight mode, I do not have three monitors view) so please do not consider me being a "happy client".
But I am a "grateful flight-sim fan"

~S~

[carguy_]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

On the other side the game is a graphics and performance monster. It eats any HW you will put to it for breakfast and asks for more.
It is my personal opinion (and 20years experience in the flight sim world) that, there is no hardware available today to make this game work properly so I am waiting for a year until the new graphics cards will have double the performance of today's top models and at least 3Gb VRAM so that I can at least enjoy some decent performance. Until then it will be compromises.

Interesting, double the performance in a year?
Anyway, if this game has even 70% of the features the 2006 trailer says, it darn right should be a resource hog! For example, giving the ground objects moving suspensions is such a feature. I don`t know why in a flightsim, so I think it should be customizable.

Of course some will say that "the game should be more optimised". Guys, forget it, they optimised it as much as they could by removing some things and making the distance radius of detail as small as it could become (that'why so many people complain about the "blocked houses"), do not expect too much "optimisation" more...
AND big kudos goes to kegetys who made theMOD and found the optimisations (which later became part of the graphics menu in the game), without his contribution we would still be playing at 15fps...

Optimised...yes. Well, performance wise it should be. The only complaint could be the stutters over the cities. No matter how low you set the video options, it never fully goes away. Now for the other optimisatnions, it also should get rid of any CDTs, stuff that stops the show (meaning literally - the game craps out). What some console idiots don`t realise is that optimisation doesn`t necesarrily mean running this game full whistle @ FullHD resolutions with todays hardware. Everyone expects their 2 year old mid range PC to run a flight simulation at the same FPS as Dx9 Crysis2.
Naaaah, this game is ahead of its time exactly as the IL2 was. The IL2 started to show signs of age about the year of 2006, when majority of the crowd were starting to run it on perfect video settings. Now what I think is going to happen, is that the more powerful pcs we get, the more complicated features will get "unlocked". It`s all a matter of consistency, and we have a real impact on it through buying the copies. It`s about the only thing we have right now and we`re so close to the ultimate online gameplay. But some poeple unable to run it on their 9600GT feel that CloD should be shot down for that reason.

Now don`t get me wrong. I see the mistakes dex team made. The game was hardly customizable for a pc game, and Kegety, even if I despise illegal modders, DID make a serious contribution. We got much more video options which let even the mid range folks run this game at a satisfying level (I have a 2008 higher mid range PC). Maybe even for this reason alone, nobody should ever negate that the community has always pushed 1C forward one step further.

I do agree that pretending that this was a game that would run on a min configuration of WinXP and DX10 was a very overstated idea....

The min system requirements are always to be ignored. Unless ofcourse you don`t know the drill cuz it`s your very first video game.

Something else worthwhile bringing to your attention gentlemen is the retail price of the game:
This game costs approx 15.00 Dollars (this is the price you pay for it in Russia)
If anybody tells me that this is a waste of money for this product, I would advice him to a psychiatrist as his system of values has been seriously imbalanced (probably too many bankers' advice).
Why this game costs 50.00 Dollars (or 50.00 Euros) in other countries is interesting and maybe you can deduct who cashes in the difference (50 - 15 = 35)... No need for answers from marketeers thanks!
Still, at 50.00 EUR I would not accept that this game is a waste of money.

I got the CE for 42€. The standard version costs here ~ 23€. I have 18 hours of gameplay. That`s almost twice the time of Crysis2 single play campaign and twice of most of the FPS game that cost this money. Probably there will be lots of free stuff coming, not 8$ dlc. Probably the Moscow expansion will come sometime in the next year. Guess how many hours I will have with CloD to that point?

The only critisism I would make is that this game did not write: WARNING! You are about to spend hundreds of dollars buying new hardware in order to start playing this game and further hundreds of dollars buying more hardware a few months later!

What for? People would still ignore it seeing how they post on these forums. The very sad truth is that many people who bought this game aren`t exactly the type of person suitable for it. It takes money, patience, intelligence, a bit of advanced PC hardware/software knowledge, lots of time. So not many. The good news is that those people who DO manage to stay with IL2 not only play the game, but they keep contributing for the good of all (like uuuuum saaaaay.... creating a free singleplayer campaign?).

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Bryan21cag

hmmm..... I have the box listed below (two DX11 1G cards btw) and even on medium settings its playable but not very pleasurable. Over water it runs like I would want it to run with 50 planes all battling over London but only there.

I know i stated this before in another post but it really takes me out of the game when the only way to make it play silk smooth is to cut its (clears Throat)..... balls off, graphically speaking of coarse

Any way I really hope that this is due to lack of crossfire optimization as this would at least mean that I was not looking at an accurate representation of how the game operates in general but just on my machine.

But then im left feeling like crap again because i just built this box and will not be building another one any time soon and at this point i may rather eat the cost of the game rather than drop another 700 bucks on a new card that may only give me a marginal performance boost at best.

it is starting to get on my nerves though that i can youtube about a thousand videos these days showing the smoothest running all graphics maxed version of CLOD and not be able to tell if its movie magic or if its actual game play. sigh

here's hoping for a smoother running future

Cheers

Even with optimized crossfire i think that your VRAM is limited to the amount of VRAM on one card only, so i wouldn't suspect the fundamentals to change: reduce the amount of stuff that needs to be loaded into VRAM ( = drop the texture size) and then you can run other options that rely more on GPU "speed" than on VRAM size (like effects/smoke, etc) on higher settings.

I think there's no optimal GPU yet, because the 3GB ones tend to have "slower" memory chips than the 1-2GB GPUs, so there really is nothing to do than drop a few settings a notch and wait.

The CPU and RAM are filled up to the brink with the FM/DM modules, so it's only the amount of VRAM left that is the biggest deciding factor. It seems the only thing that could potentially be optimized a bit better at this stage to give some PCs the ability to run with original sized textures is RAM use, so that instead of loading from the hard drive it could load up the textures in RAM and then shuffle them between RAM and VRAM as needed. It's still not optimal though, just faster.

The optimal would be a GPU with 3GB VRAM that runs faster than the current 3GB VRAM chips. In other words, nothing to do but wait.

As to cutting the sim's balls off in terms of graphics, i don't really see it that way. Don't get me wrong, yes, i'd like to be flying around with everything set to maximum. However i don't need to, because the current medium detail levels are equal or better than IL2's highest settings. In my mind this is not cutting the sim's balls off, it's making a reasonable compromise between performance, eye candy and cash spend on a PC, something which happens in PC gaming in general.

[SlipBall]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

The optimal would be a GPU with 3GB VRAM that runs faster than the current 3GB VRAM chips. In other words, nothing to do but wait.

Memristor technology which is well on its way to production, will tame this beast

[kendo65]

Hopefully the 64-bit .exe and DX11 will be here first.

[Ataros]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

there are things I am very unhappy with the game (I can not fly Bf109 because of this stupid head restriction in gunsight mode, I do not have three monitors view)

Try Freetrack http://www.free-track.net/english/ or TrackIR. With TrackIR I do not have to use the gunsight mode at all. Just lean a bit left before pressing 'center' button and then when I am back to normal vertical head position I have the gunsight right in front of me.

I think with NewView software you can save your head position as well http://www.sukhoi.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=67864
I did not try it as it is a bit complicated and not necessary with TrackIR.