Always struggling to get some more quality while keeping a decent FPS, lately, in addition to earlier big improvement getting rid of any anisotropic filtering, now (thanks to a nice hint by Aviar) a further leap in quality replacing new clouds with old and keeping them at "medium" level. This way I can run with forest=3, LandGeom=3, Water=4 and Effects=2 (which is great with HSFX 5.0.1).

The keys are those mentioned: no AF (neither in-game nor set by vidcard at all - quality got by LandGeom=3 is by far superior) and clouds as low as possible (so TypeClouds=0 and Sky=1 in conf.ini).

FPS (average) is 27. My rig is an old Athlon 64, 2 GHz.

Cheers,
GB

Cool. How do we replace clouds - just those conf.ini changes?

Yes. TypeClouds=0 should be added after "3dgunners=1" in [game] section of conf.ini.

GB

Thanks a lot. Will try it out.

What exactly does "LandGeom=3" do?

I'm always looking for more hints to max out the eye candy.

Increases distance to horizon and distance details of the landscape, AFAIK. Very noticeable at higher altitudes.

Thanks.

But I thought that was automatic when you had your in-game settings at "Perfect", which I did, but I still had "LandGeom=2" in my conf. ini.

@ Cold_Flying

To get the most out of this sim, you need to make little tweaks in the config.ini file. Just setting your game to perfect mode is not enough.

Yeah, I've got the Water=4, Effects=2, and Forest=3, but the LandGeom=3 was a new one for me.

I'm running an i5-2500 & GTX560Ti card so FPS isn't really a problem, and I'm always looking for more eye-candy tweaks. If you know of any more I'd be happy to hear about them.

You must type it manually editing by Notepad your conf.ini, then just "save". Do not "save as..." or it'll became a txt file, no more readable by game.

Cheers,
GB

P.S.: please read official Guide issued with each new patch: there you may find new graphic tweaks. The "LandGeom" command line use was described in 4.09m Readme, issued October 1st, 2009.

@ Cold_Flying

I love me some eye candy too. If your rig can handle it, you might want to use a higher resolution setting if you’re not already. In your video card settings you can set your AA settings to low. You don’t need much antiailising for this sim to look good. Here’s how I have my screen and resolution settings in my config.ini...

[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

And here are my vidio settings. I'm ATI so my warter settings are Water=2. Thats the highest for ATI but you will want Water=4 for your card.

[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=3
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=1
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=0
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=1
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=0

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0

HardwareShaders=1

Shadows=2
Specular=3
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=17
Water=2
Effects=1
ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0

With the exception of Effects=1, these are the highest setting the game will except. I use Effects=1 because it works better with the effects mod I use.

You might also want to get a copy of the Dynamic Light mod and the Dynamic Water mod. They make a big difference IMHO.

Thanks Slikk, I'm going to take a close look at that conf. of yours.

I fly mostly small A2A & A2G missions and FPS is very rarely a problem with my rig no matter how high I set AA, AF, or any conf ini. options.

I have several IL2 installs, including 4.11 & 4.10+SAS UltraPack. Are the light and water mods you mentioned separate to the SAS UP?

Thanks again.

My settings are almost identical to Slikk's with a couple of Nvidia exceptions and two others.

Question: What does UseDither & Use PolygonStipple do? I have both of mine set to zero.

--Polygon or Line stippling is the ability to create lines or polygons made up of dotted or dashed lines. This is done when you are looking at an object from a very closed angle or long distance. The polygon lines will be more or less stippled at certain angles so that they don't saturate the object making it a big messy blob.


--Dither is used in the 16bit mode, creating a pattern between two diferent colors to smooth out the transition from one to the other.


Aviar

Excuse the late reply.



"Perfect" is older and is OpenGL only, IIRC. The extra "LandGeom" was introduced much later as system performance had increased enough, to make it usable.

I'm not sure if they are included in any mod packs yet but you can get both of them over at SAS.