Performance optimisation

[TonyD]

For those of you with slightly older machines, or graphics cards with only 1GB of VRAM, this may be helpful – I have been trying to optimise the graphic settings to get a realistic enough view without losing too many fps, or causing too much stuttering. I also really wanted to run with shadows on (mostly in the cockpit) because IMO this makes the whole experience more real. The strange black lines over the sea also decreased the immersive-ness somewhat.

I have done a lot of testing over Dover at low altitude due to the number of buildings, rivers and the sea, and have come up with what I feel is a good compromise between performance and detail, along with an appreciable reduction in the stutters. I have tested these settings in a couple of the ‘bomber intercept’ and ‘dogfight’ missions with similar results.

I started with the general setting on ‘Medium’, and went from there. These settings were all tested at 1920 x 1080 since I cannot seem to reduce this without some penalty (see separate post). My settings are:

• Model detail: Medium
• Buildings detail: Low
• Land detail: High (gets rid of the black lines in the sea)
• Visual effects: Medium
• AA: Off (doesn’t seem to visibly support AA currently)
• A-EF: Off
• Damage decals: Medium
• Buildings amount: Medium
• Land shading: Low (gains some fps back and reduces stuttering after running Land detail on High)
• Grass: Off
• Shadows: On (Woot!)
• Roads: On (seems to have very little impact on performance)

I have also disabled the Windows ‘aero’ theme, as others have suggested.

As can be seen in the attached screenie (reduced to 1600 x 900), the frame-rate is at a playable level, but the most important achievement is a drastic reduction in the ‘stutters’. While I still don’t find it to run as smooth as it should, it’s a great improvement from what I’ve had previously. Hopefully this is some help to others who are struggling

[Edit: I have tried these settings with Kegetys' 'nossao' and 'lowtex' mods, and the average frame rate has increased by 7 to 10fps with no visible reduction in quality - average now ~55fps (the 'nomipmaps' mod is terrible to look at). Also the 'stutters' are very infrequent and it seems almost completely smooth now.]

[Edit #2: With the above mods I've set the Land shading back to Medium with no recurrence of the 'stutters', and a nice improvement in visual quality. I hope the Devs take a look at this - it seems to be a vast improvement with no apparent down side.]

[GOZR]

GOZR Online
• Model detail: High
• Buildings detail: Very Low
• Land detail: Low ( no line )
• Visual effects: Medium
• * * *+Texture Quality: Medium
• AA: 8x
• A-EF: Off
• Damage decals: High
• Buildings amount: Medium
• Land shading: Medium
• Grass: ON
• Shadows: ON
• Roads: On / OFF (seems to have very little impact on performance)

I have not disabled the Windows ‘aero’ theme, as others have suggested but I Change the exe properties of the laucher .exe or shortcut to [b]"Disable Desktop composition"[/b

[bDAWg]

hey TonyD
yeah my settings are close to what you've posted...have you tried lowering the ShadowMapSize=5....I've tried a value of 4 and it softens the shadows and actually looks more realistic imo....at 3 the shadows are really reduced but then also have a wavy appearance to them...but right now I'm using 5 cause I'm not sure if it's a good thing to do or not...don't want to upset the game

[tf_neuro]

G.50 @ Medium settings click me
Br.20 @ High settings click me too

Links point each to a series of screenshots that start with the Video Options interface so you can see what settings were used.

Screenshots are completely unedited.
Taken with Howie's Quick Screen Capture set to snap a shot of the active window every 60 sec (yes, I discarded a lot of pics)

The 'weird' (extremely wide) resolution is the result of playing on 3 monitors (highly recommended)

Both configurations, medium and high settings are playable on my rig (specs below), but I eventually decided to go for the medium settings because at high settings the sim would slightly stutter when flying low over towns and when there are many aircraft around. Medium settings are totally playable in any situation (so far...). No stuttering at all.