Anyone with problems with ATI drivers read this.

[RedToo]

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...3/m/5031088038

PF_Coastie over at UBI with instructions on how to let ATI know of the problem so that they might fix it.

RedToo.

[dduff442]

While you're right to complain about the bugs, I did manage to get acceptable performance after a lot of painful experimentation. My system has an i7/920 CPU with an ATI HD5870 GPU, but the settings here should be useful to anyone with a recent ATI card.

The simple solution is to use DirectX with the latest Catalyst driver update. I haven't tested this extensively but it delivered excellent FPS performance. The only problem I noticed was that the landscape tended to momentarily break up into black squares whenever the viewing angle was shifted suddenly.

The other problems with DirectX in il2 are one that the water is flat and not nearly as pretty as in OpenGL and two that 'perfect' graphics mode is unavailable. 'Perfect' mode doesn't matter except in clear weather (apparently) when it doubles the draw distance. I did manage to get both these features working in OpenGL as I'll explain.

With the latest ATI drivers (10.2), il2 is pretty much unplayable in OpenGL mode due to the problems of text corruption etc. Dropping a copy of version 9.1 of the ATI OpenGL driver into your il2 directory will allow you to use 9.1 for il2 (which works fine) and 10.2 for everything else.

So... after a lot of messing around, I finally arrived at what I consider the optimal settings:

First the screen resolution:

[window]
width=1920
height=1200
ColourBits=32
DepthBits=24
StencilBits=8
ChangeScreenRes=1
FullScreen=1
DrawIfNotFocused=0
EnableResize=0
EnableClose=1
SaveAspect=0
Use3Renders=0

[GLPROVIDER]
GL=Opengl32.dll

These settings will work for any widescreen etc. monitor unsupported by il2 simply by altering the width and height parameters to fit your monitor's native resolution.

Now to the Graphics settings:

[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=2
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=0
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0

HardwareShaders=1

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

Sky=2
Forest=3
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2

LandGeom=3
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=8
Water=0
Effects=0
ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0

I get around 32-45fps under 'normal' conditions with these settings. The 'Black Death' shows around 30-35fps on average, dropping to a minimum of around 22 in effects-heavy moments. I know that last figure sounds alarming, but I didn't notice it to be a serious problem in terms of the visual experience.

Setting effects at 1 tended to cause nasty fps hits during explosions etc. Setting water=1 (or higher) radically hurt fps performance. FRAPS showed 17 or so with water=1 but the ground was actually chugging past at around 5fps while only aircraft were showing the 'true' 17fps.

Water=0 is actually ok, still miles better than the DirectX version, and I don't think many people will miss the shadows from effects that effects=1 permits.

The good news is I can ramp anti aliasing, anisotropic filtering etc up to the limit in Catalyst Control Center without hurting the fps count in any way. As far as I can make out, the problem is that the Nvidia-optimised code is dumping extra load onto the CPU and that this is the limiting factor rather than GPU performance. Experimenting with lower resolutions did not produce an improvement in fps performance that I could see.

The game does look really well under these settings and the extra draw distance means that objects 'popping up' are much less obvious than with DirectX. Flying low over Slovakia or the big port town in the MTO map is particularly nice here and missions that use, e.g., smoke markers to designate targets will be easier when the smoke is actually visible from more than a few kilometers away.

At 30-40fps, some 'tearing' when rapidly shifting the angle of viewing, as with using a hat switch, will be apparent to those with sensitive eyes. It isn't a big issue for me, though, so unless you're one of those very few people who are sensitive to fps rates below 60 I'd suggest using the settings shown. Shooting games etc. can be painful enough at 30fps but Il-2 isn't really a 'twitchy' sort of game so I think I'll be sticking with this setup.

[rakinroll]

Thank you for your good help dduff442. I am using x1950 pro with 7.11 driver. Do you have any idea 7.11 catalyst settings for my card? I am posting my vga setting pictures.

[maclean525]

dduff442, thank you! I have a 5850 running triple screen and have been struggling with the graphics settings since installing IL-2.

One question, could you attach or send me a link to the download of the ATI 9.2 OpenGL driver? I'm not sure exactly which file to use and where to find it.

Again, many thanks!

Cheers,
...Colin

[dduff442]

Originally Posted by maclean525

dduff442, thank you! I have a 5850 running triple screen and have been struggling with the graphics settings since installing IL-2.

One question, could you attach or send me a link to the download of the ATI 9.2 OpenGL driver? I'm not sure exactly which file to use and where to find it.

Again, many thanks!

Cheers,
...Colin

Ooops -- got the version number wrong. That's 9.1 rather than 9.2. I've attached the zipped dll.

Checking for Catalyst updates on a regular basis is probably a good idea as well. Don't forget to backup the dll in your Il2 directory to test the updates, though, or otherwise you'll be stuck with 9.1 which isn't perfect by any means.

dduff

[dduff442]

Originally Posted by rakinroll

Thank you for your good help dduff442. I am using x1950 pro with 7.11 driver. Do you have any idea 7.11 catalyst settings for my card? I am posting my vga setting pictures.

Start by taking the bits of 'code' above and pasting them over the relevant sections of the conf.ini file in your il2 directory. It's probably best to make a backup copy before doing so and make sure you save it as .ini and not as .txt. Also, you'll need to change the width and height parameters to match your screen's native resolution.

I'm not certain your card will run Il2 in perfect mode -- my last PC had 250mb of video RAM but I needed to tone down the settings to get an acceptable frame rate. Try those settings for a start, though, and if the fps is not acceptable you can try lowering the screen resolution or anti-aliasing setting.

Never having been able to use AA in Il2 before, I have to say it's indispensible. Without AA, distant planes turn into squiggles and it's impossible to tell where they're headed or to guess the lead for shots.

Hope this helps. If not, get back to me and I'll see what I can do.

dduff

[maclean525]

This worked FLAWLESSLY. Thank you very much! Looks wonderful in 5760x1050 and so much better with no text corruption!

[Flanker35M]

S!

Discussed this at ATI froums as well I run similar setup as DDuff. Some small differences in setup though. I run OpenGL and in conf.ini I do NOT use UseDither, PolygonStipple, DrawLandByTriangles at all, there is no performance gain or loss with them, no impact on visuals either.

As of Effects=0 or 1. This affects the "blocky text" corruption we get when loading the graphics of the game. With Effects=1 the blocky text clears after a moment when playing a track for example. Without it does not. Also with Effects=0 the 3D models flicker from grey to skinned etc. But with Effects=1 nothing of this is seen.

I wonder how you get VertexArrays NOT to produce the "blue hue" when firing guns? Or is it different in DirectX? I do not run DirectX as it looks crap, I rather use Water=0 in OpenGL than that ugly water in DX mode In OpenGL the blue hue is tied to TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1, having it at 0 and no "blue hue" even the TexFlags.VertexArraysEXT=1 is used. Go figure.

I used 9.10 version atioglxx.dll before, but not with the new drivers. I just start the game, run a track for a few secs and join servers via IP address. New drivers give good perfromance The Black Death averages at 55FPS with 70 maximum and dipa to 26 minimum(La5 and Fw190 collision).

I did go through the logs of my game crashes and it seems it is due IL-2 engine making bad calls to driver and/or hardware thus creating a situation where the game will stop working and just CTD. Discussed this in length with some programmers at the annual virtual pilot convention and these code mongers did explain it would not be too hard to fix if there was more info available..mentions of some wrong values in the code etc.

[DB605]

Originally Posted by dduff442

While you're right to complain about the bugs, I did manage to get acceptable performance after a lot of painful experimentation. My system has an i7/920 CPU with an ATI HD5870 GPU, but the settings here should be useful to anyone with a recent ATI card.

The simple solution is to use DirectX with the latest Catalyst driver update. I haven't tested this extensively but it delivered excellent FPS performance. The only problem I noticed was that the landscape tended to momentarily break up into black squares whenever the viewing angle was shifted suddenly.

The other problems with DirectX in il2 are one that the water is flat and not nearly as pretty as in OpenGL and two that 'perfect' graphics mode is unavailable. 'Perfect' mode doesn't matter except in clear weather (apparently) when it doubles the draw distance. I did manage to get both these features working in OpenGL as I'll explain.

With the latest ATI drivers (10.2), il2 is pretty much unplayable in OpenGL mode due to the problems of text corruption etc. Dropping a copy of version 9.1 of the ATI OpenGL driver into your il2 directory will allow you to use 9.1 for il2 (which works fine) and 10.2 for everything else.

So... after a lot of messing around, I finally arrived at what I consider the optimal settings:

Thank you for these settings, unfortunately it still won't work with my system. Framerate is probably about 1-5fps and even menus are painfully slow. I have Ati HD4850 1gb card, catalyst 10.2 and 9.1 opengl driver in il2 directory, OS is xp32. Any thoughts what could be wrong?

[maclean525]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!
In OpenGL the blue hue is tied to TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1, having it at 0 and no "blue hue" even the TexFlags.VertexArraysEXT=1 is used. Go figure.

Thanks for this, I noticed the blue hue last night also, I'll try removing the UseVertexArrays=1 and setting it to 0. Will report back.

Also, if I set Water=2 and Effects=2 the graphics quality is way, way better than both set to 0, it's a significant improvement. Using OpenGL.