Comet, You've taken a big load off of my mind.
Today was a super-suck day, and I was almost at the point of exhaustion trying to explore this card.
I finally reached a livable framerate with a buttload of experimenting using Instant Action and TE w/the B61.
If I bump the details down one notch on the sliders, then use some 32-bit instead of Ultra...
Discovered that the bios had a video aperture setting of 256 Mb...choices were 128/256.
I lowered it down to 128.
Installing 'this month's driver set allowed me to force more AA options to the program w/o loss of interface..so far so good.
So basically, with it looking pretty respectable now, dogfighting in the clouds, FPS will average about 50.
Low level ground work will run from 30-50 depending on the details of the metropolis.
Trees/Shadows/Reflection look really good.
Clear skies can go up to 76...
Rotating outside view using 2&4 keys will complete in roughly 3 seconds.
AI aircraft now look smooth, as well as their exhaust.
B61 will result in a 8-33 fps as the dust settles =)

But the HUD is still stair-stepped like hell. Sometimes, the 3d HUD looks cleaner.
I can't understand it. But like you said, this is a desktop card. I should've known that you get what ya pay for.

And a Large A$$ thanks for walking me through this turmoil.
The card was 35 bucks US shipped. So it got me started.
I see that my board's PCI-E slot will only allow/deliver 75 watts to the video card.
That's all I know at this point about this new/overstock board.. I got a new power supply (500watt) and I had to do some sheetmetal work to make it fit. Then recheck for proper air flow to the ps, and a drill came in handy. Pulled the faceplate off of the cabinet and made an inch of room forward so that the dvd drive wouldn't be so close to the ps air intake grill.
It's been a crash course in patience. But I'm a gunsmith, by trade/hobby so it wasn't the end of the world.
But Guns and Electronics are two different spheres.
So buying another card will be like pulling the enamel off of my teeth w/all the computer language jargon out there today.
I speak fluent target rifles, Falcon4 and animals but D915GAG Daddy will ring someone's neck.
I'll need help finding a suitable card. One that doesn't break my little bank.
Anywhoo-
Seriously, Thanks Comet.
We'll converse on Falcon as the years go by.
All The Best-
Ed in 'Bama USA

Glad that all my typing served a purpose
Nah, seriously, I just shared bits of knowledge. Some of it was hard-learned from my personal
experiences. They weren't nice and I hope you dodge 'em altogether.

Do not see the 35 bucks spent on your 8400 GS as a bad investment. Quite the contrary.
They made you understand important things before you had a chance to make any *real* mistake.

Forgive the double-post, gents.
It's just to keep different subjects separate.



This is from yesterday night. 5th day of operation Balance of Power, Balkans theatre.
With the Frag Order of my favorite squadron (315th) seemingly empty, I peeked at the ATO to find
some interesting action. The 77th at Falconara had an Interdiction coming up. Short distance to
travel. Target zone reasonably 'cold'. Mission priority only an 'E'. Sounded relaxing - I took it.

I was ramping up, waiting for the gyroscopes to align. As usual when I got nothing better to do,
I began looking around for anything to catch my interest.

The next series of screenshots will document the last 2 minutes, 10 seconds, and 12 hundredths of
second of flight... of the sorry dude depicted here:



That's not something you see everyday. Too bad he didn't make it v_v
Wish I could screenshot a chute. But there wasn't any.
In the first instants I got him on camera he still had the gear up, the brakes closed, and enough
speed and altitude to make it. If only he jettisoned the winders and made a gentle turn to align...
Instead he hit the brakes and deployed the gear, of all the stupid ideas! >_<"
He doomed himself and the town below. Tragic. I began capturing the screenshots as it became clear
he wasn't going to change his mind.

May he RIP.

Somewhere in an earlier post I said that F4:AF's weather is dynamic (it is), but its clouds have a
tendency to disappear for good, never to return - pushed 'out of the world' by the winds, with no
fresh new clouds pushed 'in' from the opposite side.

I also said that I was experimenting with the 'set g_bEnableWindsAloft 1' BFops.cfg switch to see
if it made any difference.

I still don't have solid conclusions about it, but I'd cautiously say that 'set g_bEnableWindsAloft 1'
may have a positive effect on the weather:


This was taken late into day 5 of the campaign. Usually at this point into a campaign, you have the
sky totally clear theatre-wide by like three and a half days already. Not only I'm having clouds, but
I'm having 3 different types at once.
In fact, excluding the topmost (angels 40) stratum of clouds -which is always present- we have the
puffy cumulus clouds (on the left, they extend from 10000 to 22000 ft), then some flat clouds ('overcast' ?)
that look like snow (it's no snow, it's clouds @ 11000 ft), and finally we have that weird lone strip
high and far. Can't say how far it is, but the height appeared to be above 30000 ft.

I'm not privy of AF's weather details, but if I were to make an educated guess I would infer that
'set g_bEnableWindsAloft 1' somehow makes it unlikely for the wind to 'push out' all the clouds
before the weather system manages to elaborate on new ones to insert into the theatre. And this would
be, 'cause the wind is not allowed (with the switch On) to blow into the same direction for too many
sim-hours.

Hehe, maybe now that I said it the sim will disprove me (Murphy's Laws always linger). Maybe this is
all a coincidence... that is lasting 5 sim-days.

Sh!# Comet, I'd bet that during Easter Sunday, You would've found all of the eggs tucked around the yard here & there.
How'd you stumble up on that line of code? Was that in a list from BMS or FF5 somewhere.
Anyway, cool as spit. I wonder what your FPS numbers reflect with the newer weather 'conditions'

Hang 'Em High, Boss.

I remember when I started my first campaign in Falcon4.08-
That spilled buttermilk cloud layer. I had mixed emotions about that design. But it was what it was.
Then to run into Allied Force, Fall in love all over again, knock the dust off of the brain cells, and get into the campaigns again...
And what did I see...
More buttermilk.

And I had barely finished to say that... ¬_¬"



That 'unlikely' is the problem. It's just an 'unlikely'.
The fact it's unlikely isn't enough to guarantee it'll last. I should have known.


No more clouds. This is 8 sim-hours after the last screenshot:
(am I disappointed...)



Here's where they have gone (I think).


My route later brought me closer to them. I believe to have recognized the same cumulus formations
observed around my home plate only 8 hours earlier. But here is at ~130 nm away from home plate.

This is enough to disprove me (gee, thanks so much...).
The 'set g_bEnableWindsAloft 1' switch certainly has some effect on the clouds (it's no coincidence
that they lasted 5 good days), but it isn't enough to prevent the theatre from turning almost cloudless
in less than half a day. At best it makes it harder to happen.

Looks like periodic clouds injections are still needed to keep the sky interesting. Less frequent injections
than without 'set g_bEnableWindsAloft 1', perhaps, but still needed.

I perfectly understand that the real sky is rarely as full of clouds as I'd like. If I look out of my window
right now there's no clouds. It's the same white-azure gradient filling the sky in all directions as far as
my eyes can see.
But the real life terrain is rich of features. With or without clouds a pilot has constant perception of
movement and speed. In AF the terrain is less feature-rich, and clouds are useful, even necessary, to
some extent, to provide the simmer multiple points of reference, so he retains perception of movement
and speed.



My hardware (which is far from exceptional for today's standards) appears to have enough excess power
to keep up with the workload, no matter whatever about clouds. Nevertheless, I'm trading a lot for all
the pretty clouds I showed in the past days. Do not think they come for free Nothing does.

But since I Vsync AF with my monitor refresh rate, I'm not seeing any performance difference both with
and without clouds. But I'm sure the difference would show up if I turned the Vsync off. It's normal.

The cumulus clouds appear to be the costly ones. Just like all clouds, they cast a shadow on the ground.
The CPU has to work in order to compute *where* the shadows will appear. But the cumuli clouds also
have a 'translucency', which has a cost for the GPU. Little cost, to be sure, but when you put like 400
translucent textures all together and overlapping with one another, then the GPU workload sums up to
something you can't ignore (more so when all nVidia control panel graphics settings are pumped up to
the maximum, as in my case). Still, AF handles the situation very well. I've seen more modern games
cough their soul outta the rear end when asked to perform a comparable feat (and without me messing with
the control panel settings).

Have you tried setting the "set g_bGlueCloudsToTerrain" option to "red_KrazyGlue" instead of just "Elmers_Craft_Glue"?

Well I'll be go to ------
another Einstein.
Where do ya'll get this stuff from?
Amazing