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General Community FAQ and discussionChanging QMB PicsOfficial FAQ from Luthier:
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1. Q: I have low FPS.
Answer:
A. Please consider disabling the anti-epilepsy filter (Options – Video – Anti-Epilepsy Filter). WARNING: disabling this filter may induce previously undetected epileptic symptoms even in persons who have no history of prior seizures or epilepsy. Please read the complete warning on the game’s splash screen.
Disabling the filter will add up to 10 FPS to your game, depending on your hardware configuration.
B. If your machine does not exceed the recommended system requirements, consider turning down some graphic settings. The two options that cause the most performance gain are Forest and Building Amount (Options – Video – Show Advanced). You should not need to turn down other settings if your computer meets the recommended requirements.
C. If your computer is well below the recommended system requirements, please also consider turning down Land Detail and Land Shading, and turning off Grass.
D. The options that cause the least performance gain for the largest decrease in visual quality are Model Detail and Shadows. We only recommend turning these off if your computer is right at the edge of the minimum requirements.
E. NOTE: DirectX 9 offers slower performance and lower graphic fidelity. If your system meets Recommended system requirements, upgrading to a DX10-capable operating system will offer better performance boost in Cliffs of Dover than perhaps any hardware upgrade.
2. Q: I have an above-recommended SLI video card set up and my FPS is very low.
A: At some point in the very hectic pre-release rush, we have broken SLI support and we have not yet been able to discover the reason for it. We are working very hard to re-enable it. In the meantime, disabling SLI will significantly boost your FPS.
3. Q: I see a black screen when launching the game.
A: You are most likely running an Nvidia card with 266.xx drivers. There's a problem with that particular driver version.
It can be resolved by either rolling back to a previous driver version, such as 257.21, or upgrading to the just-released 270.51.
The issue can also be resolved by manually adjusting one of the driver parameters in the registry. This is for more advanced users. Please modify the registry at your own risk.
Start - Run
regedit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers
Edit - New - DWord
Name = TdrDelay
Value Data = 12
4. Q: I am experiencing periodic FPS hic-ups when flying low over terrain.
A: The issue is apparently caused by our extensive vegetation. We are feverishly working on a solution, which should be available in a matter of days.
5. Q: I am seeing a gray rectangle in the upper left corner of the screen.
A: You have created a new Info window. These highly customizable windows allow you to set up your own user interface in-game. Due to the fact that the game also features clickable cockpits, our solution to having distinct clickable elements that possibly overlay each other is making the cockpit elements selectable with a regular left-click, and the interface overlay windows selectable with an alt-click.
So, simply alt-click the grey rectangle to select it, and then either move it and resize it, right-click to customize it, or right-click to close it.
This can also be done with all standard interface elements, including no-cockpit gauge overlays. Or you can right-click anywhere on your screen and add new Info windows to your interface layout.
6. Q: I have turned down Model Detail and now strange things are sticking through the cockpit of my Hurricane.
A: The external model of the Hurricane wasn’t designed with decreased graphic settings in mind, so lower-detail portions of it began to stick through the cockpit. We are working to have this addressed ASAP – in the meantime please consider turning Model Detail up as it does not offer significant performance gain on anything but the slowest machines.
7. Q: I am running Windows Vista / 7, and my game constantly crashes.
A: You have most likely manually reset your render to use DX9. Cliffs of Dover only supports DX9 on Windows XP. Please use DX10 on DX10-capable operating systems, as switching to DX9 actually reduces performance, in addition to leading to unexpected crashes.
8. Q: I cannot see propellers on any planes!
A: Rotating propellers were causing the game to fail epilepsy tests, and so drastic changes were made to the propellers in addition to the Anti-Epilepsy filter. If we can be perfectly frank, there is a chance that this will never change back.
9. Q: I see two small black vertical lines on my screen.
A: These are cursors in the Info windows (see #5 above). A very annoying, nasty, despicable bug that we've been hunting down for months and those damned cursors are still there. Grrr! They are on our hit list.
10. Q: I can fly through trees without receiving any damage.
A: Since Cliffs of Dover has more shrubbery in it than perhaps any other flight sim developed so far - hundreds of thousands of trees around the player - enabling collision for the trees grinds the game to a complete halt, especially as they need to be tracked around every plane on the map and not just the player's. Making collisions less precise leads to equally poor results, when planes may fly through a tree but crash into seemingly empty space.
We know this is extremely important. The solution is there, but it still eludes us.
11. Q: Your game does not support multi-core processors! How dare you, sir!
A: Cliffs of Dover does support multiple cores. However, additional cores are not used constantly, but in spikes. Expanded multicore support is in the works, but at this time the game taxes the 1st core constantly, while only delegating additional tasks to the other cores when needed.
Depending on your hardware configuration, you can play with manually setting the ProcessAffinityMask parameter of your conf.ini (WARNING: this is an UNSUPPORTED FEATURE for advanced users only). The parameter can be used to manually force all processes to a single core, for example ProcessAffinityMask=3 to have the entire game process on the 3rd core. The actual effect of this setting will vary greatly based on your individual hardware and software configuration.
12. Q: I am an old-time fan of the series and I can no longer manually edit my conf.ini.
A: By default, your config is now stored in the steam cloud. This allows you to log into steam on a new machine, and carry over your entire config including keyboard layout etc.
This also means that manual edits to the config files are automatically overwritten by the server when the game is launched.
NOTE: editing conf.ini is an UNSUPPORTED FEATURE for advanced users only. ALWAYS back up last working version of the conf.ini.
To disable cloud config storage, go through these simple steps:
* Right-click the game in the game list in your steam Library.
* Go to the Updates tab of the Properties window.
* Uncheck "Enable steam cloud..."
* Press Close
* You can now manually edit your config file!
NOTE: (once again) some of the settings in the conf.ini are legacy settings left over from when some features were not yet set in stone, so you WILL horribly break the game if you begin to randomly reset random settings to see what they do.
13. Q: I am running Windows XP. All missions stop loading at 95% and never complete.
A: Your memory is too low to fully load landscape with grass. Please go to Options - Video - Show Advanced and uncheck Grass. This will allow the game to fully load.
(automatic fix is on the way)
[to be expanded][/quote]
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